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Food Fight! Navy Man Bites Air Force Satellite Dog

dolman — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:30:47 +0000

Navy Hits USAF On Satellite Acquisition (UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL 17 MAR 08)WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy has told lawmakers it fears being short-changed when cuts are made to over-budget spy satellite programs run by the Air Force.

In unusually blunt testimony, Rear Adm. Kenneth Deutsch, director of warfare integration in the Navy’s communications networks office, raised a series of concerns about the U.S. Air Force’s management of some Defense satellite programs.

The March 4 testimony was first reported by GovernmentExecutive.Com’s Bob Brewin, who said it broke (an) unspoken code of conduct” that “top officials of the four services … usually take pains to not take shots at each other.”

Deutsch said satellite programs managed by the Air Force, which is the Defense Department’s executive agent for space, “tend to shortchange” — in Brewin’s phrase — Navy requirements and missions.

“Without active Navy involvement today in ongoing deliberations over future satellite programs, the Navy risks operating in future scenarios with multibillion-dollar National Security Space systems sub-optimized for the maritime environment, which is increasingly important as maritime domain awareness requirements are developed.”

He told the hearing it was important Navy official were involved from the start in planning the satellite acquisition programs, which take years to reach fruition and are notorious for running over budget.

“Due to the long lead times involved, it is therefore critical that naval requirements and maritime missions be factored into the pre-launch design and planned in-orbit operation of all future satellite systems being considered for acquisition through the (Defense Department) executive agent for space,” he said.

In his testimony, he fretted that many such programs already “face technological and budgetary hurdles, which could force future capability trade-offs affecting the maritime environment and could ultimately impact their utility to the Navy.

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COMMITTEE: Senate Armed Services Committee Subcommittee on Strategic Forces

Navy Man Bites Air Force Satellite Dog

http://armed-services.senate.gov/statemnt/2008/March/Deutsch%2003-04-08.pdf

When top officials of the four services appear before congressional committees, they usually take pains to not take shots at each other.

That’s a wise move, or a hearing could end up a partisan food fight.

Rear Admiral Kenneth Deutsch, director of warfare integration in the Navy’s communications networks office, broke this unspoken code of conduct on March 4 when he took some rather direct shots at Defense satellite programs managed by the Air Force.

Deutsch told the committee that satellite programs managed by the Air Force, which is the Defense executive agent for space, tend to shortchange Navy requirements and missions. “Without active Navy involvement today in ongoing deliberations over future satellite programs, the Navy risks operating in future scenarios with multibillion-dollar National Security Space systems suboptimized for the maritime environment, which is increasingly important as maritime domain awareness requirements are developed.”He told the hearing that “due to the long lead times involved, it is therefore critical that naval requirements and maritime missions be factored into the pre-launch design and planned in-orbit operation of all future satellite systems being considered for acquisition through the DoD executive agent for space..”

Deutsche said many satellite programs currently under development “face technological and budgetary hurdles, which could force future capability trade-offs affecting the maritime environment and could ultimately impact their utility to the Navy.” He added the service intends to press its case with Defense leadership to ensure its “needs in space are identified, understood, resourced and protected.”

How Deutsch will make this happen, I don’t know. Maybe send a carrier battle group after the Air Force?

Dolman Speaks (too)

dolman — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:02:00 +0000

Jeremy Hsu of Imaginova penned an article for Space News: “Space Arms Race Heats up Overnight.” A few choice bits (my emphases):

“It was an unfortunate choice by the United States that seems to have been unnecessary. The fact is that satellites fall from space all the time and the risk of it was fairly minimal,” said Stephen Young, the senior analyst in Washington, D.C., for the Union of Concerned Scientist’s Global Security Program. “But the implications of the satellite shootdown could be very severe. We’re talking about a potential arms race in space.”

“It’s a step backward in terms of weaponization of space because whatever the U.S. government’s official stance is, the world perception is that this was an ASAT test,” said Phil Smith, assistant director for Research and Planning for the Secure World Foundation.

“This is obviously being hailed as a victory both politically, because the [U.S.] administration can claim there was no loss of life, and technically because it worked,” said Theresa Hitchens, Center for Defense Information director. “It helped the [U.S.] Navy demonstrate the capabilities of its missile defense system.”

