China Is Shocked Into Silence As The B-2 Fordo Strike Shreds China President Xi’s “Anti Access - Area Denial” Strategy

PART I. THE HISTORIC NATURE OF THE B-2 STRIKE AT FORDO

A. Introduction: The B-2

The B-2 Spirit bomber flys at 50,000 feet with the radar signature of a sparrow. This “killer sparrow”, as my son Brian calls it, can’t be detected by modern radars; it can fly anywhere in the world and back without touching ground, refueled by the US Air Force with world’s largest and best aerial refueling tanker fleet.

The B-2 can appear without warning and place a precision weapon, in this case a Maximum Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) within five meters of its target. In the case of the Fordo attack the target was three ventilation tubes, covered by concrete shields, that led directly to the uranium enrichment chambers. The MOPs sped down the tubes at 1000 ft per second to explode in the chambers. The B-2 has proved itself to be a revolutionary weapons system, changing our adversaries perception of the effective global reach of the United States; unlike any other power. The demonstration at Fordo of the strategic capabilities of a squadron of B-2 bombers was the most significant strategic shock since the 1942 Battle of Midway, which made the large gun “Dreadnaught” battleship irrelevant.

Suddenly it’s a new strategic world, for aside from Fordo the B-2 bomber can do other things. As the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Crane made stunningly clear in his briefing to the nation a week ago, the Pentagon designed and the B-2 delivered a GPS guided bomb to destroy Fordo. But the B-2 can also inflict immeasurable harm in another way. All of a sudden America deployed an undetectable bomber, with infinite range, able to penetrate modern anti aircraft defenses without a trace; deploy a penetrating bomb, with extreme accuracy; and, if required, destroy an enemy’s most precious asset, its High Command in its protected location. In doing that it will destroy the enemy’s ability to command and control its military, the protection of which is the raison d etat of its air, naval and ground maneuver forces.

A nation’s most precious asset is not a weapons bunker or tank brigades, all of which are replaceable. It’s the supreme leadership and their combatant staff that are irreplaceable in wartime. Their sudden absence leaves the remaining forces immobilized, uncoordinated and isolated. It is our old friend with CHECKMATE in the Pentagon basement, Colonel John Warden’s bulls eye, of Baghdad fame. Ignore the enemy’s maneuver forces, hit their command and control centers and their logistic supplies first. Warden’s bulls eye can now be hit with impunity. Like Alexander the Great swinging around the Persian left flank at Gaugamela and driving toward King Darius III’s chariot to chase him, his generals and imperial guard off the field. America now has the ability to achieve dominance by destroying an enemy’s command and control centers and other centers of gravity.

The B-2 has other tactical capabilities as well. When used in combat air wings of 100 or more, its successor, the B 21 Raider, can be deployed to destroy logistic centers, invasion ports, fleets of ships, aircraft bases, bunkers and troops. But it’s in its strategic role that the “B-2 weapons system” is unique in its combination of invisibility, accuracy, devastating force and unlimited range. It makes all existing air defense systems irrelevant, and the enemy’s command and control vulnerable no matter how well protected. It has the effect of a nuclear weapon without going nuclear. And it shreds China’s long held strategy of “Anti Access-Area Denial” to chase off the U.S. Pacific Fleet in order to invade Taiwan. We will discuss this in more detail in Parts II. & III.

B. The B-2’s Evolving Use: A Pin-Point Attack System

The B-2 was used before Fordo; but only now has it been used as an undetectable pin point attack system utilizing GPS guided precision bombs. It combines in one airplane the long range of the B 52 and the undetectable precision bombing capability of the F 117 stealth fighter bomber. In a previous seminar we discussed the F 117’s shocking use in the Gulf War to destroy the Iraqi Command and Control locations in Baghdad which isolated its armed forces and forced their panicked retreat from Kuwait.

Soon the Pentagon will have 100 B-21 Raiders that can do far more than the F117s, the Model T Fords of stealth aircraft. The B-2 stealth bomber was developed during the Cold War as a deterrent to a nuclear attack. By 1989, with the Soviet Union collapsing eighty of the one hundred B-2s then on order were cancelled and the B-2 fleet was reduced to the 20 already delivered. The assumption was that the U.S. had no peer enemies and therefore no need for such an expensive weapon system. That’s all ancient history now. The B-2 is being replaced by its much more affordable and improved descendent, the B-21 Raider, currently in flight testing with 100 aircraft on order and an additional 100 awaiting final congressional review and approval. The Air Force planning that the 200 B-21 Raiders will replace our aging B-1 and B-52 Strategic Bombers to form a dominant global strategic force that is undetectable and never misses.

