Photo: Nose to Nose

Everyone remembers the F-14. After all those aerial sequences in Top Gun, how could we not? Though the Tomcat has been phased out by the U.S. Navy, leaving those ones shipped to Iran just before that late-1970s unpleasantness as the only ones in active service, it's not hard to find them on display across the United States. This one sits on the grounds of Seattle's Museum of Flight, and mostly gets rained on.

It looks a lot less menacing from this angle, I think.


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A Historical Perspective: War Games at Tow Law

I've posted before about my grandfather Les Parkinson's experiences serving in the British Army of the 1930s, and looking through my text files I've come across another extract that hasn't yet made its way to this weblog. In his descriptions of coal-fired mobile kitchens and the mechanized army still being a thing of the future, it really underscores to me just what the situation was like in the years immediately prior to the Second World War, and how much of a whirlwind of change that decade saw. The events described below took place in 1935 or 1936, after the deployment of the Cheshire Regiment to Malta that the last post covered; ten years later, the world would be practically reshaped.

Still, despite the coal and horses and so on, I'm certain that the majority of my grandfather's experiences will be deeply familiar to anyone who's ever spent time in the army, no matter what century or decade.

*****

After the short leave and on our return to barracks, we learnt that we were going to go on "manoeuvres." This was to play at being soldiers in a war atmosphere. Remembering what we did in Malta, we thought it would be a piece of cake. That was where we were wrong. In fact, it was brought home to us when we had to do a lot of exercises to get us fit and in fighting order. This toughening-up consisted of lots of route marches and physical training. All this gave us some idea that what lay ahead was not going to be a picnic. We learnt that we would be near a town called Tow Law. This was a small town in County Durham, out in the wilds and in a mining area, and the exercises would last about three weeks.

Prior to setting out, we had to be sure that all our equipment was in good order. This applied especially to our groundsheet. This was a cape-like item made of a rubberized material that acted as a cape and could also be used as a bivouac or small tent. By lacing two together, one could make a small tent and this we were taught to do, but we just laughed and thought they can't do this to us, it's not human. How wrong we were.

At this time the regiment still used horses, for the army was not yet mechanized. The only people with motor transport were the RASC, known as the Royal Army Service Corps. They provided all the motor transport that was required. We had horses for the main officers to ride. They were the CO, the second in command, the adjutant and the five company commanders. Even they could not ride all the time, they had to march like the rest of us, and when they did the grooms had to lead the horses. The other transport, such as the supply wagon and field kitchen, were pulled by draft horses that were hired by the army for the occasion.

As we were going to a "war," we did not have to be bandsmen so we did not have our instruments. Instead, the music we had to march to was provided by the drum and fife band that the army maintained, just as the Scottish regiments used their pipe bands. As the bandsmen were the official stretcher bearers, they were all assigned to various companies to perform first aid duties, and those who were not first aiders were assigned as riflemen to various companies. I went to "B" company, just my luck, for they were the duty company and did not know just what this meant, but I soon found out.

At the appointed hour we formed up on the square, ready to set off to go to the "war" games. To make sure we had our food we had field kitchens. Now these were ovens on wheels pulled by four horses with a rider on one of the front horses and two cooks marching behind each kitchen. The kitchens were fired by a coal fire, as each had its own supply of coal. The cooks wore blue overalls and marched behind their kitchens, as they had to keep the fires going all the time to make sure that the midday meal was ready on time.

Anyway, we set off on the way to Tow Law. On the line of march we marched for fifty minutes of each hour and rested for ten minutes, covering a distance of two and a half miles each hour. During this fifty minutes and after the first one, we were allowed to smoke. This was called "marching at ease."

After about four hours we had to learn what being "duty company" meant. We had come to a steep hill. The men marched up and then the duty company took off their equipment and marched down the hill only to be passed by the horses being led up the hill. The kitchens were still at the bottom of the hill. It then dawned on us that we were to be the horses. We were the "drag rope" party. Drag ropes were attached to the field kitchens and we humans became horses and pulled the carts up the hill to save tiring the horses. The cooks were still with their kitchens but looked like negroes, for their faces were black from the smoke from the fumes and the handling of the coal. When we got up the hill we got dressed and set off on the march again and the horses did their work again.

