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US warfare equation 'full of
baloney'
By David Isenberg
Back in June 1997, the United States General
Accounting Office (GAO) issued a report titled
"Operation Desert Storm: Evaluation of the Air
Campaign". It was a report that debunked many of the
claims made about the efficacy of US air power during
Operation Desert Storm against Iraq in 1991. But in
retrospect, perhaps the most interesting thing about it
was that it took six years before such a report was
done.
Eventually, studies were published
detailing deficiencies in US military operations. But
most of these were found in the professional military
literature in journals like Military Review or
Parameters, trade press like Jane's Defence Weekly,
Aviation Week and Space Technology, Defense Week,
Defense News, and academic journals like International
Security or special government commissions like Gulf War
Air Power Survey.
In the aftermath of the second
US war against Iraq one might hope that claims about US
military prowess would be evaluated more skeptically.
But, sadly, far too many claims about US military
battlefield successes are being accepted uncritically.
Consider the words of Winslow Wheeler, who
directed the GAO study. Back in April he wrote: "I first
started hearing about revolutions in warfare after some
guided munitions hit a bridge in the Vietnam War. Since
then, the declaration of another new revolution in
warfare based on the accomplishments of guided munitions
and aircraft has occurred for every single American war
ever since. These declarations have become as
predictable as they are full of baloney."
Yet,
since the end of major combat operations in May 1, not
much of the debate in the US has been over whether the
model of warfare championed by Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, ie heavy reliance on air power, precision
guided munitions, special operations forces, and
intensive use of automated sensors and realtime
communications - generally referred to as the Revolution
in Military Affairs (RMA) - and correspondingly less
emphasis on armor forces and conventional infantry, is
the way to go.
This is not merely an academic
debate. The lessons US officials draw from this war will
shape equipment and personnel decisions for years to
come.
One of the few moments of skepticism thus
far occurred on October 21 at a hearing of the House
Armed Services Committee that took testimony from
nongovernmental witnesses.
The first witness was
Major General Robert Scales (Retired). In his written
testimony he took aim at the RMA advocates who believe
that technology is the answer. He wrote:
"Some
futurists claim that new information and computing
technologies will allow US military forces to 'lift the
fog of war'. According to this view, a vast array of
sensors and computers, tied together, can work
symbiotically to see and comprehend the entire battle
space and remove ambiguity, uncertainty and
contradiction for the military equation, or at least
remove these factors to manageable and controllable
levels. Technology will triumph over the general
friction of war, they claim. This view leads to the
belief that all the American military needs to do to
remain preeminent is to focus on acquiring more
sophisticated technology. The arguments in support of
technological monism echo down the halls of the
Pentagon, precisely because they involve the
expenditures of huge sums of money to defense
contractors. In some cases law makers may reduce
spending on relatively inexpensive but critical items
such as body armor, believing that technology has
precluded its use. Such policies, however, rest on a
profound ahistoricism that entirely misses the lessons
of the past, much less even a reasonable examination of
recent events."
Similarly, a draft army study of
lessons learned in the Iraq war, titled "Iraq and the
Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense
Policy", led by Stephen Biddle, a professor of strategic
studies at the Army War College in Carlisle,
Philadelphia, who also testified at the hearing, found
that the combined effect of US technological superiority
and an incompetent Iraqi military was the primary reason
for the quick victory over Saddam Hussein's forces.
As a result, the study cautions against using
the war as a model for planning future conflicts. It
"would be dangerous to assume Iraqi-style scenarios as
the future norm", the study said.
According to a
slide version of the draft study that was leaked to the
Baltimore Sun, "Without Iraqi ineptitude, even 2003
technology could not have enabled a force this size to
prevail at this cost." Against an "adept enemy", the
authors said, "results could be very different."
Another point made by Scales, which has
implications beyond military operations, dealt with
intelligence. He noted, "Raw information is not
intelligence. The problem over the past 65 years has not
been a lack of data. Rather, the problem has been
erroneous interpretation of that data. Since World War
II, intelligence organizations, both civilian and
military, have proved to be all too willing to interpret
information in light of preconceived political
prejudices or expectations."
In that regard, it
is worth noting that the New York Times reported in
September that an internal assessment by the Defense
Intelligence Agency has concluded that most of the
information provided by Iraqi defectors who were made
available by the Iraqi National Congress was of little
or no value.
Similarly, in September the
Washington Times reported that a secret report titled
"Operation Iraqi Freedom - Strategic Lessons Learned",
written for the joint chiefs of staff, lays the blame
for setbacks in Iraq on a flawed and rushed war-planning
process that "limited the focus" for preparing for
post-Saddam operations.
Although various
military units and different military services, the
joint chiefs, defense agencies, and the Office of the
Secretary of Defense have all conducted various "lessons
learned" efforts, there has not yet been a
comprehensive, objective effort. Dr Andrew Krepenenvich,
director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessment in Washington, DC, noted, "I cannot emphasize
how important a thorough independent assessment of the
conflict is, similar to the Gulf War Air Power Survey
commissioned by the US Air Force after Operation Desert
Storm."
Krepenevich also said, "since the gap
between us and everyone else is growing, our adversaries
are moving to the far end of the conflict spectrum: Get
nuclear weapons, or go terrorist, or go irregular
warfare. That's where the competition is heading. And
so, if we think about this war in terms of how would we
fight it better next time, we're missing the point
because that's not where the competition is going. And I
think that's how you have to view the lessons of Iraqi
Freedom."
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co,
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication
policies.)
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