Dark Eagle under the magnifying glass

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Joachim Wernicke, Germany

The following text is a translation of a small section from Joachim Wernicke’s forthcoming book, Germany’s Escape Route from the Dangers of War.

Trump and the new situation

US President Donald Trump made a serious mistake when he terminated the 1987 Treaty on the Prohibition of Land-Based Medium-Range Weapons in 2019 (INF Treaty, range range 500 to 5,500 km). The Treaty banned all such weapons – both US and the Soviet – from Europe, whether nuclear or conventional, including launchers. The result was some perceived security for Europe for 32 years.

It was clear that Trump’s termination of the Treaty could only have one reason: the US wanted to re-establish land-based medium-range weapons in Europe – where else? Against Russia – against whom else? This gave Russia the ‘right’ to station such weapons as well. This created a new situation for Russia, the US and NATO.

Was the 2019 termination of the INF Treaty the spontaneous result of Trump’s policies? Or did his “national security adviser”, John Bolton – more familiar with military intelligence than his boss – whisper this idea to him?: Dark Eagle as the new Super-Pershing, the hypersonic miracle weapon? Technically, there would be something to this view.

Rocket duel

If Trump was thinking of a renewed stationing of medium-range weapons in Europe, who did he want to attack or at least be able to attack? Looking at the European map allows only one answer: Russia. But what the US can do again after the termination of the INF Treaty, Russia can also do, namely to deploy new medium-range weapons. So it would be a rocket duel, as it was in the 1980s: Whoever shoots first has a – perhaps decisive – advantage. An extremely destabilizing situation.

In the sense of a military “balance”, however, neither side has really gained anything. Or maybe it has? There is a fundamental imbalance: even the most advanced Russian medium-range missile cannot be personally dangerous to any politician in Washington. Conversely, from launch points somewhere in Europe, a salvo of Dark Eagle, which can hit Moscow and kill the entire political leadership of Russia, ten minutes after the rocket salvo is launched.

After the turbulent events in the USA around the change in the presidency at the beginning of 2021, Trump’s successor Joe Biden initially had other worries than the overturned INF Treaty. But even after a year in office, Biden had neither given a sign that he had recognized Trump’s mistake, nor had he made any efforts to somehow revive the INF Treaty.

Dark Eagle

Dark Eagle is a very powerful land-based medium-range weapon that the US Army has been preparing since 2019 for operational use from 2023. Dark Eagle is a hypersonic missile system with a range of 2,700 kilometers – “1,500 nautical miles”. According to American information, the new weapons have only conventional, not nuclear warheads.

So we have a new edition of the nuclear NATO retrofit of the 1980s but this time non-nuclear – or so we are told.

Are Dark Eagles really just conventional? Conventional warheads can turn buildings into craters, but they cannot harm deep underground concrete bunkers. This requires nuclear warheads.

Technically, Dark Eagle could also be nuclear armed. But the arrangement of the Dark Eagle fire unit with the missiles in closed canisters for storage and vertical launch does not allow for easy removal of the warhead to store and guard it separately. Only a conventionally armed Dark Eagle is possible for launch from the canister.

The strongest argument for the fact that the Dark Eagle missiles – and also the Tomahawk cruise missiles – are not nuclear, but conventionally equipped is this: Unlike nuclear weapons, these weapons can be used in real life. In its wars of aggression since 1991, the US has fired around 2,000 conventional Tomahawks. The end effect – Dark Eagle or Tomahawk – is comparable to a Luftmine [German ‘parachute mine’, weighing up to 2,200lb] of the Second World War.

What is so special about “land-based”? Can’t ships or submarines also fire medium-range missiles? Both the US and Russia have ships with magazines full of guided missiles. In this case, these are cruise missiles with medium-range range – i.e. US ships with Tomahawk and Russian ships with Kalibr – and short-range missiles. So far, neither side has missiles with medium-range range on surface ships. That’s because these missiles are much larger and heavier and don’t fit into the existing launch magazines on the ships.

Both sides have submarines with intercontinental ballistic missiles. However, these missiles are technically unsuitable for the fast shooting over medium-range ranges. Their typical flight duration over a quarter of the Earth’s circumference is half an hour. These intercontinental ballistic missiles are several times larger and heavier than Dark Eagle – and much more expensive.