At work at the British Army's field kitchens outside Ypres, 1917.

We were told that we would have a couple of hours' rest at lunch time. Eventually we went into a field through which ran a stream. We were ordered to bare our feet and soak them in the stream, during which time an RAMC orderly would inspect our feet and treat any blisters that we had. There were some, but I had none as I was taught to look after my feet.

Then came dinner. Part of our equipment was a mess tin, as it was called. It was a thing that served as a plate and drinking vessel. When the bugle sounded "cookhouse," we lined up for the food. I was hungrier than I had ever been and this was my first meal out of a field kitchen, one that I would never forget. BULLY STEW! Corned beef, probably left over from World War I, and everything else that you could think of. Wow, the taste was queer, to say the least. Smoked, yes, and the cooks themselves, though they started out wearing clean blue boiler suits and clean faces, by the time they had marched for four hours behind the kitchen and keeping the fires going, their clothes were just as black as their faces. In fact, they looked like gollywogs.

Anyway, after they had served the food they were able to wash themselves in the river. While we were resting after that "gourmet" meal, I was surprised to see an ambulance pull into the field. This, we learnt, followed behind us and picked up the waifs and strays, all those that could march no further. To our surprise, it was empty. After a while we set off again on the line of march. We did learn that we were going to "camp" out for the night so we had to erect bivouacs, and after eating our evening meal - that is what they called it - it went dark and as we did not have any lights we all "crashed," that is, crawled into our shelters and went to sleep.

At about two in the morning, we were rudely woken up by the bugler sounding the alarm, so we broke camp and set off on a forced march. This, we soon learnt, was to march quicker and for two hours at a time without the usual ten minutes' rest each hour. Just as dawn started breaking we learnt that an enemy force had tried to, or was on its way to, attack our stopover place and that was why we had to break camp and set off on a forced march.

Fortunately for us and unfortunately for some poor farmer, we stopped alongside a field in which a crop of turnips was growing. Well, it was food and we were hungry, so we helped ourselves. I reckon that the farmer was a little mad when he saw what the army had done to his crop of turnips. Almost everybody had one, and I can assure you they tasted good and filled a large hole. Later we stopped at a little village called Sunnyside. Little was an apt description, for it consisted of two rows of houses and a coal mine. We had breakfast of sausages and bacon and two hunks of bread. Boy, it was good. We also had a good audience for all of the villagers must have been there watching us. For most of them, it was the first time they had seen soldiers since the war ended. Little did we know that this audience participation would be with us until the "war" was over.

After breakfast, we set off again to go to where we would stay in proper tents. What a luxury that was to be. We finally got to our camp site around tea time. This time we had a light in each tent. Although it was a hurricane lamp powered by paraffin, it was a light, but we did not have time to bother with lights for we were too tired to do anything but sleep, sleep, and more sleep. I slept so heavy that the next thing I remember was hearing that stupid bugler sounding reveille.

Having the army on their doorstep was something new and exciting for the locals, so much so that they followed us around. Wherever we went, they were sure to be. In the mock battles there were always the "good" and the "bad." The latter was known as the skeleton army. Ten men would represent a hundred and always wore blue arm bands for they were the blue army, while the other side was the white army and in the middle were the umpires who were mounted on horses and wore red. Their word was final. They watched closely what went on and declared the winners and losers, and gave you signs that said you were out of action. I was always in the blue army and would have to leave camp first to take up our positions to repel the invaders. The riflemen fired blank cartridges and the machine gun was represented by a wooden arrow on a stand, and the gunner had a rattle to imitate the firing of the gun.

On one of the stunts we were on, the first one had the attention of all the villagers. The plan was that we were defending a valley. We were posted atop the hill with our machine guns pointing down the slope. Through the trees, it was the perfect ambush site. Unknown to us, the locals had followed the white army and had guessed what was to happen, and had got in a position behind us and could be seen by the whites. They sent half their force behind our lines whilst the other half kept us busy, and we were all "killed" thanks to the locals.