“Since China did their ASAT [anti-satellite] test and got into political hot water, there’s been debate in China about whether to go forward,” Hitchens said. “This would seem to give PLA [People's Liberation Army] hardliners more ammunition for their argument, and also gives other nations the signal that it’s okay if you test this technology if it’s done safely.”

Another expert saw China’s internal debate differently, even as China asked for more information about the U.S. satellite shootdown.

“Their concern is not whether they should continue with their military space program,” said Everett Dolman, a professor of comparative military studies at Maxwell Air Force Base.

Dolman added that much of the international outcry over China’s test was over the large debris field left in orbit by the Chinese satellite’s destruction, and so the Chinese were likely discussing how to prevent such international condemnation in future tests. He sees the continuing weaponization of space as almost a certainty, particularly as the U.S. and China continue jockeying to maintain and increase their global power.

“If there is going to be a big conflict between the U.S. and China, it’s likely the first salvoes will be in space because the security needs of the U.S. and China are incompatible there,” Dolman said.

At least one expert saw the demonstration as a crucial step by the U.S. to ensure its military and political dominance if a space arms race becomes inevitable.

“This was in my view a very positive move by the U.S. for stability,” said Dolman. “The fact that you’re using a Navy ship and a fairly standard weapon to do this is really ratcheting up the technology curve.”

We Still Need the Big Guns

Esotericon — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 15:34:22 +0000

Here’s another fantastic op-ed by the only airman willing to stick his neck out and say what needs to be said. Of course it helps if you can write like this, but still…

One of the lodestars of great writing is concentration–and Dunlap concentrated so much in these few words, especially in his last paragraph.

Army Literacy: The Write Stuff?

Frank the Tank — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 15:11:59 +0000

Folks,From an H-War posting, a review in the Weekly Standard of a recent book written by a West Point professor of English. Basically, it touts the Academy as a place where a book based intellectual journey is important and one that continues for many after they leave the institution. I would contrast this finding with a recent article in The New Yorker on the value of reading for intellectual development and thinking and what changes may happen as book culture declines.

A Response to Bob

dolman — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:48:53 +0000

Our friend in Washington is the de facto interim editor. I am publishing his quick take on the Scales article preceding as I received it–a great read:

Well, there he goes again. Here’s another propaganda piece (attached) from Bob Scales concerning the need for the nation to concentrate on how to perform close combat better—and get this—with less loss of life. His answer? FIRST, we need better troop-carrying vehicles, to get more of our young people INTO the close fight faster. Second, we need more robots—that’s right, robots—things the infantry can control so that we get into close combat faster. Third, we need more airplanes to perform the logistics mission to support those troops and the vehicles taking them to the close fight. Ah, but first a little “history” of warfare, in which no airplane is mentioned. It is as if they never existed. In fact, the fulcrum of all military history apparently is the infantry! Amazing. The closest to modernity he gets is blitzkrieg, which for some reason has become “tank-on-tank” warfare in Scale’s sanctified imagination of warfare history…so, warfare has lurched between infantry dominance and ground mobility (horse or tank) dominance. And, as luck would have it, in his mind we are back to an infantry-dominated world! (For those of you keeping score at home, I will say it again, “Historians reflexively neglect and denigrate airpower.” Scales is no different, he’s just more of a pure proselytizer for his faith than your average civilian historian.)

But, before we get too far into that theological discussion, let’s take a look at the Army’s favorite game—the blame game. Apparently, the Army and Marine Corps bear no responsibility for what Scales identifies as a terrible national neglect of emphasis on close combat. After all, they are the keepers of the infantry flame, right? If that is the choir you are preaching to, it would be bad form to put any blame on them, so it must be someone else. Right. And they are, of course, the usual suspects. First, you have the American people, who by some sort of historical or hereditary oddity, do not like their young people dying in combat, like, say, the Germans or Islamic radicals or Vietnamese did. Oh, that pain of not having been born in a more courageous, manly society that really, really FAVORs their young dying in combat! Lacking that, we must, in an odd turn of logic, blame them for death itself. So, after a long, extended discussion about death, which is important because it weakens the audience to your point, even if your point now concentrates on dying rather than war, he gets to the other evils—aircraft and ship programs, and the evil contractors and lawmakers whose coffers bulge with big dollars from those programs, robbing the infantry of its due. So, the American people stab the infantry in the back, abetted by evil corporations, the airmen and naval officers who feed them lies, and the lawmakers who only know dollars, not war.

