Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
September 30, 2008
Pg. 20
By Thom Shanker
WASHINGTON — In a far-reaching critique of the way the Pentagon fights wars and buys weapons, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Monday that the military must understand the limits of combat power and its leaders must be skeptical that technology can bring order to the violent battlefield.
Mr. Gates criticized the Pentagon bureaucracy for what he called a narrow commitment to buying new generations of conventional weapons, which he said kept it from rapidly developing equipment that would save lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. He cited two projects that he said were forced upon the procurement bureaucracy: systems to detect improvised bombs and heavily armored transports to protect troops.
Without citing his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, by name, Mr. Gates also cautioned against efforts at reorganizing the Pentagon around buzzwords like “transformation.” To underscore that point, he challenged those who advocate investing in smaller numbers of higher-technology weapons in a belief that war can be revolutionized, fought at long distance with American forces never getting bloodied.
“Be modest about what military force can accomplish, and what technology can accomplish,” Mr. Gates told an audience of midcareer military, Pentagon, State Department and intelligence officials at the National Defense University here.
“The advances in precision, sensor, information and satellite technology have led to extraordinary gains in what the U.S. military can do,” he said. “But also never neglect the psychological, cultural, political and human dimensions of warfare, which is inevitably tragic, inefficient and uncertain.”
Before his departure in late 2006 as defense secretary, Mr. Rumsfeld had, with the endorsement of the Bush White House, championed a so-called revolution in military affairs that said transformational war-fighting techniques — including new generations of precision weapons, radar-evading jets and advanced intelligence — would render warfare faster and cleaner.
The views culminated in a strategy for invading Iraq with fewer ground forces than some had advocated, a mistake remedied when President Bush ordered five extra combat brigades to Iraq last year. The invasion also relied on extensive air strikes to decapitate the Iraqi leadership and scatter the Iraqi military, in a strategy nicknamed “shock and awe.”
Mr. Gates urged his audience to “look askance at idealized, triumphalist or ethnocentric notions of future conflict that aspire to upend the immutable principles of war.” In particular, he said, do not base a war plan on a bet that “adversaries can be cowed, shocked or awed into submission, instead of being tracked down, hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block.”
Mr. Gates’s address had the hallmarks of many valedictory speeches of wartime leaders, in a long line from George Washington to Dwight D. Eisenhower; it was deeply skeptical of America’s national security institutions, while complimenting the spirit, ingenuity and courage of fighting forces.
“I have expressed frustration,” Mr. Gates said, “over the defense bureaucracy’s priorities and lack of urgency when it came to the current conflicts — that for too many in the Pentagon it has been business as usual, as opposed to a wartime footing and a wartime mentality.
“When it comes to procurement, for the better part of five decades, the trend has gone towards lower numbers as technology gains made each system more capable. In recent years these platforms have grown ever more baroque, ever more costly, are taking longer to build and are being fielded in ever dwindling quantities.”
Mr. Gates said that “apart from the Special Forces community and some dissident colonels, for decades there has been no strong, deeply rooted constituency inside the Pentagon or elsewhere for institutionalizing our capabilities to wage asymmetric or irregular conflict — and to quickly meet the ever-changing needs of our forces engaged in these conflicts.”
To be sure, Mr. Gates acknowledged that the nation had to adopt a balanced strategy for national defense that prepared for a series of threats: conventional threats from larger, rival nations; irregular, guerrilla-style warfare; potential attack from a smaller rogue state with unconventional weapons; another major terrorist attack; and next-generation attacks, including cyberwarfare.
September 30, 2008
Pg. 20
By Thom Shanker
WASHINGTON — In a far-reaching critique of the way the Pentagon fights wars and buys weapons, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Monday that the military must understand the limits of combat power and its leaders must be skeptical that technology can bring order to the violent battlefield.
Mr. Gates criticized the Pentagon bureaucracy for what he called a narrow commitment to buying new generations of conventional weapons, which he said kept it from rapidly developing equipment that would save lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. He cited two projects that he said were forced upon the procurement bureaucracy: systems to detect improvised bombs and heavily armored transports to protect troops.
Without citing his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, by name, Mr. Gates also cautioned against efforts at reorganizing the Pentagon around buzzwords like “transformation.” To underscore that point, he challenged those who advocate investing in smaller numbers of higher-technology weapons in a belief that war can be revolutionized, fought at long distance with American forces never getting bloodied.
“Be modest about what military force can accomplish, and what technology can accomplish,” Mr. Gates told an audience of midcareer military, Pentagon, State Department and intelligence officials at the National Defense University here.
“The advances in precision, sensor, information and satellite technology have led to extraordinary gains in what the U.S. military can do,” he said. “But also never neglect the psychological, cultural, political and human dimensions of warfare, which is inevitably tragic, inefficient and uncertain.”
Before his departure in late 2006 as defense secretary, Mr. Rumsfeld had, with the endorsement of the Bush White House, championed a so-called revolution in military affairs that said transformational war-fighting techniques — including new generations of precision weapons, radar-evading jets and advanced intelligence — would render warfare faster and cleaner.
The views culminated in a strategy for invading Iraq with fewer ground forces than some had advocated, a mistake remedied when President Bush ordered five extra combat brigades to Iraq last year. The invasion also relied on extensive air strikes to decapitate the Iraqi leadership and scatter the Iraqi military, in a strategy nicknamed “shock and awe.”
Mr. Gates urged his audience to “look askance at idealized, triumphalist or ethnocentric notions of future conflict that aspire to upend the immutable principles of war.” In particular, he said, do not base a war plan on a bet that “adversaries can be cowed, shocked or awed into submission, instead of being tracked down, hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block.”
Mr. Gates’s address had the hallmarks of many valedictory speeches of wartime leaders, in a long line from George Washington to Dwight D. Eisenhower; it was deeply skeptical of America’s national security institutions, while complimenting the spirit, ingenuity and courage of fighting forces.
“I have expressed frustration,” Mr. Gates said, “over the defense bureaucracy’s priorities and lack of urgency when it came to the current conflicts — that for too many in the Pentagon it has been business as usual, as opposed to a wartime footing and a wartime mentality.
“When it comes to procurement, for the better part of five decades, the trend has gone towards lower numbers as technology gains made each system more capable. In recent years these platforms have grown ever more baroque, ever more costly, are taking longer to build and are being fielded in ever dwindling quantities.”
Mr. Gates said that “apart from the Special Forces community and some dissident colonels, for decades there has been no strong, deeply rooted constituency inside the Pentagon or elsewhere for institutionalizing our capabilities to wage asymmetric or irregular conflict — and to quickly meet the ever-changing needs of our forces engaged in these conflicts.”
To be sure, Mr. Gates acknowledged that the nation had to adopt a balanced strategy for national defense that prepared for a series of threats: conventional threats from larger, rival nations; irregular, guerrilla-style warfare; potential attack from a smaller rogue state with unconventional weapons; another major terrorist attack; and next-generation attacks, including cyberwarfare.