Because land forces often still believe they are the main element in the battle and therefore must own all other elements deployed to the fight, the issue of command is still argued strenuously—especially by older officers. Younger officers, however, are much more attuned to how best to organize efficiently and to coordinate land, sea, air, and space operations on a trust not ownership basis. On those occasions when the Services do have command issues, the effects are likely to be worse when the forces of other nations are brought together with ours.
Because they do not require stringent command or ownership arrangements to accomplish their missions, air and sea forces normally find it easy to operate together. Land forces, however, normally do require stringent command arrangements, and as a result geographical separation is used to resolve difficult command issues. This works in wars with orderly, linear battle lines. But it cannot work in modern wars where the battlefield is increasingly chaotic and high-speed maneuver takes the place of orderly arrangements of forces. The maintenance of order inhibits speed, which is now the vital element in achieving dominance over your enemy. Furthermore, in future wars like those in Kosovo and Afghanistan, where coalition ground forces are of greater importance than those of the United States, command of U.S. ground forces may be delegated to foreign generals . . . a situation our military has forcefully resisted since Pershing led the American Expeditionary Force in 1917.
The command aspects of warfare will continue to challenge our coalition military and political leaders as each new conflict is addressed. The control of military operations is also fraught with issues that must be resolved.
In every war since Vietnam, control of air operations has relied on capabilities fielded by the United States. During Desert Storm our allies were collocated with U.S. Air Force squadrons so that our communications and computer systems were available for all the Coalition partners’ use. This is how we transmitted the Air Tasking Order and received the intelligence from postmission debriefings. In the air, control nodes included the E-3 Airborne Warning And Control System (AWACS) aircraft that provided traffic control, information updates, and the means for the Tactical Air Control Center to recall or re-task individual sorties. All Coalition aircraft were equipped with Identification Friend or Foe, IFF, transponders . . . although only U.S. forces had the classified coded devices needed to provide absolute identification of friendly aircraft. However, since the air component commander had weapons-release control of the radar-guided surface-to-air missiles and air-to-air fighters, the coded signals were not needed and no friendly aircraft were shot down. Contrast this with the second Iraq war, where a British Tornado and a U.S. F/A-18 were downed by our own Patriot missiles operating under control of the ground forces, and you can see clearly why having good control of air operations capabilities is critical.
Command and control of air operations extends into all aspects of the battle. Due to the potential for killing our own troops, close air support of ground forces requires exacting control measures. In both Iraq wars and in Afghanistan, our own air attacks caused the needless deaths of U.S. and Coalition forces. The two most frequent errors: either the attacking pilot misidentifies our forces, or our forces on the ground provide the pilot with the wrong target coordinates. But a new problem was encountered in Afghanistan, when troops on the ground provided the attacking pilot with their own location rather than that of the Taliban fighters they were trying to target. This came about because they misunderstood how the laser-ranging Global Positioning Satellite system processed its information. They took readings on the enemy position, but transmitted their own location to the attacking pilot, who programmed his guided weapons with the friendly position coordinates and fired.
In this age of advanced information systems and precision munitions, we obviously must increase our ability to closely control air operations. Unfortunately, command and control issues are not always well understood. Or worse, they are formulated with an eye to the past, when armies maneuvered using flags, signal flares, or bugle calls.
LOOKING FORWARD
Meanwhile, new actors are appearing on and over the battle—unmanned aerial and land vehicles.
Imagine a war where one side’s soldiers, sailors, and airmen sit in air-conditioned buildings ten thousand miles from the battle. George Patton would curse such an ignominious situation, where troops need not suffer the hardships of the field, sea, or air; where fear and courage do not guide the actions of combatants; and where the warrior neither bleeds nor dies. Yet we are approaching such a state of affairs. Unmanned vehicles operating in the sea, on land, in the air, and in space are filling missions previously conducted by human beings. Precision munitions allow the combatant to attack and kill the enemy from distances measured in hundreds of miles. . . . Not too long ago, a warrior’s ability to strike an enemy was limited to what he could reach with his sword or his spear.
Aerial reconnaissance is now almost exclusively the realm of unmanned aircraft. Battles for control of the sea will increasingly be fought using cruise missiles. The demand for robotic devices that can explore buildings and attack individuals hidden inside is increasing (a radical change from yesterday’s urban warfare, when the presence of an enemy was first known when he opened fire on you). Other battles will be fought using nonkinetic methods of attack.