These "wars" took place at varying times of the day. The funniest, though, was one near the end of the two weeks. We were all issued with bits of kindling wood in addition to our haversack rations. The plan was that our field kitchens and transport were to be captured and we had to fend for ourselves. Well, we all had heavy loads on our backs to carry. Some of the fellows got fed up with the extra weight in their packs and dumped some of it. At evening time we stopped and bivouacked in a field and told to cook our own food, as the transport had been captured. Those who kept the extra weight were able to prepare a meal by joining forces, and those that ditched their load went on the scrounge or did without. Then everybody settled down for the night.

During the night, our transport was returned and was able to feed us all with a big breakfast. We did not have any portable latrines, so those who had to "go" had to do it in a ditch by the hedgerow whilst the others were breaking camp. Suddenly a lot of shouting attracted us and we saw men running towards us, some with their trousers around their ankles. They were being chased by cavalrymen. Secretly, the other side had brought a troop of cavalry up during the night and they decided on an early attack. Being chased by a man on a horse and having him slap your rear with the flat of his sabre is not funny, especially just after breakfast.

Anyway, after the umpires stopped the "action," we returned to base camp to prepare to march back to our barracks in Catterick Camp, for the war games season had ended for that year. After the thirty-odd mile march, barracks never looked nicer.

Past Perspectives:

• The Maltese Deployment
  
• Riding the Holy Rails
  
• On the Manchester Beat
  
• A Yellow Warning
  
• The Liverpool Blitz
  
• The Manchester Blitz
  

Unsafe at Any Hypersonic Speed?

War never changes; it just gets more sophisticated. Last month, while the media was doing its utmost to marginalize and pigeonhole the Occupy movement, the United States military conducted a test launch of a new weapon platform: a hypersonic missile, capable of flight at five times the speed of sound, or six thousand kilometers per hour, and faster. This missile, fired from Hawaii, didn't even need half an hour to reach a target 3,700 kilometers away. It's all part of a project intended to give the United States the capacity to strike any target anywhere in the world within an hour and with ten-meter accuracy.

The BBC's reporting on it is rather dry and slim, saying little more than "this happened. Here is a brief explanation of what it is and some of the basic reasons why it happened." What isn't really spoken about is what it means, and that's the truly important thing to consider. For one, it distinctly reminded me of George Friedman's The Next 100 Years, in which he forecasts the Third World War to start in 2050 with attacks by unmanned hypersonic aircraft against the United States, Poland, and the rest of its coalition. The way I see it, hypersonic missiles are poised to reinvent the idea of warfare similar to the way intercontinental ballistic missiles did in the mid-20th century, and destabilize the 21st century political environment.

What really concerns me is how the United States will act when it has a hypersonic monopoly. It would have the ability to strike anyone, anywhere, with practically no warning at all, and whether or not an ability is used has little bearing on how that will be perceived elsewhere. I would imagine that once the United States starts building a hypersonic arsenal, everyone who is not already a staunch US ally will feel more threatened, and be justified in doing so. Missiles that fast can't be intercepted by aircraft, and it would take an extremely lucky shot for anti-aircraft defenses to knock one down. In many, many circumstances, hypersonic missiles would give the United States to strike anywhere it wants with utter impunity.

The Phalanx Close-In Weapon System aboard HMCS Algonquin. With an effective range of two kilometers, it'd have approximately one and one-quarter seconds to shoot down a hypersonic missile moving at Mach 5 before impact.

Sure, to a degree the United States already has this ability; but that's only to a degree. While its bombers can reach anywhere on Earth, a significant chunk of the modern American bomber force is subsonic. Aside from that, there are psychological factors at play: bombers are known, bombers are familiar - and bombers can be shot down. Even stealth aircraft can be shot down, as the Serbs proved back in 1999 when they shot down an F-117 during the NATO bombing campaign. That the United States has the capacity to send a bomber anywhere and drop some bunker-busters if it feels that it needs to doesn't really generate friction on its own.

