US Navy No Likee Nukie?

“I am not an atomic playboy”.  Admiral William Blandy, joint commander of the Crossroads nuclear test, perhaps demonstrating post-test the Navy’s preferred mode of encounter with nuclear weapons.
Thanks to @jkbloodtreasure for the definitive tweet on this image:  'we made a dessert and we called it peace'

I have an article up exclusively on Asia Times, The Case of the Missing Nukes…and a Disappearing US Mission in Asia, concerning an interesting and, I fear, transitory lack of tactical nuclear weapons in theater in Asia.

I see tactical nukes making a comeback in Asia, probably courtesy of the Long Range Stand Off weapon a.k.a. nuclear-tipped cruise missile that the Pentagon probably sees as the real game-changer in countering the PRC’s military buildup.  I'm addressing that issue in depth in a separate piece. (Update: here: US Pivot to Asia Poised to Enter Nuclear Phase)

I suspect the US Navy itself is happy to be out of the tactical nuclear business and, in fact, fears their return.

For one thing, surface ships do not do well in nuclear exchanges, tactical or otherwise, something that might appear obvious in retrospect but needed to be demonstrated to the overly-optimistic Navy brass by detonating a nuclear warhead amid a flotilla of derelict ships at Bikini Atoll for the benefit of Admiral Blandy.  

Operation Crossroads in its non-cakelike, supremely and irrevocably radioactive original form.  If you look closely, you can see the flotilla.

I have a detailed write-up on the far-reaching significance of the Crossroads test (and the background of the legendary cake picture) here.

Second, judging by an appalling litany of Navy-related nuclear accidents compiled by the Federation of American Scientists, a pitchy platform on a slobbery ocean filled with enemy ships and other manmade and natural hazards is perhaps not the best place to store a nuclear arsenal.

Dozens of nuclear weapons were lost at sea over the decades because they were on ships, submarines, or aircraft that were lost. On December 5, 1965, for example, while underway from operations off Vietnam to Yokosuka in Japan, an A-4E aircraft loaded with one B43 nuclear weapon rolled overboard from the Number 2 Elevator. The aircraft sank with the pilot and the bomb in 2,700 fathoms (4,940 meters) of water. The bomb has never been recovered.

Here’s a picture from the FAS piece showing the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise on fire in 1969 after a conventional warhead exploded, ignited some jet fuel & caused a chain reaction of munitions and fuel explosions.

According to a subsequent account:

In all, there were 18 munition explosions or detonations. Eight holes were blown through the flight deck and deep into the ship. It took in a little over three hours to extinguish all of the fires. This incident resulted in 28 deaths and 344 injuries. There were 17 aircraft damaged and 15 destroyed. The cost of repairing the structural damage to the ship and replacing the aircraft and other equipment was over 126 million dollars.

According to the captain, losing the ship was a distinct possibility.  In addition to its 8 nuclear reactors, the Enterprise carried about 100 nuclear bombs. 

Six years later, the aircraft carrier USS Kennedy, also with about 100 nuclear bombs, struck and almost sank the USS Belknap.  The Belknap’s aluminum superstructure burned to the deckline in the resulting fire (helping convince the US Navy to move to all-steel construction), killing 6, and the fires were stopped within a few feet of the bunker containing the Belknap’s nuclear munitions (warheads for its Terrier SAM battery).

…and the collision of the nuclear-armed attack sub USS Pintado with a Soviet sub

…and the loss of the USS Scorpion.

Even strategic subs, which I understand are supposed to stay aloof from the fray and lurk in safe, remote waters, have apparently had several accidents.

1968: USS Von Steuben (48 warheads on 16 Polaris missiles) collides with Spanish freighter…

1970: Fire on the submarine tender USS Canopus, itself carrying nuclear missiles & warheads, while moored next to two strategic subs in port.  96 nuclear warheads involved…

1974: The USS James Madison dives on top of a Russian attack sub that I guess was rather successfully shadowing it.  160 nuclear warheads on the James Madison.  Number on Russian sub unknown.

1998: Collision between USS Kentucky & a US attack sub off Long Island; 192 warheads on Kentucky alone.

That’s just a sampling of what we know about.  The FAS page has more.   

