WOULD PHYSICALLY EMASCULATED "FORCE XXI" or "MODULARITY" UNITS WIN IF WE REFOUGHT THE VIETNAM WAR TODAY?

http://www.cfcsc.dnd.ca/irc/nh/nh9798/0080.html

Great article, but Major Mark Syvret RM fails because he looks at things as "high-tech" or "low-tech" which is a false view point with a flair for being iconoclastic. If he was less trying to be a smart ass and more focused, he would see that:

Reality is physical, mental and spiritual.

Our central mistake is thinking mental will trump physical. We do not today due to RMA hubris have the superior physical means to control the ground when fighting a VC/NVA to win and not take too many casualties. We live in a fantasy of reliving WW2 mass mobilization while we physically emasculate ourselves with mental RMA gadgets. This is the central point, he tries to make the ability to hide and avoid targeting as the salvation for low-tech forces. BS. The point is the West is vulnerable to 4th GenWar mental attacks from too many casualties because we have bad mechanical advantage that can't take and hold ground. RMA folks will say we will be able to target through jungle, yadda, yadda, yadda. So what? We will not be able to kill enough of the enemy if each one had a beacon on his head 24/7. On the ground, the VC/NVA enemy was "higher tech" than our infantry weapons. His RPGs, AKMs, RRS, stick grenades beat our M14s/M16s, LAWs, baseball grenades. The enemy camouflaged himself better than our men, that's about laziness not high or low tech. His High-tech/Low-tech construct doesn't hold up. If you can't control the ground, the enemy can cache, we have to haul everything on our backs, guess who can fight or flee at will?

He's bashing info warfare without understanding its real benefit is to attack the enemy's will by 4th GenWar means (make their casualties cause them to give up). He sees IW as just battlefield commo/networking. We all know this aspect is oversold, and yes we wouldn't win Vietnam with infantry with computer screens. But Shielded Infantry with light AFVs flown at will by aircraft and computer screens, yes, we could hold the ground and not take heavy casualties.

This brings us to the "ballpark" of being able to win another Vietnam. What happens next is we have to defeat their 4th GenWar and collapse their will psychologically---perhaps by leaflets, TV, radio, offers for peace IF they do this or that. But for this to work, we have to be able to take ground, and not have thee nemy take it away from us. And we have to do it with just about zero casualties.

He does have some good quotes:

Distant firepower not enough

"The unparalleled, lavish use of firepower as a substitute for manpower is an outstanding characteristic of US military tactics in the Vietnam War."[3]

3 Lloyd J. Mathews and Dale E. Brown, ed., Assessing the Vietnam War, (New York: Pergamon- Brasseyâ€(tm)s, 1987), p148.

We never controlled the ground

In the 1960/70s General Hay of the Big Red One said NVA/VC forces were not destroyed because it was "extremely difficult" to establish an impenetrable seal against infiltration by NVA/VC units "thoroughly familiar with the dense jungle terrain."[40] There is no reason to believe that if General Hay had at his disposal Army XXI he would have fared much better.

Maneuverism would have no center of gravity to destroy

US doctrinal restrictions would, however, be fewer than those in the 1960s due to the American switch from an attritionalist doctrine to that of manoeuvre. Manoeuvre warfare is "A warfighting philosophy that seeks to defeat the enemy by shattering his morale and physical cohesion - his ability to fight as an effective, coordinated whole - rather than by destroying him physically through incremental attrition."[42]

Nevertheless, this switch in doctrinal focus will rely on the destruction of centres of gravity, but as Colonel Dunn eluded to earlier the NVA/VC did not present any obvious centres of gravity in the 1960/70s and there is no reason to expect that they would in the future. The Communist centre of gravity on the moral plane - their mass base of support[43] - will be well protected. The NVA/ VC political advisors effective at increasing their support and ensuring the US/ARVN were unpopular.[44] The US forces portrayed as outsiders with imperialist motives.[45]