Posted on 04/03/2003 4:37:12 PM PST by JudgeAmint
"America's Stunning Victory"
by J. R. Nyquist
It is now apparent that Iraq is on the verge of defeat. The threat to U.S. lines of communications has been countered. Any delays to America’s forward advance were therefore insignificant. At the same time, Iraqi forces were unable to launch an effective counterattack. As these words are written, Iraq’s best divisions are being shredded, the Iraqi people are turning against the regime of Saddam Hussein, and the prospect of a sudden Iraqi collapse is before us.
If Saddam’s army collapses or surrenders in the next two or three weeks the war will be nothing short of a blitzkrieg operation. The word “blitzkrieg” is German for lightning war. Instead of fighting for many months or years to defeat a country, lightning warfare collapses a country in a matter of weeks. This method of warfare is chiefly attributed to two British military theorists, J.F.C. Fuller and B.H. Liddell Hart. In describing the application of the blitzkrieg technique against Poland in World War II, Fuller explained: “German armoured tactics were based on speed more so than on firepower, for their object was to accelerate confusion.” This passage helps us to understand why British and American troops were ordered to advance rapidly into the very heart of Iraq. The object was, as Fuller stated, “to accelerate confusion.” Fuller also noted that “points of resistance, fortified areas, anti-tank positions, woods and villages were normally avoided, and the lines of least resistance leading to the enemy’s rear were sought out.” This is exactly what U.S. and British forces have done in Iraq. And just as this technique worked in the Second World War, it works today.
The speed of the coalition advance, the massive bombing campaign and the direct strike at the dictator himself,
accelerated Iraqi confusion as allied forces bypassed fortifications and heavily defended urban areas. In 1939 the German forces collapsed Poland in 27 days. The coalition timetable in Iraq appears to be of similar length. What is astonishing is the small size of the invading forces in the Iraq operation. We are now seeing the effectiveness of real-time battle management. In the divisional engagements now taking place we see that Iraqi forces cannot react or coordinate their moves in a timely fashion. This is not only due to bombing, but is also due to rapid U.S. troop movements. Consequently, the Third Infantry and First Marine divisions are picking apart the Republican Guard divisions in front of Baghdad.
The American operational method differs from the German blitzkrieg in the incredible precision of America’s firepower. United States forces now combine firepower superiority with high maneuverability. Add to this the real-time management of friendly forces that gives U.S. troops a rare invulnerability. We are seeing this demonstrated before our eyes. The only way to cope with this kind of advantage is to use weapons of mass destruction, including electromagnetic (EMP) warheads, to disrupt America’s decisive command-and-control advantage and to counter America’s firepower advantage. It is safe to say that the Iraqi position has deteriorated to such an extent that a coalition victory can only be disrupted if Iraq uses biological, chemical or atomic weapons. Even in that event, it is probable that such attacks would be self-defeating for the Iraqi regime, both morally and militarily.
It was recently acknowledged that the Pentagon planned a 30 day operation against Saddam Hussein. Despite the disruption of this plan by Turkey’s refusal to allow the Fourth Infantry Division to pass through Turkish territory and attack from the north, the operation will probably be accomplished within the allotted 30 days. Those in the media who erroneously allege that U.S. officials promised victory in hours or days have been lying, and their ulterior motives deserve closer scrutiny. Such reports reveal a sour impulse to portray victories as defeats and rapid advances as “setbacks.” Politically distorted persons, some of them military professionals, have mischaracterized this campaign in a way that is unfair to the Bush administration and the Pentagon. Retired U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark recently suggested that a quick coalition victory is “not going to happen.” Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter told a Lisbon radio interviewer on Tuesday, “The U.S. is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we cannot win.”
Those who oppose the war out of ideological hatred, who are eager to gloat over an American defeat, have dug a pit for themselves. When this war is over, who will want to be associated with the wrongheaded claims of those who secretly looked forward to America’s defeat? Evidence of Iraqi duplicity and the horror of Saddam’s terror regime will be proved. For those too lazy to read the documentary evidence before the war, there will be pictures and eyewitness testimonials broadcast on television in the aftermath. Of course, persons animated by anti-American ideology will cling to their bitter rhetoric; but these will be separated from sane opinion by a clear and ever-widening divide.
Through all of this, America’s real enemies have learned an important lesson: namely, that U.S. military power can only be effectively opposed by employing mass destruction weapons at the outset of a conflict. If U.S. power is to be overthrown in the world, that overthrow must rely upon nuclear, biological and chemical munitions. Only an attack that destroys U.S. conventional military advantages is workable, and this attack must be overwhelming. In order to work effectively a mass destruction attack must decapitate the U.S. leadership. It must cripple the U.S. economy and paralyze the American military. Anything short of this merely invites destruction in turn. The same lesson can be drawn from the terror attacks of Sept. 11. As destructive as the attacks were, the United States is a huge country with nearly 290 million people. Killing 3,000 persons and destroying two large buildings only served to stir the sleeping giant into action.
