Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Barron's
May 19, 2008 The U.S. must be ready to fight the conflicts our enemies will choose
By Thomas G. Donlan
THIRTY-THREE YEARS AT LEAST -- that's how long the United States military establishment has taken to learn the most important lesson from the Vietnam War. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is not the first Pentagon chief to realize that's too long. Even now, Gates says, the entire military hasn't yet learned the lesson.
Gates recalled in a recent speech that the military rushed to forget everything it learned about counterinsurgency: "During the 1980s, a Princeton graduate student noted in his dissertation that, about a decade after the fall of Saigon, the Army's 10-month staff college assigned 30 hours -- about four days -- [to study] low-intensity conflict."
That perceptive grad student was David Petraeus, then an Army major and now a three-star general commanding military forces in Iraq. He is about to assume responsibility for the war in Afghanistan, as well. His biggest problem has been to overcome the military's institutional ignorance of the requirements of counterinsurgency.
Architects of a Bygone War
The high-ranking officers who set up the curriculum in the staff college in the 1980s were responsible in large measure for the failure of counterinsurgency in the first phase of the war against the Iraqi insurgency. The difficult lessons of the war against the Viet Cong had "withered on the vine," Gates said, warning that it must not happen again after current wars wind down.
Gates said that even in the middle of the Iraq and Afghan wars, U.S. military leaders are succumbing to what he called "Next-War-itis," which he defined as "the propensity of much of the defense establishment to be in favor of what might be needed in a future conflict" against North Korea, Iran, China or another large national military with conventional arms and conventional war aims. He was being diplomatic: A better description would be "Last-War-itis," or perhaps, "preparing to fight the war we want to fight instead of the war our enemies will choose."
We should note that the same leaders had also been responsible for the overwhelming victory of coalition forces over the Iraqi army in both Gulf Wars -- wars of planes and tanks and firepower similar to the war they had all trained and prepared for to fight against the Soviet Union in Europe.
But the U.S., as Gates said, already has "ample and untapped combat power in our naval and air forces with the capacity to defeat any, repeat any, adversary who committed an act of aggression, whether in the Persian Gulf, on the Korean Peninsula or in the Straits of Taiwan." What it needs are the tools of counterinsurgency and soldiers who can use them, he said.
"The record of the past quarter-century is clear. The Soviets in Afghanistan, the Israelis in Lebanon, the United States in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq: Smaller, irregular forces -- insurgents, guerrillas, terrorists -- will find ways, as they always have, to frustrate and neutralize the advantages of larger, regular militaries. And even nation-states will try to exploit our perceived vulnerabilities in an asymmetric way, rather than play to our inherent strengths."
Buying the Wrong Tools
Gates warned, therefore, that major weapons programs will have to show relevance and utility for irregular and counterinsurgency campaigns. That's a warning that should be heard by the makers of big-ticket weapons systems, such as large jet aircraft and large naval ships. It should be welcomed by the makers of flexible tools for the armed forces, such as ground-attack planes, cargo planes, unmanned reconnaissance planes and troop carriers that withstand improvised explosive devices.
In particular, Gates spoke skeptically about the Army's "Future Combat System," an over-budget network of 14 major vehicles and weapons. Boeing is the prime contractor, and the work is spread by subcontracts over most of the U.S. defense industry. Much beloved by the Army staff and much criticized by the Government Accountability Office, the Future Combat System has been more than a decade in gestation with no deliveries in sight. It could cost more than $200 billion to produce, when and if the vehicles and weapons are ready for production.
A month ago, Gates also put the collective nose of the U.S. Air Force brass out of joint by praising the late Col. John Boyd, "a brilliant, eccentric and stubborn character," who stood out in the 1970s and 1980s as a champion of the F-16 and the F/A-18 -- smaller and cheaper alternatives to the versatile, heavy and expensive F-15. The same situation bedevils the Air Force today, with top staff favoring construction of more highly capable and extremely expensive Lockheed-Martin F-22s. Gates has complained that the Air Force has not done enough to field new unmanned aerial vehicles for reconnaissance and tactical strikes.
Boyd never made general, but Gates urged the current generation of officers to emulate him in challenging authority.
The secretary also spoke favorably about MRAPs -- Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles that Army brass rejected for purchase in the first two years of the Iraq insurgency. The Army and Marine Corps now have MRAPs in Iraq, and the new armored trucks, built quickly by nine different contractors, have survived attacks better than Hummers and even better than tanks.
Letting a bit of frustration show, Gates said the MRAP is "a vehicle that many people see as not having much use beyond Iraq." He added, "The expense of the vehicles -- which are nearly $1 million apiece -- may have been seen as competing with the funding for future weapons programs with strong constituencies inside and outside the Pentagon."
The Long View
Speaking generally but pointedly, Gates declared, "The perennial procurement cycle -- going back many decades -- of adding layer upon layer of cost and complexity onto fewer and fewer platforms that take longer and longer to build must come to an end. Without a fundamental change in this dynamic, it will be difficult to sustain support for these kinds of weapons programs in the future."
Even more than remembering the tactics of counterinsurgency or understanding the need for flexible weapon systems, shortening the procurement cycle should be the prime lesson of the Iraq war, and it shouldn't take 33 more years to absorb it.
DONLAN is the Editorial Page Editor.
