THE TIP OF THE SPEAR: RMA vs. 4GW vs. Reality

Being lazy and not wanting to fight over the years, the GWDWTFs have emasculated the force into being dependant upon firepower bombardment steered by them from remote command posts using mental gadgets to create a quasi-linear battlefield for a support underclass to flourish. The Rummy RMA Tofflerians like this lie of lightness because trimming down the force means less power for the GWDWTFs so they can run DoD. While we can and should trim the upper headquarters staffs and get more trigger puller "teeth" as Col Macgregor argues for MILITARY COMPETENCE, the GWDWTF resist this because it means less slots for their old men peers to act like tyrants to the gullible younger men, and of course more power for DoD civilians.

Since neither the Rummy RMA Tofflerians or the GWDWTFs want to employ MANEUVER (physical and mental) which requires empowerment and not being a snob, they think that after the enemy has been blasted to bits we can simply roll in on the same garrison peacetime military trucks/mentality and transplant garrison life to a foreign country to include BS morning formations, sports PT and mindless paperwork and procedures designed to make everyone look busy. The GWDWTF are used to ordering weak co-dependants around in garrison when they arrive in Iraq move into former dictator palaces and proceed to round up civilians and rough them up to find rebels which just create rebels when you try this stunt on adults. We need LESS TROOPS IN IRAQ OF HIGHER QUALITY IN ARMORED BATTLE GROUPS who respond as needed not occupy everywhere as a daily nuisance. The rebellion grows....

THE POINT OF THE SPEAR: Tracks vs. Wheels

The rebels discover the heavy handed American GWDWTFs surprisingly are lazy and snobby and have an underclass that drives around in vulnerable trucks so they proceed to blow them up with glee. While what we need is humility and actual QUALITATIVE reform by making everyone work and everyone fight by empowering them with tracked armored fighting vehicles and dropping the snobbiness, the GWDWTF call for more QUANTITY ie; more cannon fodder for them to throw into the jaws of high explosive (HE) death. They hate tracks because they represent warfighting empowerment for the younger and less ranked unwasheds and actually spending the majority of the time in garrison on combat and not the garrison egomaniac BS they really want to do. The tactically unsound Stryker rubber tired truck full of "mother may I?" top-down dictatorial gadgets represents how they want their egomaniac cake and eat it to (somehow be combat capable when simultaneously being combat incapable).

RMA vs. 4GW: IN DETAIL

To understand the direction the U.S. Army as a sub-part of DoD is headed in, you need to read two books, Robert Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" and Alvin and Heidi Toffler's "War and Anti-War". If this doesn't alarm you, that reading sound wisdom like Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" is not required to understand the current U.S. Army's technotactical course charted, it should alarm you. To understand the true 21st century non-linear, 4th Generation war (4GW) arena, you must read Martin Van Crevald's "The Transformation of War". Since you may not have read the above books, I will summarize.

Aside for the neo-fascist bitterness of Heinlein wanting a society where only military veterans can vote and hold elected office, Starship Troopers written in 1959 (!) is about Super-Infantry dropped from space like Paratroopers in capsules, that have power suits enabling situational awareness (SA) through shared communications and increased firepower and mobility by armor and a "jump" capability to fly short distances for 3D positional maneuver advantage.

The force structure is all teeth, no tail "everybody fights, everybody works" egalitarianism where subordinates are powered down with the ability to take the initiative. This action and sense of shared adventure is what attracts our best young men to join the U.S. Army, and is why Starship Troopers has been one of the most, if not THE most beloved book at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point where idealism is still a virtue. The Army is well underway towards a primitive "Starship Trooper" with its digitized 21st Century Land Warrior program for the dismounted Soldiers of our Army.

Another book with the same emphasis on ground MANEUVER is T.R. Fehrenbach's "This Kind of War" which bitterly recounts how the air strike firepower mentality failed in the mud and mountains of Korea in 1950-53. Reading this in conjunction with Van Crevald's Transformation of War, you soon realize man is in the 4th Generation of War where the battle is over the MIND and loyalty of the people themselves. Whereas 1st generation warfare was hand-to-hand implements, the 2d machines as in firearms, the 3rd maneuver to collapse enemy organizational structures, the 4th generation strategem seeks the dominant will. In 4GW, ALL previous manifestations of war are still in play as possible courses of action, especially on Non-Linear Battlefields (NLBs) where we simply lack the mass numbers of men to create front and rear "lines".

How the "Do More With Less" Mantra Kills American Soldiers

In contrast, Alvin and Heidi Toffler's War and Anti-War (WAAW) is a very popular book with senior U.S. military leaders who ride around in staff cars a lot surrounded by yes-men staffs and spend little unscripted time with the troops and want everyone to stay in their social and battlefield "place". WAAW offers us an illusion of painless war because we are in an alleged enlightened "third wave" of civilization where computers (mentalism) replaces the physical (2d Wave) as "industrial age" and passe'. Computer mental gymnastics can create mythical "lines" and areas on the battlefield that have not been actually created in reality by troops, to keep everyone in their WWII-style place and role in the Army pecking order. Tofflerians actually think "we can do more with less", this mantra enables them to skimp on Army ground maneuver/protection via rubber-tired wheeled vehicles and use these savings to buy more computers and guided munitions that can be steered by them from a remote command post far from the enemy. Even though we still live in a world that has to grow food to eat (1st wave) and live in physical bodies requiring the physical resources of our earth (2nd wave), the Tofflers offer us a hubristically labeled "Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA) feast full of expensive, keep-the-defense-contractors-employed-and-politicians-elected stand-off firepower munitions to destroy mythical enemies who obligingly stand off from us for easy targeting; a fantasy that ironically was condemned as unsound, unworkable tactics and strategy in Starship Troopers even as far back as 1959! The enemy who doesn't have to abide by our battlefield "lines" frequently "votes" with his RPGs and road-side bombs exploding our wheeled vehicles and men as they operate in "safe" areas we have created in our minds. Its like the Bush Administration declaring the war was over and the "mission accomplished" in Iraq because they said so after their firepower bombardments had no more role to play to get the media limelight. 2, 700 dead and 22,000 wounded Soldiers later, its the ground maneuver Army that is no longer needed in the Tofflerian/RMA world-view that is keeping Iraq together at a stiff human price, not firepower munitions. No discussion of this in the media.

If you think we are making this up, read Jeff Steinberg says:

http://members.tripod.com/adm/ad/popup_source.shtml?member_name=american_almanac&path=toffler.htm&client_ip=205.188.116.5&ts=1085564780&ad_type=POPUP&category=ent&search_string=congressional+military+reform+caucus&id=35a005badc5b7a57603a9fbdd57a8b78

Toffler's 21st Century -- Strategic Insanity By Jeffrey Steinberg
Printed in the Executive Intelligence Review,

In April 1982, at the moment when Lyndon LaRouche was engaged in intense back-channel negotiations with the Soviets, on behalf of the Reagan White House, around what would later be adopted by the President as his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)--a true revolution in warfare--two of the most lunatic advocates of the post-industrial ``New Age,'' Alvin and Heidi Toffler, were being brought into the inner sanctums of the Pentagon, by some of the U.S. military's leading utopians.

At least in part, as the result of the Tofflers' collaboration with some senior officials of the U.S. Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), the United States has increasingly adopted a military strategy that can best be described as ``Nietzschean warfare,'' in which all principles of morality, strategy, and mission are abandoned, in favor of a senseless, high-tech ``scorched-earth'' policy of destroying every bit of infrastructure, and tallying rates of civilian casualties near 80%.

Toffler's notion of warfare might best be described as the most advanced form of state-sponsored genocidal ``blind terrorism'' ever put forward as a military doctrine.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President George Bush's 1991 Persian Gulf War was hailed in the Tofflers' 1993 diatribe, War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the 21st Century, as the greatest military victory in modern history. They referred to it, self-servingly, as the first war to occur between a ``Third Wave'' (i.e., post-industrial, ``information'') versus a ``Second Wave'' (i.e., industrial) society. This idea of warfare between post-industrial nations (i.e., the United States, western Europe nations, and Japan) and industrial and Third World pre-industrial nations, was favorably compared, in the Tofflers' book, to the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century ``benign'' imperial and colonial wars, conducted by the British and other European colonial powers against the populations of Africa and other corners of the underdeveloped world.

Already, advocates of ``air war'' and other utopian war-fighting doctrines are championing the 78-day aerial bombardment of Serbia and Kosovo as proof that the ``era of air power'' has finally arrived. It was only a matter of time, these ``Third Wave air power'' fanatics argue, until the proper amount of ``information-intensive'' gadgetry could be assembled, to enable warfare to be a bloodless, casualty-less affair--for the winning side.

- The new triad -

By their own accounts in War and Anti-War, Alvin and Heidi Toffler were approached, in April 1982, by Gen. Don Morelli, who, along with Gen. Donn A. Starry, was working on an overhaul of U.S. military doctrine, drawing heavily from the Tofflers' 1980 book, The Third Wave. That book set forth the idea that industrial civilization was obsolete, and that large-scale production could be replaced by ``information.'' The Tofflers received a series of detailed briefings from Morelli, Starry, and others, and, eventually, a decade later, wrote their book-length venture into the world of ``operations research,'' ``future war,'' and ``AirLand Battle 2000.''

In that book, they put forward the idea of a new strategic ``triad'' for global warfare below the threshold of thermonuclear extinction. In what they looked forward to as a three-way ``clash of civilizations'' among agrarian, industrial, and post-industrial societies, the Tofflers argued that ``Third Wave'' warfare would be successfully fought through the combined deployment of ``niche'' special forces units, overwhelming use of ``information-driven'' air power, and ``information warfare''--the use of advanced electronic systems, computer viruses, non-lethal weapons, and other wunderwaffen to disrupt the enemy's command, control, communications, computers and intelligence (``C4I'').

Much of this grab-bag of lame-brain toys and tactics was codified in the Pentagon's mid-1980s ``AirLand Battle 2000.'' If there is any doubt that the Tofflers' kookery has penetrated deeper into government than merely through the thick skulls of Newt Gingrich and Al Gore, both of whom figured prominently in the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future and the Congressional Military Reform Caucus, then just consider the recent remarks by Defense Secretary William Cohen.

Speking to the Conference on Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and U.S. Strategy, at the University of Georgia on April 28, Cohen said that he had just been reading the Tofflers' War and Anti-War, and that this was ``must'' reading for strategists. He returned to the subject of the Tofflers' ideas three times during the discussion period.

The Tofflers themselves, of course, are little more than pop-cult scribblers who take the insane ``paradigm shift'' ideas, generated by far more serious monsters from the Tavistock Institute, the Frankfurt School, and their many offshoots and fronts, and put them into barely readable prose, suitably byte-sized for an audience of ``New Age'' true-believers. The vastly bigger problem is that the U.S. military is now teeming with just such ``New Age'' policy wonks, with hundreds of billions of dollars in defense budget money at their disposal, and the increasingly frequent opportunity to play their ``Nietzschean'' war games against living and breathing human targets--most recently in the Balkans and Iraq, but, perhaps, coming soon to your neighborhood.

The preceding article is a rough version of the article that appeared in The Executive Intelligence Review. It is made available here with the permission of The Executive Intelligence Review. Any use of, or quotations from, this article must attribute them to The New Federalist, and The Executive Intelligence Review

"No degree of IPB (Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield) could compensate, alert, or prepare any U.S. force for the massive numbers of RPGs (Rocket Propelled Grenades) stored in houses, shacks, lockers, and cars. The only way to counter RPGs fired from covered and concealed positions was to absorb the hit, identify the source of the fire, and respond with massive overwhelming firepower.

Tanks and Bradleys repeatedly sustained hits from RPG's and ground directed anti-aircraft fire that dismounted infantrymen, HMMWVs and other light skinned vehicles could not sustain. Bradleys successfully protected the infantrymen inside while at the same time delivering a massive volume of fire against dismounted enemy, trucks, tanks, and armored vehicles. The firepower and shock generated by tanks and Bradleys could never have been matched by dismounted infantry. Without the use of these systems initially, the enemy would have caused many more casualties."

Whereas Heinlein's Starship Troopers have stand-off firepower means on their power suits (but no ground vehicles to more efficiently do this--a flaw in the book) they never assume that these things replace physical ground maneuver which the "Mobile Infantry" does to root out dug-in enemies impervious to even precision, nuclear firepower.

That firepower-bombardment is an old failed bromide, does not seem to faze those leaders in the Army who want to "unmanned vehicle" the human Soldier out of combat entirely. While we could name some names of those who prescribe to the Tofflerian hubris, it will do no good to entrench them any further than even their own firepower could root them out. The Army's current Tofflerian bombard & occupy scheme is nothing more than the mentality of the Air Force strategic bombers in "Army green". What is happening is while our troops are dying and being maimed in Iraq, back in the safety of the Pentagon, the generals are spending the majority of our money on their pre-war on terror projects excused away because the Iraq counter-insurgency operation is an "exception", real wars will need their expensive war toys like V-22s, F-22s all tied together by computers for their top-down micro-management and the like. Even the U.S. Army War college admits network-centric warfare is a failure in Iraq. Don't be surprised that in the next round of base closings that Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania suddenly gets eliminated to shut down the voices of reason that sometimes speak from there.

U.S. Army War College 15th Annual Strategy Conference: Winning the War by Winning the Peace: Strategy for Conflict and Post-Conflict in the 21st Century

SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS:

Many of our problems in Iraq spring from our inability to follow our own doctrine, to learn from past experiences, and to avoid making uninformed decisions out of theater. The Global War on Terrorism is here to stay. Consequently, we will need to increase the size of our ground forces. We also need to reorganize at the national level to fight it effectively. Although the Defense budget will remain adequate, the Federal budget deficit and increasing personnel costs (including more ground end strength) will force hard choices. As a result several favorite programs in all the services may be scaled back.

Iraq Reconstruction:

Pre-conflict reconstruction planning was done pretty well but lacked integration. Four major concerns were oil well fires, massive refugee flows due to chemical warfare, food shortages, and epidemics. None of these happened. Critical contracts were delayed because they could not be written before the conflict began and the bureaucracy slowed moving money to get contracts in place. In the future we need a rolling pot of money to get contracts in place quickly. From the beginning lack of security made it difficult for the Organization for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (OHRA) to do its mission.

Because the U.S. took out the entire Iraqi State and all its authorities, ministries had to be totally reconstituted from top to bottom. Wartime destruction of the communications grid was a major challenge. Iraqi infrastructure had not been maintained for decades but the country has the resources and skills to do well if the insurgency can be stabilized. The U.S. track record of walking away from difficult commitments has hampered our ability to get the Iraqis to cooperate.

Five essential actions:

o Destroy and kill the insurgents
o Reestablish the Iraqi regular army
o Stimulate the economy
o Create a system to share oil revenues
o Establish a government of federated entities (the hard part)

The U.S. did a horrible job of talking to the Iraqi people and is still not doing it well. We need a world class strategic communications capability that can work in other cultures and get the message out. Future reconstruction efforts must belong to the Combatant Commander and he needs an interagency group that works for him to do it. Three poor decisions made .out of theater in mid-May caused things to turn against the U.S.

o Disbanding the Iraqi army
o De-Baathification down to 5-6 levels
o Eliminating the group of Iraqi expatriates that had been created to talk to the Iraqi people.

Reconstruction planning started much later than it should have. George C. Marshall began planning for post-World War II reconstruction three years before the end of the War.

Grand Strategy for the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT):

Because the GWOT is unbounded, unilateral, and preemptive, it represents strategic overreach by the U.S. On, balance globalization tends to enhance and entrench U.S. power. The future is very favorable for the U.S. relative to other states. Future strategy should leverage U.S. ability to change international institutions and reshape the world order in our interests. We need to get our grand strategy right. We're using a lot of resources but not linked to grand strategy. The main imperative of our strategy must be establishing legitimate and effective government in large parts of the world that lack it. Many of our challenges are symptomatic of the good governance deficit, especially in the Islamic world.

We need to replace the National Security Act of 1947 with something that integrates all elements of national power to meet our current and future challenges. 1814, 1941, and 2001 all reflect fundamental changes in threats to the U.S. that drove major changes in U.S. grand strategy. 9/11 was a watershed event that caused us to truly recognize the threat posed by radical Islam and WMD and shifted our balance of risk equation. The apocalyptic nihilism of Islamic fundamentalists makes deterrence impossible. Present institutions (national and international) can't solve our post 9/11 problems. The war on radical Islamic fundamentalist terror will be long, costly, and unavoidable.

Fiscal and Political Sustainability:

Outlook for the U.S. economy is good but the budget is worrisome if current policies on taxes and spending continue. We can afford a strong defense but can't do it on borrowed money. The U.S. economy is resilient to shock. The past recession resulted from inevitable collapse of the '90's boom. 9/11 had minor impact. The deficit is currently high at 4.5% of GDP. This is not an immediate problem but we're on track to sustain large deficits for 10 years. Then the situation worsens dramatically due to boomers' entitlements. Interest rates are expected to increase one or two percent, more, if the U.S. becomes unable to borrow abroad. One third of U.S. debt is foreign held; thus, loss of confidence in the dollar could be a real problem. The U.S. will be forced to make hard choices on the revenue side also. Revenues are now at 16% of GDP, a historic low. Older and newer military equipment is more expensive to operate. The military medical budget grows faster than everything else. Cost estimates for DD (X) and LHAR are way under what costs will really be.