Ironically, those in Iraq and Afghanistan who celebrated Sept. 11 as a victory are now stewing in defeat. This is the fruit of Sept. 11. Instead of stimulating an Islamic holy war against the West, the United States will have effectively eliminated two hostile regimes. We may shortly learn that both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are dead. The lesson of these actions will not be missed in Tehran, Damascus, Pyongyang or Beijing. Dictatorships suffer from intrinsic weaknesses. They are economically brittle, technologically backward and administratively challenged. It cannot be repeated too often that the weapons of choice for such regimes must therefore be nuclear, chemical and biological. Only by leveling the playing field with such weapons do the inferior states of the totalitarian periphery stand a chance against American technological and administrative vitality.
The Soviet theorists of the 1960s were correct when they wrote: “Strategic missile troops will be the basic troops of modern massive armed forces. They are the decisive force at the disposal of supreme commands.” If you cannot win with conventional forces, if you are thoroughly outclassed on the battlefield, you must turn to the great equalizer. What the United States must do now, in the wake of its victory in Iraq, is anticipate the anti-American coalition’s intensification of WMD proliferation. This will be their response to America’s victory. Since this is a potentially effective strategy, the United States must solidify its defenses against such weapons.
© 2003 Jeffrey R. Nyquist
April 2, 2003
Yes, of course they want to bring us down, but playing to our military and economic strengths is hardly a clever way to achieve their goals.
Throw me into that briar patch.
The M1 is very likely the last MBT the US will ever build, though they will undoubtedly remain in service for many years. There are two major problems that are obsoleting them slowly but surely. The problems aren't so evident in Iraq, but they exist nonetheless.
First, is the relative lack of mobility. The US no longer views the battlefield in a 1.5-dimensional "lines of battle" model, but rather uses a 2.5-dimensional model of where it can position its pieces. The relative lack of airlift capability for the M1 severely limits its ability to be deployed in this model, as it must essentially follow the classic 1.5-dimensional battlefield model. For the US to fully exercise its technological advantages in future combat, it really needs all its platforms to be able to deployable anywhere in a 2.5-dimensional battlefield rather than just on the front lines. Hence the trend towards lighter vehicles that can be easily airlifted to more fully exploit the battlefield.
The second is the obsolescence of heavy armor in general. The US is literally only a few years away from deploying light, compact, rapid-fire weapon systems that can defeat all existing and projected future armor systems and with more range than any tank gun. We are quickly coming into a scenario where, for purposes other than stopping small arms fire, armor is no protection at all because the anti-armor systems operate at parameters that make it physically impossible to design an armor system capable of withstanding it for all intents and purposes. This essentially eliminates the usefulness of having heavy MBT armor. Much better to have swarms of small, very fast, very smart light armored vehicles running around on the battlefield with loads of these new classes of devastatingly lethal anti-armor and other weapon technologies. Not only do you get more bang for the buck, but it is much more mobile and arguably more survivable when the full complement of battlefield technologies are implemented. We will slowly but surely see other countries start producing weapon systems that will essentially make the value of the armor itself fairly dubious; even if it is relatively effective now, it won't stay that way.
The future of the battlefield is swarms of intelligent, largely automated, extremely mobile light-armor vehicles that redefine "lethality" on the battlefield. Humans will largely be pushing "start" and "stop" buttons, with computers doing the actual fighting and coordination. Rather than trying to fight the increasingly unwinnable scenario of keeping our armor survivable, the US has opted to develop weapon systems that are so fast and so lethal that the enemy never has a chance to take an honest shot at the vehicles. This is a sane choice; tests and research seem to indicate that our new weapon systems would slaughter the Abrams on the battlefield, and the Abrams is a pretty survivable tank currently. The DoD R&D guys have a pretty good track record of finding good medicine for battlefield problems way ahead of the curve.
The Third reason in the future will be remote-controlled unmanned battle tanks; the Fourth will be fully automated robotic tanks a generation after the remote-controlled unmanned tanks.
Still, the M1 will be around for a while, as having a well-trained, disciplined, motivated human inside an Abrams continues to have enormous military advantages. In fact, it may well turn out that it is the Air Force that makes the remote-controlled unmanned transition first, followed only much later by the Army. Boots on the ground and grunts in the tanks may simply be more difficult to obsolete than jet-fighters that already fire robotic missiles.
Yup. They won't be replacing humans on the ground for some time, at least for some tasks. Driving and repairing vehicles in the field, for example, is still something DARPA has not been able to solve without a human in the loop, whereas moving the Air Force to almost purely robotic vehicles is being aggressively road mapped because there is little stopping this conversion technologically. The groundpounder's job is safe for the time being, though they will be doing less and less of the actual fighting.
Not too long, if it was at the front of the battle.
But if its role was to control a swarm of next-generation Predators and other flying or crawling robots armed with guns and missiles, and do it from 50 miles away, then it would be another story
This sounds a lot like France and Germany, as well.
"What the United States must do now, in the wake of its victory in Iraq, is anticipate the anti-American coalition’s intensification of WMD proliferation. This will be their response to America’s victory. Since this is a potentially effective strategy, the United States must solidify its defenses against such weapons."
France should not be allowed to keep nuclear weapons. They are too unreliable and immoral.
