Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq

by Tom Clancy

  If an enemy facing the corps has a vulnerable flank, the corps commander might use his two lead divisions as a fixing force and maneuver his third division around to the flank and rear of the now-fixed enemy.

  If there appears to be no assailable flank, the corps commander might concentrate combat power on a narrow front and force a penetration of enemy defenses, then pass follow-on corps maneuver elements through the breach rapidly into the enemy rear.

  He will normally time his selected maneuver so his units have time to execute, but also late enough so that the enemy will not have time to react (he wants the enemy to stay fixed in the posture best suited for the attacking corps to be successful). In order to accomplish whatever maneuver he selects, the divisions will pass through the cavalry regiment (which is already engaged with the enemy). The 8,000 vehicles of each division will maneuver through parts of the cavalry regiment that are spread across the corps front. Sometimes this is done in daylight; sometimes in dark. It is never easy. Meanwhile the corps intensifies the deep fight with its own Apache aircraft, long-range tactical missiles, and support from theater air. These attacks are normally another eighty kilometers in front of the division attacks of fifty to seventy-five kilometers deep.

  Divisions take up the fight from the cavalry regiment with their 300-plus tanks, 200-plus infantry fighting vehicles, 72 155-mm howitzers and 18 MLRS launchers (each with 12 rockets), and 24 Apache attack helicopters. They maneuver in their sectors, choosing their own form of maneuver (penetration, infiltration, envelopment, or frontal attack) for the mission. When the entire corps is brought on line, the seventy-five-kilometer-wide-by-thirty-kilometer-deep division sector of destruction is now extended in front by another seventy-five kilometers. This last zone of destruction will not be total, however, but will depend on available assets. Behind the main zone of attack, the supporting elements of the corps stretch some seventy-five to one hundred kilometers deep.

  The corps will also normally have a reserve. The reserve can exploit an opportunity to maintain the momentum of the attack, or else it can be available to react to an enemy surprise. In a three- to five-division corps, the reserve might initially be a single division in the movement to contact, or it might be the cavalry regiment after the attacking divisions have passed through.

  IN short, the mounted corps will be the principal means of destruction of the enemy force. It not only is capable of attacking the enemy directly, but it also has the mobility to move deep in the enemy rear and do its damage there.

  To create such a powerful force means putting together a complex organization with many moving parts. Such a force will usually be tailored for a specific theater of operations and a known enemy. It will usually have two to five armored or mechanized divisions. It will also have eight to ten non-division organizations, such as an armored cavalry regiment, an artillery command of two to four artillery brigades, an aviation brigade, an engineer brigade, a military intelligence brigade, a signal brigade, an air defense brigade, a personnel brigade, and a finance brigade. Its support command is normally bigger than any of the divisions.

  To quote Franks: "Modern warfare is tough, uncompromising, and highly lethal. The enemy is found and engaged at ranges from a few meters to thousands of meters. Casualties are sudden. Because of that, commanders and soldiers at every level are also aware of the intense human dimension of war. The results are final and frozen in time for a lifetime. There are no real winners in war. Objectives are achieved, but always at a cost to your soldiers. That is why force protection is a vital ingredient of combat power. It is why at all levels the aim always is mission at least cost. Commanders and soldiers have to feel it all to really know what to do. But in feeling it all, they must not be paralyzed into inaction. They must decide, often in nanoseconds, make it stick, and go on. They must feel, but they also must act. They cannot give in to second-guessing themselves or to emotions. That is what makes combat leadership so demanding and why officers train so hard and constantly throughout a professional lifetime to make the few tough decisions they have to make in battle. It all comes down to that."

  U.S. Army commanders, soldiers, and units regularly train to move and fight such a complex and powerful organization to achieve its full potential. Each officer and noncommissioned leader demonstrates competence at each succeeding level of command and responsibility before being entrusted with the next level. Moreover, NCOs and officers are afforded opportunities for education and training at each advancement progression to reinforce the level of competence. Normally it takes from twenty-eight to thirty years of experience, personal study, demonstrated competence, education, and training to develop a corps commander. A division commander normally has twenty-two to twenty-five years. Brigade commanders from twenty to twenty-two years. Battalion commanders and their Command Sergeant Majors seventeen to twenty years. Company first sergeants usually fifteen to eighteen years, platoon sergeants ten to fifteen years. In Desert Storm in 1991, most battalion commanders had entered the Army in the early 1970s. No other army in the world has such depth in officer and noncommissioned officer leadership or goes to such lengths to train and educate that leadership.

  Devastating combat actions executed by mounted units on the battlefield don't just happen. They are planned, synchronized, and executed by skilled professionals, always so that the combat power can be brought to bear to accomplish the mission at least cost to the soldiers.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  March to the Sound of the Guns

  IT would soon be time for Fred Franks to put all that knowledge into action--but in a way he never expected.

  In the fall of 1989, the Warsaw Pact was collapsing, the Iron Curtain opened, and the Cold War seemed to be coming to an end. For over four decades, the U.S. Army in Europe, as part of NATO, had "fought" that war, not in actual battles, but in planning, training, and exercises. The mission in that war had been to deter and defend--to make the enemy unwilling to risk attack and, if they did attack, to throw them out. Now the mission had been successful.

