Podcast: Cold War Comeback

Robert Wall:

Welcome to the Check 6 podcast, where today we discuss the Cold War comeback at the NATO summit in DC and the just concluded Global Air and Space Chiefs' Conference in London. We seem to be back talking about GLCMs in Europe or Ground Launch Cruise Missiles for our younger listeners and asking questions about deterrence, including does it work?

Here to hold your hand through what seems like a time warp to 1984 are Steve Trimble, Aviation Week's Senior Defense Editor and his Pentagon counterpart, Brian Everstine. I'm Robert Wall, Aviation Week's Executive Editor for Defense and Space.

Brian, GLCMs, intermediate range ballistic missiles in Europe. Walk us through what got announced in Washington and what's going on really. 

Brian Everstine:

Yeah. So at the end of the NATO summit, one of the key announcements after days of talking about air defenses, a lot of what's going on in Ukraine was a joint announcement with the White House and Germany about an upcoming deployment with the Army's new multi-domain task force, which will be bringing some of its key big new munitions, new weapon systems to Germany by 2026. This of course includes the HIMARS, it includes the Mid-Range Capability or Typhon, and in a relatively vague statement, the White House said they will also be bringing a developmental hypersonic system.

Now, this possibly, I would say likely would be the long range hypersonic weapon or the Dark Eagle that is in development right now, which would be a very notable, I think if you're in Moscow will be kind of, they're definitely paying attention to the army deploying a hypersonic long range system to Germany will have Moscow within its reach. So that is supposed to be by 2026. We knew the multi-domain task force would be deploying to Germany, but this puts a timeline on these new weapons being deployed to Germany. 

Robert Wall:

Typhon's still a pretty new program for many of our listeners. Maybe talk people through what is involved there. 

Brian Everstine:

Yeah. So Typhon, the Mid-Range Capability is the army doing a land-based way to launch standard SM-6 missiles and tomahawk missiles, kind of bridge the gap between the shorter range, HIMARS within the MVPF and the longer range LRHW. It is new. The army just did their first deployment to the Philippines in something that really rankled China, which I guess would probably be a preview of what Russia might have to say when it comes to Germany. 

Robert Wall:

Steve, can you talk a bit about that? I mean, the GLCM debate is not entirely new to you, so maybe can you talk us through why this is significant and how it's similar from a strategic perspective and also different than it was 40 years ago? 

Steve Trimble:

In comparison to the Cold War and the nostalgia for the Cold War is pretty appropriate because I was a kid of the Cold War. My dad was in the Air Force in the 1980s. We were actually stationed in Europe with ground launch cruise missiles on our base with the 485th tactical missile wing at Florennes, Belgium with nuclear warheads. In fact, they were tomahawk missiles. They were called Gryphons, but they were derivatives of the BGM-109 tomahawk. And now we're back to that.

I was there in 1987 when Gorbachev and Reagan signed the INF Treaty that banned all those missiles, both nuclear and conventional. And the reason why that treaty was signed was because of how frightening it was that we had, not just ICBMs, which have a certain strategic and time interval associated with warning and all sorts of things, plus you keep track of where they are a lot easier. But with the short-range missiles, the lack of transparency on where they were, where the launchers were and where they could go because these were mobile systems scared both sides. And then you had the fact that they had nuclear warheads, which is also pretty scary. And the warning time was less than 10 minutes because the flight of these missiles were not nearly as long as what you would see with intercontinental missiles.

And that's what led to the signing which banned all those missiles by the US and Russia or Soviet Union until 2019 when the treaty lapsed. Europe was not a signatory to that treaty, but they pretty much followed along with it. And that led to another announcement at the NATO summit last week. So yeah. 

Robert Wall:

First, of course, we need to point out that this time we're not talking about nuclear tipped weapons. We're talking about conventionally armed missiles. 

Steve Trimble:

Yeah, no, absolutely. And that obviously was an aggravating factor back then. But even with conventional missiles, that hair trigger warning and the lack of visibility over where they might be creates a certain hair trigger alertness, which can lead to misjudgments and miscalculations, especially in the most stressful months of a conflict or of a pre-conflict.

