Birdstrike
Atlantic City
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2002
- Posts
- 13,334
Sound reading, below. We only have one division, the 3d ID, on line entering its sixth straight day of combat. The 4th ID is 2 weeks away waiting for its equipment to be fully off-loaded. One division. No Air Cav Regt. No strategic reserve. 30 of 32 Apaches from the 11th Avn Regt hit by ground small arms fire in its first air recon over Republican Guard positions. Should we wait for reinforcement before fully engaging or press on to Baghdad?
Washington Post
March 25, 2003
Shock, Awe And Overconfidence
By Ralph Peters
The allied forces on the march in Iraq have performed impressively. Within weeks, major operations will give way to a few months of mopping up. Iraq will be liberated. This will happen despite serious strategic miscalculations by the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Most wars begin under the spell of prevailing theories that are swept away by the realities of combat. World War I began with a belief that elan and the bayonet still ruled the battlefield. Waves of soldiers fell before machine guns. In World War II, blitzkrieg worked against weak states but failed against those with strategic depth.
Now we are trying to prosecute a war according to another military theory, "shock and awe." Again, bold claims have led to disappointments redeemed only by the skill and determination of our military.
Explained as simply as possible, the shock-and-awe theory proposes that America's arsenal of precision weapons has developed so remarkably that aerial bombardment can shatter an opponent's will to resist. The airstrikes are to be so dramatic in sensory effect and so precise in targeting a regime's leadership infrastructure that the enemy's decision-makers see no choice but surrender.
The first waves of airstrikes on Baghdad were indeed dramatic and precise. The problem is that one's enemies don't necessarily respond to theories. Shock and awe, like blitzkrieg before it, would work superbly against Belgium. But its advocates failed to consider the nature of Saddam Hussein's regime.
No matter how shocked and awed the Iraqi leadership may be, surrender is not, never was and never will be an option for Hussein and his inner circle. Because of the nature of their regime and its crimes, the contest is all or nothing for them.
Had the most senior officials surrounding Donald Rumsfeld paused to consider the enemy, instead of rushing to embrace a theory they found especially congenial for political reasons, they would have realized that you cannot convince Hussein, his sons or his inner circle that they have been defeated. You must actually defeat them. And you must do it the old-fashioned way, albeit with improved weapons, by killing them and destroying their instruments of power.
Our attempt to baby-talk Iraq's elite military forces into surrender was humane in purpose and politically attractive, and it might have minimized Iraqi casualties. But it delayed essential attacks on Iraq's military capabilities. This encouraged at least some Iraqis in uniform to believe they had a chance to fight and win. Now our forces advancing on Baghdad face the possibility of more serious combat than would otherwise have been the case.
Some things do not change. The best way to shock and awe an enemy is still to kill him. Those who want to wage antiseptic wars for political purposes should not start wars in the first place.
A student of military history would recognize the ghost of Italian Gen. Giulio Douhet at work in the shock-and-awe theory. In 1921 Douhet published "The Command of the Air," a book predicting that air power would prove so powerful in the next war that land forces would be of marginal relevance. In World War II, air forces did play a critical role -- but the Army still had to fight its way across the Rhine to secure victory, just as our soldiers and Marines have had to fight their way across the Euphrates.
Without question, air power is performing magnificently in Iraq. Weapons technologies truly have improved by an order of magnitude over the past decade. The Air Force and the air arms of our other services are indispensable. But they remain most effective as part of an overall land, sea and air military team. Once again, it has taken ground forces to provide the main thrust of military operations, to take and hold ground, to seize oil fields, airfields and bridges, and to force the war toward a battlefield decision.
Unfortunately, those ground forces are spread very thin. Military planners have argued for months that more and heavier ground forces were needed to ensure rapid and sustained success, as well as to minimize risk. Rumsfeld personally and repeatedly rejected calls for the deployment of additional Army divisions. Now, as our last major units move into the fight in Iraq, Gen. Tommy Franks does not have on hand a significant armored reserve he can commit to battle, should things go awry.
I do not doubt our ultimate success. But the impressive television images of tanks charging across the desert mask a numerical weakness for which technology may not fully compensate. One senior officer serving in the Persian Gulf complained to me that had we had sufficient forces on hand to deploy security elements along our routes of march -- the usual practice -- those American POWs who appeared on Iraqi television might not have been captured.
The troops at the front of our attack are performing superbly, but they are operating on adrenaline at this point. Four to five days into any conflict, another division should have conducted a "forward passage of lines" with the 3rd Infantry Division before the final push to Baghdad, giving the 3ID a chance to rest, rearm and reequip before returning to battle. But no other heavy division is on hand in the theater of war to relieve or reinforce our tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. The closest unit is on ships in the Red Sea, at least 10 days away from any ability to influence the battle.
Why did Rumsfeld and his most trusted subordinates overrule the advice of their military planners? For political, bureaucratic and theoretical reasons. Rumsfeld, who is otherwise an inspiring wartime official, was out to prove a point. In his vision of the future -- one shaped by technocrats and the defense industry -- ground forces can be cut drastically in order to free funding for advanced technologies. To that end, Rumsfeld has moved to frustrate the Army's efforts to field medium-weight brigades that can be deployed swiftly to a crisis, which would have been invaluable in this conflict.
This war was supposed to prove the diminishing relevance of ground forces, while shock-and-awe attacks from the air secured a swift victory. Instead, the plan had to be rearranged so that ground forces could rush into Iraq to prevent economic and ecological catastrophes -- you still cannot seize ground, prevent sabotage, halt genocide and ethnic cleansing, or liberate anybody from the sky.
We are headed for victory, but, as the Duke of Wellington observed of Waterloo, it may be a "near-run thing" on the ground.