What a terrible, terrible situation we have created for our infantry and the glorious services who speak for them! How do we fix it? What is the goal? To achieve the same kill ratios we have achieved in air-to-air combat—you know, because we’ve given the air guys so much money and attention, and that’s all it takes. Although the cost per infantry soldier has increased exponentially, some orders of magnitude over the past several years, he doesn’t bring that fact to bear, because all the facts do not matter. Only the casualty facts matter when you’re beating someone with your bloody scarf.

The real problem is that if Bob got his wish, and we really did allow our navies and air forces to atrophy so we could concentrate on REAL men—the infantry—he’d lose the game he loves so well. Then, he’d have nobody else to blame for the fact that close combat still kills too many Americans—or that it doesn’t kill enough, and that would take all the fun out of it. When you can be as irresponsible as the Army in neglecting counterinsurgency or even the infantry themselves in THEIR OWN SERVICE, and still successfully blame everyone else—EVEN THE AMERICAN PEOPLE—you are sitting in a place too pretty to be interrupted by accountability. No, Bob, you love things just as they are—you’re making too much money and having too much fun being a Jesuit for your religion to have it all ruined by empiricism or actually seeing dramatic decreases in death from close combat. That would suck the air right out of your system of demagoguery.

I would ask you to consider, based on this tract, why Airmen were placed in such a land as America? Was it to create a world safe for infantry close combat as Scales suggests? He LOVES airpower—you know, drones and airlift and A-10s buzzing over the close combat killing fields, and Airmen to blame after every battle. Given this sort of advocacy environment, what is an Airman to do? To join him? To go with the flow? If war is all about the close fight, then you would be right to take the easy road. But, if it isn’t, and in fact, if close combat actually is something to avoid due to our national humanitarian culture, then what is our role? Bob’s fans are sucking this stuff up—in fact, I got it sent to me by people gushing about how great it is. This article should be a way of examining just what war is, and how America should wage it. The infantry is here to stay, and airpower has a tremendous role in precluding close combat to the extent it can be—when it cannot, airpower has a tremendous role in dominating that environment and extricating the infantry as rapidly as possible from no-win situations. Someone must speak FOR the American people on this issue, not against them. That might be YOUR role.

Best,

Tom

Bob Rides Again!

dolman — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:45:29 +0000

AMERICAN INFANTRY AND NATIONAL PRIORITIES

Armed Forces Journal December 2007

By Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales (Ret.)

The progress of war, like other forms of human endeavor, is defined in terms of epochs, cycles of periodic change that sweep through and shape the course of Western civilization. Political scientists recount the advance of governance in terms of theocracy, monarchy, autarky and democracy. The history of science and culture measure the advance of Western civilization in terms of three grand epochs: the agrarian, machine and information ages. Economists speak of the evolution from barter to mercantile to market to global economies.

Military historians define the grand epochs of war in terms of formations, tactics and weapons that dominated battle at the time. Battles are the signposts that illuminate the paths through and between epochs. Rifts that separate epochs are defined by seismic rends in the fabric of war caused principally by social, geopolitical and technological change. Epochal rifts occur infrequently. There have been only four. The period between shifts continually shortens as the pace of demographic, social and technological change accelerates. A study of contemporary battles suggests that we are in the midst of another seismic event only a half century after the last.

FROM INFANTRY TO MOUNTED WARFARE

The first epoch belonged to infantry. It began in the farthest recesses of antiquity and lasted for several millennia culminating in the remarkable and deadly proficiency of the legion. For more than 500 years, Roman infantry dominated the battlefield with their discipline and ability to win in any terrain and against any enemy. The signpost that signaled the end of the age of infantry was the Battle of Adrianople in 378 AD. There, mounted Gothic horsemen demonstrated how to defeat the legion by combining shock effect and superior long-distance mobility of the horse. For the next 1,000 years, the desert cavalry of the Saracens, the steppe cavalry of Genghis Khan and the heavily armored European horsemen determined who would conquer and rule.