Hypersonic missiles are a different story. Basically, unless you already operate a ballistic missile defense system, you're not stopping a hypermissile. Sure, you might be able to see it coming, you might be able to get out of its way, but nothing more than that.

Granted, I don't believe - at this point, at least - that the United States really would start using hypermissiles hither and yon outside of extremely unusual circumstances. The point, however, is not what it would do; the point is what it could do, and how that it is perceived by its rivals. It's easy to imagine how states that aren't on the best terms with Washington might see a hypermissile force as an existential threat. The way the reactions to such perceived threats manifest may greatly influence the geopolitical landscape as the century drags on.

Photo: Treads and Wheels

For a while, there have been tanks on Beatty Street. Two of them, to be precise, placed as static installations outside the Beatty Street Drill Hall - an M4A3E8 Sherman and a Ram Mk II, both of Second World War provenance. I was thankful to see that they'd been cleaned up; some weeks earlier I'd been going down the far side of Beatty Street, and one of the tanks had been covered by graffiti - probably the work of some group of morons completely ignorant of both historical importance and simple respect, perhaps a result of the riot.

Photographed here is the Sherman, contrasted against the more common sort of wheels you'll find in Vancouver today.


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Photo: Algonquin on the Sea

Most days, all you're going to see on the waters of Burrard Inlet are container ships, tugboats, personal pleasure craft, and one or two of the SeaBuses. Every once in a while, though, you'll find the stark lines of a warship there. HMCS Algonquin, one of Canada's three remaining Iroquois-class air defense destroyers, arrived at Canada Place in Vancouver a couple of days ago for the Canada Day festivities. She does look subtly meaner to my eyes than the Halifax-class frigates, even though all those VLS cells toward the bow only contain surface-to-air missiles - if Wikipedia is accurate, that is.

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Carrying Carriers to the Future

"Look, pals, the aircraft carrier was the weapon of this war, before Hiroshima. Carriers don't look so good against space ships. Let's build galleons instead; they are cheaper, prettier, and just as useful."
- Robert A. Heinlein, "The Last Days of the United States"

For the last seventy years, the aircraft carrier has been one of the ultimate expressions of power on the waves. Bombers operating from an aircraft carrier raided Tokyo in 1942; Harriers operating from aircraft carriers kept the Falklands British in 1982; Maverick shot down a bunch of MiGs and made peace with Goose's death while flying off an aircraft carrier in 1986. Specifically, the aircraft carrier has been one of the ultimate expressions of American power; of the world's twenty carriers, eleven of them fly the Stars and Stripes. Italy is in second place, with two.

I don't expect this to be a state of affairs that will continue indefinitely into the future, even as the People's Liberation Army Navy of the People's Republic of China puts the final touches on what was once the Soviet aircraft carrier Varyag, built but unfinished in 1992 as a consequence of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Reportedly renamed Shi Lang, the carrier is a powerful symbol of China's rise. Carriers are the cornerstones of a blue-water navy; states do not need them to secure their coasts, which is probably why Canada decommissioned its last carrier in 1970. What a carrier says is "I am in a mood to enforce my state's interests beyond the range of land-based aircraft."

Ultimately, Shi Lang may have more power as a symbol than a weapon of war. Not only because she's outnumbered - but the days of the carrier may be ending soon. In fact, it may be that in the not-too-distant future, surface combatants become as worthwhile to have as men-o'-war.

You start with this, then add about a hundred years' worth of R&D, then maybe weld some bigass VLS tubes onto the side...

The submarine has come a long way in the last hundred years. Before the First World War, their biggest booster was probably Jules Verne; it was the war, and the demonstrable advantages of being able to sink enemy ships while remaining relatively hidden, that propelled a flurry of technological development. Today their roles are focused mainly on hunter-killer and ground strike operations; there's no particular reason this has to stay the same as technology changes.