Some lessons of this war are already clear: Ferocity, skill and determination, not theories, win wars. And our nation will continue to require balanced, adequately funded forces -- in all of our armed services -- for a very long time to come.
Ralph Peters is a retired military officer and the author, most recently, of "Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World."
Washington Post
March 25, 2003
Shock, Awe And Overconfidence
By Ralph Peters
The allied forces on the march in Iraq have performed impressively. Within weeks, major operations will give way to a few months of mopping up. Iraq will be liberated. This will happen despite serious strategic miscalculations by the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Most wars begin under the spell of prevailing theories that are swept away by the realities of combat. World War I began with a belief that elan and the bayonet still ruled the battlefield. Waves of soldiers fell before machine guns. In World War II, blitzkrieg worked against weak states but failed against those with strategic depth.
Now we are trying to prosecute a war according to another military theory, "shock and awe." Again, bold claims have led to disappointments redeemed only by the skill and determination of our military.
Explained as simply as possible, the shock-and-awe theory proposes that America's arsenal of precision weapons has developed so remarkably that aerial bombardment can shatter an opponent's will to resist. The airstrikes are to be so dramatic in sensory effect and so precise in targeting a regime's leadership infrastructure that the enemy's decision-makers see no choice but surrender.
The first waves of airstrikes on Baghdad were indeed dramatic and precise. The problem is that one's enemies don't necessarily respond to theories. Shock and awe, like blitzkrieg before it, would work superbly against Belgium. But its advocates failed to consider the nature of Saddam Hussein's regime.
No matter how shocked and awed the Iraqi leadership may be, surrender is not, never was and never will be an option for Hussein and his inner circle. Because of the nature of their regime and its crimes, the contest is all or nothing for them.
Had the most senior officials surrounding Donald Rumsfeld paused to consider the enemy, instead of rushing to embrace a theory they found especially congenial for political reasons, they would have realized that you cannot convince Hussein, his sons or his inner circle that they have been defeated. You must actually defeat them. And you must do it the old-fashioned way, albeit with improved weapons, by killing them and destroying their instruments of power.
Our attempt to baby-talk Iraq's elite military forces into surrender was humane in purpose and politically attractive, and it might have minimized Iraqi casualties. But it delayed essential attacks on Iraq's military capabilities. This encouraged at least some Iraqis in uniform to believe they had a chance to fight and win. Now our forces advancing on Baghdad face the possibility of more serious combat than would otherwise have been the case.
Some things do not change. The best way to shock and awe an enemy is still to kill him. Those who want to wage antiseptic wars for political purposes should not start wars in the first place.
A student of military history would recognize the ghost of Italian Gen. Giulio Douhet at work in the shock-and-awe theory. In 1921 Douhet published "The Command of the Air," a book predicting that air power would prove so powerful in the next war that land forces would be of marginal relevance. In World War II, air forces did play a critical role -- but the Army still had to fight its way across the Rhine to secure victory, just as our soldiers and Marines have had to fight their way across the Euphrates.
Without question, air power is performing magnificently in Iraq. Weapons technologies truly have improved by an order of magnitude over the past decade. The Air Force and the air arms of our other services are indispensable. But they remain most effective as part of an overall land, sea and air military team. Once again, it has taken ground forces to provide the main thrust of military operations, to take and hold ground, to seize oil fields, airfields and bridges, and to force the war toward a battlefield decision.
Unfortunately, those ground forces are spread very thin. Military planners have argued for months that more and heavier ground forces were needed to ensure rapid and sustained success, as well as to minimize risk. Rumsfeld personally and repeatedly rejected calls for the deployment of additional Army divisions. Now, as our last major units move into the fight in Iraq, Gen. Tommy Franks does not have on hand a significant armored reserve he can commit to battle, should things go awry.
I do not doubt our ultimate success. But the impressive television images of tanks charging across the desert mask a numerical weakness for which technology may not fully compensate. One senior officer serving in the Persian Gulf complained to me that had we had sufficient forces on hand to deploy security elements along our routes of march -- the usual practice -- those American POWs who appeared on Iraqi television might not have been captured.
The troops at the front of our attack are performing superbly, but they are operating on adrenaline at this point. Four to five days into any conflict, another division should have conducted a "forward passage of lines" with the 3rd Infantry Division before the final push to Baghdad, giving the 3ID a chance to rest, rearm and reequip before returning to battle. But no other heavy division is on hand in the theater of war to relieve or reinforce our tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. The closest unit is on ships in the Red Sea, at least 10 days away from any ability to influence the battle.
Why did Rumsfeld and his most trusted subordinates overrule the advice of their military planners? For political, bureaucratic and theoretical reasons. Rumsfeld, who is otherwise an inspiring wartime official, was out to prove a point. In his vision of the future -- one shaped by technocrats and the defense industry -- ground forces can be cut drastically in order to free funding for advanced technologies. To that end, Rumsfeld has moved to frustrate the Army's efforts to field medium-weight brigades that can be deployed swiftly to a crisis, which would have been invaluable in this conflict.
This war was supposed to prove the diminishing relevance of ground forces, while shock-and-awe attacks from the air secured a swift victory. Instead, the plan had to be rearranged so that ground forces could rush into Iraq to prevent economic and ecological catastrophes -- you still cannot seize ground, prevent sabotage, halt genocide and ethnic cleansing, or liberate anybody from the sky.
We are headed for victory, but, as the Duke of Wellington observed of Waterloo, it may be a "near-run thing" on the ground.
Some lessons of this war are already clear: Ferocity, skill and determination, not theories, win wars. And our nation will continue to require balanced, adequately funded forces -- in all of our armed services -- for a very long time to come.
Ralph Peters is a retired military officer and the author, most recently, of "Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World."