  But now what? What was the Army's mission in Europe--in the whole world, for that matter--now that it appeared to be no longer East versus West? The Army's leaders quickly began to move to answer such questions.

  IN August 1989, just as the Iron Curtain was beginning its final collapse, Lieutenant General Fred Franks took command of VII Corps--the "Jayhawks." With headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, the Cold War VII Corps was 110,000 U.S., German, and Canadian soldiers (74,000 of them were U.S.). Its major units were the 1st Armored Division, 3rd Infantry Division, 12th German Panzer (i.e., Armor) Division, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, 11th Aviation Brigade, VII Corps Artillery (three brigades), a Canadian brigade, the 4th CMBG (the 4th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group, the Army Group reserve), logistics (Corps Support Command), and corps separate brigades of military police (14th MP Brigade), military intelligence (207th MI Brigade), signal (93rd Signal Brigade), engineers (7th Engineer Brigade), finance (7th Finance Group), and personnel (7th Personnel Group).

  By the turn of the new year, it was evident that the end of the Soviet empire was likely to be permanent. That meant that Franks faced hard questions, not the least of them being how he was to deal with the drawdown of VII Corps units.

  Now that the mission to defend against a Soviet-led invasion seemed over, the United States was sure to cut back in Europe. Two U.S. corps were then stationed in Germany, the V and the VII. In a matter of months, the two corps would be pared down to one, with units inactivating in each corps. Fred Franks would have the unhappy responsibility of presiding over the termination of many of his proud units.

  That was several months down the road, however. In the near term, he had more pressing tasks. He had seen the flood of East Germans coming west in November. By early March 1990, he had pulled the 2nd ACR off their over-forty-year border mission. Formal mission changes would eventually be issued, but for Franks and VII Corps, change was needed now in training. He thought of new missions.
<
br />   One thing was certain: they would be nothing like the terrain-oriented mission the corps had been used to. In a terrain-oriented mission, the lanes and routes the attackers can take are well known. You set up obstacles to slow him down while your own reserves are flown in. If you have to fall back, it is to already prepared positions. Your logistical support and command-and-control structure are clear and well worked out. Your command posts can remain in previously prepared positions where communications are dependable. After four decades of confrontation in Europe, defense against every conceivable attack had been minutely choreographed.

  That would no longer be the case. In a rapidly changing world, the new mission for a powerful armored corps like VII would more likely involve finding and killing a similarly powerful opposing force at some distance from the corps's launch point. In other words, it would be a force-oriented mission, involving a long--100 kilometers or more--movement to contact, followed by a meeting engagement.

  Thus the corps commander and the corps staff needed to know how to move the corps over those long distances. In contact, they needed to achieve coherence of formation--to keep units physically positioned relative to one another so that they could mutually support one another in a fight--and to rapidly focus their combat power--to arrange their tanks, infantry, artillery, and aviation in the right combination for maximum effect against the enemy. Formation alignments would have to be shifted rapidly . . . and units would have to be trained to know how to do that. Reactions and responses would have to be trained to a much greater quickness than in terrain-oriented operations. There would have to be far greater adaptability of mind and agility of units. Meanwhile, logistics would become stretched out. A lot of material would somehow have to find its way to the right units, all of them on the move: food, fuel, and ammo. And the entire corps--all of its many component units--would have to be orchestrated the way Franks and Brookshire had orchestrated the 2nd Squadron of the Blackhorse in Vietnam.

  Training, training, and more training! More important, a different mind-set from the now-vanishing Cold War scenarios would have to be created. Agility and adaptability don't come easily.

  In the fall of 1989, at the start of his command of VII Corps, Franks was already talking about fighting the corps as a corps, and not as a collection of individual units battling to defend a piece of NATO territory. Early in 1990, he published a "commander's intent" directive with a vision for an "agile" corps. He followed that in May with details. The corps, he said, must be prepared to "master rapid transition in tactical maneuvers, attack to defense, defense to attack, attack from the march. . . ." The tasks included "moving rapidly over great distances, fighting from the march, retaining the initiative in meeting engagements, conducting hasty attacks/defenses, sustaining combat power continuously. . . ."

  Major exercises in 1990 put these ideas into practice. In January, General Butch Saint ordered that the annual REFORGER exercise engaging VII Corps against V Corps begin with tactical movement that brought them to contact and then a meeting engagement. Saint also had been talking about a "capable" corps, meaning one that clearly must be able to do more than its NATO mission. Later that winter, in a BCTP exercise with Major General Tom Rhame's 1st Infantry Division--the Big Red One--at Fort Riley, Kansas, Franks and VII Corps took the ideas even further.

  Because of the old Cold War lineup of forces, VII Corps was the 1st Infantry's immediate headquarters (in the event of war in Europe, the division would have moved to positions in Germany under VII Corps as a REFORGER unit). Even so, VII Corps would not have normally supervised the BCTP, or any of the division's tactical training in the United States. However, Franks recognized that the BCTP exercise was another opportunity to train for the likely new corps mission, so with the okay of III Corps (their normal U.S. HQ) he brought a corps headquarters team to Fort Riley, plugged them into the Big Red One's command structure, and changed the training scenario from the old Cold War defensive mission to something completely different, again involving long unit movements climaxed by meeting engagements.