Army is in the worse shape for risk. Historically huge cost risk (70%) is driven by FCS. Defense spending will decline as a percentage of the Federal budget and the economy. Over time there will not be seven- percent increase per year in Defense. Enormous deficits will cause tough choices in Defense. Neither Kerry nor Bush is in competition for fiscal responsibility. Defense won't have to tighten its belt for the next one to two years. The national political center of gravity is not to cut defense. Kerry is hugging Bush on defense but might increase Army end strength by 40,000 (to 520,000). $500 to $600B deficits are not sustainable. The speaker argued for a 50,000 increase in Army end strength to give the Army some breathing room on personnel tempo. To generate savings of two times the increase in personnel costs, he argued for the following changes in programs:

o FCS. Keep in R&D for five more years

o F-22.makes sense to buy some against the future Chinese threat but don't need as many as planned. Buy more/refurbish F-15Cs.

o V-22. Survivability problems. Use as a prototype and SOF platform. Buy 50 only.

o JSF.2500 manned aircraft makes no sense. Buy several hundred VSTOL models, cancel Navy buy. Buy 1000 or fewer total. Buy more/refurbish F-15Cs.

o DD(X).Navy costing at only half what program will really come in at. Hull design is unseaworthy. A lot of other platforms can strike shore targets; thus, DD(X) is duplicative.

o Nuclear Weapons. We need only a few hundred. Modest force of only 1000 warheads is adequate.

o Virginia Class Submarines do more overseas basing of other ships. Two crises, Iraq and the economic future, don't permit easy, old-fashioned solutions. In two years the nation's politics will cause hard choices in Defense. The GWOT hasn't had a major effect on Defense spending. The increase from $300B to $400B in the defense budget is mostly a reflection of increased compensation, R&D for transformation, the end of the procurement holiday., and rising O&M costs (some for increased force protection).

o DD(X) and LCS: the Navy needs more, smaller combatants but the question is in what numbers with what capability. You can make an argument for DD(X) but it's harder to argue for 24.

Some plausible future scenarios, most of which are Army intensive missions:

o U.S. assistance to Musharraf in Pakistan

o U.S. intervention to prevent a nuclear war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir

o Conflict with Iran over the Straits of Hormuz

o China-Taiwan

o Peacekeeping operations in Indonesia, the Philippines, or the Congo

Insurgency and Terrorism:

Insurgency is the only way weak actors can try to affect the global system. Radical Islam provides a powerful critique of the existing order but can't generate a successful alternative state. U.S. will have to choose between a strategy of victory or management of terrorism.

Key determinants of success (in Iraq and elsewhere) are the legitimacy of a new government and the effectiveness of economic reform. We are now seeing a global insurgency because the U.S. dominates and enforces global order. The good news is that it is based on a narrow, negative theology and ideology. Insurgency was the most prevalent form of conflict in the 20th century and probably will remain so in the 21st. Although there are some changes (IO, weapons, etc), the causes and requirements for combating them remain the same.

Cordon and search approaches have never worked well. Sometimes the best you can do it to restore law and order and reduce violence to acceptable levels. Formulating a counterinsurgency strategy requires recognition of the nature of the enemy. Is Al Qaeda a snake that can be beheaded or a virulent mold? Why no small-scale Al Qaeda attacks since 9/11? Even small operations require infrastructure. After 9/11 the U.S. was seen as too hostile an environment; thus, terrorists may be waiting for a better opportunity. Since 9/11 there have been 25-30 attacks overseas.

Phase IV Operations

Army doctrine phases operations as follows:

o I. Deter/Engage
o II. Seize Initiative
o III. Decisive Operations
o IV. Reconstruction

Secure
Stabilize
Build institutions
Hand over/redeploy

We historically plan for IV when we do III. Can no longer do that. Planning must be simultaneous.

In Iraq all the Iraq experts were put on phase III planning. U.S. military doesn't like doing phase IV but it's the only institution that can do it. If it can, the Army follows the Von Moltke model of only being engaged in decisive combat, then allowing the civilian leaders to take charge of the aftermath. Policy goals cannot be achieved without long-term Army commitment. Combatant Commanders should control reconstruction with civilian deputies and an interagency staff.

U.S. has done a reconstruction operation every two years since 1990 but each one overwhelms our security apparatus. We need to improve the capabilities of other agencies or the military will continue to bear most of the load. However, civilian agencies have no planning capability, no lead agency, no way to move money quickly, and no stand-by capability. Afghanistan has one peacekeeper per 1000 population needs 20. Iraq would require 500,000 troops at that level. In Iraq the CPA is vastly understaffed and confined to Baghdad. It's now on its fifth plan for transition to Iraqi rules. Attempts to privatize reconstruction have run into problems because the U.S. doesn't have its act together on contracting. Has led to serious problems, like training and equipping Iraqi security forces.

The U.N. has much to offer in reconstruction operations

o Unique legal authority
o Unique moral authority
o Unique global membership to generate unique combinations of forces. In the Congo, 50 percent of the U.N. officers are African, greatly enhancing the UN's ability to operate there. [The Congo was Africa's World War.3.5 million dead, 17 foreign armies fighting there.]
o Burdensharing

Democratization

The Arab-Israeli conflict is the central problem in the Middle East. The issue of political identify in the Arab world was never resolved. Iraq is the most egregious example. An election putting one ethnic group in power could lead to civil war, as in Algeria. The only solution elsewhere in the Arab world has been liberalized autocracy. In Iraq, if the follow-on Iraqi government doesn't have a degree of legitimacy, it will be unable to get any public support to do anything else.

You must first have a state to have democracy. The state must have a monopoly on the means of violence; thus, security is a preeminent requirement. Sadr's Mahdi Army has committed numerous acts of terrorism to cow its opponents through fear.

Implications for U.S. Force Structure:

We need to determine what the primary mission of the U.S. military is before we make changes to force structure. The U.S. military is a Western world asset. Most European forces fail the test of usability.

We clearly need more ground power. It matters. Close combat capability is critical. One of the shortcomings of force transformation is that it ignores the uncertainty of war and tries to reduce combat to a targeting drill. Net Centric Warfare (NCW) doesn't work in counter-insurgency. Today, the focus of all four services is on land. The enemy can use our networked awareness to make us deceive ourselves. Many low-tech opponents present no key nodes to attack. Training and education of military and other agency leaders is essential for effective counter-insurgency. We need to learn from past conflicts, particularly Vietnam.

Another disturbing reality in the Iraq urban guerrilla war is the huge number of casualties compared to dead in contrast to other wars where blast effects have been absorbed by soft rural terrain. Wounded are coming at a ratio of 8 for every dead; and these are people who are horribly disfigured with amputated limbs. ALL OF THIS IS THE RESULT OF THE STUPID U.S. LIGHT INFANTRY IN TRUCKS AND ON FOOT WE ARE JUST OCCUPYING MENTALITY that offers our Soldiers unprotected to enemy bombs and RPGs going off, blast effects magnified by urban terrain. On the NLB you cannot afford to be wounded in the first place. WE MUST PUT ALL OF OUR ARMY IN AT THE VERY LEAST LIGHT TRACKED AFVs A-S-A-P.

Senior Army Leaders lusting for linear WWII battles and everyone-stays-in-their-social-place?

Colonel Douglas MacGregor's recent appearance on the Lehrer News Hour

www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june04/army_1-13.html#

calling for a reorganized Army is not just a "nice-to-have"; the failure of our Army to have robust and self-sufficient units like he proposes is costing us lives in Iraq. In the minds of too many Army officials, Tofflerian computer graphics have painted a mythical arena where wheeled trucks and armored cars can shuttle men and supplies forward to "the edge" of a linear battlefield much like Belton Cooper describes took place in WWII Europe in his book, Deathtraps. Cooper explains how allied air supremacy was so great that trucks were driven end-to-end for miles with their headlights on to get superior numbers and mass on the enemy to overwhelm him. When its pointed out today that the 8-wheeled Stryker armored car is extremely vulnerable to RPGs, the computerized Army officials excuse this fatal flaw away by declaring "its not a combat vehicle, it will just shuttle men to the forward edge of the battlefield".

This is not 1944, its 2004.

What "forward edge" of the battlefield are Army officials talking about?

Then there is the real, non-linear battlefield taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. Army does not have 100 Divisions to fully control large areas and clear out all enemies to make "safe", "rear" areas for an underclass of support troops to do the dirty work for the upper social class of combat arms Soldiers on the "front lines". The Army has just 10 active-duty divisions, spread thinly around the world in Korea, Afghanistan, the Balkans, Kuwait and Iraq yet is commanded by thousands of people in several layers of bureaucracy yet wonders why simple things like enough body armor reaches the troops. In still-not-pacified Iraq/Afghanistan, the enemy is all around, and there are no "front" lines for Army troops to ride up to on the cheap in rubber-tired trucks, dismount and fight the enemy less-than-"even" M16 vs. AK47/RPG/IED but hope to overwhelm him by superior numbers and "information" about the enemy's location and condition. The only "Forward Line of Troops" (FLOT) is wherever your units are and these are small FLOT circles that have only local control possibilities not FLOT lines firmly controlling large areas of terrain. Tofflerian/RMA hubris tries to foist this lie that with computers units that can only control FLOT circles can somehow physically control large areas with less troops to create FLOT lines and pacified areas ie; recreate WWII linear battlefields. Reality dictates that Army units must be able to--fight in all directions at any time---to control FLOT circles. Yet, why doesn't the Army use light tracked AFVs when the preponderance of evidence demands they must be used for successful 2D/3D maneuver war and SASO operations?

The Army in love with computer mental gymnastics espoused by Alvin and Heidi Tofffler, has forgotten there is a huge difference between knowing and being able to physically DO something about it. Steering firepower by mouse-clicks has not worked and you would think that the Army doing the actual physical ground maneuver would know this better than anyone else in DoD. Instead, Army officials want to "homogenize" the Army into all-wheeled truck formations to showboat their Tofflerian computers that through their own egomaniac general officer pseudo-genius we can "do more with less". They want emasculated wheeled platforms to draw attention to their C4ISR; what they think is their soley unique Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) contribution to the "history of warfare". Splice C4ISR mental means to physically robust track vehicles (common sense keep the good physical strengths you have and ADD mental strengths) but this would risk the tracks getting some or even all of the attention for their fire & maneuver dominance--which is actually more important in the real world we live in than the C4ISR. We can't have the tracked vehicles getting the spotlight, they are supposed to be "2d wave" in the Tofflerian timeline. Furthermore, the current crop of Army general officers didn't "create" tracked vehicles--thus, they can't as easily take credit for someone else's work. Rubber-tired wheeled-vehicles-with-computers are symbols of general officer egotism that through their self-acclaimed brilliance we can now skimp on our Soldier's physical armor protection, firepower and mobility costs and buy even more expensive gadgets/munitions. Nevermind, that the wheeled Stryker armored car costs $53/mile to operate and the light tracked M113 Gavin costs $3/mile to operate; the Army's generals THINK they are saving money with rubber-tired vehicles, it looks different and they can then take personal credit for changing, ehh "transforming the Army". As long as the true cost figures of the heavily overweight and road-bound wheeled vehicles never becomes widely known public knowledge, the lies of "doing more with less" can continue.

However, Army Soldiers have not forgotten about real reality: they are being killed/maimed in the un or weakly-armored wheeled vehicles that are traveling in predictable, linear paths along roads/trails that are not safe and clear of the actual enemy living on the actual planet earth. The "shock and awe" aircraft firepower bombardment didn't kill Saddam; ground troop MANEUVER got him months afterwards. Yet DoD press releases constantly proclaim the victories brought to you by precision guided munitions and computer "situational awareness": Tofflerian spin all the way.

Where is the physical "Can-Do" of the WWII Generation?

Non-linear warfare requires vehicles that can go anywhere not be restricted to linear roads/trails. Cooper warns us repeatedly that the Army's M4 Sherman 33-ton medium tanks needed wider tracks in order to go cross-country at will to out-maneuver the Germans. Even in WWII, the so-called "rear" areas populated by rubber-tired trucks moving along roads/trails were pummeled with enemy artillery fire which shredded and burned their tires. Cooper doesn't even refer to wheeled vehicles as combat vehicles. Yet today's Army officials are crazy about putting the ENTIRE ARMY ON RUBBER-TIRED WHEELS steered around a make-believe linear battlefield that exists only in their minds and computer screens. If wheeled vehicles didn't physically work in WWII, why are we trying in the even-more lethal 21st century send them with our men inside into "near" combat areas? What do we do when the enemy does not conform to our computer-generated "lines" and "areas" and attacks the not-ready-for-combat wheeled vehicles with our men packed inside?

Cooper describes how welders worked around the clock in 30 days to add armor patches around the ammunition holding areas of an entire armored division's 232 x M4 Sherman tanks when it was discovered they were vulnerable to enemy gunfire. Today, Army Soldiers are dying and being maimed in wheeled vehicles and all the Army says it can do is two years from now "up-armor" 3-ton HMMWV into 6-ton HMMWV trucks from the factory at great cost that will NEVER be RPG-resistant and cannot even go cross-country without getting stuck. In stark contrast, the Army today owns over 13,000 M113 Gavin 11-ton light tracked armored fighting vehicles with 1.5 to 1.75 inch thick armored walls, with most sitting in storage while Army Soldiers are driving around Iraq in the thin-skinned wheeled trucks getting blown up, shot-up and incinerated. Only the Army's heavy divisions have M113 Gavin light tracked AFVs, not the light divisions that desperately need them. But the Army refuses to take even a few hundred M113 Gavins and quickly add RPG-resistant side, underbelly landmine, and upper gunshield armor as Belton Cooper's generation would have done if they had these vehicles available in great numbers to adapt and overcome the enemy.

Why?

Its all about General Officer Ego: wheels look like we are "doing more with less" thanks to their "genius"

The Army's current generals have "other plans" for its future; a Tofflerian plan where weak people ride in weak vehicles in a make-believe linear battlefield that does not exist except in the linear, bureaucratic minds of several layers of bureaucracy commanded by senior Army officials who do not have to get real results in reality but can "spin" and "sound bite" lies to Congress and the American people through their PAOs. Buying new wheeled vehicles means easy power, prestige and money for the Army and defense contractors who will hire the Army officials after they leave the service. Never mind that if the Army upgraded its light tracked AFVs, for the same money that only buys a handful of armored car brigades it could TRANSFORM THE ENTIRE ARMY to new capabilities, gaining the respect of Congress, the American people, keeping moral faith with our Soldiers and sending a message to our enemies that America's Army is ready-to-fight.

However, upgrading tracked vehicles that already exist requires HUMILITY--admitting that someone from gulp--the past---actually did something right and to build on that. It would take being ego-less and respecting others, a two-way street when the truth is Army leaders want a 1-way street where you respect them and their "visions". You are a peon, what do you know? If the Army wanted to ACTUALLY do more with less, not just appear that way it would upgrade its tracked AFVs and improve the entire Army with new capabilities. Form should follow function. Why doesn't the Army follow Assistant Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz's advice to "think about old things in new ways that make sense."?

The current crop of Army officials are wrong and our Army needs to be reformed to fight non-linear warfare

The 4GW, non-linear battlefield (NLB) requires strong people in strong vehicles. The days of an upper class "fighting" Army and a lower class "Support" Army commanded by vast staff bureaucracies in some sort of rear area are over. Army Chief of Staff General Schoomaker has directed every Soldier be a rifleman, a combatant. But he must go farther than this and provide every Soldier a vehicle suitable for non-linear battle; you cannot walk everywhere---you will need a motor vehicle and this means tracks not trucks. We have the M113 light tracks to do this, we just need the will to face real non-linear reality and to do it as the WWII generation would if they were in our shoes today. The can-do IDF has up-armored their M113 Gavins and they don't lose a man a day in combat operations like we are. We need to put the mission and the men before general officer transformational glory-seeking egos.

Tracked vehicles are non-linear combat vehicles because their tracks enable them to go off roads/trails, cross-country for two-dimensional maneuver. The best non-linear combat vehicle for the walking infantry is a LIGHT tracked AFV like the 11-ton M113 Gavin because it can go anywhere the infantry can, so it has more firepower from the vehicle, staying power supplies of ammunition, food and water than can be carried on a Soldier's back. Instead of fighting enemies at a disadvantage, its our men behind M113 armored gunshields firing Heavy Machine Gun-Disposable Rockets-M16s vs. the enemy on foot with AK47s/RPGs/IEDs. When our infantry dismounts, it has more ammunition because the M113 Gavin is nearby not left far away at a road/trail junction as a wheeled vehicle should be. Enemy fires at its tracks will not mobility kill the M113 as it would shred and set fire to the wheeled vehicle's rubber tires.