So as you see these missiles go in, that's kind of what we're dealing with. It's a really important thing that's happening here. The deployment's not going to take place until 2026, but it's a big change in just the whole strategic and tactical posture in Europe. Russia has had those missiles of that size, nuclear and conventional on their side of the line, but now NATO's getting them as well. 

Robert Wall:

Yeah. And I think very important, obviously that that was in fact, the Russian systems were in fact the reason for the INF Treaty basically to come to an end or the US effectively to pull out because it argued that Moscow was in violation of the agreement, and boom, now here we are.

But I cut you off. You were going to talk about, which is also very interesting that of course this time to some extent, the Europeans themselves are getting into the game. So Steve, kind of walk us through that, if you don't mind. 

Steve Trimble:

Yeah. So we started hearing about this a few weeks ago. It's this program called the European Long Range Strike Approach, and that is basically set up to fill a gap in the missile inventory by European governments and European manufacturers. They don't have a conventional medium or intermediate range ground launched missile at the moment, but that's what they decided to do with a four country agreement signed at the NATO summit last week. That included Poland, Germany, France, and Italy, and a few other countries may join in the future. But between them, they are going to develop a new ballistic missile capability, or I should say actually just a missile capability. It's not clear if it's ballistic or cruise missile at this point.

A few weeks ago, the German Ministry of Defense, said that it would be in the 1,000 kilometer range at least. And when they signed the agreement at the NATO summit, the information they released about it was that it was more like 500 kilometers or at least they lowered that threshold. So it could still be over 1,000 kilometers, because that's more than 500, but they changed the definition a little bit.

So that means that at some point in the future, probably in the next several years, you could have both US batteries of these medium and intermediate range hypersonic missiles along with European equivalents. And if they're ballistic and intermediate range, they're usually by definition hypersonic, although they may not be able to maneuver quite as much during the glide phase, the sort of mid-course phase as you would with a hypersonic glide vehicle. But those are the two big developments in that area. 

Robert Wall:

Thanks, Steve. I mean, very interesting obviously that this kind of general theme and vibe of Cold War then carried over from Washington and the summit here to London at the Global Air and Space Chiefs' Conference where it seemed like the dominant theme, if there was one, was around deterrence. A lot of talk about it on very many levels, and we can kind of explore some of that. But maybe Steve, start off talking a bit about what was kind of debated to some extent, and then we can drill into maybe the various subsets of the conversation. 

Steve Trimble:

You're right. So the theme of the conference was deterrence, and really it's set against this backdrop that they sort of described as this scenario that analysts were sort of putting out there in the 2027, 2028 timeframe, the so-called Davidson window where you have a chance of a major conflict developing in Asia, especially over competition with China over the fate of Taiwan and also the situation in Ukraine.

Now, we heard from Justin Bronk who's an analyst at RUSI here in London. He painted sort of a worst case scenario that he considered to be, I don't know, something that he considers to be more likely than a lot of other analysts out there, which is that Ukraine could actually lose this war. Maybe not this year, maybe not next year, but the year after that. He said that they're on a path to losing this war unless things change. And he had some prescriptions for doing that.

A lot of other analysts disagree with that, and they think there's a sort of a permanent stalemate developing and that neither side has the resources to exploit breakthroughs or anything like that by the other. But that is the backdrop. And how do we deter that war from happening is the discussion because nobody wants deterrence to fail.

And then there was the whole discussion of did deterrence fail with Ukraine? Obviously Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, in February of '22, which put us in this situation. But is that failure? Some people were saying yes, it absolutely was failure. Mike Bonitas, a former Air Force officer and F15 WSO who's now at SHIELD AI made an interesting point that maybe it's just a situation like that is undeterrable. When you have irrational actors making self-defeating decisions, how do you stop that from happening? And it's an interesting point.

But that was sort of the framework of the discussion. And then there were other particular technologies that were discussed in relation to deterrence. And one of those is this new concept of collaborative combat aircraft. Sometimes they're called loyal wing men, sometimes they're called remote carriers, sometimes they're called flying robots, but they are coming, that's for sure. But how do they affect deterrence?

Now in the US, we've heard a lot of discussion about this. In fact, autonomous aircraft, or sorry, autonomous systems including CCAs, but also UUVs, undersea unmanned vehicles or uncrewed vehicles, as well as uncrewed surface vehicles on uncrewed ships have all been discussed as part of this hellscape concept that Indo-Pacific Command came out with back in August and September.

