Military Strategies

[SWJED]

20 April Washington Times commentary - Military Strategies by Major General Robert Scales (USA Ret).

... One particularly prophetic series of games exercised plans that took down a "particular" nation's nuclear-weapons capability without a traditional land invasion. In these games, aero-mechanized brigades established a series of temporary enclaves surrounding enemy WMD sites and held the enemy at bay until all of his weapons were systematically (and bloodlessly) located and completely destroyed by ground forces. We knew then that aero-mechanized maneuver would work. It would change the entire course of modern war. All we needed was a defense establishment that believed as passionately as we did in the concept.

We were pretty much ignored. Since the first Bush administration the consistent message was that future wars would be won with "shock and awe." Kill enough of them from the air and the war would be cheaply won, at least for our side.

Budgets reflected this love affair with aerial killing. Since Gen. Huba's first exposition in the early 1990s, 70 percent of defense investments, more than $1.3 trillion, have gone into shock and awe, delivered by Air Force and Navy aircraft and missiles.

The Army got 16 percent. Thus, we come today to an amazingly perverse strategic circumstance. We have more first-line fighter aircraft costing $50 million to $400 million per copy than we have Army and Marine infantry squads, costing less than $100,000 each.

Since Gen. Huba's experiments began, we have achieved a "kill ratio" in aerial combat of 257 to one over enemy air forces. In the second battle of Fallujah that ratio for Marine and Army soldiers was, at best, six or seven to one. Why? Because in large measure our soldiers and Marines had to assault those buildings in Fallujah on foot, virtually unprotected, just as their grandfathers did in World War II.

So here we are trying to find a way to rid Iran of its nuclear weapons and the only warfighting tool in the tool box is shock and awe. Simply put, there is no ground option. We have too few soldiers to fight the wars we have, much less take on another enemy. Even if we had the ground forces, without an aerial maneuver option we could never hope to reach Iran's nuclear facilities by a ground invasion. So we'll blow them all up with bombs. Right...

[Tom Odom]

General Scales is once again on target. He was my boss in writing Certain Victory; I had the air war and intel chapters plus all things Iraqi and rewriting the ground war chapter.

Shock and Awe goes back to "Instant Thunder"--the precursor to the Air War plan. I was briefed on it early into Desert Shield; it was premised on the idea that a massive but "pin point" takedown of Saddam's Iraq would cause him to throw in the towel and pull out of Kuwait. It did not put a single bomb or airframe against the Iraqi heavy forces poised on the border with Saudi. We had elements of the 101st, 82d, and Marines and that was all. We were critically short of tank killing munitions (and would be for nearly 90 days). And here was a USAF BG complete with flight rompers and scarf esposung this "plan" to Dan Farley, an Apache Driver who worked ops in the Army Ops Cemter, an A10 Driver from CENTCOM, and me as the current intel analyst on the Mid East for the Army Staff. My response to the BG was along the lines of "your #$%@ CRAZY, Sir," one echoed by the A10 driver, probably saving my ass from insubordination charges.

General Scales allowed me to put a limited version of that scene in Certain Victory, a decision also approved by then LTG Peay as DSCOPS. Both wanted to bring out the AF tendency to push "Brass Ring" strategies and tactics. Sadly that tendency has never stopped. Scales use of statistics on fighters versus squads is what we need more off. F22s don't win small wars (or even big wars) by themselves.

Best
Tom

[slapout9]

Read War and Peace in the Space Age written in 1958 BY Genral James Gavin former commander of the 82nd and you will find that what General Scales talked about is exactly what Genral Gavin wanted as a future 82nd Airborne division. Most people don't know it but what are called PGM"s were invented by the Army but were called guided missles and were platform independant. Any service could use them on any platform. The Gavin Army was to be an Airborne Guided missile army with lightweigt air drop, air transportable armor, with UAV's for the ground force commander. This was already in process before it was stripped of this capability in the late 50' early 60's. This led to his premature resignation because he refused to standby and watch the army and marines stripped of what they needed to fight. He even coined the term pushbutton warfare where UAV's give data to missle artillery and the ground commander can launch and get BDA in real time.

[Merv Benson]

Scales is a smart guy, and we should pay attention to his ideas. However, it seems to me that what he has described is consistent with Secretary Rumsfeld's transformation goals of making the projection of force faster and lighter. It is surprising that he has not been able to sell this idea. History has shown that combined arms or in the new buzz word jointness is the winning formula that reduces casualties on all sides by rapidly overwhelming an enemy. This is really what the major combat operations phase of the Iraq liberation was all about. The forces that Scales suggest whould have made that task even quicker if we could have by passed the Turkey problem and inserted armored forces in northern Iraq or even western Iraq.

Isn't the Styrker intended to operate the way Scales is suggesting?

[Jones_RE]

Striker isn't ready for a forced entry scenario. I also seriously question the ability of these ground units to get out once the job is done. Airborne units combine tactical surprise with strategic mobility. Once both assets are expended, they're light infantry - with all of the attendant strengths and weaknesses. An attempt to withdraw by air (while under fire) would get very complicated - units would have to conduct phased retreats to wherever the transports are. As troops pulled out, the defensive capability of the assault force decreases. Theoretically, an expendable force of unmanned ground vehicles (or third party nationals, or contracted mercenaries for the ruthless among us) could hold the line. Theoretically, sufficient firepower in the form of air support would prevent an enemy advance. Of course, theoretically, sufficient firepower in the form of air support can just destroy the facility in question.

Our investment in air power has caused an adaptation on the part of our enemies. They avoid concentrating large numbers of troops in the open. In Iraq, they've all but abandoned the use of heavy weapons - even mortar fire is sharply curtailed compared to other conflicts. These adaptations don't make air power useless - after all, it's very useful to our Marines and Soldiers on the ground that various insurgent forces aren't massing in battalion strength outside their FOBs every night. But I do think that we've neglected light infantry capabilities to a serious degree.

[Tom Odom]

Scales is a smart guy, and we should pay attention to his ideas. However, it seems to me that what he has described is consistent with Secretary Rumsfeld's transformation goals of making the projection of force faster and lighter. It is surprising that he has not been able to sell this idea. History has shown that combined arms or in the new buzz word jointness is the winning formula that reduces casualties on all sides by rapidly overwhelming an enemy. This is really what the major combat operations phase of the Iraq liberation was all about. The forces that Scales suggest whould have made that task even quicker if we could have by passed the Turkey problem and inserted armored forces in northern Iraq or even western Iraq.

Isn't the Styrker intended to operate the way Scales is suggesting?

At the risk of speaking for General Scales I would say his ideas are quite different than those of the Secretary Defense who remains tied to ideas that do not reflect the reality of boots on the ground as the key to winning. Scales definitely believes in boots on the ground.

Combined arms warfare and jointness are interrelated but separate ideas. Combined arms has usually been applied as a doctrine by ground forces (including use of aerial fires); jointness is purely targeted toward improving inner service cooperation, a goal that has been around since we pushed horses over the sides of Navy transports off the coast of Cuba.

Stryker is a medium skinned vehicle designed to speed the movement of lighter forces and improve C2I through its suite of digital systems.


best
Tom

[zenpundit]

"Airborne units combine tactical surprise with strategic mobility. Once both assets are expended, they're light infantry - with all of the attendant strengths and weaknesses."

Operation Market Garden