  Adapting to these last-minute changes was no simple matter for Rhame and his commanders and staff, and it was a big risk, too. All those involved could fall flat on their faces in a big way. Specifically, they weren't used to working within the context of a corps offensive operation--that is, as one unit operating in concert with several others, all under the direction of the corps commander. At the same time, they were used to the Cold War scenarios, all set in Germany. This new scenario was not in their planning and training scheme, or their mission requirements, and it required some fast footwork on their part.

  In fact, Generals Rhame and Franks did not even know each other. They were all starting completely cold.

  As it turned out, it was a terrific exercise for everyone, and it told Franks a great deal about Tom Rhame and his commanders and staff--primarily that they could take rapid mission changes in stride and go on to execute the mission. Later on, this knowledge influenced Franks's mission assignment to Rhame's division not once but twice.

  In May, then again later in the summer, Franks used a similar scenario for Major General Dutch Shoffner and the 3rd Infantry Division (their 3rd Brigade would deploy with 1st AD) BCTP exercises--that is, long movement to contact, followed by a meeting engagement, followed by an attack or defense, depending on the success of the meeting engagement. Major General Ron Griffith, on his own initiative, brought his entire 1st AD command element to the field during this exercise. He mirrored what 3rd Infantry was doing and in that manner was able to get an exercise for his division.

  In June, VII Corps's 11th Aviation Brigade deployed Apaches to Israel for a live-fire training exercise in the Negev Desert. For Franks and his aviators, it was valuable training that they could not do in Europe, plus they were able to gain lessons on deployment of aircraft and units.

  In September, Franks and his commanders and staff did a VII Corps seminar for one week as part of the preparation for their own BCTP WARFIGHTER exercise to take place in early March '91. That week was an intense series of discussions, tactical problem solving, and commander-to-commander interaction. In that seminar, Franks also used a scenario that required the corps to move a long distance and attack from the march. Elements of the corps also trained with a still-experimental JSTARS system (Joint Surveillance Target-Acquisition System), the first time that revolutionary technology had been used by an operational unit. JSTARS aircraft are modified Boeing 707s with the capability, through recently developed radar technology, of seeing unit moves on the ground over a wide radius, and showing these moves in real time over downlink facilities. JSTARS gives commanders the capability of knowing all the enemy's moves over the deep battlefield, a great advantage to have in the kind of force-oriented missions Fred Franks foresaw for U.S. Army corps in the future. Later, in Saudi Arabia, Franks recalled those capabilities and successfully lobbied for the use of JSTARS in theater. Though the system was still experimental, JSTARS was too useful to do without.

  A leader has to know how his commanders will respond to situations they're likely to encounter in battle. Training exercises provide the most realistic opportunity to observe commanders in action. These exercises--REFORGER, the BCTPs with the 1st Infantry Division, and the 3rd Infantry Division, VII Corps, BCTP seminar--also provided Fred Franks with the opportunity to see how he himself and his corps staff handled the new situations VII Corps would surely face if it was ever to fight another war.

  It wasn't luck that VII Corps was ready, and trained, to fight Saddam Hussein's best in February of the following year.

  ON 2 August 1990, the Iraqi army invaded and occupied Kuwait. Soon afterward, President Bush sent U.S. air, sea, and ground units to the Persian Gulf region to deter Iraqi aggression. An extension of Iraqi conquests a few kilometers down Saudi Arabia's east coast would put Saddam Hussein in charge of close to half of the world's known oil supplies. By mid-August the Army's 82nd Airborne Division and the 7th Marine Expeditionary Brigade were ta
king up positions in northeast Saudi Arabia, showing American resolve--if not a great deal of combat power. During the following weeks, more powerful ground units from the United States and other members of the Coalition that President Bush had created to stop the Iraqi threat arrived in Saudi Arabia. If Saddam Hussein was ever of a mind to continue his conquests toward the south, he now had second thoughts.

  Meanwhile, in Stuttgart, General Franks was looking at ways his VII Corps might become useful to the Army in the present crisis. Whether or not VII Corps would eventually be deployed to southwest Asia was a national policy decision, but VII Corps was available, it was relatively close (Germany is about the same distance from Saudi Arabia as New York from California), for the time being it was not really needed for the defense of Europe, and it was a heavy, armored corps, much of which had recently trained for offensive, force-oriented missions--the kind of missions that would surely be necessary if the decision were made to forcibly uproot the Iraqis from Kuwait. So it was certainly possible that all or part of the corps would go to Saudi. More to the point, Franks knew that fellow soldiers were in a tough spot, the United States was deeply committed, and it was up to him to anticipate and look to the future where VII Corps was concerned. For Franks, the strategic situation resembled the days in 1945 when the European war ended, permitting forces to be shifted from that theater to the Pacific. The commanders had to find out first what was going on in that other theater of operations.