We Still Need the Big Guns

[jcustis]

Sir,

No disrespect intended, but what the hell does an Air Force officer know about what is going on in the Army at 6' AGL? Seriously?

Actually, the reality is quite different. The lesson of Iraq is that old-fashioned force works. Add 30,000 of the world’s finest infantry to the 135,000 battle-hardened troops already there, as we have done, and the outnumbered insurgency is in serious trouble. Detain thousands more Iraqis as security threats, and the potential for violence inevitably declines. Press reports indicate that the number of Iraqis in prison doubled over the last year, to 30,000 from 15,000; and while casualty figures are sketchy, military officials told USA Today last September that the number of insurgents killed was already 25 percent higher in 2007 than in all of 2006.

I think the term "force" may have been confused with the warfighting principle of "mass". I'm not so sure that the surge resulted in more applied force. I could be wrong, but I'm not so sure.

The problem emerges when we consider pouring excessive resources into preparing for only one kind of conflict. Doing so would put us at real risk of losing the technological superiority that has kept America’s vastly more dangerous threats at bay. Consider, for example, that our warplanes are on average more than 25 years old.

C'mon for chrissakes...what are these excessive resources? Is this an example of what they call a strawman argument? Any references? Or is there a concern that the MRAP purchases are sinking funding for advance technology fighters? Based on the exact lessons of Iraq, would we be wrong to assume that IEDs are going to be employed in a Korean peninsula scenario? I read the op-ed, and it smells like just another thinly-veiled and parochial push to advance a service-slanted agenda.

I think RTK and Cavguy will agree with my assertion that current operations are different than conventional operations to some degree, but closer to a wide range of fights that FM 3-0 or MCDP 1-X is designed to show a path for, than people sometimes see at higher levels.

I think of RTK because when I asked him if he had any schoolhouse insight on recce tactics in Iraq in the COIN context, he told me flatly that although there were certain twists, reconnaissance and security was just like the pubs laid out...reconnaissance and security.

As a case in point, I've always tried to get it into the head of my light armored recon brethren that if we were capable of conducting nothing more than zone recon, area security, and a screen, then an LAR company could accomplish just about anything it needed to perform in Iraq. IED layers are not much more (once they've reached the emplacement phase) different than the Soviet combat reconnaissance patrols of the old COE that were trying to penetrate the security screen. Interdicting the other phases of the IED cycle may require different fine motor skills, but the gross motor skills are pretty much the same. Conduct tactical movement, establish a screen, conduct surveillance under all visibility conditions, etc.

As for crystal-balling the prospect of fighting in Korea, that's smashmouth stuff, so I wouldn't be too worried about training my troops in 50-100 Korean control phrases. Is it wrong-headed to think that way and not say, "well, we were flat-footed in our Arabic skills prior to the invasion, so we should brush up on Korean..."? Perhaps, but we don't live in a world with crystal balls.