And that's just vulnerabilities exhibited in normal peacetime operations, without enemies shooting missiles, setting off bombs, firing torpedos, and whatnot.  So maybe the US Navy on balance prefers that somebody else worry about storing and delivering tactical nuclear weapons.

Thirdly, nukes, especially tactical nukes, reduce the need for big, expensive conventional maritime platforms like aircraft carriers, destroyers, and so on, especially in dealing with a nuclear power like the PRC.

Because of the re-nuking of Asia, at least in US "defense" doctrine, that I anticipate, I view current Navy activities in the West Pacific as a dash by the US Navy to create a narrative supporting its relevance and enabling it to bulk up its position in the few years before the return of tactical nuclear weapons and growing local qualms about the wisdom of the pivot combine to sunset the Navy's dominance of the China-containment narrative.   

Make non-nuclear hay while the sun shines, in other words!

About Those Missiles on Woody Island

I have an article up exclusively at Asia Times Online, South China Sea Face-off: The Mystery of Woody Island.  Go ahead, click the link!

It addresses the media freakout over a Fox News report that commercial satellite imagery revealed something that looked like HQ-9 surface-to-air missile launchers were on the beach at Woody Island in the Paracels.

Official reactions in the PRC were noticeably...strange.  The PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs was clearly blindsided by the whole thing, indicating that whatever was happening was not part of a carefully planned provocation/escalation.

On the US side, Admiral Harris said rather belatedly that the report, "if verified", was an unwelcome sign that Xi Jinping was breaking his "pledge" not to militarize the South China Sea.

(I don't go into in the AT piece, but as I noted at the time of Xi's visit, he never "pledged" not to militarize, he simply said he didn't intend to.  The idea that Xi would unilaterally and individually make "pledges" to the United States concerning areas the PRC considers sovereign territory is apparently not too ludicrous to be entertained by the Western media at large.)

Anyway, it turns out that the Woody Island deployment, if it actually occurred (I'm always a tad skeptical when these things are documented by expert photo analysis of fuzzy commercial imagery), was not the first time the PRC has put missile launchers on Woody Island; in fact it would have been the third time.

And since Woody Island is a key PRC military facility of decades standing, characterizing rotations of military equipment on and off the island are hard to spin as "militarization".

The HQ-9s might have been put on Woody Island to support the deployment of J-11 fighters, something which is supposedly happening now.  It would be the second deployment of J-11s since the airport was enlarged to accommodate them, apparently something the PRC does in rotations instead of stationing them permanently and risking corrosion of the airframes from prolonged exposure to salt air.

And, of course, the Paracels are genuine, not man-made islands a couple hundred kilometers from Hainan, not the infuriating fake-island Spratlys down by the Philippines.

The Paracels do have issues.  In fact they are a permanent obstacle to any formal settlement in the South China Sea since their seizure from Vietnam in 1974 is the hottest of hot button issues and Vietnam will never acknowledge PRC sovereignty over them.  The US doesn't like the archipelagic baseline the PRC claims around the whole group of island (instead of calculating individual territorial waters/EEZs like UNCLOS wants) and the most recent USN FONOP challenged this particular piece of cartography.

But the Paracels and Woody Island are not part of the Spratly island building/militarization fears/nine-dash-line/salami-slicing/arbitration fracas that obsesses the United States right now.

As such they are not a particularly effective venue for the PRC to "defy" President Obama and the ASEAN confrerees at Sunnylands, the allegation that Fox (and its DoD partner in leakage) were trying to push.

All of this, of course, just factual noise in the media  "Missiles in the South China Sea!"  frenzy. As I write in the piece:

Just like in Hollywood, the motto for reporting on the military in Asia is “Nobody knows anything.” Exactly the way the DoD likes it, I expect.


As far as I can tell, the big outlets ran with the Fox story without demanding a look at unambiguous high-res imagery from US spy satellites or, for that matter, trying to get a comment from the PRC apparatus before running the story.

No fun or profit in that, I guess.

The prevailing media zeitgeist appears to be that PRC propaganda must be balanced, in an info-war sort of way, with equally crappy adversarial reporting in part, I suspect, to punish the PRC for its serial mistreatment of foreign journos and their employers.

Might as well get used to it.