The battle of Pavia in 1525 fought between the mounted blue bloods of France and the common-born infantry of Spain heralded the next epochal rend in the fabric of war. The awakening of the classical era allowed the Europeans to rediscover from Roman literature the war-fighting power of infantry when placed in massed, disciplined formations. Technology in the form of the first efficient gunpowder weapons proved too powerful for even the most expensive, heavy and constrictive plate armor. For 500 years, from the Reformation to the end of European Empire, the common foot soldier from Spain, France, Germany and England proved the ultimate arbiter of success in peer warfare, European vs. European, and in asymmetric warfare, European vs. American Indian, African, Asian and Islamic.

THE ARMORED PHALANX DOMINATES AGAIN

The second age of infantry died in the trenches of the western front. The appearance of the small-bore rifle and the machine gun, as well as rifled artillery, ushered in the first precision revolution in warfare that made the battlefield too lethal for infantry to cross. The signposts of battles that preceded this third seismic rending in the fabric of war were unambiguous. The slaughter of the American Civil War and ominous indicators from South Africa and Manchuria at century’s end provided more than enough evidence that the day of unprotected infantry assault was over. But soldiers then, as now, are a conservative lot, and only the deaths of millions sufficed to make the point.

After World War I, the Germans combined the internal combustion engine and the radio to reinvent heavy mounted warfare and introduce the world to tank-on-tank blitzkrieg during the Battle for France in May 1940. This fourth rending in the fabric of warfare came at a cost, however. The race to win on the armored battlefield was predicated on the ability of armies to build larger and more complex fighting machines to best the machines of the opposition. As weapons grew larger, heavier and more complex, they became less able to fight effectively outside the narrow battlefields of the industrial world. This frenetic rush toward gigantism and overcapitalization is leading to the premature demise of the blitzkrieg epoch. And in a curious twist of historical irony, the forces accelerating this demise are former victims of the colonized world that western armies defeated so easily only a century ago.

SIGNPOSTS OF A NEW AGE

The battlefield signposts that point to the end of the blitzkrieg epoch are as numerous and unmistakable as those that appeared a century ago to signal the end of the second age of infantry. The problem is that since World War II, a period some term the “American era of war,” our military has been caught in an ambiguous epochal crease that has drawn us in conflicting directions — between blitzkrieg-age wars we fight well and post-blitzkrieg-era wars that we would prefer not to fight.

The laboratory of contemporary battle provides ample evidence to make the point: Whenever former colonial states choose to fight Western armies, Western style, they lose: Four blitzkrieg-style Arab Israeli wars (1948, 1956, 1967, 1973) ended well for the Israelis and badly for the Arabs; five American wars (Panama, 1989; Desert Storm, 1991; Kosovo, 1999; Afghanistan, 2002; the march to Baghdad, 2003) proved conclusively the dominance of American techno-centric warfare. In contrast, whenever many of these same antagonists choose to fight Western armies their way, the outcomes reverse: against us in Vietnam, Korea, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq; against the French in Indochina and Algeria; twice against the Israelis in Lebanon; and against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

All of these contemporary failures have characteristics that collectively add up to a fifth crease in the fabric or war. Connect the dots from the viewpoint of successful actions by our enemies during the past half century, and the argument for a return of infantry dominance goes from obvious to compelling. Their success comes from the enemy’s ability to offset our big-machine advantage with advantages of their own: masses of infantry, with enthusiasm to sacrifice that offsets skill at arms; an ability to learn quickly and adapt so that technological innovation can be offset by clever adaptations of existing technologies. The enemy has evolved a new strategy learned from past masters such as Mao and Ho Chi Minh that seeks to win by not losing. His is a global scheme in which the strategic object is merely to kill Americans until we lose the will to carry on. His geostrategy is founded on the principle of distance. Find a battlefield least conducive to long-term commitment, in inhospitable places such as cities, jungles and mountains where he can reduce the effectiveness of our machines and thereby increase the odds of defeating us with infantry alone.

A WINDOW ON THE FUTURE

Conclusive proof that another epochal shift had occurred came last year during a “Pavia moment” in the small village of Bint Jbiel, just over the Israeli-Lebanon border and nearby in the defile of Wadi Saluki, where Hezbollah fighters ambushed and destroyed a battalion’s worth of Israel’s blitzkrieg heavy tanks. The story of Bint Jbiel and Wadi Saluki not only provides a prescient window on the future, but also serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of dismissing the signposts of epochal change. Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, the first Air Force officer to be appointed head of the Israeli Defense Forces, said he believed that the American experience in Kosovo demonstrated that a carefully planned, orchestrated and technologically precise air campaign could collapse Hezbollah’s ability to threaten Israel.