The U.S. Navy has ordered a variant of Dark Eagle for submarines, called CPS, delivery starting in 2025. Three CPS units fit into the launch tube for a Trident intercontinental. But the valuable missile submarines of both sides operate only on the oceans, where they can hide at great depths if necessary.

The decisive military advantage of land-based medium-range missiles is the possibility of firing a large volley of such missiles simultaneously – within seconds. Ships and submarines can only fire missiles one after the other, with pause intervals between two shots of at least a few seconds. But with the first shot, the ship or submarine betrays its position.

Incidentally, in order to target Moscow with a short flight time, the US Navy would have to shoot from the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea or the Barents Sea. There, however, every American warship or submarine will have a Russian escort ship nearby, which would immediately torpedoe and sink the intruder after the first missile launch.

A decapitation strike against the Moscow leadership in a matter of minutes is therefore not possible from the sea. Conversely, this would also apply to the US leadership in Washington. A decapitation strike needs land-based medium-range missiles, and they need to be stationed on the nearby mainland. The USA has Germany in Europe. Russia does not have a single point of support on the American continent.

NATO in self-contradiction

In Europe, medium-range weapons do nothing but threaten, i.e. disrupt the peaceful neighbourhood in the “common home of Europe”. For 32 years, Europe looked safe from such dangers.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg emphasized in a press conference in January 2022: “NATO is a defense alliance, an alliance that threatens not a single country, not even Russia.” But what other capabilities does Dark Eagle have than to threaten Russia as its NATO adversary? Should the Russian leadership be personally threatened?

Stoltenberg continues: “We call on and encourage Russia to engage in talks with us, including the reduction of missile systems and nuclear weapons.” Before the reduction, the first thing to do is not to carry out any new deployments of missile systems, i.e. to participate in the moratorium, Russia’s proposal. Why doesn’t NATO want a moratorium?

Here NATO has maneuvered itself into a self-contradiction. Regardless of an anti-Russian turn in German public opinion after the Russian attack on Ukraine in February 2022, the German majority would probably reject a new deployment of far-reaching US offensive missiles in the country – if only they knew about it.

But one NATO line has become clear since 2019, namely that the new US missile deployment should not become a public issue. The German government under Chancellor Angela Merkel apparently covered this line: there are no public statements by the government or press reviews about it. Surprisingly, the change of government in 2021 to red-green-yellow brought no change here.

Multi-Domain Task Force

It became known in 2021 that the US Army had begun a revolution in its long-range missile artillery in Europe, with a wide range of firing ranges. For these new “miracle weapons”, the US Army introduced a new troop structure, called MDTF, Multi-Domain Task Force. The combat zone of this type of modern army soldier is no longer the trench, but the computer work station.

In the MDTF of the US Army, three systems of missile artillery are combined under one command:

- The smallest system is HIMARS, an older but modernized self-propelled rocket launcher with a short-range range of up to a few hundred kilometers.

- The second Typhon system is a medium-range weapon, technically not new, but new for the US Army: On trucks are mounted vertical launchers of the type Mark-41 for four missiles each, as they have been in use for decades on US naval ships and since 2016 at the Aegis missile station of the USA in Romania. In the Army, the Mark-41 are to fire two types of ammunition: SM-6 surface-to-surface short-range missiles or Tomahawk medium-range cruise missiles. With a range of 1,600 kilometers, Tomahawk is the direct further development of the GLCM cruise missiles, which were stationed in Europe during the NATO retrofit in the 1980s, also in West Germany.

- But the centerpiece of the army’s innovation is the third and largest system: the Dark Eagle hypersonic missile (also known as the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon, LRHW) with a range of 2,700 kilometers.

Official voices from Russia

The Russian leadership needed a few months to clarify the new situation. A statement from Russia, in December 2021, describes the Western focus on the Ukraine conflict as a pretext to distract from the fact that in NATO territory, “attack missile systems are stationed with minimal flight time to central Russia, plus other destabilizing weapons.” From the Russian point of view, the truth is not about Ukraine at all, but about new US long-range missiles in Europe. NATO has reasons to conceal this from the Western public. Subtracting a propaganda component: was this claim simply plucked out of thin air?

