Posted on 12/11/2004 9:00:02 PM PST by neverdem
GUEST OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Los Angeles
UNDER questioning from an American soldier wanting to know why he was forced to use "hillbilly armor" on his truck, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could only admit to his troops that they lacked the right stuff: "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time."
Many are taking the exchange, along with alarming new statistics on military preparedness from the House Armed Services Committee, as proof that the Bush administration has failed to give soldiers in Iraq the equipment they need to face combat. Actually, the problem runs much deeper than the current administration: it stems from the Pentagon's uneven effort over the last decade to turn a cold-war military into a force able to meet today's challenges.
For 40 years, Army doctrine centered on what's known as a linear battlefield. Combat units line up shoulder to shoulder across a broad front to face the enemy, which organizes its units in much the same fashion. Support units operate in relative safety in the rear, with only the occasional enemy infiltration to worry about.
Under this model, trucks in logistical units can afford to do without armor, and their drivers can make do with just an M-16 rifle; there's no need for Kevlar door panels or .50-caliber machine guns because the enemy is taken care of by combat units at the front. This was the way the Army won World War II.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the military has slowly recognized that its fundamental assumptions about warfare are being rendered obsolete. In Somalia, American troops faced guerrillas adept at trapping military convoys in ambushes in urban areas. In Bosnia, partisans on both sides used land mines to great effect, making every road a potential hazard. And now in Iraq, the insurgency has transformed the battlefield into one that is both nonlinear and noncontiguous, with sporadic fighting flaring up in isolated spots around the country.
Simply put, there are no more front lines. In slow recognition, the Army purchased light armored vehicles in the late 1990's for its military police to conduct peacekeeping, and more recently spent billions of dollars to outfit several brigades with Stryker medium-weight armored vehicles, which are impervious to most small arms and rocket-propelled grenades and can be deployed anywhere in the world by airplane.
But the fact that there is no longer a front line also means there aren't any more "rear" areas where support units can operate safely. Support units must now be prepared to face the same enemy as the infantry, but are having to do so in trucks with canvas doors and fiberglass hoods because Pentagon procurement planners never expected they'd have to fight. Remember that Pfc. Jessica Lynch, the Iraq invasion's most celebrated prisoner of war, was a supply clerk with a maintenance company.
Americans who have never served in the military may not realize the scale of the problem. Napoleon's army may have marched on its stomach, but ours requires a juggernaut of mechanics, medics, logisticians and truck drivers carrying everything from ammunition to underwear to keep moving. As a general rule, these support troops outnumber combat soldiers by about seven to one.
As Americans found out this week, the more enterprising of these soldiers find ways to improvise armor, diving into Kuwaiti scrap heaps or cannibalizing damaged American vehicles. Some, like the soldiers of the 343rd Quartermaster Company, refuse their missions entirely, risking court-martial instead of facing combat with broken or unarmored trucks. Others simply drive on, with blind (and some would say foolish) faith in their equipment.
None of these approaches are acceptable. The Army (and to a lesser extent the Marine Corps) must reshape its entire force, front to back, to fight the noncontiguous, nonlinear battles. Every vehicle must have sufficient armor to protect its crew; every convoy must have the right mix of light and heavy weapons to protect itself; every unit must be equipped with night-vision goggles and global positioning systems; every soldier must have the skills and training to fight as an infantryman.
One of our military's great strengths is its ability to learn from its mistakes - when things go wrong for a platoon or company, its soldiers and officers put together reviews to make sure it won't happen again. On the larger scale, that system has broken down: the Pentagon has had more than a decade since the cold war ended - and 20 months since the fall of Baghdad - to identify and fix these problems to protect its support troops. There is no excuse for its failure to do so.
Phillip Carter, a former Army captain, is a lawyer.
Rumsfeld's response was as pathetic as his planning.
I expected such attitude fom a Clinton style Sec. Def.
"Clinton style sec def"?
Sir, that statement requires an explanation.
He should blame his own chain of command. You can be sure they weren't going to pipe up if that affected their careers.
With taxes the way they are, I hate to hear about the military not having everything they need over there in Iraq. A strong military is one of the things I'd never have a problem paying for.
I wonder if the problem is the ability to get sufficient government funding, or if they just underestimated how much the soldiers were going to need?
What doesn't kill me makes me stronger.