And then we heard a lot about replicator. And this is the idea that if we're going to try to deter China in the next few years, we don't a whole lot of new breakthrough type systems coming into the inventory during that timeframe. But we could do something like the way Ukraine has responded to the Russian Black Sea in the last couple of years, which has used USVs and UUVs and some UAVs and missiles to essentially turn the Black Sea into a no man's land.

Can we do the same thing with the Taiwan Strait using uncrewed systems? So that's been talked about, but there were some questions raised about that. Jeff Harrigian, former commander of USAFE, US Air Forces Europe, now works at Lockheed Martin, raised the question, will China be deterred by these things? He made that in his comments as part of a panel discussion. I went up to him afterwards and asked him for what he thought the answer was to his own question. And he clearly had doubts that CCAs can do this, that can influence the deterrence posture positively because they're not visible.

You're sending them into the theater in crates and boxes. You don't fly them very much, if at all. And then after a conflict breaks out, that's when you use them. But that is not a deterrence effect, right? Because unless you see it, it may not actually deter you. That was his point.

And then the second point he raised is that he saw those questions about how useful they'll be and if they end up being not very survivable and essentially play the role of somewhat sophisticated decoys, China may not be as deterred by that as we'd like either. So that was that point.

And then another commenter from King's College London, a professor made the point that in her studies of the Chinese military, the scholarship is that they're still reluctant to engage in a bloody war with another country, that is they'll engage in cyber warfare, economic warfare, information warfare, but actual man-to-man combat as she put it, is something that still makes them a little bit reluctant.

So if we remove that blood, the flesh and blood from the equation as you would with UAVs or CCAs or other types of autonomous systems, that reduces the deterrent effect as well. That was her argument.

So just a couple other points about in this new age of technology and some of the technologies coming into the fore, how that is affecting the way deterrence is viewed and the way deterrence could actually be conducted. I'm not sure if anything that we heard was definitive either way, but it was some really interesting conversations on both sides of that. 

Robert Wall:

Brian, you also, you kind of paid attention to this too, because there was a bit of a discussion how the deterrence concept factors in when we start thinking of the space domain. So maybe you can kind of tell us a bit what was discussed there. 

Brian Everstine:

Yeah. So General Chance Saltzman, the Chief of Space Operations, the U.S. Space Force had a pretty interesting conversation, discussion because I mean, the title of the event is about deterrence. And he kind of came out and he pushed that aside saying, "As air and space chiefs, you can't think about deterrence. You need to think about building a force that will defend or attack."

Leaning into what Steve was talking about as an irrational actor, you can't really get into their mind and stop an attack. You can only really build a force that can protect against it.

And it's interesting, because if you go back to his bio, he was previously the deputy commander of US Air Forces Central and Middle East in 2019, 2020, dealing with Iranian missile attacks, and you couldn't establish deterrence against Tehran. We've seen that going on for years. You can only really build a force to protect.

And with the emerging capabilities with what the Space Force is trying to do, they're trying to find new ways to be able to protect the missions from space, whether talking proliferated the low earth orbit for missile tracking, that sort of thing.

His focus is on approaching this problem a little bit differently. There's no way you can get into Putin's mind, no way you can get into Xi Jinping's mind to effectively deter them. You can only really build a four second protect against it. 

Robert Wall:

Okay. Now that's very interesting. I guess not generally a huge endorsement of the deterrence concept at the conference then it sounds like. 

Brian Everstine:

No. 

Robert Wall:

Before we wrap this, I did want to ask you, both of you actually. The event was interesting to me in part because it was so ... We had voices from so many different places. I mean, I forgot, I mean, they said something like more than 60 different Air Forces were represented. Obviously not all on stage, but we had Nigerian Air Force representatives there. We had folks from the Middle East, certainly Lebanon was there. I think Bahrainis were there, and obviously Europe and Asia.

But just generally, was there anything you kind of picked up on the sidelines that you didn't necessarily write about, but you just thought, "Oh, that was kind of curious," that you wanted to share with our listeners? And Steve, maybe I'll kick it off with you. 