“We call on Washington to join Russia’s unilateral moratorium on the deployment of land-based short- and medium-range missiles in Europe.” That is to say, despite the termination of the INF, Russia will for the time being continue to unilaterally refrain from deploying such missiles in Europe. And Russia also includes short-range missiles. Can’t you take them at their word?

Missiles withdrawn from Kaliningrad? The short-range missiles are a surprise, because in 2018 in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, formerly Königsberg/East Prussia, exactly such missiles had appeared (Iskander, firing range 500 kilometers). From Kaliningrad to the US military bases in Germany, it is about 1,000 kilometers, the shortest possible route from Russian territory to these destinations, and thus the shortest flight time.

However, the short-range missile Iskander only comes about as far as Berlin. There are no military targets there that would be worth the use of an expensive missile for Russia. If the Russian moratorium is true, the Iskanders were moved back to the Russian heartland by the end of 2021. Given their important statement, would Moscow risk being caught and paraded as a fraud by NATO?

NATO’s response

In response to the Russian statement, NATO expressed “strong concern” about Russian troop deployment on the border area with Ukraine in a counter-statement in December 2021.

NATO is ready for negotiations with Russia within the framework of the NATO-Russia Council. As for the OSCE: it is “also a relevant platform” but there is no commitment to include it in the process. NATO therefore considers ‘quarrels’ between NATO-Russia to be more expedient. The NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 reads quite differently: “The OSCE, as the only all-European security organization, has a key role to play for peace and stability in Europe.” In other words, the OSCE is the ideal neutral mediator, especially for NATO-Russia disputes. What can be said against it? Should this no longer apply?

If instead of the NATO-Russia Council, the OSCE was to become the independent mediator of the negotiations between the USA/NATO and Russia, this would be the beginning of the end of the two opposing military alliances NATO (USA) and CSTO (Russia). Both sides know this.

Further from the NATO text: “Should Russia take concrete steps to reduce tensions, we are ready to work on confidence-building measures.” In other words, before negotiations begin, Russia must make advances. Strikingly, in the entire NATO declaration, there is not a word about medium-range missiles.

Clarification from Moscow

At the Russian government's annual press conference at the end of 2021, British journalist Diana Magnay (Sky News) asked President Putin whether he could unconditionally guarantee not to invade Ukraine. Putin's answer:

"It is not the negotiations themselves that are important to us, but their results. (...) They demand guarantees from me. It is you who must give us guarantees, and you must do it immediately, now, instead of decades of talking about it and doing what you want."

Another quote from Putin in response to the subject of missiles:

"What would the Americans say if we stationed our missiles on the border between Canada and the United States, or between Mexico and the United States?"

Also at the end of 2021, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov spoke about the Russian missiles banned under the INF Treaty: "At the moment they do not exist. We have a unilateral moratorium. We call on NATO and the US to join this moratorium," but "they simply do not respond to our proposals."

Did Ryabkov tell the truth about the "non-existent" missiles? Until the termination of the INF Treaty in 2019, Russia could not expect to ever be allowed to deploy medium-range weapons again, so it made no sense to build such a thing. But the technology is still there, and has been for decades. In response to the stationing of the Pershing missiles in West Germany from 1984 onwards, the Soviet Union deployed SS-23 short-range nuclear missiles targeting the Pershing positions and other U.S. facilities in West Germany. The successor of the SS-23 was the modern Russian model Iskander. In the 1980s, an SS-23 with a second propulsion stage and steerable warhead was in development, the medium-range missile of the type Volga. It would have brought capabilities such as the American Pershing missile, but development was halted with the INF Treaty.

Deputy Minister Ryabkov became even more precise: There are "indirect signs" that NATO is again stationing medium-range missiles. Rather casually, he mentioned that the 56th Artillery Command of the USA had just been re-established. This unit had operated the Pershing missiles in Germany from 1984 to 1987 – in fact even until 1991.

On the question of what the Russian government might mean by military measures against the US missile deployment, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko became relatively concrete in December 2021: Russia had offered NATO a draft treaty to address the military situation. But if this were not followed by negotiations, "we too would go into the mode of creating counter-threats. But then it will be too late to ask ourselves why we made this and that decision and why we have stationed this and that system in the respective place." "Systems" here apparently means new Russian medium-range missiles and "respective location" probably also or mainly Kaliningrad. Again, Grushko on what it is about from the Russian point of view: "If attack systems that can reach our command centers within minutes are stationed on the territory of NATO countries, we will have to create an appropriate situation for them."...