Light tracked AFVs due to their compact size and light weight can be flown by fixed-wing aircraft (dropped by cargo parachutes) and helicopters into blocking positions anywhere on the non-linear battlefield to capture/kill Saddams and Bin Ladens before they escape a 2D maneuver force coming at them on the ground. These 3D air-maneuvers are not possible in overweight 19-21 Stryker and the planned 23-ton Future Combat System (FCS) wheeled armored cars because they exceed the C-130's 17-ton and the CH-47D/F's 11-ton payload limits. Larger C-17 jet transports could transport the heavier wheeled vehicles or better yet the more capable medium M2 Bradley and M1 Abrams heavy tracked AFVs by airlanding onto a runway; but if we are going to lose time seizing a runway from the enemy, the enemy will likely escape as Saddam did from Baghdad when the 173rd Airborne Brigade landed in the north.

The Army's current crop of officials oppose strong people in strong tracked vehicles because these would be units that would not be on a "short leash" to several layers of higher headquarters to micromanage but could take computer awareness and ACT ON IT because they would have the physical means to do so. On the fluid, rapidly changing, non-linear battlefield this is what our Army needs to get the Bin Ladens and get the Saddams earlier so we don't suffer daily casualties in a plodding, predictable linear campaign (easily resisted by the enemy) to hunt them down after they went into hiding.

Its time the American Congress assert civilian control over the military and get involved with the future direction of its Army. It must not stand on the sidelines as our Army self-destructs in an ill-conceived all-wheeled vehicle make-over. Congress should direct the Army to upgrade its M113 Gavins with the computers they crave, but with actual physical superiority features like RPG-resistant armor, band-tracks, hybrid-electric drive for 600 mile range and stealth operation, so that THE ENTIRE ARMY IS TRANSFORMED IMMEDIATELY as the WWII generation would, we are talking days and weeks here not months and years. America's Army is at war now and it needs more upgraded M113 Gavin light tracked AFVs in the non-linear fight not trucks. Congress should begin by creating units along Colonel MacGregor's designs and get rid of staff bureaucracies so they are manned by Soldiers not paper-pushers.

If our Army would expand its future identity and vision to include books written by the likes of sound, humility-driven, realistic war futurists like Sun Tzu, Liddell-Hart, Bolger, Leonhard, Antal, Vandegriff, Grange, MacGregor, Jarnot, Lind, Johnson in a required reading program with promotion points as incentives [www.geocities.com/equipmentshop/probooks.htm] it would not be at risk of being deceived by "snake oil" from misguided false prophets like the Tofflers or becoming an "Army of One" controlling an Army of "bots" in a bad replay of a Star Wars movie where the droid army collapses by a more cunning, clever human foe. The U.S. Army must have strategic maneuver capabilities.

You think we're making this up?

Let's hear what Maneuver Warfare reformer William S. Lind and others say:

ON WAR # 19:

The Men Who Would Not Be King

By William S. Lind

3 Jun 2003

Normally, the position of Chief of Staff of the Army is the ultimate brass ring an Army officer can hope to grab. There is no higher Army job, and merely holding it guarantees a man at least a small place in the history books -- though not necessarily a favorable one. In fact, the last Army Chief of Staff to merit Clio's praise was General "Shy" Meyer, who held the post twenty years ago. Since he left, the Army has been stuck in a Brezhnevite "era of stagnation."

It is therefore surprising that at present, no one seems willing to take the job, nor the position of Vice Chief. Both current incumbents leave this summer, and instead of the usual line of hopefuls standing hat in hand, the eligibles have headed for the hills. Rumor has it they may have to recruit the hall porter and the charwoman.

The interesting question is why. Part of the answer is Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. To put it plainly, Rumsfeld treats people like crap. Working for him is like working for Leona Helmsley, except that Leona is less self-centered. Unless you are one of his sycophants, equipped with a good set of knee-pads and plenty of lip balm, you can expect to be booted down the stairs on a regular basis.

Truth be told, some senior officers deserve to be treated that way, because that is how they always treated their subordinates. But Rummy does not discriminate between perfumed princes and the real thinkers and leaders. He has driven more than one of the latter to hang up his hat in disgust, to his service's and the nation's loss.

But that is not the whole story. Part of the reason no one wants the Army's top job are two fundamental contradictions in the Administration's policy toward the Army. Unless they are resolved, any Army Chief of Staff will find himself in a difficult position.

The first contradiction is that the Administration puts the Army last in line among the services at the same time that it is getting us into wars only the Army can fight. We are already fighting one Fourth Generation war in Afghanistan, we are becoming enmired up to our necks in another Fourth Generation war in Iraq, and we are sticking our noses into still more in the Philippines, maybe Indonesia, and possibly Iran.

Only the Army can fight Fourth Generation war, to the degree anyone can (and no one really knows how). The Navy is irrelevant, the Air Force almost irrelevant, and the marines want to get in and get out, fast, while Fourth Generation war plays itself out with agonizing slowness. Volens nolens, the Army is left holding the bag.

Logically, that should make the Army the Administration's focus, its Schwerpunkt. Instead, OSD is in love with the Air Force, to the point where it wants to make the Army into a second Air Force, waging the high-tech, video-game warfare that exists only in the minds of children and Pentagon planners.

That leads to the second contradiction. The Army needs and has long needed genuine military reform. Reform means such basic changes as adopting Third Generation, maneuver warfare doctrine and the culture of decentralization and initiative that goes with it; instituting a radically different personnel system that creates cohesive units, eliminates the bloat in the officer corps above the company grades and suppresses rather than mandates careerism; making free play training the norm rather than a rare exception; and getting rid of dual standards for men and women.

Secretary Rumsfeld also preaches reform, but what he means by reform is just more of the high-tech illusion. Again, the Air Force is the model: the more a system costs and the more complex it is, the better it must be. The result is absurdities such as the Stryker, where Light Armored Vehicles, which are wonderful for operational maneuver, are instead to be used for urban combat where they will be instant coffins for their crews, and the Future Combat System, a conglomeration of robots, tanks, drones and kitchen sinks that surpasses anything envisioned by Rube Goldberg. Meanwhile, the real reforms so badly needed go un addressed.

In the face of all this, becoming Chief of Staff of the Army is somewhat less enticing than becoming mayor of Baghdad. But at the same time, it leaves the troops desperately in need of not just a Chief of Staff, but of a highly talented and morally courageous Chief of Staff, someone who can defend his men against the follies emanating from the civilian side of the Pentagon. Those who know him believe the current Vice Chief, General John M. "Jack" Keane, is such a man. Some think he could be the Army's Al Gray, the reforming Commandant of the marine corps of the early 1990s who left an enduring and powerful legacy. So far, General Keane is refusing the job, on the legitimate grounds of his wife's health problems. Many are praying he will reconsider. If the job goes instead to one of Rummy's lickspittles, God help our Soldiers.

Willam S. Lind is Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation.

A few weeks later, Lind elaborates on why "RMA" is no salvation for America to have a better military.

http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:bLAP2Y3zwSAJ:www.freecongress.org/commentaries/2003/030716WL.asp+congressional+military+reform+caucus&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

On War #25 Military Reform Is Not RMA

By William S. Lind
July 16, 2003

The June 30th, 2003, issue of what used to be one of the most cultured magazines in America, the New Yorker, contains a long article by Peter Boyer titled, "The New War Machine: How General Tommy Franks joined Donald Rumsfeld in the fight to transform the military." For the most part, the piece is a typical paean to America's "great victory" over Iraq. History will correct that error, as it already is beginning to do on the ground. The war did not end with America's taking of Baghdad; that's when the real war started.

Mr. Boyer makes a similarly common error when he attributes the victory that did not happen to a "transformation" of America's military, particularly the Army, that also did not happen. "Transformation" is merely the buzzword for the latest game of keeping the important things the same while ramping up the budget for hi-tech Wunderwaffen. Somehow, whenever I hear the word "transformation" connected with the American military, a vision of Kafka's Die Verwandlung comes to mind. Perhaps it is because the Future Combat System will turn out to be a giant bug.

But Boyer's article is important, because alongside these common errors it introduces a new one: it confuses Mr. Rumsfeld's "transformation" with military reform. In fact, the two are almost opposites.

Here is the essence of Boyer's error, all within one paragraph:

The themes of maneuver warfare - speed, agility, flexibility - became the language of the military-reform movement. As a Presidential candidate, George W. Bush had associated himself firmly with the reformers, and with a particular wing of the movement (emphasis added) that placed its faith in the transformative power of microchip technology in warfare. This group, which included Rumsfeld and a handful of key defense intellectuals who would form his executive core at the Pentagon, believed in a "revolution in military affairs", triggered by the advent of precision-guided munitions.

In fact, the military reform movement and those who believe in the "revolution in military affairs (RMA)" represent opposites. The latter are not in any way a "wing" of the former. And candidate George W. Bush identified himself with the RMA, never with military reform.

The reformers' appreciation of the difference between military reform (including its key component, maneuver warfare) and the RMA goes back at least until 1989. In that year, I co-authored an article for the Marine Corps Gazette that first laid out Fourth Generation Warfare. It foresaw two alternate futures: one based on high technology, the RMA, and the other direction war has actually taken, where the state loses its monopoly on war. In a follow-up piece in 1994, we made clear that the RMA represented a false road and 4GW meant war by non-state actors.

The distinction between military reform and the RMA is even more evident if one factors in maneuver warfare. Maneuver warfare depends on a military culture that focuses outward, on results, not inward on process; relies on self-discipline more than imposed discipline; and prizes initiative over obedience. The RMA, in contrast, uses high technology to facilitate centralization. It actually proposes to put a camera on each Soldier's helmet, so the commander can see and direct the actions of every man.

A further distinction between military reform and what Mr. Rumsfeld represents can be seen by turning to the briefing of the Congressional Military Reform Caucus, which is the closest thing to an official document that the reform movement possessed. A small group that included John Boyd wrote it in the early 1980's. On page four, the briefing says, "To win wars takes three basic elements. In order of importance, they are: peoplestrategy and tactics(and) hardware." In contrast, Mr. Rumsfeld puts hardware first. Strategy and tactics mean the neo-cons' mad dream of American World Empire coupled with precision weaponry. And under Mr. Rumsfeld, people get tossed into the dumpster. Current Pentagon policy inverts the reformers' priorities. How much farther from military reform can you get?

The most curious thing about the New Yorker article is that Peter Boyer called me when he was researching it and I explained that Rumsfeld's "transformation" and military reform were opposites. The New Yorker's fact checker called, and I told her the same thing. But not a hint of what I said appears in the article. Did Mr. Boyer simply print the line handed to him by the Pentagon? And if so, why would the Pentagon try to tie transformation and the RMA to the old military reform movement? So it can say, "We've done that" when the reformers' ideas are raised? Or even to ensure that concepts such as maneuver warfare go down with the RMA ship?

One thing certain does come out of this odd incident: the New Yorker's fact checking sure ain't what it used to be.

William S. Lind is Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism.

2006: New Yorker magazine writer Boyer still doesn't quite get it right after Rumsfeld's Firing

Boyer's key mistake again stems from not understanding the issue here is EARTH vs. MAN, FIREPOWER vs. MANEUVER.

You can't control the surface of the earth with even RMA precision firepower, you need ground maneuver because in the battle against the earth (TBATE) the earth is still too big and can absorb easily high explosive firepower. Marshall's thesis that precision HE = generalized nuclear SHE annihilation is false. Against specific platforms (large aircraft carrier battlegroups, fixed air bases full of parked fighter-bombers) precision HE strikes equals the effects of a nuclear blast from a distance away, but the rest of the earth around the precision strike is not obliterated. If you have no point, specific target to hit with precision and/or its camouflaged, dispersed, well-hardened etc. you have no military effects---and this can occur in BOTH nation-state and sub-national conflicts.

Lacking this framework of understanding he jumps ahead to a sub-national conflict and implies that firepower cannot work there because of just HUMAN considerations; the battle against man (TBAM). His construct is:

Nation-State War: FIREPOWER
Sub-National Conflict: MANEUVER

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

Truth:

Nation-State War: MANEUVER + FIREPOWER
Sub-National Conflict: MANEUVER + firepower

Note that in SNC the "firepower" is in lower case as its needed in lesser quantities in relationship to maneuver.

www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/061120fa_fact
www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/061120fa_fact?page=1

DOWNFALL How Donald Rumsfeld reformed the Army and lost Iraq.

by PETER J. BOYER

Issue of 2006-11-20
Posted 2006-11-13

The improbable restoration of Donald H. Rumsfeld to the seat of American military power was consummated on a cold Friday afternoon in January, 2001, when he was welcomed back to the Pentagon with a full-honors review. The ceremony, a ritual display of martial pomp and fanfare, was staged on the River Parade Field, the vast lawn on the Potomac side of the Pentagon, where Rumsfeld had been welcomed as Gerald Ford's Defense Secretary a quarter century earlier. Standing before the assemblage, Rumsfeld seemed like a figure lifted from another age. He had run the Pentagon in the time of the Berlin Wall, the era of Brezhnev and Kissinger, and the reunification of Vietnam under a Communist regime. Then he was the youngest-ever Secretary of Defense; now, at sixty-eight, he became one of the oldest, and the only man ever to serve in the position twice. His selection by George W. Bush had been a surprise, not least to Rumsfeld himself ("What in the world am I doing here?" he sometimes asked himself). Rumsfeld had been out of government since 1977, and although he was still well connected, he had not been a particularly close Bush adviser during the campaign. Even so, when General Henry H. Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who introduced Rumsfeld at the day's event, and declared him "exactly the right man for the job in this new century," everyone knew what he meant. Bush and Cheney had campaigned as friends of the military-"Help is on the way," the candidates had repeatedly proclaimed-and Rumsfeld, a totem of the Republican national-security establishment, was a promise delivered.

At the ceremony, Rumsfeld declared that the new President's first goal for defense was "to strengthen the bond of trust with the American military." Earlier that day, at Rumsfeld's swearing-in at the White House, the President had used the same phrase and promised to give Americans in uniform "the respect they deserve." The refrain was repeated so often that a reporter finally pressed Rumsfeld to spell out what he and the President really meant: had the "bond of trust" been ruptured by eight years of Bill Clinton? Rumsfeld allowed the question to speak for itself ("I'm looking forward, not back," he said), but no one missed the point: a central message of the Bush-Cheney campaign had been that the American military had somehow needed to be rescued from its Commander-in-Chief.

Of the several partisan fevers that afflicted the Clinton era, none was more acute than that having to do with Clinton and the military. Some of the disaffection reflected Clinton's moment in history: the end of the Cold War offered the chance for a "peace dividend" of a smaller military, which Clinton seized, but, in the eyes of many military leaders, he lacked a consistent doctrine for the use of American power. Early in his first term, a relief mission begun by the elder Bush in Somalia became a military mission aimed at capturing the nettlesome clan leader General Muhammad Farah Aydid. When eighteen Army Rangers were killed and one was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, Clinton pulled out. The following year, when a humanitarian disaster unfolded in Rwanda, the United States stood aside, at the price of countless lives-for which Clinton later apologized on America's behalf. A "Clinton doctrine" eventually evolved, which defined the national interest partly in terms of humanitarian interventions, a construct that justified bombing in Bosnia, an air war in Kosovo, and the open-ended commitment of American troops to both. To Clinton's critics, it seemed as if American foreign policy were shaped by the latest ghastly images from the nightly news cycle, and Clinton himself seemed to confirm it, saying his aim was a world where "we don't have to worry about seeing scenes every night for the next forty years of ethnic cleansing in some part of the world." The military was deeply skeptical about what it called "operations other than war," such as peacekeeping and nation-building. The added duty for a smaller force put serious strains on the military's readiness for combat as well as its ability to retain people. Toward the end of Clinton's tenure, the Army, Navy, and Air Force each failed to meet its recruitment goals.

The revelation that President Clinton had had sexual relations with a female subordinate in the Oval Office, and then lied about it, struck a particular nerve in the military, and some of the deeply felt resentments began to surface. One marine major wrote an article in the Navy Times referring to Clinton as "an adulterous liar." Another marine, a reserve officer, wrote an opinion article, in November, 1998, questioning a military officer's obligation to obey the orders of "a morally defective leader." The marine corps deputy commandant, General Terrence Drake, issued an order to all the Corps's generals to remind their officers of Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice-the provision prohibiting officers from using "contemptuous words" about the civilian authority.

And so, that January of 2001, when Donald Rumsfeld was officially welcomed back to the Pentagon, "There was just great relief in the military," recalled Kenneth Adelman, a former Reagan arms-control official, who was among the invited guests that day. "There was the feeling that now somebody was going to be on their side."

Bush had inherited a pressing problem. The American military continued through the nineteen-nineties to train, plan, and equip itself to fight an enemy-the Soviet Union-that no longer existed. It was hardly a secret that the military was badly in need of reform; everyone in uniform knew it, and those analysts and scholars who populated the think tanks of Washington had been fixated on the subject for most of a decade.

As a pro-defense Republican, Bush would have the political capital to bring about genuine, even historic, change. During the campaign, he had vowed to give his Secretary of Defense "a broad mandate to challenge the status quo and envision a new architecture of American defense for decades to come," and he had chosen Rumsfeld because he believed that he would be more willing and better able than the other candidates to pursue his agenda. The contents and scope of that agenda were not yet known, but Rumsfeld made it clear that his approach to the military was very much hands-on.