Hezbollah had a different take. The subsequent parallel disasters of Bint Jbiel and Wadi Saluki became laboratories for teaching how a well-trained insurgent force exhaustively drilled, carefully dug in, camouflaged and armed with the latest precision anti-tank weaponry could utterly devastate a modern, technologically superior Cold War armored force, even if that force commanded the air absolutely. Just as the first precision age doomed the last age of infantry, both of these battles strongly suggest that weapons from the second precision revolution in the hands of diabolically skilled infantry will eventually make heavy, mounted warfare a relic of the machine age.

The successes of Hezbollah, al-Qaida and other new-age infantry forces tell us that we must find a way to counter this 21st-century corollary to the dilemma faced by 16th-century France. The enemy chooses to fight as infantry because he can win the infantry fight. Our own experience in Iraq and Afghanistan tells us that we have no choice but to meet him on his terms, on the ground in the close and all too often fair fight.

A UNIQUELY AMERICAN PROBLEM

But America can’t fight fair because a fair fight costs too many lives. This conundrum leads to the core of the greatest challenge of 21st-century American warfare. How will the armed forces of the U.S. prevail in this new age of infantry if the cost of infantry fighting is too high? Let’s begin by confessing how high the cost of the close fight really is. During wars in the American era, four out of five combat deaths have been suffered by infantry soldiers, principally dismounted (foot) infantry. In practical terms, this means that an overwhelming preponderance of deaths occur among a population that comprises less than 4 percent of all the uniformed population of the Defense Department. Anyone not an infantryman in contact stands a far greater chance of dying from disease or accidents than from an enemy bullet.

Of particular interest is how these close-combat soldiers die. Virtually all deaths at the hands of the enemy are suffered within a mile or less from contact with the enemy. About 52 percent die trying to find the enemy, either as scouts, on point or in ambushes. Once in contact, the close fight generally goes in our favor if the enemy can be engaged far enough away to employ superior American firepower. Put a close-combat soldier in a fighting vehicle of any sort, and his chance of surviving contact with the enemy increases about an order of magnitude. This fact flies in the face of popular perceptions drawn from battlefield footage in places such as Chechnya that show soldiers roasting in burning panzers. Most of our Cold War armor was designed to take a head-on shot from a Soviet tank. Thus, most of an American tank’s armor protection is concentrated in its front 60 percent of obliquity. Again, the irony of real combat takes over the story by confessing that all of this frontal armor has saved few lives because American armor has never faced a serious enemy tank threat. Since the beginning of the American era, only eight tank crewmen have been killed by enemy tanks — all of them in the Korean War.

In contrast to mounted combat, the statistics for infantry deaths in close combat are troubling. A comparison of kill ratios between infantry and air-to-air combat is instructive. In World War II, the kill ratio in the Pacific campaign was about 13 enemy to 1 American; in Europe against the Germans, the ratio was about 11 to1; in Korea, 13 to 1. Since the end of the Cold War, the kill ratio for the F-15 series of fighter aircraft flown by American and Israeli pilots is about 107 to 1. During the second battle of Fallujah in November 2004, the ratio between enemy and American infantry deaths was about 9 to 1 within fifty meters. For soldiers and Marines fighting inside buildings, the ratios were, tragically, much closer to parity.

Then there is the Jessica Lynch factor. The enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan realizes that he can best achieve his goal by killing those least able to protect themselves, principally logistical and support soldiers. It should come as no surprise to discover that almost four out of five casualties — killed and wounded — in Iraq have been suffered by these soldiers.

INFANTRY AS A FUNCTION

Infantry is a function, not a service or branch of service. The infantry function includes Army, Marine Corps and Special Forces troops who occasionally share the close-combat space with like-minded specialists such as tankers, military police and artillerymen. Two tasks define the function. First is intimate killing. Killing close is the essence of what it means to be an infantryman. Others on the battlefield, such as pilots and artillerymen, kill — but they kill at a distance. Killing, to them, is detached, antiseptic. After a mission, a pilot may feel remorse at the realization that the bomb he dropped at some distant target killed someone. But an infantryman sees his target die. He watches the life drain out of an enemy who chances across his sights. To be sure, soldiers other than infantrymen may occasionally stumble upon the enemy. These are incidental fighters, occasional victims of war who die in ambushes, roadside bombings and assassinations. But only an infantryman goes out every day with the intention of taking another human life in face-to-face intimate combat. It is his skill at this method of killing that wins contemporary wars.