Throughout history, psychological methods have been used to traumatize an enemy. The Mongols would slaughter all the inhabitants of a town that resisted their attacks to ensure the inhabitants of other towns would surrender when they arrived there. Today we use far more sophisticated psychological methods to achieve the same results.
Today computer viruses can disable vital utility, banking, or communications-control devices. The use of standoff weapons, unmanned vehicles, and nonkinetic attacks raises a number of moral considerations. To be sure, war—killing people and destroying things—is immoral. Yet using military force is often the question of the lesser evil: Do I kill my enemy before he or she kills me? Do I kill the enemy to halt the pillage, rape, and murder being inflicted on a helpless third party?
In the past, the battle—getting shot at—imparted some measure of emotional relief to those engaged in the killing and destruction. Now one can kill the enemy or destroy the target while drinking a cup of coffee, and then go to a nearby Taco Bell for lunch. What will be the effect of a war on such a warrior where only his low-tech enemy bleeds and dies? Will it make war a more acceptable alternative for the resolution of conflicting nations’ interests? Will it inflict long-lasting, perhaps debilitating, psychological scars on combatants who do not feel the fear and anger currently found in battle, yet still turn their opponents into piles of burnt and bloody flesh?
We are not yet at such a point, but with the advent of each new unmanned system and new nonkinetic weapon, and with the increasing range of precision munitions, we approach an age where the nature of warfare will pose many painful new dilemmas.
CHALLENGES AND DILEMMAS
The recent conflicts in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq have also posed unique dilemmas for military forces in what is commonly referred to as the postconflict or stabilization phase. Current military doctrine, training, equipment, and procedures do not adequately address the missions required by the war now being waged against radical Islamic terrorists and their state sponsors.
In 1991—even though the local populace welcomed our liberating forces, even though the Kuwaitis had large cash reserves that could be used to rehabilitate themselves, and even though Kuwait’s Arab neighbors, like Saudi Arabia, made great efforts to provide for the immediate needs of refugees and thousands of Iraqi prisoners of war—it was a struggle to stabilize postwar Kuwait. Our Air Force had to get the International Airport running as soon as possible to support the airlift bringing in emergency supplies, while our Navy did the same for the port and adjacent waters mined by the Iraqi Navy. Civilian contractors rushed to Kuwait to extinguish the fires burning fiercely in the oil fields. But the role of reha
bilitation fell mainly on the U.S. Army, a force that was trained and configured to fight tank battles and capture territory. Our Army had to ensure adequate food, water, utilities, transportation, police protection, and security forces were available so the citizens of the razed and looted country did not suffer inordinately. Though Lieutenant General John Yeosock, Commander 3rd Army, took control, and his forces worked tirelessly to ensure the pain and suffering of Kuwaitis was minimized, it nevertheless took many months to bring normalcy to the nation that had suffered so horribly from seven months of Iraqi occupation.
The same tasks arose after Serbian military forces were driven out of Kosovo, after the Taliban and Al-Qaeda military were defeated in Afghanistan, and after Saddam Hussein’s rule over Iraq was broken. But in those countries we faced a very different situation. There the populace had mixed views about our postconflict presence, capabilities available to restore basic services were limited, and in many locations the security situation was tenuous. Though the international community supported the postconflict efforts, in each case the chief responsibility fell once again on the U.S. military—primarily on its Army.
It was recognized early in the planning for the second war against Iraq that the postconflict tasks would be huge. Our experience in postwar Germany in 1945 provided a model for ensuring that members of the former regime, who had directly participated in Saddam’s reign of suppression and terror, would not escape judgment nor be placed in new positions of authority. Our military police had the doctrine and training to handle large numbers of prisoners of war. Our logistics teams, engineering battalions, and medical cadres knew how to quickly bring support to a country ravaged by war. What we lacked was an appreciation of the extent our efforts would be frustrated by terrorists who saw postwar Iraq as their battleground, by former regime members who fought fiercely to seize back control of the country, and by a people traumatized by an evil dictator’s decades of rule.
Our efforts were often also hampered by a lack of cooperation and coordination among various U.S. government and international agencies. Many turf battles in Washington, Europe, and the United Nations migrated to Iraq. Though valiant efforts were made, all soon learned that postconflict is the most difficult phase in this type of war. Serious mistakes were made, which made the job even more difficult.