Among those gathered at the River Parade Field for the Rumsfeld ceremony was an elderly man with a pleasant, grandfatherly aspect, who, amid the political celebrities and military brass, might have been taken for someone who had strayed from a Pentagon tour group. But within the national-security priesthood Andrew Marshall was something of a legend. He headed a unit called the Office of Net Assessment (he was its first and only director), which had evolved over the years into a sort of in-house Pentagon think tank. That made him the resident deep thinker, and what Marshall, who was in his late seventies, had been thinking about for every President since Richard Nixon (and for two decades before that at the Rand Corporation) was how America could prevail in the next big war.

Marshall's professional life had paralleled the full sweep of the Cold War. He was admired as a boldly original theorist; in the forty-year strategic chess match between East and West, it sometimes seemed as if Marshall were playing a three-dimensional game. Marshall was among the very few who understood the Soviet vulnerability, and it was largely Marshall who imagined the strategy for exploiting it-the Reagan-era conceit of a winnable nuclear war, based on technologies (such as the unproved missile-defense shield) and levels of expenditure that the Soviets could not hope to match.

Marshall fell out of favor under the Clinton Administration, which saw less call for an esoteric Cold War strategist. But he had already turned his focus on something that he believed was of immense and pressing importance. It was a new way of thinking about the military, an idea with vast implications for every aspect of American defense, from the nation's weaponry to its global posture, because it would radically change the way America waged war-indeed, it could alter the very nature of war. It was called the "Revolution in Military Affairs".

This revolution had begun to unfold in the Cold War's last stages. In the post-Vietnam nineteen-seventies, the Soviet-led forces of the Warsaw Pact conducted a steady, massive buildup of heavy forces-tanks and mechanized infantry-along the western edge of East Germany and Czechoslovakia. Twenty thousand battle tanks, mostly Soviet, faced west; on the other side, NATO fielded a force of only seven thousand tanks. In the event of a conventional Soviet attack, NATO forces would be forced to wage a fighting retreat until reinforcements arrived, mostly from the United States. One option for countering the Soviet advantage was the deployment of "tactical" nuclear weapons to Europe. Tactical nukes posed obvious political and strategic problems-the NATO allies did not welcome the prospect of even limited nuclear war in Europe, and there was always the chance of escalation into full-blown nuclear conflict.

But the Americans were also working on a non-nuclear weapons system that would change the equation. The top-secret Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency was funding a program called Assault Breaker, which was designed to strike far behind enemy lines, disrupting or destroying follow-on forces, gaining time and cover for the Western alliance to launch a counter-offensive. Assault Breaker was meant to compress the process of locating a target and launching a strike into a synchronized target-and-fire action taking just minutes. DARPA equipped an Air Force plane with an advanced radar system and onboard computers that worked out the target's coördinates and transmitted them to an Army missile base, which fired rockets toward the target area. In a test of Assault Breaker at the White Sands Missile Range, in New Mexico, the system hit five out of five targets.

In the early nineteen-eighties, Marshall and his colleagues began to notice in their reading of Soviet military literature that the Russians were writing about this new American weaponry with increasing alarm. The Soviets assumed that deployment of Assault Breaker was imminent, and that this American advance represented the dawn of a new military epoch-what the Soviet analysts referred to as a "military-technical revolution." (The Americans weren't nearly as attuned to the implications of their own developments. Assault Breaker was not close to deployment; in fact, the Air Force and the Army were disinclined to coöperate, and the joint program eventually died.) Marshall began to analyze this idea, and, after months of study, his office concluded that the Russians had got it right. The Red Army's Chief of Staff, Marshal Nikolai V. Ogarkov, had recognized that advances such as those tested by the Americans would give conventional weapons many of the strengths of nuclear weapons, without the apocalyptic effects. Implicit in Ogarkov's insight was the idea that a key breakthrough in technology (for example, microprocessing) could suddenly reconfigure the battle-field-in this case, with accuracy so precise that, Ogarkov wrote, conventional warfare took on "qualitatively new and incomparably more destructive forms than before."

[EDITOR: Ogarkov created Operational Maneuver Groups (OMGs) that can penetrate deep into the west after Airborne insertion that would be co-mingled with NATO forces and thuis not be subject to precision targeting.]

Marshall was struck by this idea, and, throughout the eighties, he assigned teams of analysts to search for historical instances of such advances. ("What's amazing," Marshall told me, "is how much we know, it turns out, about the chariot revolution back in 1700 B.C.") The example he found most compelling was that of Europe in the years between the twentieth century's two World Wars. After the Pyrrhic victory of the First World War, France built the finest Army in the world, and an imposing defensive complex of forts, bunkers, and tunnels-the Maginot Line-along its border with Germany. A defeated Germany, on the other hand, had to overcome the constraints of the Treaty of Versailles (forbidding Germany warplanes, tanks, submarines, or heavy guns, and outlawing its general-officer staff) to build Hitler's Wehrmacht. Yet, in the late spring of 1940, Germany invaded France and won a French surrender in less than six weeks. The stunning German victory was produced by a battlefield innovation, blitzkrieg, that married two relatively new technologies-radio and the internal-combustion engine-to facilitate a tactic of rapid, coördinated movement. The Germans had designed their new panzer divisions to suit this doctrine, and their impact was decisive. The German forces bypassed the Maginot Line, attacked directly through the Ardennes Forest, and dashed to the French rear, sowing chaos en route and forcing a quick surrender.

[EDITOR: the Germans won because they used LIGHT TANKS that were physically sound to prevail against the closed terrain of the earth itself. Without this physical MANEUVER talking on radios would just let everyone know they were stuck]

To Marshall and his associates, the lessons were clear. The side that recognized and exploited such advances gained not just an edge in warfare but an overwhelming advantage; for the side that missed the chance, the consequences could be fatal. [EDITOR: the fatal hubris that mental computerization is a physical overwhelming advantage when the German success was both PHYSICAL and mental; maneuver and firepower]

With the impending demise of the Soviet Union, the U.S. was entering a new interwar period. Marshall had no doubt that some new competitor would emerge to challenge the United States, and it struck him as exactly the moment to prepare for the next big war. The U.S. led the world in microchip technology, and the information age promised a dazzling range of military applications, such as advanced sensors, satellite imagery, robotics, and laser systems. The danger would not arise in Europe, Marshall believed, but in Asia-most likely China. The conflict would not be a prolonged ground war, involving massed formations of infantry and tank divisions; rather, there would be long-range precision strikes by "smart" missiles. If there was infantry in the fight at all, it would be in small, specialized units. Marshall supposed, too, that in the global economy these technologies would be available to all. This made it imperative that the U.S. push conflicts to distant battlefields, if possible, and to reduce (or eliminate) such easy American targets as overseas airbases and huge aircraft-carrier battle groups.

In July, 1992, during the race between George H. W. Bush and Clinton, Marshall gave the Pentagon's senior leaders a formal assessment reflecting his conclusions about the "Revolution in Military Affairs". Marshall preferred that term to the Russians' "military-technical revolution," because he believed that technology only partly accounted for such bursts of progress. The other critical element was a military's adoption of entirely new operational concepts, organizational structures, and doctrines. For instance, the French and British had radios, tanks, and airplanes in 1940, but Germany put them to novel use. Marshall wrote that new ideas had to be tested, even if most of them failed. Perhaps most important, the Pentagon needed to stop depending exclusively on the big-ticket weapons that devoured defense dollars and perpetuated the status quo.

Marshall's assessment came just as the national-security establishment was trying to define America's posture in a world without a Soviet counterweight. Some, including the first President Bush, Brent Scowcroft, his national-security adviser, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, were avowed "realists," who believed that America's role was to be part of a new world order, with the emphasis on order. But others believed that the U.S. should embrace and, if possible, enhance its position as the world's sole superpower. Bush's Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, was inclined to this view, as was his top policy official, Paul Wolfowitz, who argued emphatically that the United States should strengthen its military superiority so that potential rivals would have no hope of catching up. Marshall's "Revolution in Military Affairs" offered a means to achieve that goal, and both Cheney and Wolfowitz became converts.

There were also converts within the uniformed military, including a few in the senior ranks, but the services were generally skeptical about the R.M.A., as it was now being called. Some of the resistance, particularly in the Army, reflected the belief that Marshall's vision of long-distance precision strikes ignored the gritty reality of actual war, with Soldiers on the ground. Had President George H. W. Bush won another term, he might have been willing to impose upon the military the upheaval that a revolution in military affairs implied. But the last thing the Army was inclined to do while facing cutbacks under the Clinton Administration was tinker with its revered divisional structure, and the Navy was no less inclined to reduce the number of its aircraft-carrier battle groups. Clinton's last Secretary of Defense, William S. Cohen, had tried to get the Army to transform itself into a lighter, more expeditionary force. But Cohen, a Republican, was frustrated from the start. "I was coming into a Democratic Administration, and that had its own dynamic," Cohen recalled. "I must say that President Clinton gave me total authority, so it wasn't a question coming from him. But just dealing with the issue-how do you push transformation in a Democratic Administration? Is this something that's weakening the military? The perception on the Hill would be 'Here they go cutting back on the military powers of the Army.' "

Still, Marshall continued to promote his revolution. Using his budget at the Office of Net Assessment, he financed his own futuristic war games. The "Revolution in Military Affairs" thrived in think tanks and seminars.

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As Marshall watched Rumsfeld's official welcoming ceremony, he was hopeful that the revolution's moment had arrived. During the Presidential campaign, George W. Bush had promised to build a new American military for the twenty-first century. In a speech at the Citadel in 1999, Bush had said that as President he would instruct his Defense Secretary to conduct a "comprehensive review" of the military, to question everything from its force structure and strategy to its acquisition process. He promised not just to make "marginal improvements" but "to replace existing programs with new technologies and strategies, to use this window of opportunity to skip a generation of technology." That speech was instantly recognized, by those with a trained ear, as the language of the "Revolution in Military Affairs".

Marshall had known Rumsfeld over the years, and he liked him. Shortly after Rumsfeld's induction, the new Secretary arranged to have lunch with Marshall-not, as Marshall had expected, in Rumsfeld's private office but in the "Sec Def Mess," a nearby dining room where the guests seldom went unnoticed. "Oh, I think it was very clear," Richard Perle, a former Reagan defense official and a close adviser to Rumsfeld, recalled. "It went all over the building that Andy was back. It was like Deng Xiaoping's return." The President had pledged to conduct a comprehensive review, identifying probable American adversaries, and when and where the next wars would likely occur. Rumsfeld asked Marshall if he would like to take something like that on. Marshall said he could put a team together right away. The Pentagon's traditional review process, the Quadrennial Defense Review, was just getting under way, and wouldn't be finished for another nine months. Hundreds of uniformed staff officers from all the services had spent tens of thousands of man-hours trying to answer essentially those questions. This review tended to be an exercise in justifying the budgets, force size, and programs that the military services wanted to protect. Rumsfeld evidently intended to circumvent that process. He told Marshall that he'd like to have the first draft of his strategic review in six weeks. "We delivered on that," Marshall recalled.

Word of Marshall's new assignment rang through the Pentagon like a distress signal, which may have been part of Rumsfeld's plan. Rumsfeld had in mind for the military, and for the Pentagon itself, an agenda of radical reform. He called it "transformation," and the return of Andrew Marshall meant that it would be guided by the principles of the "Revolution in Military Affairs". Rumsfeld intended to remake the American military into a lighter, more agile, more readily useful force that would be able to leverage new technology to project lethal power over great distances.

Marshall would have been the first to say that technology and the "Revolution in Military Affairs" had very little application to certain kinds of conflict, such as a counter-insurgency fight against some indigenous guerrilla force. But that was the sort of war that no one-on the new Bush national-security team, or certainly in the American military-had any intention of ever fighting. That would be a war like Vietnam.

When war came, with the invasion of Afghanistan, in late 2001, Rumsfeld had only the barest beginnings of a "transformed" military, but he had a fully formed philosophy that dictated how America would fight. In Afghanistan, it meant routing the Taliban with small bands of American Special Forces and coördinating long-distance air strikes and Afghan ground troops. For the subsequent invasion of Iraq, in March, 2003, the Rumsfeld vision meant getting to Baghdad and toppling Saddam Hussein's regime as quickly and with as small a force as prudence permitted. Many professional military men strenuously disagreed with Rumsfeld's war plan, but, fresh from the [alleged] validating triumph in Afghanistan, he prevailed.

The man who came to exemplify this new way of war was Major General Buford (Buff) Blount, a courtly Mississippian who commanded the Army's 3rd Infantry Division-the 3rd I.D.-and who became a popular figure with reporters. ABC's Ted Koppel rode with Blount, as did the late David Bloom, the NBC News correspondent whose dust-blown satellite video reports provided the signature images of the conflict's early days, and Michael Kelly, the Atlantic editor, who died in a skirmish near Baghdad. The 3rd I.D., with its tanks and armored fighting vehicles, was, by training and structure, a [alleged] relic of the pre-Rumsfeld Army. But Blount was a creative, daring general, who, after weathering a brief storm delay, pushed quickly through to Baghdad. And it was Blount who devised and executed the "thunder runs" from the outskirts of Baghdad to the heart of the Iraqi capital, providing the decisive blow in the stunningly short campaign to end the Saddam regime.

[EDITOR: the line infantry narcissist marines with RMA mental gadgets in wheeled trucks were stopped by mere Iraqi rear guards and were 6 days late arriving into Baghdad enabling saddam & subordinates to escape]

But within a few weeks Rumsfeld and his closest advisers came to regard Blount as part of a problem they had not foreseen and were wholly unprepared to handle: the gathering chaos that soon became an insurgency.

With American troops in Baghdad, General Tommy Franks, the top commander of the coalition forces, left his headquarters in Doha, Qatar, and flew in a Kevlar-lined helicopter and then a C-130 transport plane to Baghdad. He made his way to the Abu Ghraib North Palace, where he and his commanders shared a victory cigar, and Franks told them to start preparing to leave Iraq.

Blount's 3rd I.D. had been slated to go home, and his troops, having stormed into Baghdad, considered their mission accomplished. But the days passed, and Blount's unit found itself faced with a policing mission it didn't want and hadn't expected. Scores of looters appeared, and then hundreds and thousands, making off with anything that could be carried away.

"Never, from the first day that we ever started planning this until we got to Baghdad, in all the processes, rehearsals-nobody ever mentioned the word 'looter,' " Blount told me. "I mean, it was just never, ever, ever mentioned. Our focus was on fighting the war." Blount was loath to order his troops to use deadly force on looters. As he saw it, the raiders were indulging an impulse to street justice. "These are the people that we're liberating," he recalled. "The oppressed. You know, that have been without for centuries now, and they've got nothing, and they're trying to get a little bit back from the Baath Party."

Blount ordered patrols to secure hospitals, power facilities, and other key structures, but in many cases the looters had already come and gone. As it became apparent in Washington that the disorder might spin out of control, the 3rd I.D.'s pullout was delayed. At the division's home base, in Georgia, some of the troops' spouses began to voice their dismay, and in Baghdad, some of Blount's Soldiers complained to reporters. One, a private named Matthew C. O'Dell, told the Times, "You call Donald Rumsfeld and tell him our sorry asses are ready to go home."

Blount's superiors in the Pentagon were furious, blaming his unit's recalcitrance on a lack of leadership. "We had no orders or plans to occupy Baghdad," Blount says. "There were just a lot of assumptions made. I've looked back at this a good bit at different times, wondering, you know, well, could we have done something differently?"

General Jack Keane, then the Army's Vice Chief of Staff and one of Rumsfeld's most trusted advisers in the force, flew to Iraq and was chagrined that the 3rd I.D.'s briefings failed to focus on containing the spreading disorder. But Keane later reflected that Blount's troops could hardly be blamed. "They were ill-prepared-they weren't educated to do it, and they weren't trained to do it, and they weren't expecting to do it," Keane said, of the unit's impromptu policing mission. When the 3rd I.D. eventually left Iraq, four months later, Blount was assigned to a desk job at the Pentagon, a role he served in for the remainder of his active career. He did not get a promotion and a third star, as many had once expected.

As chaos spread in and around Baghdad, Rumsfeld remained publicly serene. "You don't go from despotism to freedom on a feather bed," he told reporters on April 24th. Pressed to explain the vivid images of chaos in Iraq, Rumsfeld dryly observed that "freedom's untidy." From the start of the new Bush Administration, Rumsfeld had been the Administration's lightning rod, and he seemed almost to relish controversy. Just a few months into his tenure, as he was making enemies inside the Pentagon's bureaucracy with his insistent reform crusade, and on the Hill with his reluctance to pay deference, the political press had begun a deathwatch on his career. Maureen Dowd mocked him as Rip Van Rummy, and Slate observed, "Rumsfeld is probably toast." But by the time Baghdad fell, Rumsfeld believed he had seen his critics proved wrong so often that he had every reason to rely on his instincts.Two weeks before the Iraq invasion, a reporter had asked him, "Can you promise it won't be a quagmire?"

"I can almost promise you that someone in this room will say it's a quagmire," Rumsfeld replied. Indeed, by the second week of the drive to Baghdad, reporters had summoned the "quagmire" scenario, only to be chastened by the rapid fall of Saddam's regime. The subsequent failure of the search for weapons of mass destruction, whose existence had been a major justification for the war, may have been a blow to the Administration's credibility (as well as a distraction for troops engaged in the hunt), but it did not seem to affect Rumsfeld's certainty in his own judgment. More and more, he met questions about the progress of the mission in Iraq with ironic (and, some would say, arrogant) deflection.