The infantryman’s second task is to make other infantrymen. Teaching others to fight as infantry is a competency that the Army and Marine Corps have perfected over more than a century of practical experience, beginning with the creation of the Philippine Scouts before World War I and continuing with distinction to Greece and Israel immediately after World War II. The Army learned to build armies while fighting in such disparate places as Korea, Vietnam and El Salvador, and most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan.

GETTING BETTER: THE HUMAN DIMENSION

Dominance in the close tactical fight is dependent as much on human as technological factors. Dominance depends on creating world-class small units, superbly selected, trained and psychologically inoculated to endure the stress inherent in the act of intimate killing. Small-unit leaders, sergeants and lieutenants, must be found, nurtured and taught to make life-or-death decisions in the heat of the close fight. Think of a tactical, small-unit version of the Navy’s Top Gun or the Air Force’s Red Flag exercises, in which small-unit leaders and their soldiers would have the luxury harnessing training technology to get better bloodlessly.

The lesson from recent wars is that serving as a close-combat soldier is far more difficult and hazardous than serving in any other military specialty. The act of intimate killing takes a toll on even the most emotionally hardened close-combat soldier. Likewise, humping a 150-pound rucksack in 130-degree heat takes a toll on the body of even the most fit. Bureaucratic institutions and personnel polices at the Defense Department must be changed to reflect the unique requirements for making world-class infantrymen. Pay scales should be changed such that infantrymen are compensated for risk, as well as skills. They should be allowed to retire earlier in their careers before the stress of close combat scars them emotionally and physically. Small units should be staffed with greater numbers and higher ratios of leaders to followers to compensate for the inevitable attrition that comes from the tactical fight.

History teaches the same lesson over and over. Mature, intelligent, well-led, trained and motivated soldiers are far more effective in the close fight and far less likely to die. More pay, greater numbers and less combat stress should allow an all-volunteer military to select and promote those who demonstrate the tactical right stuff. Only the best and brightest among all those brought into the military should be allowed to join this elite band of brothers.

TECHNOLOGY AND THE CLOSE FIGHT

Our military has a history of waiting until soldiers start dying before applying technology to the close fight. The often-told story of body armor and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles in Iraq needs no re-telling here. Part of the problem is that until recently, the technology to enhance the tactical fight has been developed and acquired incrementally in programs too small to compete with aircraft and ship programs. Big-ticket items tend to capture the attention of the big machine makers and the lawmakers who support them. Another problem is the lack of silver bullets such as stealth or precision strike that have proven so decisive in air-to-air combat. Real dominance in the infantry battle will demand a new approach and a new set of developmental and acquisition priorities. Instead of fixating on a few big-ticket platforms, the Defense Department must focus on developing a set of smaller complementary capabilities, the sum of which would offer the infantry true dominance in the close fight. First priority should go to those technologies that are most likely to lessen the cost of infantry combat. We know that mounted fighting diminishes the cost by an order of magnitude. The problem today is that our Cold War armored fleet carries too few infantry. Our vehicles are optimized for warfare in developed regions where weight, complexity and fuel efficiency are not impediments to tactical success. In the future, the fleet must be modernized to allow more infantry to fight mounted in distant places for extended periods, to keep them under armor longer and to allow infantry to remain protected until very close to the enemy.

If more than half of all infantry deaths occur finding the enemy, then unmanned surrogates such as low-flying aerial drones or unmanned ground robotic vehicles are needed to perform this most dangerous task. If most soldiers die within a mile of the front, a place soldiers call the “red zone,” then we must find the means to keep infantry outside the red zone long enough to destroy as many enemy infantry as possible with precise, discrete and immediately available killing power.