The official responses of the US and NATO

At the end of January 2022, Russia received written responses to its draft treaties of December 2021. According to statements from Moscow, they did not address the individual Russian points, but rejected them in general form. The focus was on the sovereign right of states to choose their own alliances: "NATO's door is open and remains open," said US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.

But this misses the point: the dispute is not about association membership, but about the presence of foreign troops in the member states. Allowing such presence is not a condition of NATO membership. 22 of the 30 NATO member states do not allow foreign bases, including Germany's neighbours France, Denmark and the Czech Republic. Kosovo is not a NATO member, but has a US base, Camp Bondsteel, with 7,000 troops – larger than Kosovo's own army.

The original texts of the Russian draft treaties were immediately published by the Russian government, and the answers of the USA and NATO remained secret. But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov acknowledged receipt of the responses, complaining: "There is no positive answer to the main question in this document. The main question is our clear position on the inadmissibility of further NATO eastward expansion and the stationing of weapons that could threaten Russian territory."

Accordingly, in the US response, not a word about the stationing of US offensive weapons, i.e. Dark Eagle.

In early February 2022, a few weeks before the Russian attack on Ukraine, the Spanish newspaper El Pais managed to get hold of the texts of the US and NATO responses to Russia and published them as facsimiles. This made it possible to analyse Russian criticism of those responses. Looking at these answers, the question arises as to why the US and NATO are keeping them secret after the Russian papers were immediately published. Which side stands for transparency?

The Russian draft treaty to the US addressed the two main concerns, which – embedded in broad criticism of Russian measures – were answered by the US as follows:

- On stopping NATO's eastward expansion, especially Ukraine's non-admission to NATO: "The United States continues to strongly support NATO's open door policy and believes that the NATO-Russia Council is the appropriate forum for discussing this issue." So not a concrete proposal, but the shifting of the topic to "discussions". Even without Ukraine's NATO membership, the US could have concluded bilateral military agreements with Ukraine in the meantime.

- On the new US medium-range weapons: "The United States is ready to discuss condition-based mutual transparency measures and mutual commitments of both the United States and Russia, to refrain from stationing offensive land-based missile systems and permanent forces with a combat mission on the territory of Ukraine." "The U.S., in close coordination with our allies, is ready to begin discussions within the U.S.-Russia Strategic Stability Dialogue (SSD) on arms control for ground-based medium-range and short-range missiles and their launchers." Not a concrete proposal, but again the postponement to "discussions". In the meantime, the US may have long since stationed its Dark Eagle missiles in Europe, thus creating a fait accompli.

… In the Russian draft treaty to NATO members, one main Russian concern was in the foreground: the reset of the military situation of the Eastern European NATO members to the state of 1997, before the beginning of NATO's eastward expansion. Overall, the NATO response was in line with the US response, and this point, which – for the sake of competence – was only included in the draft treaty for NATO members, was not addressed in the NATO response.

What can Russia deduce from this overall tenor other than that the US and NATO ignore Russia's security needs and, in particular, keep the Dark Eagle problem under wraps?...

Dark Eagle is the new Pershing

Immediately after the INF was terminated (August 2019), the US began testing new land-based medium-range weapons for the army, using conventional warheads, i.e. non-nuclear. These tests were of target-guided missiles, with accuracy in the meter range – every shot is a direct hit, no matter what the range of fire.

The precision-determining target guidance is done via satellite navigation, in the case of the USA via GPS (Global Positioning System). A second system, called INS (Inertial Navigation System), uses accelerometers and rotary sensors in the missile to allow it to dance wildly around the GPS target trajectory without loss of precision in order to trick out flight and missile defense.

The Dark Eagle has two drive stages and is about 8 meters long, 0.9 meters in diameter, weight class probably around 8 tons. Like Tomahawk, Dark Eagle is transported in erectible canisters on trucks, two of them on a truck. In these canisters, the Dark Eagles are stored in weatherproof conditions, and are fired after they have been erected by hydraulic arms. Dark Eagle is a modernization of the Pershing missile of the "NATO retrofit" of the 1980s, even from the same manufacturer. A Dark Eagle fire battery comprises four rocket trucks, i.e. eight missiles, plus a command vehicle.