The most notable problem was the handling of prisoners in facilities where it is impossible to separate the military prisoner from a terrorist from a common criminal from an innocent person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Pictures of the shameful abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the American-run Abu Ghraib prison made sensational news, and were used to castigate our country by everyone opposed to our interests, to our efforts in Iraq, or to the war there.
There is no excuse for the actions of those who abused the prisoners. But their criminal behavior was investigated fully, and those charged were tried and punished in accordance with the Code of Military Justice.
The larger question is: How could this have happened? The answer: We as a military are ill-prepared to conduct the missions thrust upon us after the battles have been won. Abu Ghraib is a sterling example of how the military needs to change to meet the demands of postconflict stabilization.
The prison at Abu Ghraib was filled to capacity. The inmates were mixed with legitimate prisoners of war, terrorists, common criminals, and innocent citizens (including women and children). Our Military Police are trained to process and contain those prisoners of war who bring with them standards of conduct, a chain of command, and protections under the Geneva Convention. Undertrained for the task they were sent to perform, they guarded murderous individuals and vile sexual deviants, along with innocent men, women, and children. To further complicate this explosive environment, there was a need to interrogate the prisoners in order to assist in the fight to provide security to the countryside outside the prison walls, as well as to identify those individuals who should be released immediately. Meanwhile, the internal organization of our Military Police and Military Intelligence hampered the coordination and cooperation between these two disciplines, while long tours of duty in the region led to rotation policies that resulted in a lack of unit cohesion, inexperienced or weak leadership, and inconsistent procedures. All of this blew up after those Military Police at Abu Ghraib, who were responsible for the criminal abuse, tried to excuse their behavior as part of a process to extract intelligence information from their Iraqi prisoners. Neither was it helpful when hostile critics attempted to portray this crime as typical of all the military, or as a result of political policies they believed wrong.
What should be the lesson learned from Abu Ghraib? Our military, and even our government beyond the Pentagon, must examine our capabilities in order to bring together the elements needed to stabilize another postwar situation such as we find in Iraq today.
★ Historically the church and the military are highly resistant to change. The dogmas of both are etched in stone; their self-images are articles of faith, not of reflection; and their leaders are more concerned with preservation of the institution than with change. The military can no longer remain that inflexible. Technology, the challenges it must confront, and the means by which it plies its trade are simply changing too rapidly to allow it to maintain those traditions. Today’s wars are fought in a revolutionary manner, with new capabilities emerging every few months. The pace of information technology revolutions is even quicker. Land, sea, air, and space vehicles become obsolete more rapidly than in the past, and in some cases even before they can be deployed, as new materials are invented, microprocessors shrink in size and balloon in capacity, and new countermeasures are created to offset advantages in armor, speed, stealth, or range.
Technology is not the only consideration that demands rapid and constant change in our military. As the United States military forces prove their prowess in battle, potential enemies take note and later tailor the threats they pose to our vital interests in ways that take advantage of holes and weaknesses they perceive in our capabilities. The guided weapon of the terrorist is a human being with an explosive vest ready to die for his cause. The B-2 bomber of a radical Islamic terrorist is a B-767 filled with fuel and flown into the Pentagon. The battlefield is no longer the deserts of Iraq but the minds of young Islamic people forced to choose how they see the world and what their place is in it.
A huge role remains for military forces to protect our country’s vital interests and its citizens, but the challenges and the threats to those interests are changing almost more rapidly than our military forces can adapt to them. The need to change, and the pace of that change, are the greatest challenge our military forces face today. Fortunately, because we live in a free and profoundly diverse society, and because of our ability to master technology and our willingness to be self-critical, our nation and our military are highly adaptable. We will confront the changes and institute the needed reforms.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to all the men and women who flew over the Gulf and performed such magnificent feats, as well as those who supported them on the ground and on the water. Thanks, too, to G. P. Putnam’s Sons, for letting me do these four books on command—it’s been a real learning experience. And thanks to you, Chuck—the right man in the right place at the right time.
TOM CLANCY
The folks who deserve acknowledgments from me are Tom Clancy, who collaborated with me and got me hooked up with William Morris, who didn’t want me but learned to love me. To John Gresham, who got me started with lots of clerical help and shared enthusiasms. And to Tony Koltz, who asked the right questions, told me how sorry a writer I am, and procrastinated sufficiently to mean I am working on this four years after I was ready to go.
CHUCK HORNER
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