More than two-thirds of Marine Corps, special operations and Army infantry fight on foot. So the second greatest challenge is to develop every technological advantage to make dismounted infantry more lethal and less vulnerable. Clearly, the greatest need is for light body armor impervious to high-velocity projectiles and artillery fragments. Soldiers fighting on foot must solve the problem of touch in the close fight. A soldier’s greatest fear in the close fight is the fear of fighting and dying isolated and alone. As bullets fly, he looks constantly about for reinforcement from his buddies. Experience in all recent wars tells us that these soldiers are far more effective if they can maintain voice and visual contact with their buddies. Surely telecommunications technology has advanced far enough to enable every soldier to “see” and “talk” to everyone in his squad using an individual audio and video connection?

Finally, back to Jessica Lynch. The need to deliver ammunition, spare parts, fuel and water exposes support soldiers to the tender mercies of the enemy along the line of communications. Tomorrow’s infantry must be able to fight supported by a much smaller and much less vulnerable logistical umbilical cord. The only sure way to eliminate our logistical vulnerabilities would be to supply the close fight predominantly by air.

A MATTER OF PRIORITIES

The U.S. has practiced the infantry arts in peace and war since the American Revolution, but only recently has the art taken center stage. The enemy knows that dead soldiers are our greatest vulnerability. So winning quickly at least cost becomes more than a moral necessity. It is now a national strategic imperative. The challenge for the future is to do it better and at less cost in human life. Getting better is culturally averse because we don’t like to fight this way. We would prefer to kill from a distance, but our enemies won’t let us off the hook. They are leading us where we are reluctant to go. But contemporary history and the shrewd actions of our enemies now compel us to change our priorities. Our presence in this new age of infantry demands that making better infantry is no longer an Army or a Marine Corps problem. It’s a national problem. And the challenge is not just to get incrementally better, but also to dominate our enemies in the close fight, to achieve the same kill ratios on the ground that we have achieved recently in air-to-air combat.

Future presidents must have the latitude to send armies to distant places where the enemy has the home field advantage. Our infantry will never be able to get to these places and stay there unless it has the protection and lethality to dominate a determined and diabolical enemy in waiting. If these reforms sound as if they will break the bank, remember that if all the infantry in all the services were collected together in one place, they wouldn’t fill an NFL stadium. The next administration must realize that when entering a new epoch of warfare, all past habits are suspect. It’s time that our priorities — our national priorities — change to meet the realities of the war we will be fighting for generations.

Don’t hate the Playa’ …

dolman — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:21:19 +0000

The hideous little article and a lengthy discussion thread can be found at the American Prospect. Times are tough, and the lashing out continues…

Why isn’t the USAF getting the Love?

dolman — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:06:35 +0000

Our friend in Washington passed along a very interesting analysis:

Three reasons why USAF is under attack:

1. The national security strategy vacuum: From 1981 through 2001, our national security strategy was deterrence and containment, with airpower playing the largest single role. During that period, the USAF enjoyed a position of respect and support. Since 2001, our national security strategy has been large scale engagement on the ground, with urban ops most prominent. Under that strategy, it is no wonder that AF status is diminished, and even that its relevance is questioned by some. This will continue until our political leaders begin to articulate some national security strategy beyond stay the course in the long GWOT.

In the absence of any such new strategy, it is not unreasonable to assume that we will continue to be broadly engaged on the ground in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, trading the lives of young Americans for the lives of young Muslims at some “favorable” ratio, for the next twenty years. If that is indeed our future, then the Army zealots are right: the AF should get into harness and prepare to pull the Army cart for the next two decades. Moreover, it is pointless to argue with the Army zealots until political leaders at least suggest or propose a new national security strategy and a new vision of the next twenty years.

It is naive to assume that we can do everything that we would like to in national defense. If we are indeed going to slug it out with the Muslim world in a twenty-year street brawl, the economic cost alone will be crippling to our nation, and will preclude the simultaneous pursuit of any other expensive national security strategies. Already, as a result of the cost of the war in Iraq, unpaid by taxes and fully passed on to our children as debt, we have severely constrained our other defense options. At the beginning of ”The Pacific Century”, rightly or wrongly, we chose to spend all our chips on the Middle East. Building a set of credible deterrent capabilities against China is probably already economically impossible, and certainly will become impossible if the GWOT continues and expands over the next several years. Taiwan’s independence may ultimately be a major casualty of the Iraq war.