My point is simply that on the PRESENT battlefield, the M-1 is king, most certainly not obsolete. We need to maintain and upgrade the M-1/Bradley force until the FCV comes online, which I assume will be about 20 years, since the current projection is about half that. The Battleship/Aircraft Carrier analogy is very popular. What I'm saying is don't make the shift from Battleships to Carriers in 1900.
I do think the mobility issue is overdone. A month or so ago I saw a think tank study indicating there isn't enough airlift to deploy the Stryker brigades by air, either, and recommended prepositioning stocks in strategic locations - the same solution we've used for decades with main battle tanks. The bottom line is we don't have enough air and sea lift and it doesn't make sense to structure the force around perhaps wrong perceptions of mobility rather that the battlefield threat. We should structure the lift to the force, not vice versa.
I also think the push to dump M-1 units in favor of Stryker units was misguided. I agree a mix is needed and Stryker can be useful in peacekeeping operations or low intensity warfare, but it would be a mistake to take on a Syria or North Korea with Stryker. Stryker was conceieved after Kosovo when the conventional wisdom was that symetrical battles were a thing of the past and what we need is a force primarily for missions other than war. Since that hasn't been true during the recorded history of mankind, I knew the CW was wrong, I just didn't expect the next big war to come along this soon!
Survivabliity will remain an issue and as I understand it is an important component of Future Combat Vehicle design.
The enemy will abandon their present armored vehicles too as the threat intensifies. Indeed I saw reports from Iraq that tanks and pc's were abandoned in favor of dismounted attacks because they were so vulnerable to air units. It would sure ruin someone's day to have a Stryker full of computers operating a billion dollars worth of air and missle assets taken out by a guy armed with sandels and an RPG.
And have them used right back at you, 100 times over, accomplishing what?
Some of our new systems are supposed to have automated weapon systems designed to smack down individual soldiers the same way they would attack armor. I know such systems have been tested. A person cannot fire an RPG faster than a computer with broad spectrum IR can identify that threat and kill it. For all I know these new systems may be able to intercept an incoming RPG; it is certainly within the capabilities of our technology to do so. Which is the whole idea. The only thing that will have a reasonable chance against these systems is another more lethal computer-controlled machine. Humans are no longer fast enough to be a threat.
This type of stuff is expected to be deployed by the end of the decade, and much of it has already been undergoing field testing. All weapon systems have weaknesses, but that is no reason to scrap them if they do the job better than the last one. The DoD is very familiar with RPGs, as those things have been around forever. I am quite certain that effective counter-measures and strategies have been employed to deal with that. The US frequently overstates the capabilities of enemy weapons and understates the capabilities of American weapons, but even our "mediocre" weapon systems prove awfully effective in combat.
Actually, no. None of what you describe in on the Stryker. And it doesn't even take an RPG to kill a Stryker - a heavy machine gun will do.
The future you describe sounds a bit like this:
"A metal foot crushes the skull like china.
TILT UP, revealing a humanoid machine holding a massive battle rifle.
It looks like a CHROME SKELETON... a high-tech Death figure. It is the endoskeleton of a Series 800 terminator. Its glowing red eyes compassionlessly sweep the dead terrain, hunting.
The SOUNDS of ROARING TURBINES. Searchlights blaze down as a formation of flying HK (Hunter-Killer) patrol machines passes overhead.
PAN WITH THEM toward the jagged horizon, beyond which we see flashes, and hear the distant thunder of a pitched battle in progress.
EXT. BATTLEFIELD - NIGHT
THE BATTLE. Human troops is desperate combat with the machines for possession of the dead Earth. The humans are a ragtag guerrilla army. Skynet's weapons consist of Ground HKs (tank-like robot gun-platforms), flying Aerial HKs, four-legged gun-pods called Centurions, and the humanoid terminators in various forms.
SEQUENCE OF RAPID CUTS: Explosions! Beam-weapons firing like searing strobe-light. A gunner is an armored personnel carrier fires a LAW rocket at a pursuing Aerial HK, bringing it down in a fiery explosion. Another APC is crushed under the treads of a massive Ground HK.
A TEAM OF GUERRILLAS in a intense fire-fight with terminator endoskeletons in the ruins of a building. Three terminator endoskeletons advance, firing rapidly. Another (complete cyborg), with flesh ripped open and back broken, gropes for a rifle on the ground.
A Centurion overruns a human firing position. Soldiers are cut down as they run. Fiery explosions light the ranks of advancing machines."
This is one I don't know enough details on to add anything to the discussion, other to say that by the time things get to procurement decisions, politics plays a big role.
Also, one point, the wheel is constantly reinvented. But I always had a fond liking for the AGS concept of bolt-on armor, though I'm guessing it boosted the overall system weight by not being integral. That is, the bolt on armor (by the nature of being bolt on) could not contribute to the flexural stiffness of the overall structure, and so the base structure had to be built stiff enough on its own to handle vehicle frame requirements. This chews up a lot of thickness, because plate thickness, more than weight or strength, contribute to flexural stiffness (thickness goes as the cube of plate thickness)
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