Missile Trivia

1] Mazkirovka:

Soon after Trump made his magic missile tweet on 11 April, a former CinC of the Russian Navy, Admiral Masorin, stated the USS Donald Cook could easily be taken out by torpedos if they launched missiles on Syria.  The Cook, and many other US, French and Brit ships were operating in the Eastern Mediterranean at the time not far off the coast of Syria..  Not sure why he focused on the Cook, but that ship has had many run-ins with Russian ships and aircraft in the past especially in the Black Sea when on FON Operations.   Plus there were stories in the US and British media that the Cook was on station and as an Arleigh Burke class destroyer was capable of launching Tomahawks on Assad's purported chemical weapon sites.  I believe there were similar reports in Turkish newspapers.  In the lead-up to the 14 April missile strike the Cook was shadowed closely by the Russian Navy and buzzed repeatedly by Russian air.  The same thing happened to the British submarine HMS Astute armed with Tomahawks.  She was followed closely by one (or two?) Russian Kilo-class submarines, two frigates and antisubmarine aircraft.

Neither was involved in the missile strike.  That strike was launched by aircraft from Cyprus, France and Qatar;  and by ships in the Red Sea, the northern Persian Gulf, and from an unwatched French Frigate and US submarine in the Med. 

The Cook media stories were plants.  Hmmm?  Sounds like SecDef Mattis is finally returning to our Revolutionary War roots of 240 years ago to mislead the enemy as to our force disposition and plans.  Or did the deception idea come from our allies, the wily Sassenachs in Whitehall, instead of the Pentagon?

BTW, nice hat. 


2] Dezinformatsia: 

Lots of discussion going on throughout the web about the 14 April missile strike on Barzah and Him-Shinsar in Syria.  Aficianados of RU, RT, Sputnik, TASS and other Russian newsites have bought into the meme that 71 of the missiles never made it to their intended targets either by being shot down by Syrian AD.  Or by Russian Electronic Counter Measures or magic wand Cyberwarfare tricks that deflected the missiles.  Or by plain old  missile malfunction.  The Pentagon claimed all missiles made it through.  Perhaps one side is lying?  Or perhaps both sides are employing a wee bit of dezinformatsia.   For me I don't really care which.  But I think those rooting for the Russian point of view are missing the main point. 

105 cruise missiles (66 TLAM, 19 JASSM-A, nine SCALP, eight Storm Shadow, and three MdCN), each with a 1000 pound warhead is pure overkill for three targets.   It appears 'swarm tactics' were used.   Definitely not one of the autonomous, cooperative robotic swarm dreams of DARPA or AFRL.  But still a swarm launched by 20 separate platforms from six or seven widely dispersed locations.   The Russian General Staff freely admits only 71 missiles or just under 70% did not make it to the target.  So it seems to me that if the Russian claim is correct (and I am not conceding that point) then 34 did get through, therefore validating the tactic.  If we get in a major conflict, would we do any better defending an aircraft carrier against 100 plus anti-ship missiles?  Just one hit out of 100 with a 1000 pound warhead would at the least cripple her with massive casualties, and at the worst could send her to the bottom.  I know we are working on anti-swarm tactics, but would surmise we are far from perfecting them.
 

Guile and Valor

Just finished reading 'The Deceivers' about the art of deception in the 2^nd world war.  Not the novels of the same name by Forsyth or Masters, but a well-researched nonfiction account.  Boring you say, as most everybody has heard about the phantom armies in Southeast Britain facing across the channel from the Pas de Calais and perhaps about the ‘man-who-never-was’.  But this book goes into the organized deception campaigns in the Chinese/Burma/India Theater, North Africa, Italy, the Eastern Front, and both the Central and Southwest Pacific Theaters also.  Very detailed and interesting.  The Americans and French learned it as well from the Brits.  The Soviets too but that part is not quite as detailed, due I am sure to unavailability of the appropriate Russian records to an American researcher.  

The author does not credit the British mastery of deception to any particular perfidiousness in the English character.  Interestingly he ascribes it to a 1900s era  British Colonel, G. F. R. Henderson, who was a dedicated student of the campaigns of Stonewall Jackson in the American Civil War.  Henderson was also an author and a Professor of Military Art at the British Staff College.and influenced generations of British officers with Stonewall’s systematic mystifying and misleading of his enemies.   Great generals of all nations have of course used ruses and feints since the beginning of warfare.  But the British genius was to make deception a separate staff section reporting directly to the commander or to his chief of staff and to codify it into their doctrine.  We Americans learned the game from them during the war and played it well at the time.  But unfortunately our staff system was more rigid so we added a layer between commander and the deception staff by assigning it as a tiny subsection of either G-2 or G-3.  And then in 1946 we promptly forgot about it and it and everything we had learned.

Admiral Hewitt in NW African waters and the western Med used it with his Beach Jumpers for mock amphibious landings to disguise the real intended beachhead.  The original idea came from Hollywood (Doug Fairbanks Jr) and they were later used in the Pacific.   

 Nimitz took to deception and used a notional invasion of the Kurile Islands from the Aleutians (termed Wedlock) to mask his intentions in the Marianas and later the Palaus.  That same deception plan also also benefited MacArthur at Leyte.  It worked as evidenced by the buildup of Japanese ground troops in the Kuriles from 14K in 43 to 64K in January 44 plus four air regiments were moved to Hokkaido in February 44 from southern Japan and from Manchuria.  Later Nimitz used a notional invasion of Formosa and mainland China coast (codenamed Bluebird) to disguise the largest amphibious assault of the Pacific – the Okinawan campaign.

MacArthur himself was a natural and used tactical deception brilliantly during the Hollandia campaign.  But for strategic deception requiring coordination with other theaters his imperious Chief of Staff, LtGen Sutherland, and his G-2 and G-3 did not take kindly to outside advice so lost many opportunities.  The Japanese were no slouches at deception themselves as witnessed by their outfoxing Halsey at Leyte.  But they entered that game too late and their efforts were to no avail.

Mountbatten used it extremely well in Burma, his prime practitioners being General Slim and also Peter Fleming,elder brother to Ian, the author of the James Bond novels, some even claim that Peter was a literary clone of 007.  General Stillwell did not like the concept of deception and would not allow it by his command.  His later replacement, Wedemeyer, used a notional drive to the coast of the South China Sea by a Chinese Army Group, reputedly led by Patton (?) so they could link up with Nimitz’s Bluebird ruse.

The book is not new, it was published nine years ago, so is relatively inexpensive but is well worth a look.  The author, Thaddeus Holt, is a former Deputy Under-Secretary of the Army.  He has also written articles on military history for MHQ, JMH and the NYTimes.  Good read but not for the faint of heart as it is 805 pages plus another 300 or so pages for the Appendices.  My only beef is that he seems to spend too much time on the personalities of the various deception staff officers and some of their arguments with each other.  Otherwise it is great reference work not just for deception but also for the real operations they were designed to protect with their <i>”bodyguard of lies”</i>.