The fallacies of military
transformation By David Isenberg
Though the handover of "sovereignty" to
Iraq has done little to defeat the insurgency there,
and the prospects for military success still appear
dim, many military officials and war supporters like
to reminisce about the resounding success that
US-led military forces had last year in the major
combat phase of the war - Operation Iraqi Freedom.
In a mere 21 days the United States resoundingly defeated
the Iraqi military forces, overthrew former president
Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime, and seemingly proved
the wisdom of transforming the US military into one that
was lighter, swifter and laden with advanced standoff
technology.
There is only one problem, and it is
based on an assumption that is unproved. That is the
conclusion of a monograph titled "Toppling Saddam: Iraq
and American Military Transformation", which was
released by the US Army War College's Strategic Studies
Institute.
Though the report - collectively
written by a group of seven army officers and civilian
analysts - was published in April, it was designated
"Distribution Limited: Not to Be Released Outside of the
US Army". But a copy was leaked and posted online by the
Federation of American Scientists.
After
reading the report, it is easy to understand why
military officials would not want to see it
publicly disseminated. Its conclusions contradict
the conventional belief that Operation Iraqi Freedom
proved the wisdom of transforming the US military into
a lighter, high-technology force that relies on speed,
precision, and situation awareness.
The monograph set itself on the task of
answering the question of what accounted for Saddam's
inability to impose a heavier toll on US and coalition
forces, and what the answers generally mean for US
military transformation and defense policy.
The authors argue that a central component of
the answer lies in a synergistic interaction
between advanced technology and a major skill differential.
In 2003, advanced technology in skilled hands
enabled the coalition to punish Iraqi mistakes
with extraordinary severity. The Iraqis in 2003 made many
errors, allowing US technology to operate at maximum
effectiveness; the resulting lethality enabled a small
but skilled coalition force to defeat the world's
12th-largest military at a very low cost to itself. But
technology's effects are strongly influenced by its
targets' behavior: without the targets' errors to exploit,
the same technology can produce very different results.
The Iraqis' shortcomings created a permissive
environment for coalition technology that a more skilled
opponent elsewhere might not. The 2003 outcome was thus a
product of a powerful interaction effect between
coalition strengths and Iraqi weaknesses. The
coalition's strengths were indeed essential for the outcome, but
so were Iraq's shortcomings: both advanced technology
and a major skill imbalance were required.
Outside
experts agree with this view. According to retired
Lieutenant-Colonel Piers Wood, a Vietnam combat veteran and
director of Military Insights, a public-policy research group
in the US state of Virginia, "The Iraqis
were not prepared to even slow the Americans down and
their dispositions were wildly inappropriate and
ineffective. The Americans could have succeeded just as
well with the army it had in Vietnam."
Actually,
this is not the first such view that has been expressed.
A 1996 article in the journal International Security by
Stephen Biddle, who was the study director of the War
College monograph, found that, "in the Gulf War, Iraqi
errors created opportunities for new coalition
technology to perform at proving-ground effectiveness
levels and sweep actively resisting Iraqi Republican
Guard units from the battlefield. Without the Iraqis'
mistakes to provide openings, however, the outcome would
have been far different in spite of the coalition's
technology, and coalition casualties would likely have
reached or exceeded prewar expectations. But without
the new weapons, mistakes like the Iraqis' would not
have enabled the coalition to prevail with the
historically low losses of the Gulf War. Many previous
armies have displayed combat skills no better than
Iraq's, but without producing results anything like
those of 1991; only a powerful interaction between skill
imbalance and new technology can explain the
difference."
According to Woods, "We can't
assume that the RMA [Revolution in Military Affairs]
will prevail against all forces. If we've learned
anything from fighting in Asia, it is that we've
repeatedly underestimated the capability of Asian armies
to do end runs around our technological advantages and
our superior mobility, as was the case in Korea and
Vietnam." And, he went on to note, "The major shortfall
we find among RMA advocates is that they tend to ignore
the more abstract aspects of combat. They assume the
battlefield is a huge target array; it is a
bean counter's view of the war, tantamount to
[US secretary of defense Robert] McNamara's view during
Vietnam. I think it should be obvious that we can't
discriminate among targets on the battlefield."
Another
analyst, retired US Colonel Dan Smith, a senior
fellow at the Friends Committee on National Legislation
in Washington, DC, said the monograph is "a necessary
restatement of the obvious". He noted that just
last week General Peter Schoonmkaer, US Army chief of
staff, testified before the House Armed Services Committee,
where he was met with some skepticism regarding
military transformation. The committee chairman,
Republican Duncan Hunter, said, "I think we need to be
cautious. Transformation is a good idea for the new
capabilities it brings to the military, but it's equally
important to pay attention to what we could lose in the
process. First, in the rush to embrace high technology
and replace armor and firepower with speed and
information, we may well lose the ability to engage in a
traditional stand-up fight against either heavy or
unconventional forces. And I think our experience in
Iraq, when we saw some of the new and some of the old
performing very well, is a good illustration of that,
where while we validated the capabilities and the
importance of things like precision munitions, we also
revalidated the value of things like heavy armor."
The study argues that the condition, morale and training
of Iraqi forces had deteriorated so badly that they
were unable to respond effectively even when weak points
developed in the US attack. For example, the monograph
noted that it was far from clear that the US had
sufficient forces in the theater to surround multiple
Iraqi cities simultaneously in the face of aggressive
partisan action against coalition lines of communication.
Since many of those cities controlled key bridges,
the United States' ability to sustain a siege of other
cities deeper in the country would have been reduced
accordingly. With large numbers of forces tied down
providing security, coalition forces would inevitably
have been forced to leave many Iraqi cities - and
possibly Baghdad itself - under Ba'athist control. And
the countryside would have remained almost wholly in
Ba'athist hands.
This in turn would have reduced
the ability of either standoff precision or air raids to
destroy key nodes in the city centers. Fortunately for
the US military, the Iraqi forces were not skilled
enough to capitalize on these vulnerabilities.
But, as the monograph concludes, the US
cannot be sanguine about the prospect that future
opponents will be so inept. It states, "In particular, it would
be a serious mistake to overestimate the contribution
of technology or speed and to underestimate the
importance of the skill differential and the Iraqis role in
this ... It could lead to a mistaken assumption
that precision and situation awareness can produce
Operation Iraqi Freedom-like results against other opponents
with better skills than the Iraqis'. Even with skilled
forces of our own, this is a risky proposition. In 2003,
our technology could operate at maximum
effectiveness against exposed, ill-prepared opponents. Enemies who
do a better job of exploiting the natural complexity of
the Earth's surface for cover and concealment could
pose much tougher targets - as we have already seen in
the performance of al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan
and Serbian forces in Kosovo. Our technology's
performance is strongly affected by the nature of its targets,
and our targets were extremely permissive in Operation
Iraqi Freedom. If we overlook this, we could exaggerate
our technology's potential against better-skilled enemies
elsewhere."
When asked if it was likely that the
monograph's conclusions would receive much attention at
the policymaking levels, such as Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, Smith replied, "After 26 years in the
army I fervently hope so, but am prepared to be greatly
disappointed."
David Isenberg, a
senior analyst with the Washington-based British
American Security Information Council (BASIC), has a
wide background in arms control and national security
issues. The views expressed are his own.
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