This is very meaningful for our peer adversaries, China and Russia and for our near peer adversaries, Iran and North Korea. We will explore that in future Seminars. In a nutshell shell it leaves China’s Taiwan strategy of “Anti Access -Area Denial in shreds. But first, to appreciate the strategic significance of the B-2 Spirits and B-21 Raiders let’s place them in historic perspective.

C. Lethal Range: From the Battle of the Nile in 1175 BC to The Battle of Jutland in 1916

1.) RAMS

Since in 1175 BC, and the Battle of the Delta between the Egyptian Pharaoh’s warships and The “Sea Peoples” fleet, the first recorded fleet action in history, nations have attempted to project force at sea; in addition, in modern times in the air. It’s the strategic desire of nations to dominate their neighbors and protect their homeland. Their ability to do so was limited by the reach and range, of their weapons. Before railroads the sea was not only the fastest way to travel, its was the most effective way to extend a nation’s reach beyond their homeland. Therefore, from the Greeks to the Romans to medieval England, fleets of warships were built with one objective, to sink an opposing fleet, transport troops to occupy an enemy’s homeland, and occupy or destroy its center of gravity, its capital. Until the use of naval canons in the 14th century, a battleship had limited range. In pre Roman times warships mounted a large ram in order to close with an enemy ship and pin the enemy to the ramming ship’s bow. In effect spearing it, to board with infantry utilizing archers, spears and swords. It was a land battle on water.

2.) Cannons

Then 2,000 years later during the Hundred Years War in 1338 at the Battle of Arnemuiden the English had in their fleet one ship, the Christopher, that was equipped with three cannons and a handgun. The English lost the battle but the cannons proved so devastating that they launched an arms race in Europe that was a turning point in Naval warfare. From then on battleships closed at close range and fought savage “bulwark to bulwark” artillery duels due to the cannons lack of accuracy at anything but point blank range. As cannons got bigger, their effective range marginally increased to 400 yards, then 5,000 yards, then 10,000 yards. Nevertheless battleships were built with guns of varying ranges to protect against “short range attacks” from smaller faster destroyers. This hodgepodge of guns on battleships lasted until 1904 when Admiral John “Jackie” Fisher, Britain’s First Sea Lord in a fit of brilliance based on many years observing the effects of big guns on moving targets, concluded that any gun on a battleship that was not of large caliber and able to shoot at least 15,000 yards (10 miles) was “as useless as a third tit” and only slowed the ship down.

3.) Big Guns

As First Sea Lord, with the political support of King Edward VII, Fisher demanded that the entire main battle fleet be made up solely of “big gun” ships. This gave birth to the “Dreadnaught” battleship, named after the first in its class of a new line of super battleships. They were slick greyhounds of the sea, with new turbine engines able to exceed 22 knots, with a lethal range of 10 miles. This was unheard of at a time when the average “pre Dreadnought” battleship had an effective range of five miles and a speed of 18 knots. It was easy for dreadnoughts to remain out of range of the slower battleships with triple expansion piston engines and multi caliber shorter range guns. As a result dreadnoughts were able to pound all other ships to destruction.

This “big gun ship”revolution, overnight, made the entire British battle fleet obsolete. The “Dreadnought”, launched in 1906, extended a battleship’s range so dramatically that it immediately made all “pre Dreadnought” battleships with shorter ranges not just obsolete, but useless in fleet engagements. When Admiral Fisher did this he was castigated by most of the Royal Navy Officer Corps and loathed for forcing hundreds of British battleships to be consigned to the breakup yards before their time. Such is the fate of visionaries. Britain was immediately forced into an arms race with its naval rival Germany, which had suddenly become competitive. The rival powers constructed ever more dreadnoughts which led to both nations having a large fleet of dreadnoughts by 1914 and the beginning of the First World War.

Britain entered the War with Germany with a substantial edge in both number of dreadnoughts and lethal range because the British had built their ships slightly bigger guns with longer range. Effective lethal range and accurate firepower was the key to victory simply because the longer ranged ship could stay out of the shorter ranged ship’s field of fire and destroy it. In that era the armored battleship was akin to a very large and thick crystal vase. Hit it with a hammer once or even twice, and it would just bounce around. But hit it multiple times by armor piercing shells and it would crack and shatter like a cracked crystal vase.