In April, as the situation in the streets of Iraq grew messier, Rumsfeld said that "free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things." More pointedly, he refused to dignify the chaos with a name that might summon memories of Vietnam. To many conservatives, the Iraq war, quite apart from its strategic implications, was a way of exorcising those ghosts, a chance to demonstrate the national will and military prowess that had arisen in the decades since the humiliating withdrawal from Indochina. Long after others, on the ground in Iraq and even within Rumsfeld's inner circle in Washington, discerned the ominous signs of a gathering insurgency, Rumsfeld insistently declined to call it such.

Jack Keane, the Vice Chief of Staff, says that he was the first to raise the matter in the Tank, the super-secure Pentagon meeting room of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "I said, 'This is a low-level insurgency,' and I told them what the definition of that was, and what it looked like," Keane said. "They were targeting Americans, and it was organized. It was being done at multiple locations, which meant that there had to be some general guidance. . . . The operations they were conducting had some basic complexity to it. They were planned, and thought out, and well executed, in the sense that they were achieving success. They were killing us."

It was not a welcome observation, as General Richard B. Myers, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, made clear, according to Keane. "I got some pushback from the chairman, and he said, 'We've gotta be careful about that word,' " Keane said.

Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, also sensed that what was happening in Iraq was more than the untidy impulses of a newly free people. In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, two months after the fall of Baghdad, he conceded, "There's a guerrilla war there, but . . . we can win it."

Wolfowitz, too, got pushback, both from Rumsfeld and from Tommy Franks, who said three weeks later that "guerrilla and insurgency operations are supported by the people, and I've demonstrated to my own satisfaction that the people of Iraq do not support the violence that we're seeing right now."

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Keane said, "They thought maybe it wouldn't be that bad, and there's no sense using those names associated with it, because you're gonna stomp it out in a couple, three months-it wasn't worth all the rhetoric."

In a remarkable exchange with reporters at a Pentagon briefing in late June, a reporter read Rumsfeld a dictionary definition of "guerrilla war" and asked why he was so reluctant to name it as such. "Can you remind us again why this isn't a quagmire?" the reporter asked. Rumsfeld replied, in his best vice-principal tone, as if patronizing a particularly dull student, "I guess the reason I don't use the phrase 'guerrilla war' is because there isn't one, and it would be a misunderstanding and a miscommunication to you and to the people of the country and the world." He explained that the disturbances in Iraq were being caused by looters, criminals, remnants of the regime, foreign terrorists, and Iranian agents. "Doesn't make it anything like a guerrilla war or an organized resistance. It makes it like five different things going on that are functioning much more like terrorists. . . . Now, that is not-it doesn't fit that word. So, I think, that if one analyzes what is going on in that country, they would find a different way to characterize it. I know it's nice to be-have a bumper sticker, but it's the wrong bumper sticker."

At this, the reporter pulled out the official Defense Department definition of "guerrilla war" ("I knew I should have looked it up!" Rumsfeld said. "I could die that I didn't look it up!"): " 'Military and paramilitary operations conducted in enemy-held or hostile territory by irregular, predominantly indigenous forces.' This seems to fit a lot of what's going on in Iraq."

To which Rumsfeld replied, "It really doesn't."

Two weeks later, Rumsfeld's top commander on the ground, General John Abizaid, a Rumsfeld favorite, who had just taken over the leadership of the Army's Central Command from Tommy Franks, addressed the question squarely. The insurgents who were attacking Americans, Abizaid said, "are conducting what I would describe as a classical guerrilla-type campaign against us. It's low-intensity conflict in our doctrinal terms, but it's war however you describe it."

Abizaid, a Lebanese-American who speaks Arabic, went on to note that the insurgents were mostly mid-level Baathists, members of Saddam's Special Republican Guard and security services, and that they had organized regionally into cells. For his efforts, Keane says, Abizaid "got his ass handed to him."

The American invading force had prepared for a chemical assault from Saddam's Army, for a set-piece battle with Saddam's armored units, and for a long, bloody battle for Baghdad. "What we didn't plan for," says Jack Keane, "is what happened."

The American military had spent thirty years avoiding the thought of fighting a counter-insurgency, a subject that hadn't been part of the curriculum at West Point since the Vietnam era. The proud, professional volunteer force constructed since Vietnam was not built for a protracted occupation, an eventuality that, in any case, the nation's political leadership reflexively rejected out of hand. Bill Clinton fought a war in Kosovo by announcing at the outset that the commitment of ground troops was not an option; the Bush Administration came into power renouncing the idea of nation-building as a foolish misuse of military resources.

But the inability quickly to recognize and formulate a coherent strategy to fight the insurgency that arose in Iraq reflected more than the military's institutional biases, or Donald Rumsfeld's intransigence. It also partly reflected a crucial policy decision in Washington, which effectively dashed any chance that the coalition forces would be received as liberators rather than as occupiers.

The circle of defense advisers that had most ardently advocated the Iraqi invasion, including Richard Perle and Newt Gingrich, had imagined a strategy that wouldn't require a lasting American presence in postwar Iraq. The plan depended on the recruitment and training of "free Iraqis" to participate in the combat phase of the operation, and the imposition of a provisional government, run mostly by Iraqi exiles, after the war. Something like that had worked in Afghanistan, and, the reasoning went, the approach stood an even better chance of working in Iraq; Iraqi exiles had been planning for such an eventuality for more than a decade. But the program to train Iraqi fighters produced fewer than a hundred recruits; it also ignored the reality that prominent exiles like Ahmad Chalabi had less credibility, and less of an indigenous base, than those whom the U.S. had relied on in Afghanistan. The Defense Department's plan to set up a provisional Iraqi government was abandoned after a bitter interagency argument within the Bush Administration that lasted until the very eve of the war. The State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency refused to endorse the imposition of a provisional government composed of Iraqi exiles, arguing that it would not be seen as legitimate. In the end, Rumsfeld surrendered on the point-to the lasting distress of the hawks nearest him. "I think he made a serious mistake," Perle, a member of Rumsfeld's advisory Defense Policy Board, recalled. "I think he underestimated the importance of getting those matters right."

President Bush, with Rumsfeld's approval, ultimately decided that post-war Iraq would be governed by an American-led Coalition Provisional Authority, to be headed by a veteran diplomat, L. Paul Bremer. With that appointment, and the implicit personal authority conveyed therein, came a critical, and not entirely intended, shift in American postwar policy. Bremer became the American proconsul in Iraq, technically reporting to Rumsfeld's Defense Department but exercising a degree of authority that came to surprise even Rumsfeld. Bremer began his tenure, in May, 2003, by issuing a series of edicts that included the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and the removal of senior Baath Party members from government jobs. (Bremer said that he was acting on instructions from the Pentagon.) The edicts signalled that Baathists would have no place in the new Iraq, but they also crippled the bureaucracy and eliminated the most important instrument of Iraqi unity and a crucial tool in establishing order. In effect, half a million men, many with guns, were sent into the streets.

These moves had a decisive impact on the coalition's response to the widening insurgency. A huge instant bureaucracy was set up inside the walls of Saddam's former Republican Palace, where Americans laboriously laid plans for undertakings ranging from the design of a new Iraqi flag to the restructuring of the Iraqi monetary system. Meanwhile, no coherent, unified plan to fight the insurgency emerged, which rendered such plans increasingly abstract. "It was Alice in Wonderland," recalled Gary Anderson, a defense specialist who was dispatched to Iraq by Paul Wolfowitz to help set up an Iraqi civil-defense corps. "It was surreal. I mean, I was so depressed the second time we went there, to see the lack of progress and the continuing confusion. The lack of coherence. You'd get two separate briefs, two separate cuts on the same subject, from the military and from the civilians."

To Wolfowitz and others who had advocated the quickest possible turnover of authority to Iraqis, the C.P.A. was a maddening obstacle to the ever-dwindling hope of replicating the Afghanistan success. "There was an explicit, coherent strategy," recalled Newt Gingrich, another influential neoconservative member of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board. "It was the strategy of staying light, getting in, rebuilding the Iraqis quickly, and getting out. The war plan was right. Bremer thought he was MacArthur in Japan. And Bremer, in thirty days, destroyed the strategy. And neither Bush nor Cheney nor Rumsfeld would intervene decisively enough, and neither would Franks or Abizaid. It was one of the most amazing strategic mistakes I've ever seen."

Such comments may be the retrospective rationale of men who'd advanced a war policy that had gone bad. Events in Iraq have provided no compelling evidence that the war hawks' plan stood any real chance of success, even if it had been followed. But Bremer did come to symbolize an occupying force that did not seem intent upon leaving anytime soon. "When one now looks back," Douglas J. Feith, the Under-Secretary of Defense, would later observe, "and says, huh, we had an insurgency, and the insurgents were able to capitalize on the widespread perception that the United States wanted to occupy, own, exploit, and stay for a long time running Iraq-and that enormously valuable piece of information operations by the bad guys was facilitated by the way we organized the C.P.A. I mean, one can look back, make that point, and then say, what a dumb, obvious error."

As the weeks turned into ever more bloody months, it became increasingly clear that the coalition could lose in Iraq. General Abizaid, the CENTCOM commander, knew that the coalition had to have a single, coherent counter-insurgency strategy, and it had to have one soon.

On November 11, 2003, Abizaid sent a memorandum to Rumsfeld, in which he provided the Secretary with the definition of "counter-insurgency," taken from the Pentagon's own dictionary of military terms:

Sir, our doctrine states: "Counterinsurgency-those military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency.". . . Clearly we must integrate elements of national power in any effort to defeat an insurgency.

Abizaid attached to the memo a one-page primer called "Elements of Successful Counterinsurgency" ("worthy of your time to digest," Abizaid noted to Rumsfeld), which included the advice to "develop a coordinated, integrated plan based on an accurate assessment of the insurgency's goals, techniques, and strategies." It is difficult to imagine that, at that late date, the Secretary of Defense needed to be told the meaning of "counter-insurgency," but the likely purpose of Abizaid's memo is no less remarkable. Seven months after the fall of Baghdad, the Administration still lacked a strategy for countering an enemy it did not fully understand. Abizaid's memo underscoring the need for an "integrated" strategy arrived at the same moment that Bremer was summoned to Washington for a series of meetings that effectively reined him in. He returned to Baghdad with instructions to hasten the timetable for establishing Iraqi sovereignty. (Bremer said that the new timetable was his idea.)

Insurgency and the means to combat it soon became the hot new subjects in military circles; books on counter-insurgency, such as John Nagl's "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife," became required reading around the Pentagon and among junior military officers. Rumsfeld himself never quite surrendered to the language of Vietnam-preferring terms such as "terrorists" to "guerrillas" or "insurgents"-but he'd long since realized that Iraq had devolved into something much worse than untidy. Just a month before Abizaid's memo reached him, Rumsfeld had written to four top Pentagon officials, conceding that the war in Iraq would be "a long, hard slog."

By the end of George W. Bush's fifth year in office, the inner core of true believers around Rumsfeld, such Iraq hawks as Wolfowitz and Feith, were mostly gone from the Pentagon. Rumsfeld, meanwhile, was poised to become the longest-serving Defense Secretary ever, and was already a powerful token of the war itself, freighted with all its failures and controversies, from the abuses at Abu Ghraib to the harsh interrogation policy that Rumsfeld had personally endorsed. Among Democrats, insistence upon Rumsfeld's resignation became a kind of litmus test of anti-war seriousness. By the time of the 2006 midterm elections, more than a few Republicans were inclined to concur.

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To the end, Rumsfeld seemed to embrace the controversy. When, on the day after the election-an emphatic no-confidence vote on Rumsfeld's war-he joined Bush at the White House and his departure from the Pentagon was announced, Rumsfeld could not resist comparing himself to another civilian warrior who believed himself misunderstood by his critics. "I have benefitted greatly from the criticism," he said, invoking Churchill, "and at no time have I suffered from the lack thereof."

In some way, Rumsfeld's long tenure has brought the relationship between the military and its civilian leadership full circle. At the end of the Clinton Administration, some uniformed critics of the President had to be warned about possible insubordination; Rumsfeld inspired similar passion among some senior military leaders. This spring, what appeared to be a coördinated wave of criticism of Rumsfeld by retired generals moved some of their peers to suggest that they, too, be mindful of the prohibition on "contemptuous" remarks. On March 19th, General Paul Eaton, who had been in charge of training Iraqi troops before his retirement, last January, wrote in the Times that the Defense Secretary "has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to America's mission in Iraq. Rumsfeld must step down." Lieutenant General Greg Newbold, who retired in 2002, called for Rumsfeld's resignation in Time in an essay that cited "McNamara-like micromanagement" and stated that "a fundamentally flawed plan was executed for an invented war, while pursuing the real enemy, al-Qaeda, became a secondary effort."

Rumsfeld had arrived at the Pentagon convinced that the American military had to be broken down and rebuilt, and he had done just that. In Rumsfeld's six-year tenure, he had initiated a dizzying list of reforms, some deemed necessary even by his critics, from the restructuring of the Army's once-cumbersome fighting formations to the repositioning of American forces abroad, shifting them away from Western Europe. Less visible change was brought to the military culture, especially in the Army, which now sees itself as the force of first resort-an attitude once reserved for the marines. But it is also true that the Iraq war has severely stressed the Army, and Rumsfeld's reluctance to significantly increase the size of the force has it stretched to its limits. It is a war-honed and immeasurably more knowledgeable Army, precisely because it is bound up in a conflict with no apparent end, facing a resourceful enemy who daily presents some new lethal challenge. It has truly been transformed, but not in the manner that Andy Marshall would have prescribed, or foreseen. It is caught in a de-facto civil war that has cost the lives of more than twenty-eight hundred service members, and those of many times that number of Iraqis.

Donald Rumsfeld might have made a fine peacetime Defense Secretary. But it may also be that Rumsfeld would never have lasted in peacetime. He survived in the job because war came, and he used the wars to force change upon a recalcitrant professional military. In a real sense, the war in Iraq allowed Rumsfeld to create his transformed military, even while presenting it with a mission that it may not be able to win-a war like Vietnam.

A real brilliant thinker is David Isenberg. He pointed out RMA was bogus early-on.

www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EJ28Ak03.html

U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. war against Iraq one might hope that claims about U.S. military prowess would be evaluated more skeptically. But, sadly, far too many claims about U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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."

THE REVOLUTION IN MILITARY AFFAIRS HUBRIS: BRINGING U.S. MILITARY TO RUIN?

BREAKING NEWS!

Growing Realization that the Rumsfeld "philosophy" of war (cheapo troops-in-trucks to save money to buy sexy bombs) is bogus

Even friendly Iraqis realize this: www.iraq.net/displayarticle3189.html

Posted by: Editor on Saturday, April 24, 2004 - 12:00 AM

President Bush should be sending yellow roses to Gen. Eric Shinseki and begging him to come back. Before the war in Iraq, General Shinseki, then the Army chief of staff, said that Mr. Bush was going to need "several hundred thousand" Soldiers to occupy and stabilize the country.

The general was denounced by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's civilian team and then ushered into retirement. Mr. Bush clung to Mr. Rumsfeld's misguided idea that a minimal force could not only capture Baghdad but could also hold, stabilize and rebuild an entire country.

Mr. Rumsfeld was right about the lightning strike into Baghdad. But he was tragically wrong about everything else, and the deeper the United States gets into this badly planned occupation, the more American Soldiers are paying the price. In the 13 months of war, about 700 American Soldiers have been listed as killed, including at least 100 just in April. The White House cannot continue to deny our forces and the Iraqi people the protection that adequate troop strength would provide.

The administration agreed to increase the occupation force from about 115,000 to about 135,000 after being surprised by an easily predictable uprising this month. But it did so by extending the stay of already exhausted soldiers. And it authorized the increase for just 90 days, suggesting that it is continuing to put off hard decisions and deny unpleasant realities. The White House does not talk about it much, but the Pentagon is planning to stay in Iraq at least until the end of 2006. Even that timetable is extremely optimistic. It assumes everything will go precisely according to a plan that no one outside Mr. Bush's circle seems to understand and that has certainly not worked well so far.

It is past time for the president to let go of Mr. Rumsfeld's flawed theories of war and authorize a real long-term increase in the force in Iraq. There is debate about how many more Soldiers are needed - some experts say at least 50,000 in the short term, while others say even more. What is certain is that the nation cannot continue limping along on small, politically calibrated 90-day infusions. The White House likes to shift responsibility to those in uniform by saying it is up to the military to figure out what it needs to do its job. Unfortunately, military planners are not certain what that job is in broad political terms. They stick to the safer ground of figuring an adequate force to handle very specific, immediate assignments. The administration needs to create a long-term military strategy and accept the burden of providing the troops to carry it out.

The failure to do that reflects the overarching error of the Iraqi invasion, one that has defined the entire Bush administration - the refusal to take the political risk that comes with asking the voters for real sacrifice. The president led the public to underestimate the time it would take to turn Iraq into a stable democracy and the likely cost in money and blood. Even now he is trying to avoid admitting that Congress needs additional appropriations for the war, while preaching an election-year gospel of tax cuts.