Check out Rush Limbaugh's web site. The whole question/answer series was a set-up by the reporter. He was not allowed to directly ask questions to Rumsfeld, so he coached soldiers on the questions to ask, then asked the sergeant to call on his coached soldiers. The whole thing was a set-up to embarrass Rumsfeld.
Times are changing and the military has only had 4 years to recover from Clinton's "reforms". It's true the main problem is aquisition and that depends on what type of unit you are in.
Still combat units should get priority based on the fact that they purposefully go into dangerous areas.
Yep, and who was in charge during most of that time?
If you want to learn something about the military acquisition system read on - otherwise please keep you half baked totally uniformed opinions to yourself.
Yes, I have just flamed you. Do I have your attention?
I am retired military, 20 years as combat air crew, half of it in special operations. I have just completed 14 years as a system analyst, a dollar word for contractor, for AFSOC. Almost twelve of those years were in flight test - testing the “newest and greatest”.
The way the CONGRESS has structured the acquisition system:
It takes 8 to 15 years, as a minimum, to bring a new system on line.
You can only start a new system every other year - the paperwork for an odd year start is unbelievable!
I can go out to the commercial market and upgrade the HUMVEE using a third of the official cost at one tenth of the weight. But, since military purchases are viewed as re-election perks, I have to go through an approved vendor no matter the cost , weight and time deltas.
Any project needs between 10,000 and 50,000 pages of paperwork just to make its way to Congress. I have a system that was fast tracked and works but I can not get any money for maintenance until that paperwork makes its way up to and through Congress. The damn system works, there are a few prototypes in outside storage, and I can not get money to move them inside out of the weather.
A decade ago I knew, and could prove beyond the shadow of a doubt, that a sensor would not work - its in the wrong darn place. Since then we have attempted 4 times to fix the problem - all attempts cost in excess of 20 million, each, and all failed. We are now attempting solution # 5 and no one wants to bet me that it too will fail.
Yes these are signs of a serious problem. Most of which were written into Federal Law and Statue by Congress to “correct” problems that they had caused earlier.
What Congress didn’t do, the military did to itself by establishing “centers of excellence” to improve the acquisition process. Since when has a committee improved anything?
Can we do better? Yes, we have!
Kelly Johnson’s “Skunk Works” (Lockheed’s Advance Concepts Division) did the U-2 and SR-71 without going through the official process.
The AC- series of aircraft didn’t go through the official process either. Every variant was delivered ahead of schedule, with the required combat capabilities, at substantial savings.
“Google” an aircraft called Creditable Sport. Then remember it went from a mission requirement to ready for mission execution in less than six months. A heavily modified aircraft that could do things that active duty special operations aircrews still don’t believe is possible.
Enough soap boxing on my part.
If you want to blame a group for the problems the MSM reports with such glee - call your Congressman and Senator first!
Regarding Rumsfields remark........name one leader who ever went to war with the army he wanted.
Still talking about this? WTF?
That is oh so too true! Combat units normally have larger budgets as well because they spend more time training than supply units.
I can remember going on training just so we would get allocated a certain amount of money the next year. That of course is all Congress's method of budgeting.
The numbers I've seen vary on the price of an armored Humvee but it's around $150,000-$180,000. The military has requested the up-armoring of about 4,100 Humvees in the Iraq theater to date. For the military to have had 4,100 armored Humvees available for use in Iraq they would have had to ask for $1/3 Billion more for the equipment (we won't even consider what it would have cost to buy the entire supply of Humvees as armored). I know what the response would have been from Clinton era military appropriators.
This all doesn't take into account that the Humvee was intended as a light vehicle. There is good reason to prefer light vehicles for support vehicles not the least of which is they use less gas, don't get stuck as easily and are more readily transported to the theater.
What this article points out is that this is a new type of war. There was no justification for armored Humvees prior to last summer.
There should be no blame placed on the military, congress or the Bush administration about this. It's a lessons learned thing. We've learned, now lets get back to the mission at hand.
All diplomas,rank and whatever credentials aside, this author is out to trash our President and the administration in time of war. He and the sidewalk superintendents, full of their own self importance, posting agreement with him here are aiding and abetting our enemy with Hate America diatribe.
You got it.
You can make the battlefield linear again simply by expelling or executing all the civilians in the areas occupied by our forces.
The real question is whether or not we are willing to do so.
I.e. - Baghdad would be a safe zone if there were no Iraqi's in it.
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