More to the point, if we are not going to challenge China over Taiwan, whether by choice or by economic constraint, then the purpose and mission of the USAF changes profoundly, both in scope and in character. Without China, there is no near-peer adversary, and no need for more F-22s, NGB, et al. The prime AF mission becomes theater persistence (lots of sorties, for years on end) in a low-to-mid-level threat environment. And the primary challenge for the AF becomes not new capabilities, not greater reach, but rather reconstitution and maintenance of current capabilities at the lowest possible cost. Unless leaders begin to articulate a different strategic future, it is pointless to argue either for more exotic assets or for any more prominent role for airpower than it now plays in Iraq.

2. Inept USAF Leadership: The AF has failed to recognize its position in this drama. AF leaders have foolishly pressed issues at the worst possible time. Demanding a decision on UAS Executive Agency at this time was as bone-headed as pissing into the wind. Now, predictably, it’s blowing back in the form of calls, not entirely in jest, to disband the AF. Politics matter, and timing matters. The time for a boy to demand a decision on the new bicycle he wants is not in the middle of his brother’s birthday party. And if he engages in a tantrum during that party, he’s likely to not only forfeit the bicycle but also receive punishment afterward. That’s what’s happening now to the AF in the wake of their childish behavior on Executive Agency.

KC-X, SBIRS, CSAR-X, JASSM. These are not simply programs that have encountered technical or cost difficulties. They are inexcusable failures of acquisition management, entirely self-inflicted by officials either incompetent or unwilling to follow simple rules. And after repeatedly embarrassing themselves on such a scale before the world, their response is to demand DoD-wide UAS acquisition authority?

3. The Faustian bargain between the military, the Republican Party and right-wing macho jingoism: The Party sold its soul to the right wing to get elected, embracing the South’s crudest elements, and the military sold its soul to the Party in hopes of bigger defense budgets. Both got their wishes, but at a heavy price. First, soccer moms were told to be afraid, very afraid, and fear was used to drown out dissent. Then, anyone questioning the wisdom of the war was a non-patriot and a coward. Now, that madness has simply followed its course to the point that only soldiers and Marines are real patriots. The Air Force has only slightly better seats in Valhalla than the State Department. Real men don’t need State Department geeks, and they only need Air Force geeks for support.

The war has broken the Army, and the other branches are not far behind. Not only have the fruits of higher defense budgets been consumed by the war, even the trees have been lost, leaving the services far worse off than before. Through its own political support of this administration, the military has naively assisted in its own demise, ushering in a new era of weakness not unlike the post-Vietnam decade. The Army, Navy and Air Force are each in crisis now, largely because of their gross misuse and abuse by the very people they helped elect. Yet each of the services continues to see their own individual plight as if they’ve been unfairly singled out. The Army woes are because Rummy hated them. The Navy is broken because the shipyards are too expensive, and all the resources go to the Army and Air Force. The Air Force feels like Rodney Dangerfield. The truth is that all three have been sacrificed to a failed national policy based on fear and perverted patriotism.

Army Answer in Iraq?

dolman — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:26:46 +0000

(Astropolitics’ good friend sent us this cartoon with additional captions)

The cartoonist missed a couple steps. After we send in even more hunters …

2.       When that doesn’t work, blame the tribal leaders for sending you.
3.       Demand never to be sent to tar pits again (Og say “no more tar pits”) unless you have way more hunters and overwhelming popular support
4.       Homo sapiens come along and figure out that shooting arrows will work, and eat the mammoth at their officer’s club
5.       Neanderthals say that arrows won’t work in every situation and cause too much reliance on technology so you still need more hunters
6.       Embarrassed by arrows working, Neanderthals send more hunters to the tar pits, this time on a “surge”
7.       …and repeat
Oh, and the Neanderthals never become extinct.

For strategists in Iraq…

Eros Pace — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:44:28 +0000

Here’s a penetrating strategic assessment on Iraq by Bartle Bull (of Prospect). Bull’s essay, “Mission Accomplished,” is long, but it’s reasoned, articulate, and extremely well-supported. I’m serving it up here on astropolitics.org blog not to open an argument about the Iraqi question, but to offer a quality litmus test to those Iraq-focused strategists out there who are (or will be) working at either the national or operational level of strategy development. If you’re on your game, my sense is that Bull’s argument will speak clearly to you, whether you find yourself in agreement or not. If this essay loses you, then you’ve got a good guidepost for the degree of understanding you’ll want to drive toward in honing your effectiveness. – Eros (Thanks for the keys, Ev.)