Right now, the wrong people are bearing the burden. The reserves have done far more than their fair share and many men and women on active duty are also being kept in the field too long. Iraqi civilian casualties mount and the Iraqi people, who were supposed to get their freedom, are prisoners in their homes while street crime, terrorist violence and insurrection are rife.

Sending more troops will cause further pain to an already strained military and it means acknowledging that units now being rotated home could be sent back to Iraq. But there seems to be no other choice. Much of the current trouble could have been avoided if Mr. Rumsfeld had not been so determined to disprove the doctrine named for his rival, Secretary of State Colin Powell, which posits that force, if it is to be used at all, should be overwhelming. The period after the fall of Baghdad was catastrophic: Iraq was looted, its police and army were disbanded, its civil servants were fired in a needless political purge, armed militias formed, and the thin American ranks could do little more than watch in horror. The United States should have had a much larger military force ready to actually occupy Iraq and restore order.

As much as we hope that Mr. Bush's very belated agreement to involve the United Nations in Iraq can clear the way for greater international military assistance, it would be folly to count on more than symbolic help in the near future. Any real increase in the military force in Iraq will have to come from the United States.

This page felt it was a mistake to invade Iraq without broad international support, and since then we have seen few indications that Mr. Bush's notion of establishing a stable democracy there is anything but a dream. Yet leaving Iraq now would create a situation so horrific that the United States is obliged to press forward as long as there seems any hope of making progress. The only possible, but by no means certain, road to a good outcome is to stick with the plan to allow the United Nations to set up an interim Iraqi government, to expand international political support, and to work with moderate Shiite and Sunni leaders to isolate the violent radicals. The Iraqi security forces have to be made into something far better than what they are now. It was a relief last week to see the occupation authorities finally start to reverse a foolish policy that denied work to Iraqis who had been forced to join Saddam Hussein's Baath Party in order to serve in the middle and lower levels of the deposed government and disbanded army.

We may, in the end, find that the task Mr. Bush has laid out for the brave men and women in the military and the brave Iraqi citizens who are struggling to create a better future is simply impossible to achieve. But we have not reached that point. This is not the moment for retreat and it certainly is not the moment for half measures.

GAO Says Army on Road to Ruin

** Sadly, this confirms what Colonel Doug Macgregor wrote in his book, Transformation Under Fire.

** FCS works under the false assumption that real-time networked data and stand-off precision fires will work as well for land warfare as it has for air warfare and is believed likely to work for naval warfare. But land warfare is different. Adversaries can get very close without revealing themselves or their intentions simply by not forming up conventional, industrial age mass formations, dispensing with uniforms, and otherwise taking up the tried and true methods of guerrilla warfare.

** Asymmetric warfare is nothing new -- the ancient Hebrews used it against the Philistines of the Mediterranean plain, the Spaniards, Britons, and Jews used it against the Romans, the Moros of the Philippines used it against Spaniards, Americans, and Manila's forces for centuries, and the Vietnamese used it against first France and then America nearly decades ago. It is even more effective in an era where the established major powers value individual life more than any previous era's hegemons, and where the individual insurgent can carry more firepower than a platoon could manage a century ago, can have instantaneous communications for miles, and can travel by individual vehicle or mass transit at speeds and over distances inconceivable back then.

** The realities of land warfare, especially in an era when America's adversaries are most likely to adopt irregular tactics rather than futilely seek to match the U.S. in conventional warfare, remain totally infused with the "fog of war." In the murky confusion of fighting irregulars, insurgents, bandits, and the like, often in crowded, built-up areas, FCS as currently conceived is likely to present an array of dispersed, distinctive, large, costly, and very vulnerable targets. The much maligned main battle tank and the even more often dismissed boxy tracked APC are at least as likely to be effective, given proper support and tactics, and more survivable. The real, sensible answer is to build prototype FCS units and put them through rigorous OT&E against baseline conventional heavy mechanized units, STRYKER units, and simple motorized light infantry mounted in camouflaged "dune buggy"-like vehicles. This of course will take time and money, but failure to thoroughly test all of the major options -- in terms of ConOps and tactics as well as in terms of equipment and of force structures -- risks spending billions on a future force that is less effective and less survivable than what until recently were called "legacy" forces or modernized versions of them. I personally believe that the next generation combat platform should combine the weight, off-road mobility, and footprint of the M2 BRADLEY, have the effective protection, firepower, and networking capabilities of the M1A2 SEP ABRAMS, and have on-road fuel efficiency and sustainability superior to anything in the current DoD armored vehicle fleet. A 30-35 ton tracked vehicle can incorporate enough armor to defeat light-to-medium automatic cannon and close-in weapons, while relying on active protection systems (used by foreign armies but as yet not operational with the US Army) to defeat heavier, longer-range threats such as air-/artillery- delivered top attack weapons, anti-tank missiles, and tank main guns. Such a vehicle using advanced, rubberized band track and a hybrid turbodiesel/electric powertrain can be much quieter than today's BRADLEY or STRYKER, have superior fuel economy and range, and be more agile in tight urban areas and rugged off-road situations. Complemented by UAVs with passive and active sensors and modern data networks, it can have far superior situational awareness than today's systems while carrying a sufficiently lethal mix of line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight weapons to engage a variety of threats ranging from mines and remotely fired anti-tank weapons to RPGs, heavy cannon, artillery, and suicide bombers in vehicles or disguised, on foot, with satchel charges.

--Steve X

GAO Says Army on Road to Ruin

By Noah Shachtman

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,62931,00.html

02:00 AM Apr. 05, 2004 PT

It's been called the most ambitious military effort since the Manhattan Project, and the centerpiece of Donald Rumsfeld's plans to overhaul America's armed forces: a $92 billion push to change almost everything about the Army by 2010, from the guns GIs carry, to the officers they salute, to the tanks they drive.

A new congressional report is alleging that the Future Combat Systems program is poised for major delays and a financial train wreck. Worst of all, the report claims, the Army knew this was going to happen all along. "Army officials acknowledge that (2010) is an ambitious date and that the program was not really ready for system development and demonstration when it was approved. However, the officials believe it was necessary to create 'irreversible momentum' for the program," reads the report (see attached PDF) from the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigational arm. "FCS is at significant risk for not delivering required capability within budgeted resources."

The Army and Boeing, one of Future Combat Systems' two main contractors, both say the sprawling project is on track. They assert the congressional report is off-base. But outside military analysts and former Pentagon officials are inclined to agree with the GAO's take on the Army effort. And they see it as the latest case of the military pouring countless billions into weapons systems before they're ready to go.

"For years, the GAO has been trying to explain in kindergarten-simple terms to the Pentagon that you should make something and test it before you buy it. But year after year, the process goes on. And the situation is getting worse," said Marcus Corbin, with the Center for Defense Information.

The Pentagon brass wants a military that's lighter, quicker and more deadly -- one that can be fighting anywhere in the world within 96 hours, instead of the weeks and months it can currently take to lug gear and personnel around the globe. Future Combat Systems is the Defense Department's strategy for meeting that goal. Getting there is going to be beyond hard -- the "greatest technology and integration challenge the Army has ever undertaken," according to the Army. And it has to do it quickly: FCS, officially launched last May, has initial production decisions due in 2008.

In that 5.5-year stretch, the Army wants 18 major systems designed -- including new sensors and munitions, as well as replacements for the Abrams tank and the Bradley fighting vehicle, staples of American armored power for decades. Over 100 defense contractors have been marshaled for the effort. They'll be responsible for constructing 53 critical technologies and 157 complementary systems -- as well as writing 34 million lines of code -- according to the GAO report. That's five times as big as the military's next-largest software project. But despite the project's leviathan size and watchmaker intricacy, there's almost no margin for error.

"The first prototypes of FCS will not be delivered until just before the (2008) production decision. Full demonstration of FCS' ability to work as an overarching system will not occur until after production has begun," the GAO notes. "This demonstration assumes complete success -- including delivery and integration of numerous complementary systems that are not inherently a part of FCS but are essential for FCS to work as a whole."

"It's one thing to strive for transformation, but another thing to expect a near-miracle. That's what we're talking about here, nothing short of a miracle," Eric Miller, a defense analyst at the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, said in an e-mail.

The military sees it differently. Yes, some of the FCS projects are tough to tackle. But the Defense Department has built in "technology 'off-ramps' or 'tollgates' -- specific decision points and criteria where decisions would potentially be made to use alternate, less risky" technologies, according to an Army official.

But FCS is about more than new gear. It's also a remix of the traditional way the Army arranges its forces. Separate armored or infantry groups are gone. In its place: the 5,000-person "Unit of Action," or UA, which blends grunts, tanks, flying drones and robots designed for on-the-ground combat. The idea, according to the Army's Maj. Gary Tallman, is to have a UA anywhere in the world within four days. Currently, a few of the Army's more mobile units -- like the 82nd Airborne -- can travel that quickly. But they don't have the tanks and heavy personnel carriers needed to sustain a long fight, Tallman explains. The UA will be speedier, in theory, because its armor will be a whole lot lighter than the current crop. Instead of a 70-ton M1 Abrams tank, for example, the FCS equivalent will weigh a svelte 20 tons.

But some wonder whether slender is such a good idea. In Iraq, after all, U.S. troops are dying because their Humvees are roaming around Baghdad and Fallujah armorless. "Lighter and smaller also means you're more vulnerable," said Jim Lewis, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Army wants to make up for the lack of brawn with precision and speed. That's why every Soldier, every drone and every tank replacement is supposed to be joined together in a wireless network for combat.

This could prove to be the toughest FCS task of all, the GAO believes. Imagine how hard it would be to set up a cell-phone system -- under fire, without any towers. Even if it works, all the chatter would eat bandwidth quicker than you can say "Homer Simpson." "An internal study revealed that FCS bandwidth demand was 10 times greater than what was actually available," the congressional report alleges.

Nevertheless, Lt. Gen. Joseph Yakovac told a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday that the Army is committed to "an FCS program that is in control, within reasonable risk and on schedule for a 2010 fielding."

Maria McCullough, a Boeing spokesperson, added, "We are definitely on cost, and on target."

But if all of FCS' systems are kept intact, the $92 billion budget is almost certain to be blown wide open. After all, that figure only accounts for 14 of FCS' 18 major programs, the GAO notes. There are still four more to go.

Big deal, argues Lewis. "To sell a program, you set your costs and faster deadlines than you're able to meet," he said. "It's a fairly standard trick."

But by repeating the trick over and over again -- and by paying for equipment that doesn't work as advertised -- troops in harm's way wind up suffering, replies Philip Coyle, a former assistant secretary of defense. Coyle wrote in an e-mail, "The victims here -- besides U.S. taxpayers -- are our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and marines who too often get equipment that doesn't work, and have to struggle in the field with inferior gear."

Message to DoD: there is no RMA Jesus: Why more Troops is not the Solution in Iraq

Emery Nelson reveals in the June 2004 issue of G2mil.com exactly why we are losing the war in Iraq and elsewhere.

I actually believe that there's all kinds of chemical, and maybe some biological, agents hidden around the country. But it's really not all that dangerous. If this thing had been filled with HE, those two guys would have been dead. As for proof, even if they get it the outcome will not be changed. We will still be fighting an insurgency with a woefully unprepared civilian and military leadership. These are all "Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA) guys. It's their Jesus.

The Hersch article (www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040524fa_fact) tells me a lot. RMA, although a myth, requires pinpoint targeting in order to destroy the enemy center of gravity. It's clear that they authorized torture because they haven't been able to get the targeting that successful RMA requires. Since that's not going to happen, they will just pull out, rather than admit that their "RMA Jesus" doesn't exist.

If we are forced to retreat from Iraq it is not because we didn't have enough troops. The drumbeat throughout the land is that former Chief of Staff of the Army, General Eric Shinseki was right. He said it would take 200,000 Soldiers to pacify Iraq (http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-02-25-iraq-us_x.htm). An Internet search of General Shinseki was right, brought up 11,700 hits on Google. I suspect that well be long gone from Iraq, without ever having come close to this many troops, but this myth will endure forever more or at least until reality kicks us in the teeth (again). Even if we were to put 500,000 Soldiers in Iraq it still wouldnt guarantee victory.

Adding mass (Soldiers) to fight a growing insurgency flies in the face of history. In fact, fewer and better-trained armies are the most lethal. If numbers won insurgencies than Vietnam would be the 51st state. Since the end of WWII, no western style nation state army has defeated an insurgency without the overwhelming majority of Soldiers coming from the host country. You can advise and provide material but never battalions. The very act of jamming the host country with invaders insures that the invaded will never flock to your banner.

The highly centralized and conventional U.S. Army cannot beat decentralized and loosely aligned guerillas. We can hurt them badly everyday, but win? Never! The people of the country in question are the only ones that can accomplish victory. If they fight with us, victory is assured. If they fight against, we wont lose so much as get tired and go home.

Even in conventional warfare numbers are not always the answer. It didnt help the British at the Somme in WWI. But here we go again, unlearning the lessons that have been around since the start of organized warfare. Alexander the Great always faced larger armies; most of the time far from home, with unfortunate results for his enemies. Our populist leanings ignore the historical fact that large armies are rarely well-trained armies, and although capable of great carnage, its mostly to itself, in the form of half trained and ill led troops blundering into the meat grinder.

The beauty of mass (for general officers at least) is that its a built in excuse. When things go badly, generals always say we need more Soldiers. General Westmoreland in Vietnam lived this lie unto the deaths of 69,000. The final straw came when he asked for another 135,000 troops, on top of the 535,000 already in country. He never understood that each additional Soldier added to an occupation is a recruiting poster for the insurgents, a drain on the local productive economy, as well as the economy of the invading country.

Unless they intend to slaughter occupied in the style of the Roman Legions, occupiers are nothing but targets for the guerillas, particularly the U.S. Army with its huge tooth-to-tail ratio. Invaders put treasure, and their finest young men, into the host country while getting coffins and ruined lives in return. The moral confidence of possible gains will fade as the casualties mount and the treasury empties.

We conservatively have at least one General officer, plus his staff and security detail, for every battalion in Iraq. Many generals, if not all, have moved into Saddams palaces. Could we do anything more insulting to the Iraqi people (well, apparently yes)? In a method reminiscent of our failure in Vietnam, We divided the country into sectors where a each general officer has his own fiefdom. While some units fight all the fights, other units are in very quiet zones with little or no action. Has the army ever heard of economy of force? This mania for zones and lines is symptom of all thats wrong. The conditions we are trying to create cant happen when fighting a guerilla war because it all takes place with no respect for lines, zones and borders.

To understand what you get with more generals you only have to look at the Abu Gharib scandal. More generals obviously do not mean more control of a clearer chain of command. The ever-increasing number of generals trying to get their tickets punched, while avoiding anything that will hurt a career, dilutes any real accountability.

Now the army and its supporters are rushing to cash in on the more troops madness. Highly respected writer and retired Colonel Ralph Peters just did an editorial in the NY Post entitled, "Troops Dont Trust Rummy" www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/20841.htm. His loyalty to the organization that spawned him, particularly the senior officer corps, is clouding his judgment. As is the custom at most newspapers, Col. Peters probably did not decide on the title. Surely he knows that since WWII, study after study has shown that junior officers and enlisted men have little faith in their senior officers, which is not the case in other armies like the British and WWII Wehrmacht.

Im sure the Colonel, along with most senior officers, would put this off to normal troops bitching. In Vietnam, where it became a matter of life and death, this bitching came in the form of fragmentation grenades. Now they want to increase the size of the army so that half-trained troops can play beat the clock for a year, while clueless junior officers spend a few months in any danger and dont even learn how to be good platoon leaders and company commanders. Imagine what it would be like to be a young Soldier in Iraq and no that you will probably have 2 or three inexperienced platoon leaders during that time.

Peters rightfully accuses Rummy and his minions of failing to understand that, Airpower doesn't win wars on its own. Technology doesn't trump courage, guts and skill. But if he thinks for one minute that army General officers dont believe in these same things than the good soldier has not been paying attention. Long before Rumsfeld arrived on the scene the army was involved in all kinds of navel gazing linear warfare garbage like Blue Force Tracker, digitization, and Land Warrior to name but a few. The common denominator with these systems is the desire to further centralize the command and control capabilities of ever more superfluous general officers. If technology and air power dont win wars then he should inform the generals.

Peters goes on to assert that Rumsfeld was the architect of "transformation". Although theres a great deal of truth to this, it isn't a good thing, the army version was General Shinsekis doing, along with a host of army generals (some now working for General Dynamics) with his Stryker Brigade Combat Teams (SBCT). The SBCTs have little firepower but are supposed to overcome this with the notion of complete situational awareness (Iraq makes a mockery of this notion on a daily basis) and stand off firepower (Wheres that firepower supposed to come from? The air???). This was the army's plan long before Rumsfeld came on the scene. Its easily documented that the army itself, not Rumsfeld, saw its own infantry as nothing more than a constabulary to clean up after a conventional warfare mess caused by a perfectly targeted enemy thats killed from afar. Nothing the army has done in the recent past has prepared it for fighting long-term insurgencies, and that goes back to the Reagan Administration.