May 19, 2008 The U.S. must be ready to fight the conflicts our enemies will choose
By Thomas G. Donlan
THIRTY-THREE YEARS AT LEAST -- that's how long the United States military establishment has taken to learn the most important lesson from the Vietnam War. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is not the first Pentagon chief to realize that's too long. Even now, Gates says, the entire military hasn't yet learned the lesson.
Gates recalled in a recent speech that the military rushed to forget everything it learned about counterinsurgency: "During the 1980s, a Princeton graduate student noted in his dissertation that, about a decade after the fall of Saigon, the Army's 10-month staff college assigned 30 hours -- about four days -- [to study] low-intensity conflict."
That perceptive grad student was David Petraeus, then an Army major and now a three-star general commanding military forces in Iraq. He is about to assume responsibility for the war in Afghanistan, as well. His biggest problem has been to overcome the military's institutional ignorance of the requirements of counterinsurgency.
Architects of a Bygone War
The high-ranking officers who set up the curriculum in the staff college in the 1980s were responsible in large measure for the failure of counterinsurgency in the first phase of the war against the Iraqi insurgency. The difficult lessons of the war against the Viet Cong had "withered on the vine," Gates said, warning that it must not happen again after current wars wind down.
Gates said that even in the middle of the Iraq and Afghan wars, U.S. military leaders are succumbing to what he called "Next-War-itis," which he defined as "the propensity of much of the defense establishment to be in favor of what might be needed in a future conflict" against North Korea, Iran, China or another large national military with conventional arms and conventional war aims. He was being diplomatic: A better description would be "Last-War-itis," or perhaps, "preparing to fight the war we want to fight instead of the war our enemies will choose."
We should note that the same leaders had also been responsible for the overwhelming victory of coalition forces over the Iraqi army in both Gulf Wars -- wars of planes and tanks and firepower similar to the war they had all trained and prepared for to fight against the Soviet Union in Europe.
But the U.S., as Gates said, already has "ample and untapped combat power in our naval and air forces with the capacity to defeat any, repeat any, adversary who committed an act of aggression, whether in the Persian Gulf, on the Korean Peninsula or in the Straits of Taiwan." What it needs are the tools of counterinsurgency and soldiers who can use them, he said.
"The record of the past quarter-century is clear. The Soviets in Afghanistan, the Israelis in Lebanon, the United States in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq: Smaller, irregular forces -- insurgents, guerrillas, terrorists -- will find ways, as they always have, to frustrate and neutralize the advantages of larger, regular militaries. And even nation-states will try to exploit our perceived vulnerabilities in an asymmetric way, rather than play to our inherent strengths."
Buying the Wrong Tools
Gates warned, therefore, that major weapons programs will have to show relevance and utility for irregular and counterinsurgency campaigns. That's a warning that should be heard by the makers of big-ticket weapons systems, such as large jet aircraft and large naval ships. It should be welcomed by the makers of flexible tools for the armed forces, such as ground-attack planes, cargo planes, unmanned reconnaissance planes and troop carriers that withstand improvised explosive devices.
In particular, Gates spoke skeptically about the Army's "Future Combat System," an over-budget network of 14 major vehicles and weapons. Boeing is the prime contractor, and the work is spread by subcontracts over most of the U.S. defense industry. Much beloved by the Army staff and much criticized by the Government Accountability Office, the Future Combat System has been more than a decade in gestation with no deliveries in sight. It could cost more than $200 billion to produce, when and if the vehicles and weapons are ready for production.
A month ago, Gates also put the collective nose of the U.S. Air Force brass out of joint by praising the late Col. John Boyd, "a brilliant, eccentric and stubborn character," who stood out in the 1970s and 1980s as a champion of the F-16 and the F/A-18 -- smaller and cheaper alternatives to the versatile, heavy and expensive F-15. The same situation bedevils the Air Force today, with top staff favoring construction of more highly capable and extremely expensive Lockheed-Martin F-22s. Gates has complained that the Air Force has not done enough to field new unmanned aerial vehicles for reconnaissance and tactical strikes.
Boyd never made general, but Gates urged the current generation of officers to emulate him in challenging authority.
The secretary also spoke favorably about MRAPs -- Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles that Army brass rejected for purchase in the first two years of the Iraq insurgency. The Army and Marine Corps now have MRAPs in Iraq, and the new armored trucks, built quickly by nine different contractors, have survived attacks better than Hummers and even better than tanks.
Letting a bit of frustration show, Gates said the MRAP is "a vehicle that many people see as not having much use beyond Iraq." He added, "The expense of the vehicles -- which are nearly $1 million apiece -- may have been seen as competing with the funding for future weapons programs with strong constituencies inside and outside the Pentagon."
The Long View
Speaking generally but pointedly, Gates declared, "The perennial procurement cycle -- going back many decades -- of adding layer upon layer of cost and complexity onto fewer and fewer platforms that take longer and longer to build must come to an end. Without a fundamental change in this dynamic, it will be difficult to sustain support for these kinds of weapons programs in the future."
Even more than remembering the tactics of counterinsurgency or understanding the need for flexible weapon systems, shortening the procurement cycle should be the prime lesson of the Iraq war, and it shouldn't take 33 more years to absorb it.
DONLAN is the Editorial Page Editor.