While I have a few disagreements with George Friedman's The Next 100 Years, one of the aspects of his forecast I found interesting was the rising importance of hypersonic missiles in the twenty-first century. At sufficient speeds, such missiles wouldn't need warheads - their kinetic energy would do all the damage. While Friedman used them to attack ground targets like military bases and power plants, it's not inconceivable that hypersonic weapons could be scaled down enough to be used as naval armament. Specifically as submarine armament.

If that's the case, I would expect modern navies of 2061 to be absolutely submarine-heavy. Aircraft carriers in the modern mold wouldn't exist; they'd be liabilities, too difficult to defend and too expensive to keep replacing. If anything, I'd expect to see things like "micro-carriers" - ships that launch and recover UAV fighters, which can be piloted from anywhere on Earth where there's a secure connection. Or perhaps the pilots would be in a submarine somewhere near the carrier, kept in control of their planes with undersea communication lasers feeding to unobtrusive transmission buoys on the surface.

Sure, there's every possibility that I'm wrong, that this won't be the case - but the fact is that no paradigm lasts forever. The Battles of Tsushima and Jutland only reinforced the notion that big-gun battleships ruled the waves. Today, the only battleships you'll find are floating museums. The potential of a shift is something to consider... and even if the United States doesn't, I'm confident that China will.

Photo: New West's First Line of Defense

Outside New Westminster City Hall, you'll find an interesting reflection of the city's origins: a pair of twenty-four pounder field howitzers, dropped off on these shores by HMS Sparrowhawk in 1866 to defend the place against, presumably, the Americans. Even though they haven't been used for a hundred and thirty years and now have plugged muzzles, they're still pointed toward the south, just in case those folks down in Blaine or Point Roberts get it in their heads to go all 1812 on the Lower Mainland.

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Photo: Coast Guard of Canada Place

I don't know if she's still there today, but for Wednesday and Thursday at least, the western cruise ship berth at Canada Place in downtown Vancouver was host to an uncommon visitor: USCGC Hamilton, lead ship of the Hamilton class of high-endurance cutters operated by the United States Coast Guard. According to an article in the Juneau Empire, Hamilton is making a series of port visits while returning to her home port of San Diego, California after finishing a deployment in the Bering Sea.

When I first ran into her, before I could find any identifying marks, the Canadian flags that flew from Hamilton's mast made me think it was part of the Canadian Coast Guard. Nothing could be further from the truth. Canadian Coast Guard ships aren't even armed. Contrast this to Hamilton, which actually has a Phalanx CIWS mounted at her stern - meaning that its designers thought there was a legitimate chance that U.S. Coast Guard ships would find themselves in a position where they needed to be able to shoot down high-speed anti-ship missiles.

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PDP #311: One of the Guns

On Thursday I attended the Remembrance Day ceremony at Victory Square in Vancouver. It was significantly larger than any ceremony I'd attended in Toronto, perhaps because people in Vancouver do not necessarily need to choose between Remembrance Day and a work day. Part of the ceremony included a twenty-one gun salute by the 15th Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery - something I'd never encountered in Toronto, as there aren't many places in the downtown core where it would be safe to fire off howitzers while having them audible at Old City Hall.

Though most of the crowd dispersed while the soldiers marched off after the ceremony, I stayed to watch them go - and am glad I did, because after they left, the howitzers came through. It's not very often you get a chance to see one of the regiment's 105mm C3 howitzers get towed past the cenotaph along West Hastings Street.



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PDP #310: I Remember

Whenever Remembrance Day comes around, I think of my grandfather most of all. He went and served, and unlike so many others he made it back. He was the one who set me on this path, and he was the one who wrote it all down so it could be remembered, now that he's gone.

So for today, I'm posting a photo from his files, a photo of him on the march in Southampton, England in the summer of 1937, when he was part of the 22nd Battalion of the 22nd (Cheshire) Regiment. It doesn't exist the way it once did; it was folded into the Mercian Regiment in 2007. But I remember, and that man in the middle, I won't forget.

This United Kingdom artistic work, of which the author is unknown and cannot be ascertained by reasonable inquiry, is in the public domain because it is a photograph which has never previously been made available to the public (e.g. by publication or display at an exhibition) and which was taken before January 1, 1940.