Hypersonic means at least five times the speed of sound. In fact, Dark Eagle flies at about twelve times the speed of sound. But the warhead does not necessarily fly in a high ballistic parabolic arc through the vacuum, but can also fly at a lower altitude at the upper edge of the atmosphere. There, the glider can maneuver with rudders. Therefore, enemy missile defenses cannot adjust to a uniform trajectory of its target, that is, the hypersonic warhead penetrates every missile defense…

When and where will Dark Eagle be stationed?

For the triple capabilities of the missile artillery (HIMARS, Typhon, Dark Eagle), the US Army has created a new troop structure, MTDF. Of these, a first unit was set up in 2017, located in the northwest of the USA, in Lewis-McChord in the state of Washington. In 2021, a second MDTF, stationed in Germany, in Mainz-Kastel, close to the European High Command of the US Army in Wiesbaden, followed. There are no further MDTFs so far, and no further one is planned in Europe.

In December 2021, the U.S. Secretary of the Army declared that the Dark Eagle missiles "will probably be deployed in the U.S., rather than in allied countries near China.” A low-content statement: Of the fire positions in the heartland of the USA, Dark Eagle only reaches Canada, Mexico or water surfaces in the Atlantic and Pacific. Asian countries have already thankfully waved off the issue of stationing Dark Eagle against China. Dark Eagle could be deployed on the US island of Guam in the South Pacific, but from there the missile cannot even reach the coast of China, 3,000 kilometers away. So Dark Eagle is useless for the conflict with China.

The minister did not talk about Dark Eagle stationing in Europe. But according to a quasi-official report, the US Army is – unsurprisingly – trying to station Dark Eagle in Europe. Where else in the world? And where in Europe? The command and operational units for Dark Eagle have been set up in Germany since 2021. The operational units in Germany, the missiles elsewhere? What are the operational units without missiles and the missiles without operational units supposed to do? But officially so far not a word about it.

An unbiased look at the map: From where in NATO Europe could Dark Eagle reach Moscow in a short flight time? France and Denmark will certainly say "no, thank you" to new American medium-range weapons on their soil, as will Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium. The Eastern European NATO members are absent, because the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1990 prohibits such important US deployments there.

All other NATO countries are too far away from Moscow, too long a missile flight time. So the remaining option for stationing Dark Eagle is ‘Pershing country’: Germany …

Flight tests with real Dark Eagle missiles should begin in early 2022. When the first missiles are delivered to Germany 'in the fiscal year 2023' (that is, in principle, from October 2022, the beginning of the financial year 2023), then the training in the USA will be completed and the Dark Eagle soldiers will be transferred back to Germany. You can fire immediately, because every move and every calculation is thoroughly practiced. When the missiles are delivered, they are also immediately ready for use.

So the deployment of Dark Eagle (and also the land-based Tomahawk) actually started in 2021, in Germany, in no other European country. And hardly anyone notices it.

Who decides on the stationing?

Who actually decides on the stationing of Dark Eagle in Germany – the US government or the German government? Actually, it is clear in a sovereign country: its government decides. But the decades of experience with the claim to sovereignty or the obedience of the German governments cast doubt on the fact that this will happen …

Why the government, not parliament? Why does the Federal Government and not the Bundestag decide, when the Bundeswehr is a "parliamentary army"? This dispute had first broken out in 1984 over the stationing of the Pershing missiles: The Parliamentary Group of the Greens had complained to the Federal Constitutional Court that the Bundestag had to decide on the missile deployment. The Federal Government, on the other hand, felt that it was sufficient for the Bundestag to discuss it. The Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the stationing was the decision of the Federal Government. At that time, the whole thing was a purely cosmetic process, for the United States, as the occupying power, had decided to deploy it. There were no Germans as decision-makers. But the stage design, painted as democratic, was maintained...

Main factor German public opinion

... Since reunification in 1990, German public opinion has ultimately been the force that can maintain or change their country's role as a potential NATO battlefield.

German public opinion must be mobilised again if we are to prevent Dark Eagle missiles from being stationed in Europe.

Translated by TU. All errors are the responsibility of the translator.