Desert Storm was an aberration, fought against a third-rate conventional army that we heralded as world class. Insurgency is the warfare of the past and future and those who cant deal with it will fight it anyway. The armys tired phrase, we dont do mountains and we dont do jungles is as close as it ever came to dealing with the predominate method of warfare in the 20th century. In the later part of that century and moving into the beginning of this one, so-called 4th generation warfare, conducted by gangs, groups with all kinds of political and religious leanings, and old-fashioned nationalists, is the order of the day.

The U.S. Army/marines have already suffered one major defeat at the hands of insurgents (Vietnam), although they've always tried to blame it on someone else. Learning to deal with guerilla warfare would mean moving away from the senior officer holy grail of mass, combined with methodical battle, directed by a very centralized hierarchy. I suspect the general officer corps would rather see us lose then see their status reduced with the decentralized army it takes to beat insurgencies.

Carlton Meyer adds:

Ed: We wouldn't need more than 10,000 troops over there if that fool Bremer hadn't disbanded the Iraqi Army. We had direct communications with Iraqi Generals prior to the invasion; we could call their personal cell phone numbers. Most agreed to order units to disperse in exchange for cash or immunity. (General Franks has confirmed this.) We could have offered them cash and retention of their command if they ordered their troops to stay in their barracks area with a promise they would not be bombed or attacked. After Saddam fled and U.S. tanks moved into Baghdad, Iraqi troops (which included Shia and Kurds) could have moved into the cities to prevent looting and restore order. However, I suspect the idea drove our Generals nuts, who dream all their life of a chance to bomb the hell out a country while armored columns charge forth.

The American media failed to note that Iran's religious leader harshly denounced the U.S. occupation of Iraq; he had remained silent about the U.S. invasion until this year. On May 16th he stated: "The Americans are trapped. There is nothing they can do. They will fail if they continue along this path, and they will fail if they pull out. But continuing will be the greater defeat." No reporter seems to understand the real issue in Iraq today. The U.S. Government doesn't really give a damn about who runs Iraq, so long as they can maintain order, allow US oil companies to do business, and allow the U.S. military operate from their four new permanent bases in Iraq.

MacNamara vindicated: will his clone, Donald Rumsfeld learn the truth 20 years after leaving power, too? Why wait?

www.imdb.com/title/tt0317910

The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, The (2003)

We strongly encourage everyone watch it!

Thompson tells President Kennedy, "No" during Cuban Missile Crisis that saves the day and gets him to act on the Krushchev peace overture and not the military hard-liner's message, saving the world from nuclear WWIII. Thompson had the strength of conviction having lived with the Krushchevs to know how he thought.

Today, do we have such people in Bush's administration to do same with Iran?

As a dictator, Bush is no JFK, and he surrounds himself with yes-men liars.

Blind-obedience bureaucracies create such situations, professions where men of conscience act on the behalf of the people they serve can make the hard decisions and not bring disaster on the world. There was no Thompson to stop Bush/Cheney from occupying Iraq in 2003.

Other observations:

1. MacNamara HAS learned his lessons from his failures in Vietnam
2. He is a very nice man and a good human being
3. Most of what he says NOW (repeat N-O-W) is 100% right on
4. We now like the guy a lot

Some of the cynical people here no doubt hate him, but the truth is PEOPLE DO CHANGE. MacNamara has. We like the MacNamara of 2003 better than of 1963. This is what LIFE is all about. We are here on the earth for a reason; the phrase, "its all good" is true. All the bad that happens in the world is there for us to resist it, to dig deep and ask ourselves what's wrong and why and to FIGHT IT, to be heroes or villains, its our choice.

Here is the most important point of MacNamara and its where we need to take what he says and Van Crevald and GO FARTHER. You did hear me correctly. This bullshit that we have nothing to offer and add to the work of great men is simply BS.

MacNamara's first lesson in the film and #9 in his formal 11 lessons is EMPATHY.

We must be able to see and feel what's going on in the minds of others and our enemies. The war in Vietnam boiled down to simply this according to MacNamara: The North Vietnamese wanted to unify their country and have independance and thought we had replaced the French as colonial rulers. We thought the North Vietnamese were puppets of the communists and would be the first domino to fall that would lead to a communist southeast asia. We at no point talked directly to the North Vietnamese to reconcile these DOMINANT STRATEGIC IDEAS (DSIs), and when we had a back-channel open to Ho Chi Minh the military bombed as we were delivering the message.

The point is in ALL WARS there is a DSI of us and the enemy. It may be irrational hate. But it is an IDEA. There may be several DSIs of several sub-national groups in play (Iraq) but there are indeed DSIs. We're telling you MacNamara's empathy thinking and other observations backs up our concepts of DSI.

We are not talking about throwing the towel in and surrendering or suing for peace, but we MUST understand ourselves and our enemies as Sun Tzu warns, to do this we must be honest, humble and have empathy. Many of us are not because we are narcissistic assholes eager to kill the _____ bastards (you fill in the blank).

Now on to Van Crevald's observation of 4GW that the strong cannot be seen as bullying the weak sub-national groups. First, we need to ascertain the sub-national group's DSI. Then, we need to mentally come up with a morally superior DSI of our own. As we pursue our DSI even if we are indeed stronger we need to appear weaker, "If you turn the other cheek, DO NOT HAVE A GLASS JAW".

And yes you are damn right we're talking about M113 Gavin light tracked AFVs. Paint them all white and put in the native tongue a slogan like "U.S. ASSISTANCE" on the side. Have them on band tracks and hybrid-electric drives so they are quiet and not boisterous. But you damn well better have lots of extra armor layers on and hidden, discrete weaponry that can be instantly mounted behind gunshields the minute some thug tries to break the peace. Consider these "Q-Vehicles" like the Q-ships of WWI/WWII. Our men if they are driving around restoring public works do not present themselves as easy targets in wheeled vehicles so the opposition can get us drawn into a cycle of violence. If we turn the other cheek, we must not have a glass jaw!

The epitome of warfighting is TO MAKE YOUR ENEMY INTO YOUR FRIEND. If we cannot reconcile opposing DSIs through direct meetings of combatant leaders then we must smartly execute military operations so we "turn" not annihilate our foes into our friends. Its a big task but if we get on the right course we can do it.

P.S. there is footage of MacNamara riding in the back troop section of a M113A1 Gavin light tracked AFV as it SWAM across a river in West Germany with the Berlin Brigade! I wish we were a physically agile U.S. Army like that again today!

MacNamara's Film 11 Lessons by Robert D. Steele

LESSON 1: EMPHATHIZE WITH YOUR ENEMY. We must see ourselves as they see us, we must see their circumstances as they see them, before we can be effective.

LESSON 2: RATIONALITY WILL NOT SAVE US. Human fallibility combined with weapons of mass destruction will destroy nations. Castro has 162 nuclear warheads already on the island, and was willing to accept annihilation of Cuba as the cost of upholding his independence and honor.

LESSON 3: THERE'S SOMETHING BEYOND ONESELF. History, philosophy, values, responsibility--think beyond your niche.

LESSON 4: MAXIMIZE EFFICIENCY. Although this was McNamara's hallmark, and the fog of war demands redundancy, he has a point: we are not maximizing how we spend $500B a year toward world peace, and are instead spending it toward the enrichment of select corporations, building things that don't work in the real world.

LESSON 5: PROPORTIONALITY SHOULD BE A GUIDELINE IN WAR. McNamara is clearly still grieving over the fact that we firebombed 67 Japanese cities before we ever considered using the atomic bomb, destroying 50% to 90% of those cities.

LESSON 6: GET THE DATA. It is truly appalling to realize that the U.S. Government is operating on 2% of the relevant information, in part because it relies heavily on foreign allies for what they want to tell us, in part because the U.S. Government has turned its back on open sources of information. Marc Sageman, in "Understanding Networks of Terror", knows more about terrorism today than do the CIA or FBI, because he went after the open source data and found the patterns. There is a quote from a Senator in the 1960's that is also compelling, talking about "an instability of ideas" that are not understood, leading to erroneous decisions in Washington. For want of action, we forsook thought.

LESSON 7: BELIEF & SEEING ARE BOTH OFTEN WRONG. With specific reference to the Gulf of Tonkin, as well as the failure of America to understand that the Vietnamese were fighting for independence from China, not just the French or the corrupt Catholic regime of Ngo Dinh Diem, McNamara blows a big whole in the way the neo-cons "believed" themselves into the Iraq war, and took America's blood, treasure, and spirit with them.

LESSON 8: BE PREPARED TO RE-EXAMINE YOUR REASONING. McNamara is blunt here: if your allies are not willing to go along with you, consider the possibility that your reasoning is flawed.

LESSON 9: IN ORDER TO DO GOOD, YOU MAY HAVE TO ENGAGE IN EVIL. Having said that, he recommends that we try to maximize ethics and minimize evil. He is specifically concerned with what constitutes a war crime under changing circumstances.

LESSON 10: NEVER SAY NEVER. Reality and the future are not predictable. There are no absolutes. We should spend more time thinking back over what might have been, be more flexible about taking alternative courses of action in the future.

LESSON 11: YOU CAN'T CHANGE HUMAN NATURE. There will always be war, and disaster. We can try to understand it, and deal with it, while seeking to calm our own human nature that wants to strike back in ways that are counter-productive.

Rumsfeld's anti-physical Folly Continues: running Army into the ground with world-wide deployments

The IRR: Emptying the Cupboard

July 06, 2004

By George Friedman

Summary

The U.S. Department of Defense is now activating the Army's Individual Ready Reserve for combat duty. Given the inherent problems associated with such a move, it is clear that U.S. war planners were caught in a trap: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "revolution in warfare" has not evolved as expected.

Analysis

On July 6, 5,600 members of the U.S. Army's Individual Ready Reserve will start to receive notices that they are being recalled to active duty. Members of the IRR are generally soldiers who have completed their primary active-duty assignments. They are not part of the regular Reserves or the National Guard, but are simply kept on a list as available for recall. In general, this has been simply a formality. IRR members have been called up on only two occasions: Once was in 1968, following the Tet offensive; the other was in 1991, in the context of Operation Desert Storm. There have already been some smaller call-ups of essential specialties, but this is the first large-scale mobilization. The Army has indicated that there likely will be more.

The recall is neither routine, nor what the Army would like to be doing.

First, the reactivated reservists will have been out of the Army for several years. They might not be in appropriate mental or physical condition for a tour in a combat zone -- where, according to the Army, most are going to be sent. Since the current plan is to keep them on active duty for no more than a year, there is little time for an extensive conditioning program if the troops are to spend much time in-theater. These are not the forces commanders want to lead if they have a choice.

Second, although this call-up might fix the Army's quantitative problem in the short run, it can wreak havoc in the long run. The volunteer army depends, obviously, on the willingness of people to join. That rests on a large number of variables, one of which is the idea that the volunteer can control his term of service, building it into his or her long-term plans. It has always been understood, in the fine print, that calling up the IRR was possible, and soldiers who are being recalled cannot complain that they did not know -- they can complain only that they did not expect it to happen. However, people who have already served and completed their tours -- and are busy with careers, children and mortgages -- are now going to be sent into combat zones. Their younger siblings, cousins and friends are going to be watching the chaos in their lives and could well decide that, while they would be prepared to serve a given term and even have that term extended during war, giving the Army control over their lives -- and those of their families -- for years afterward is simply not worth it.

The Army, the Defense Department and the Office of the President are all acutely aware of this problem. Nevertheless, they have chosen to go this route. Given the inherent defects of the choice and its obvious potential cost, they did not make this move frivolously; this was something that was absolutely necessary. That said, the question now is this: How did the U.S. Army get into the position of having to make this choice?

The call-up of the IRR in 1968 came in the midst of a crisis surrounding Vietnam. The United States had miscalculated troop requirements and found itself short of critical specialties that it could not make up from the pool of available conscripts. No one planned for the circumstances that presented themselves in 1968 -- or for those that prompted Desert Storm either. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait left little time to redesign the Army's force structure, and by 1991 it was dealing with a surprise. The IRR has been utilized twice, both times in the face of the unexpected. Sometimes it was mismanagement, sometimes reality, but always it was an attempt to cope with the unexpected -- and unwanted -- event. The 2004 call-up obviously fits into this category. The issue is what was unanticipated, and why it was not expected.

The Sept. 11 attacks certainly were unanticipated. This cannot be disputed, although whether they should have been is going to be an interminable debate. However, this large-scale activation of the IRR is taking place not six months after Sept. 11, but almost three years later. That indicates a much broader and deeper surprise than the attacks themselves.

The first surprise had to do with the nature of warfare. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was an advocate of what has been called "the revolution in warfare." This concept is the belief that as technology of all sorts comes online, the need for massed armies will decline. Few would debate that a revolution in warfare is under way. The issue is whether it has matured to a sufficient degree that policymakers can depend on it, or whether it still has several generations to go.

Throughout his tenure, Rumsfeld has been highly critical of the Army. He felt that it was too heavy, in the sense of relying on armor and artillery -- supply hogs that take a long time to get to the theater of operations. Rumsfeld's view of the war against al Qaeda was that it would require very small, very fast and very lethal forces to execute. Rumsfeld was right, but he failed to factor in two things.

The first was that while the deployment of small, fast, lethal forces potentially could take out al Qaeda units and could be used to destabilize nation-states, those units could not be used to take control of those nations. There is a huge difference between shattering a government and governing a country. Indeed, there is little value in destabilizing a nation unless it can be pacified; otherwise, destabilization opens the door to al Qaeda, rather than shutting down the network. Therefore, insufficient thought was given to the problem of pacification -- not only in Iraq, but also in Afghanistan. Denying terrain to al Qaeda means being present on the ground in sufficient numbers to make a difference. Rumsfeld constantly tried to find a way to transfer responsibility for the ground to an indigenous government -- failing to recognize that the high-tech destruction of the state creates a vacuum that either is filled with U.S. forces or left in chaos.

Rumsfeld focused on the first phase of the war: regime change. This phase was certainly amenable to the kind of war he favored. But the second phase -- regime construction -- is not at all influenced by the revolution in warfare. It requires a large security force -- and even that might not be enough. Rumsfeld's hostility toward the Army's cumbersome, traditional ways of doing things caused him to make a massive miscalculation: Rather than building up Army ground forces in 2002 and 2003, he restricted the growth of the Army, thereby leaving it short of troops for the prolonged second phase of the war.

Rumsfeld's second surprise was a persistent underestimation of the enemy. In particular, he seemed to genuinely believe that with the occupation of Baghdad, all organized resistance would cease. The idea that there would be people in Iraq who, out of support for the Baathist regime or simple patriotism, would resist the American occupation in an extended and effective way seems never to have been factored into plans. Indeed, when Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who was very much concerned about extended resistance, argued before the war that in excess of 200,000 troops would be needed in Iraq for an extended period, Rumsfeld attacked him as being alarmist. Rumsfeld failed to plan for occupying a country of 25 million people or policing a city of 5 million people -- both in the face of resistance, albeit relatively light resistance.

Occupying a country or a city takes manpower. That is a requirement -- though not necessarily the only one -- for success. Rumsfeld's view of warfare did not take into account the complexities of occupation. The tension between Rumsfeld and the Army created a situation in which dramatically pyramiding responsibilities for the Army were not met with equivalent increases in manpower.

This is the first global war the United States has waged in which neither the command structure of the armed forces nor the force structure evolved dramatically in the opening years. The fact that there has not been a doubling or tripling in size of the U.S. Army is startling. In spite of the fact that it is involved in a variety of combat operations in remote areas of the world -- and that the enemy can choose to open new theaters of operation that are unexpected (such as Saudi Arabia or Pakistan) -- the armed forces have not grown substantially in three years.

Rumsfeld apparently thought the war would be easier than it has been, and he believed that technology would be more effective than it possibly could be. The need to occupy, pacify and govern hostile nations was not built into the war plan -- nor is it there now. The fact is that the call-ups from the IRR are Band-Aids on a fundamental issue: The United States is involved in a land war in Asia again, and it is trying to fight that war with a military -- especially an Army -- that was designed for peacetime in the 1990s. It cannot possibly stretch.

The central conceptual problem in Vietnam was that the United States did not want to spend its resources on doing the things that might give it an opportunity to win the war. Having insufficient resources, the United States simply decided that they were sufficient.

In Vietnam, the military had recourse to a draft. It did not work very well. Not only did it create deep social tension between those who served and those who did not, but also a two-year term was not sufficient to master most of the specialties of warfare -- including rifleman skills. Between two years of service and a one-year tour in Vietnam, the military lost its people just when they were learning to do their jobs. The draft -- particularly as it was structured during the Vietnam era -- was the failure point, not the solution.

Two-year conscription is simply too short a period of time to master the specialties the military needs now. Today's military does not consist of cannon fodder, but of highly trained specialists who need two years to begin becoming proficient at their jobs. Moreover, another draft in which half the eligible candidates were exempt would rip the United States apart. Universal conscription creates too large a manpower pool. It creates more problems than it solves. What it needs is an expansion of the volunteer force.

For that, very large sums of money are needed, making it attractive to choose the military as a profession. The problem is that the United States is out of time. The time for this expansion should have been early 2002, when it became clear that al Qaeda would not be easily defeated and that other military campaigns would be coming. Had the Bush administration asked Congress for sufficient money to expand the volunteer Army, large numbers of well-trained troops would be coming out of the chute just about now.