What Price Sovereignty, Now and Tomorrow

In a move that doubtless sent ripples of disbelief and shock across the country, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has moved ahead on the purchase of sixty-five F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters. Because, you know, a military purchase is totally out of character for a Conservative government. These sixty-five multirole fighters, the product of an international research and development project that goes back to 1993, are set to replace Canada's current fleet of CF-18 Hornet fighters, which have been the backbone of the Air Force for twenty-seven years and are likely to continue serving until the F-35s arrive, sometime around 2020.

The cost for this replacement? $9-billion up front, and maintenance over an initial twenty-year timeframe has been estimated to account for another $7-billion for $16-billion in total. In what has been perhaps the single most predictable political announcement of this season, the Opposition has come out against it. While the rhetoric of "if we win the next election we will cancel this program" has been toned down, there's still a great deal of back-and-forth about the sole-source nature of this contract. Myself, this didn't come as much of a surprise - I've known about this impending purchase for years, quite literally. Fighter programs have a hell of a long turn-around time from commencement to actual service.

Incidentally, I find it interesting that the Liberals are raising such a hue and cry over the "lack of competitive bids" in the F-35 project, whereas they were - to my recollection, at least - totally silent when Toronto awarded Bombardier more than a billion dollars for its streetcar renewal program without seriously entertaining any other companies' bids, but I guess stealth fighters are sexier than streetcars.

I'll admit that the F-35 itself appears to have potentially serious issues, the most prominent of those being that in contrast to the two-engined CF-18 Hornet, it has only one engine. Defence Minister Peter MacKay's assertion that "it won't" fail during, say, a long and isolated Arctic patrol strikes me as an equally serious issue. Look, I know that the government is all starry-eyed over these fighters, but please be realistic. Bad things happen no matter how much we don't want them to, and dismissing the possibility of a catastrophic engine failure on a single-engine aircraft out of hand does a disservice to the men and women who will be flying those aircraft, not to mention Canada's security. Nor does the assertion of an anonymous official, who claims that "the F-35 engine is newer technology so it is extremely robust," fill me with any sort of confidence. In my experience, it's the newer technology that's much more liable to break.

But what's the alternative? It's easy to say that procurements like this are relics of the Cold War and have no place in the modern world, but honestly I think that's simplifying the situation. Whether it's the F-35 or something else, we really do need a new fighter. Canada needs to maintain a modern air arm, because once the resource wars and climate wars start in earnest, we're going to need them. More importantly, we need to shoulder the burden of securing our own airspace because there's a country down south that some of you may have heard of, and which is greatly interested in its own security and that of its backyard. If we don't patrol the Arctic, I imagine the Americans will (perhaps grudgingly, but regardless) do it for us.

Delegating the security of its own airspace is generally not the mark of an independent state, and it could easily push Canada down that road.

Four F/A-18 Hornets of the Blue Angels, the United States Navy's aerial acrobatics squadron, fly low over the Toronto Islands - September 6, 2009

If you don't like it, think of it this way - the F-35 may be the last piloted airframe the Canadian Forces purchases. By 2040, at which point the F-35s will have been in service for less time than the CF-18s already have, the skies may be filled with combat UAVs. Unmanned aerial vehicles capable of performing all the missions modern piloted aircraft do, but piloted remotely from a secure location, may well be the future. Though the possible removal of humans from the aerial battlefield does present a great deal of problems, and should be considered very carefully in the years to come, it would probably at least be cheaper.

PDP #99: Big Friggin' Frigate

It's not every day that a warship shows up at your (figurative) doorstep. Last weekend saw HMCS Ville de Québec, a Halifax-class frigate of the Canadian Navy, stop at the foot of Yonge Street in Toronto as part of a Great Lakes tour to buff naval volunteerism. If you only see vessels like this in pictures, it's easy to be unprepared for how massive they are. Today's frigate would be a cruiser a couple of generations back, with the effective firepower of a battleship for as long as it's got Harpoons in the tubes.

I wrote a novel set aboard one of these ships once. Maybe eventually it'll see the light of day.


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