4.) The Battle of Jutland

The German High Seas dreadnought Fleet avoided a major fleet engagement with the comparable British Grand Fleet until the Battle of Jutland when the German fleet unexpectedly stumbled into the longer ranged ships of the Royal Navy. The Grand Fleet, knowing the German Fleets location from a secret operation in the Admiralty which had tracked their wireless signal brilliantly crossed the German’s “T”, the High Seas fleets vertical straight ahead line of battle with a crescent of 28 dreadnoughts. The Grand Fleet by staying just on the edge of the lethal rage of the High Seas Fleet, which had limited guns and range bearing on the Grand Fleet, were able to mount devastating fire. This forced the German High Seas fleet into a dramatic “Battle Turn” where, on signal, they simultaneously turned in the battle line, while keeping the same place, but the lead ship became the last ship in the battle line and the last ship became the first ship in the line and sped out of range to safety. By this startling maneuver the 16 German dreadnoughts escaped inevitable destruction from the 28 Royal Navy dreadnoughts. Subsequently your Grand Fleet, with a decisive edge in numbers of dreadnoughts chased the German High Seas Fleet back its North Sea Base,in Wilhelmshaven. The German High Seas Fleet was never to return to the North Sea except to hand over its dreadnoughts to the British for internment at the end of the War.

5.) Aircraft And General Billy Mitchell

During the decades between the two World Wars 1918-1939, a dramatic new weapon came on the scene, challenging the dominance of the dreadnoughts. It was the birth of naval aviation and the aircraft carrier, which extended the effective destructive range of a fleet from 10 miles to 200-300 miles. The significance of this revolution was not understood until the Battle of Midway in 1942. At first aircraft were viewed solely as “scouts” extending the ability of the fleet to see the enemy. Then in 1921 Army Air Service General Billy Mitchell, in an attempt to disprove this limited thinking, famously sunk the interned German Battleship SMS Ostfriesland in a demonstration of air power; proving the dreadnought battleship’s vulnerability to a low level bombing attack, He publicly castigated the Navy for continuing to fund vulnerable battleships. He was tried by court martial for insubordination, convicted, reduced in rank and suspended without pay for five years. But he sparked the birth of modern naval aviation when the Navy, shortly after the sinking of the Ostfriesland, converted an old collier to the nations first aircraft carrier the USS Langley. Such is the destiny of prophets.

Coming Up:

PART II. THE IMPORTANCE OF LETHAL RANGE : The Battle of Midway; The Battle That Changed Everything

A PERSONAL UPDATE, AN APPRECIATION AND A REQUEST 😎

My last Seminar, discussing the impact of the Fordo Strike on Iran, was posted five days ago, June 25th. I then took a break on Amtrak’s Coast Starlight from San Francisco to Seattle to spend a few days with my son Colin and his family in Bellingham Washington. It was great. The grandkids are leaving the nest, one for art school in Savannah Georgia, one to go with his jazz band on tour, he plays bass, and another is taking a summer break from college. So “Gramps” said Godspeed. I’m now on the Train south back to San Francisco. I have finished writing this Seminar, which is Part 1. of three parts, about the impact of the B-2 strike at Fordo on China’s Anti-Access-Area Denial strategy in the Pacific. It’s been illuminating writing and researching between chess games and outings with the family. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

The next two parts should be interesting as well. Part. 2 will be on the significance of the Battle of Midway that has had lasting impact in the Pacific Theater. Part 3. will be on the B-21 Raider and its strategic use in the defense of Taiwan, breaking the hold of Xi Jinping’s Anti Access-Area Denial strategy.

During my break I lost a few paid subscribers, so I’m exploring ways to expand my reach. I’d ask those of you who feel motivated to restack my Seminar posts to broaden my exposure; encourage your friends to subscribe and check me out. If they like these Seminars, perhaps they will take a leap and purchase a subscription. For those dear readers who are not yet paid subscribers but appear like these Seminars, I ask that you consider purchasing a subscription to keep our lights on, the research vibrant, and the morale high. I didn’t realize how intense this job is until I took a break.

We have three affordable plans:

*$7.50 yearly

*$75 annually

*$115 for a Founding subscription which entitles the purchaser to a beautiful West Point Black Knight lapel pin, the logo of the Seminar and the West Point athletic teams.

I sincerely appreciate all of my subscribers. I am particularly grateful to those of you who have taken the leap and become paid subscribers. God Bless You; and God Bless The United States of America! 🇺🇸🙏