No such request was made. Rumsfeld ignored Army requests for increased manpower, focusing instead on surgical tools for regime change. The force structure did not undergo a quantum expansion. As a result, when the worst-case rather than the best-case scenario came to pass in Iraq -- guerrilla war -- the United States was unprepared for it. It had to reach into the IRR for a few thousand men. The military is, in effect, cannibalizing itself, using up its reserves. Since this war is not likely to end soon, and the IRR is not a bottomless well, it is clear that something will have to be done.

Copyrights 2004 - Strategic Forecasting, Inc. All rights reserved

The Threat From Below

Not only is DoD failing to understand WHAT IS GOING ON, ON THE GROUND, its failing to realize what's going on BENEATH THE GROUND:

www.combatreform.org/thethreatfrombelow.htm

The Threat From Above: the RMA "bogeyman" they themselves ignore

This is NOT Strategic Maneuver or sound C3D2 to defeat SSCs: where did our Soldiers learn such bad habits?---Fort Lewis, Washington: "From Here to Eternity" Garrison U.S. Army Unready For War: As Seen From Space

James Jones, an Army combat veteran revealed the bankrupt and snobby Army culture as being unready for WW2 in his book; "From Here to Eternity". As Japanese planes are bombing and strafing U.S. Navy ships and Army/marine planes parked in neat rows to ward off "saboteurs" our entire force in the Pacific was nearly wiped out resulting in us almost losing the war on day 1. Despite the obvious need to drop the rank snobbery, work together and stop the non-tactical "parade ground" military, after WW2 we reverted right back to "From Here to Eternity" and suffered grievous losses in Korea, Vietnam, and now in Iraq. We are today, parking both ships, planes and trucks, troops, tanks and buildings in easily targeted rows, both in CONUS and overseas.

Are We Headed For Another Pearl Harbor?

On the 21st century, non-linear battlefield dominated by high explosives we simply CANNOT afford to play BS barracks games and keep living in rows of buildings with our air, ground and sea platforms parked in rows, uncamouflaged.

If you have ANY doubt about the dangers we face of reliving "Pearl Harbor" which we compound by base closures compressing even more targets in smaller areas, look at the satellite imagery of U.S. bases using google maps.

1. GO TO

www.maps.google.com

2. Type in

fort lewis wa

you will see a street map

3. Click on "Satellite"

Click on + to zoom all the way in on to see the clusterfucks of Stryker and other wheeled trucks

Move <--- and ---> to shift view from space to keep the wheeled truck narcissist wagons in view etc.

Here's the photo of Fort Lewis, Washington taken from space by a satellite with key features of the U.S. Army "garrison" BS mentality explained:

1. HUGE parade ground for brass to self-worship themselves with troop standing in hot sun for hours at a time. Troops have to waste hours mowing this huge lawn. Parade grounds and useless golf courses should be ripped out of every Army post and the space used for tank cross-country open terrain maneuver training or at the very least a firing range. You will notice there is no maneuver training area on Fort Lewis--they have to drive over 100 miles southeast to Yakima training center--more time and resources wasted, when we do not have the time or the money to waste. Is it a wonder our troops are so road-bound and easily blown up by roadside bombs in Iraq?

2. HUGE motor pools of Stryker, Humvee and FMTV vulnerable wheeled trucks in Fulda Gap Olive Drab Green paint that makes them clearly seen against gray pavement. Troops waste many hours obssessing over these flimsy and tactically unsound trucks under the hot sun to micro-manage and alleviate the anxieties of the brass and their bean counters that they will work. However, the hot sun and temperature elements are degrading the rubber tires, optics, paint constantly.

So as mother earth kills the life of these flimsy vehicles, they make an easy Pearl Harbor-esque target for enemies who could with GPS guidance destroy them en masse with just a few direct hits. ALL vehicles should be painted in universal TAN or BROWN and dispersed and co-located with their units in the field at all times under concealing vegetation and/or nets to keep the sun off, or better yet IN ISO containers. Some "war on terror" we are waging, huh? We didn't declare war on 9/12/01 and we are still not at war.

3. You will see 5 x CH-47D Chinook heavy lift helicopters and a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter again in absurd "Fulda Gap" green camouflage paint making them easy targets on the ground and in the air. These aircraft should be GRAY for effective camouflage in the air and be covered in camou nets on the ground. The main runway of Gray Army airfield is only 6125 feet x 150 feet and the secondary runway is only 1867 feet by 46 feet. This is good enough to fly-away by USAF C-17s and C-130s, but the Stryker truck is too heavy to fly by C-130 even stripped down anywhere unless you want to go to Spokane, Washington. Only 3 Strykers can fit into a C-17 which we do not have many total, and only a squadron of 12 at nearby McCord AFB. If the Army were wise and transferred Stryker trucks to MP units where their road-bound fatal weaknesses would be offset by a less lethal mission and re-equipped with M113 Gavin and M8 Buford AGS light tanks, they could fly 4-5 at a time in C-17s and 1-at-a-time in C-130s to strategic distances (over 1, 000 miles). Moreover, if the main runway was lengthened to over 8, 000 feet, cargo 747s could fly brigade Gavin/Buford sets and all required personnel rapidly to any place in the world with international airports. This was what an Army that was serious about getting ready to fight anywhere in the world would do.

4. Here you see a feel-good sports field and 400 meter tracks for absurd sports PT in t-shirts, shorts and running shoes which has no combat relevance. Also notice the tennis courts. More evidence that the U.S. military garrison lifestyle is all about narcissism and not combat effectiveness.

5. Here you see the comfortable Rank Hath Its Priveliges (RHIP) officer's housing adjacent to the parade ground for narcissist ceremonies. This is disgusting and not leadership-by-example. These housing units should be torn down on all U.S. military posts/bases and everyone made to live off post in REAL civilian houses to have real civilian cultural lives instead of living in the cloistered artificial lifestyle that leads to snobby and disrespect of people with less money, rank and status--people like our foreign enemies and civil populace that we are trying to win to our side. Amerocentric snobbery does not win hearts & minds.

6. All over the post are multi-story troop barracks and enlisted family housing units where the underclass lives and the under 21 year olds can be frequently visited by their over-bearing "mother may, I?" chain of command to nitpick over the condition of interior paint and the state of the lawns around the buildings. So while America's enemies study how to kill us with the latest technologies, our troops spend their days picking up trash and mowing lawns in the hot sun or freezing cold after starting the day without enough sleep doing absurd sports PT to numb them down to better control them and remind them that they are somehow inferior to the careerist narcissists running the show who want to look good and get themselves promoted. Is it a wonder troops think 5-ton trucks weigh 5 tons? Is it a wonder they do not know what a RPG can or cannot do? Is it a wonder our troops are ignorant of warfare and think they can ride around in wheeled trucks and just shoot the enemy as if it were a TV western gun duel? The sad truth is they enter the combat zone sleep-deprived for months and years at a time and are falling asleep at the wheel and dying. They are getting blown up by a push of a button by roadside bombs before they can even get a chance to shoot their hand weapons. War is not an event to prove manhood and adulthood you should already have, its not a game or a duel. Its about winning or losing, living or dying. And we cannot afford any longer to waste time on 19th century parade ground BULLSHIT on today's lethal, non-linear, 4th generation warfare battlefields dominated by not just bullets but high explosive weaponry.

Let's be brutally honest, shall we?

Where is the constructive effort to be good at warfighting?

U.S. military is not "AMATEUR hour"; amateur implies at least we are TRYING; we are not trying; U.S. military is PHONY.

Air Force & Navy when they fly aircraft and sail ships are kept somewhat honest and combat capable because if they at any second fail they can be dead falling from the sky or in the water where man really doesn't live. To warfight they need to actively operate air/sea platforms.

In contrast in land combat, man lives on land; he does not need a platform to exist on land that automatically has a war function. He is under no compulsion to be combat ready even by platform default. Man can die on land from EXPOSURE however, and since he lives on land all the time for a peaceful, civilian life his answer to this is FIXED BUILDING SHELTER. Since man has a civilian existence means that has no military platform utility, both the Army and marines have been corrupted by building and lawn care as convenient excuses/time wasters by people who are phonies who do not want to be combat ready, they want to be phony narcissist snobs and extended adolescents paid middle-class wages.

Actives: wake up each morning sleep-deprived, roll call troop formation, do non-sense sports PT, then breakfast, some more troop formations, "leaders" meetings, paperwork, Mondays wasted in motor pool doing PMCS on tactically unsound Humvee SUV trucks, Tuesday/Wednesdays building and lawn care, Thursday meetings, Friday paperwork. WHERE IS THE TIME TO DO ACTIVE WARFIGHTING EXCELLENCE? The entire daily and weekly routine established by the narcissist egomaniacs to baby sit the economic weak co-dependants is geared around BULLSHIT (lawn and building care) not active thinking cat vs. mouse warfighting.

www.combatreform.org/sleeplessarmy.htm

Reserves: one weekend a month they arrive and waste Saturday and Sunday with roll call formation, sports PT then lunch, then yadda yadda meetings, then time to go home for the day. Two weeks in summer is fun time away from wife and kids.

Solutions

1. Get rid of static buildings: force ground troops to every day do combat things by making them live every day in tactically-sound, portable, fortifiable "Battle Boxes" THERE IS NO GARRISON. There is only the FIELD.

www.geocities.com/strategicmaneuver/battleboxconcept.htm
www.geocities.com/strategicmaneuver/battleboxes.htm

2. Make Reserves go to war for 24 hours each month

www.geocities.com/paratroop2000/realreadyreserve.htm

3. Get rid of phony narcissists and economic bennie boomers and replace with warfighter enthusiasts

www.geocities.com/paratroop2000/weakcodependantarmy.htm

4. Cat & Mouse Warfighting Experimentation Needed

www.combatreform.org/cluelessarmy.htm

Once we cut out all the BULLSHIT we will face the tools we have in front of us and start grappling with how we will use them in war and how to better use them by ACTIVE THOUGHT. Force everyone to FACE THE TOOLS THEY HAVE IN FRONT OF THEM their minds will be forced to THINK about what it is they have. FORCE THEM TO BE IN A WAR SETTING AND THEIR MINDS WILL PONDER hey, what if I left on foot over there to patrol and an enemy sapper team is already there?

The same intellectual development and innovation that I undertake will happen with the troops, what we call FIELD CRAFT. How can you have FIELDcraft when you are NOT IN THE FIELD but in garrison doing LAWN CARE?

A few examples:

Drive vehicles and lay smoke screens with OPFOR to perfect what it takes to evade optical weapons engagement

Off-road, x-country driving of TRACKED armored fighting vehicles to avoid roadside bombs/RPG ambushes

Finding out how to hide vehicles from thermal imagery

Shoot actual soft nose RPGs at vehicles and practice evading them

Actual hardening of combat vehicles and loading arragements perfected not static BS "this is the SOP we've always used so go back to sleep"

Pre-Operation Iraqi Freedom

"Rowan Scarborough has it about right in his story today in terms of what Rumsfeld and his lieutenants have in mind for the Army. The Army wanted 7 of its interim wheeled brigades. It will get the 3 it has now which eliminates the need for the side-by-side. It is an example of their arrogance that they believe we will be able to depend on surrogate armies, they know best how to win the nation's wars and until some army lands on our shores, they may be right. In the meantime, the marines landing at Kandahar and SOF running around on horseback providing the ground sensor link to airpower are the examples they point to in planning for the next war. The air force is already claiming that they are now the dominant force and the Army plays a supporting role. We are seeing the wholesale shift in national military strategy. TR Fehrenbach is out. Douhet is in."

Post-Operation Iraqi Freedom

By Gerry J. Gilmore
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 15, 2003 DoD's fiscal 2004 budget proposal now before Congress "is the first to fully reflect the new defense strategies and policies, and the lessons of the global war on terror," the military's top civilian told senior legislators here May 14.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld testified before the Defense Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He said the $379.9 billion DoD fiscal 2004 request would be applied "to meet the threats that this dangerous new century poses, and threats that emerge often without warning."

"We have to apply the lessons from the experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq," the secretary emphasized, in transforming DoD and the services "as to how they organize, how they train, how they equip and exercise and fight" in the 21st century.

For example, Rumsfeld noted, speed and agility displayed by U.S. and coalition forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom prevented Saddam's troops from putting up "a coherent defense," thus shortening the war's duration and reducing casualties.

Another important lesson learned in Iraq was the ability to quickly act upon fresh intelligence, as shown by the surprise March 19 air strike on Hussein's suspected headquarters in Baghdad.

New munitions have proved their worth in 21st century war fighting, Rumsfeld pointed out, such as the thermobaric Hellfire missile that was used for the first time in Iraq against enemy forces. With this Hellfire, an exploding mist creates a powerful shock wave where it detonates, wiping out whatever and whoever is nearby.

As such, that missile "can take out the first floor of a building without damaging the floors above," the secretary explained, "and is capable of reaching around corners, striking enemy forces that hide in caves or bunkers and hardened, multiroom complexes."

Also, U.S. and coalition military planners used computer modeling in determining the best direction, angle of attack and type of weapon to use for air strikes against enemy targets, while reducing civilian casualties and collateral damage.

Consequently, Iraqi Freedom "was done with greater precision than any conflict in history," Rumsfeld asserted.

The secretary said the use of precision munitions against enemy forces and facilities in the Iraq War, "had to have persuaded the Iraqi people that the effort was not against the country of Iraq, was not against the Iraqi people, was not against a religion, but, in fact, was against a regime."

Such success supports "the decision to request increases in the 2004 budget for research and development, testing, evaluation (and) procurement," the secretary observed, as well as ongoing efforts to expedite the development and issuance of new equipment to war fighters.

Joint operations also proved their worth in Iraq, Rumsfeld noted. He pointed out that former prisoner of war Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch was rescued "by a joint team of Navy SEALS, Army Rangers, marines, (and) Air Force" special operations troops.

The employment of such forces, Rumsfeld asserted, proved to be another combat multiplier during fighting in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

Special operators "were the first coalition forces to hit the ground" in Iraq, Rumsfeld said, noting that "a number of them went in before the war formally began." He also cited these troops' "remarkable performance" in Afghanistan.

Such successes "support the decisions we've made to transform the Special Operations Command and to request needed new investments in special operations in the budget," Rumsfeld remarked.

Other important lessons applied to 21st century warfare will also be gleaned from military operations in Iraq, the secretary pointed out.

DoD's 2004 budget request "was developed with warfare of this kind in mind," Rumsfeld declared, "and the experiences in fighting this war have confirmed the decisions made in the Defense Review, which are reflected in the budget before the committee."

NOTE: This is a plain text version of a web page. If your e-mail program did not properly format this information, you may view the story at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/May2003/n05152003_200305151.html Any photos, graphics or other imagery included in the article may also be viewed at this web page.

FEEDBACK! Post-Rumsfeld

An aerospace engineer writes:

"Its is damn discouraging to see billions wasted on V-22, F-22, F-35, Hummers, Net Centric Command Centers, and so forth. A combined arms force of tracked high rate of fire protection vehicles, large caliber, low recoil direct fire vehicles, command and control, and personnel movers together with a fleet of indigenous STOVL attack aircraft and STOL equipment/people mover aircraft with the correct ordnance would be tough counter to the arab/muslim tribal warfare tactics. So we need a basic tracked vehicle base to build a number of versions on, a direct attack aircraft that can get down and dirty, and a non-USAF, non-helicopter Army transport. All of these need an advanced fire control system that can give first shot hit snap shots. Done correctly you'll think you are using iron sights but really are not.

Walking through though streets with hummers or Abrams is not the way to go, it is ambush alley in a confined trap.

Is the Bradley effective in Afganistan and Iraq?

I remember pictures in WW II of the half-tracks with large bore mortars/105mm Howitsers that could be very effective.

How are we going to get this turned around? In listening to the generals testifying before congress they are like chinese heroin addicts that want more of the same to fell good all the time they are destroying themselves.

In the latest Aviation Week they have a disclosure of what the Chinese are working on and that includes building themselves the best fighter/attack aircraft made the Sukhoi Su-27 with there electronics. They have a knack of building what uniquely they need for their geography and tactics."

A former Assistant DA writes:

"Basically what you're saying is that the Navy -- and the Army and AF -- all choose, say, 50% efficient solutions so that they can employ double the number of half-assed (50% efficient) cronies, or do things at 50% efficiency so they can spend twice the amount of money. This is well known from business and government agencies in general. They have little or no incentive to do a good job 100% efficient because they reason that they will get less money and don't think of or care about the damage that 50% solutions do. 50% solutions are not mathematically scalable so that doubling them gives you a full 100%. A 50% military solution could be completely lethal to our side and doubling it only gives you two equally lethal 'solutions' that result in you being wiped out entirely, as you seem to be saying.

What is interesting and despicable are the asskissing bootlickers who cling to the 50% solutions and loudly proclaim they are really 100%. Their proof is the half that works and they cover up the half that does not. I have seen this so many times in so many different areas of life (business, govt, science) and it is just sickening. They cannot be reformed, it is hopeless. Only those who are teachable and willing to learn the truth are worth spending any time or effort on and there is some hope they can have enough influence and networking with other like minds. I know. I've tried."