Steve Trimble:

Okay. I'm warning you, it's a little nerdy, but Air Vice Marshall, Jim Beck, he's Director of Air Capability and Programs, he had a defense economics lecture that I found kind of fascinating. He had a chart that he showed that showed global defense spending in constant 2022 dollars, so adjusted for inflation between 1988 and 2023, and that we were spending $1.7 trillion on defense globally in 1988, and it's $2.4 trillion now. So even after adjusting for inflation, we're spending more now on inflation than we ever have before.

And with that, there's also been significant increases in the last three or four years for reasons that we've probably already sort of discussed. But with that, that creates some really interesting economic effects that if you've had Economics 101, you can sort of anticipate because he made the point that the defense industrial base is shrinking. It's not growing. And so when you have more demand and more spending, but fewer suppliers and a limited pool of supply, that creates pressure on prices. So you see inflation.

And according to him, they are seeing 4 to 9% pricing inflation above the baseline rate of inflation. So that's on top of whatever the inflation rate is in the UK, 3 to 4%. And that's a result of not being able to expand the defense industrial base.

So when I hear a lot of talk about expanding the defense industrial base, a lot of it it's about trying to get new innovation, trying to get other ideas, try to find ways around, or try to find more nimble and agile actors that can adjust what they can provide as the military rapidly adjust their needs.

But there's also this issue of pricing and inflation with this effect of increasing demand, surging demand, and declining supply. And think about that as even I'm writing about F-35 production and shortages of fighters, shortages of UAV, shortages of ammunition and artillery. All of that has an inflationary effect, which means that you're able to buy less with the same amount of money, and all militaries are in the same boat there.

I've never heard sort of a more interesting argument for why the defense industrial base needs to be expanded or at least a more convincing argument for it. Anyway. 

Robert Wall:

Yeah, very interesting indeed, and certainly an interesting conversation to be had on defense inflation also going forward. And I'm sure we'll revisit that in future podcasts. Brian. 

Brian Everstine:

One thing that really stood out to us today is General Dave Allvin, the Air Force Chief of Staff, US Air Force Chief of Staff had a keynote and he was talking about some of his priorities and new approaches to modernization. And as part of it, he was talking about the NGAD family of systems, which as I'm sure everyone listening to this podcast knows, has been a very pointed discussion lately within Washington with the Air Force saying they need to kind of review the design and the need for it. The US Navy is pulling back its funding on its F/A-XX.

And so halfway through his presentation, he put up a picture that we hadn't seen before rendering of a notional fighter. And so naturally, we all screenshotted it, went over every detail that we could find. It kind of looked like a baby F-35. It was single engine, had a lot of different unique approaches to it. And then I reached out to his public affairs representative who said, "Oh, it was just a generic AI rendering." So we were kind of picking apart every possible detail we could for something that doesn't necessarily matter in the long run, but I think it shows that how starved we are focused on NGAD news. 

Robert Wall:

It shows the Air Force has finally found a use for AI, I guess. Anyway. Well, I thought the Nordic Chiefs panel on Wednesday afternoon was really charming actually. The Finnish, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish Air Force Chiefs were all there, and all of them, they talked a lot about dispersed operations, which I thought was really interesting. And then I really liked the Norwegian chief. He gave that example. Last year, I think it was, he said, gave his team a challenge to figure out a way to quickly or to make an effort to get one of his F-35s to land on an [inaudible 00:22:22], or not on a runway, but on a highway as they often practice in the Nordics, but a Finnish highway.

So his team went away, came back shortly later and said, "Okay, we think we've figured out what we're going to do, what we want to do." And he calls his Finnish counterpart and says, "Yeah, we're thinking about doing this." And the Finn's just like, "Okay, when can you show up?" And I don't know, I just thought that can do attitude of small Air Forces, action-oriented, closely collaborating was ... I don't know. I just thought it was charming and interesting, and sometimes you wonder why it's so hard for the larger air forces to ever get anything done.

Anyway, that was one of my favorite moments from the event. But anyway. Thanks Brian. Thanks Steve. You're heading off to RIAT, so have fun there. It looks like great weather and I hope you have a good time. And thanks Guy Ferneyhough for producing this podcast. And I'll see you Guy, I guess at Farnborough and you, Brian. And thanks to our audience. And remember to check back next week for another Check 6 after we've checked out Farnborough.