The Bunker: Pentagon Perspectives

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PERSPECTIVE 1.0

Maybe they’re not so great, after all

In the murky world of national security, perspective is everything. It’s the catalyst that leads to comprehension. We taxpayers and troops often are nothing more than witnesses to sales pitches through one-way mirrors, leaving us seeing but not understanding. Too often, in too many debates over military matters, context is MIA. That can lead to blunders of both omission and commission.

Speaking of which, last week was not a good one for the two biggest potential military foes of the United States. It helps to put things in that elusive context.

First, commercial satellite photos captured September 21 revealed a Russian RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile had blown up about 500 miles north of Moscow. “Satellite images suggest test of Russian ‘super weapon’ failed spectacularly,” reported Ars Technica, a reputable website well-known for its solid reporting on state-of-the-art technology. “All that’s left of the Russian missile silo is a big hole in the ground.” Other analysts concurred that something bad had happened. Moscow remained mum.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the Sarmat’s development in 2018. Capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads, the 200-ton, 116-foot-tall missile supposedly has a short launch phase, making it challenging for targets — like the U.S. — to detect and track it.

Last September, the chief of Russia’s space agency said the new missiles were ready for combat. It was a not-so-veiled threat to nations thinking of coming to the aid of Ukraine, invaded by Russia in 2022. Two months after launching the invasion, Putin said the Sarmat would “reliably ensure the security of Russia from external threats and make those who, in the heat of aggressive rhetoric, try to threaten our country, think twice.” The nonprofit Institute for the Study of War said September 22 that this failure represents the missile’s fourth, following only a single successful launch, in 2022.

Five days after news of Moscow’s missile mess broke, Michael Gordon of the Wall Street Journal reported that China’s newest nuclear-powered attack submarine sank at pierside nearly 4,000 miles away, shortly before it was to enter the fleet. Gordon reported that U.S. officials called it “a major setback for one of the country’s priority weapons programs,” adding that “the episode, which Chinese authorities scrambled to cover up and hasn’t previously been disclosed, occurred at a shipyard near Wuhan in late May or early June.” The vessel was to be the first in the Zhou class of Chinese subs.

We only know of these failures because of Western satellite imagery. Submarine sinkings and missile explosions are too big to hide. Who knows how much more rot is embedded in Chinese and Russian weapons hidden from unblinking, orbiting eyes? Unlike those tight-lipped militaries, the Pentagon has rightly to deal with bureaucratic blabbermouths like the Congressional Budget Office, the Government Accountability Office, and assorted inspectors general. In fits and starts, that leads to better arms.

Based upon decades of unclassified intelligence gathering (aka reporting) and personal observation, The Bunker confidently says that U.S. weapons eclipse whatever Beijing and Moscow can muster. That’s a perspective too often missing from debates over the size and prowess of the U.S. military.

PERSPECTIVE 2.0

Let’s hear it for the grunts!

The number nerds over at the Congressional Budget Office released their study into the availability of Army aircraft earlier this month. “Unlike the Air Force and the Department of the Navy, the Army experienced an upward trend in the availability of its aircraft from 2000 to 2023,” the CBO reported.

Now that’s news!

“In 2023, the Army’s average availability rate for manned aircraft was 68% — that is, those aircraft were in the possession of operational squadrons and capable of being flown for missions for 68% of total possible hours,” the congressional bookkeepers said.

In a 2022 report (PDF), the CBO found that Air Force aircraft availability was 48% in 2019. The Navy’s aircraft fleet was 40% that same year.

How can that be? Nearly 95% of Army aircraft (PDF) are helicopters. The mechanics and physics of flight of these “rotary wing” aircraft are far more complicated than traditional planes. Such “fixed wing” aircraft make up the bulk of those flown by the Air Force and Navy, which also included those flown by the Marines.

While CBO doesn’t explain why the Army eclipses the other services when it comes to flyable aircraft, here’s a safe Bunker Bet™: the other three lust more for gee-whiz technology. That tilts them more toward buying new machines rather than keeping what they’ve got airborne. That shortchanges spare-parts bins and other mundane items, depressing availability.

Tellingly, the Army is the only one of the four services that doesn’t fly the beleaguered F-35 fighter (PDF). Close, but no cigar. The Air Force “does not accurately track availability or flying hours for the F-35A, and the data CBO received from [the Navy] on the F-35B and F-35C did not match other reports of the availability of those aircraft, so F-35s are not analyzed here,” CBO said (PDF) in its 2022 study.

Apparently, things are even worse than we thought.

PERSPECTIVE 3.0

Uniformity

Sure, ICBMs and submarines and aircraft are all complicated pieces of kit. So, it should come as no surprise that they sometimes blow up, sink, or spend much of their time on the tarmac instead of drilling holes through the Wild Blue Yonder.

But gym suits?

The Air Force announced its new physical-training uniforms in March 2021 and said they would be available in October 2022. Production snafus delayed their promised debut until March 2024. Yet that date came and went. The service postponed their introduction until April for new recruits, and to July for everyone else, due to “a previous fabric shortage and pending resolution of an ongoing color match concern for the running and all-purpose short.”

But it took until July for the recruits to get their workout duds. Now it’s looking like November before the rest of the Air Force can begin smartly suiting up for PT. The new gym garb supposedly cuts down on the “swish-swish” sound made by the old gear when moving. While the Air Force won’t confirm it, it’s likely that quest for stealth is what delayed things.

WHAT WE’RE READING

Here’s what has caught The Bunker’s eye recently

→ “Political neutrality… ”

…is the best guarantee to keep the U.S. military out of any dubious actions ordered by a future president, West Point philosophy professor Graham Parsons wrote in the September 29 New York Times.

→ Port-a-nuke

The Pentagon broke ground in Idaho for its first experimental portable nuclear reactor, the Defense Department said September 24.

→ “Look — up in the sky!”

Air Force Times rates the chances that something shot down last year by a U.S. Air Force F-22 was an unidentified flying object.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark Thompson has been covering the Pentagon for more than 45 years.