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Just picked up this new piece while I was surfing around.

LABORATORY OF WAR

By RALPH PETERS
April 9, 2003 -- AMERICA'S armed forces entered the war in Iraq with the finest equipment, the best training and the most advanced doctrine in the world. Our military will end the war with priceless practical experience of what works on the 21st century battlefield and what doesn't.
No matter how much thought is applied to war, theory is never a substitute for experience. Even the most insightful military thinkers will not get everything right. We know that.

That's why we stress flexibility at all levels of training and planning. Our military is better than any other at adjusting to new realities while the bullets are still flying.

Many of the nitty-gritty lessons learned will only emerge after the dust settles and the services can audit everything from specific weapons effects to the most appropriate basic load of ammunition for tanks in urban combat. But, at a broader level, critical lessons are already evident.

Perhaps the greatest revelation has to do with the continuing value of ground forces. Every few years, critics who insist that, this time, technology will win the war with little or no help, must be proven wrong. And while the remarkable advances in precision weapons delivered from the air have enhanced our ability to make war more efficiently while reducing the price civilians pay, what has gone largely unnoticed is the emergence of another form of precision weapon: ground troops.

Traditionally, ground forces have been war's blunt instrument. But, in this campaign, our Army and Marine units have been applied throughout the depths of the battle-space with unprecedented efficiency. Our troops have done more with less than any army previously has done.

Dramatic improvements in intelligence and communications allowed our forces to focus combat power at the right place and time - before the enemy could begin to react - in a manner that gives one Army division the battlefield effect of multiple divisions in past wars.

This does not reduce the need for any of the divisions currently in our inventory - a meager ten in an Army with global commitments. On the contrary, our Army and Marine Corps are sized austerely for our country's responsibilities. But it does revolutionize the impact of ground forces.

More and more, our forces resemble the Roman legions of the empire's golden age, invincible against all threats posed by barbarians.

This isn't a revelation to military professionals. Planners and force designers have been working toward this goal of intensifying combat effectiveness for more than a decade. But the doctrine and technologies had to be proven on the battlefield. Now the military's forward-thinkers have been vindicated.

That said, numbers still matter. While our forces have conducted the most impressive military campaign in history, another heavy division on the ground would have allowed them to press on immediately to Tikrit, the regime's last citadel, and to open the back door to Mosul and Kirkuk in the north. This role will fall to the hi-tech 4th ID as it enters the war zone, but there has been a time-lapse between opportunity and our capability to exploit it.

Our troops fighting in Baghdad would also welcome additional comrades beside them. They're doing a spectacular job under tough conditions. But more troops on the ground would enable us to finish the Iraqi resistance even more swiftly and safely. In urban operations, sheer presence can be decisive.

Other advances that have proven their worth include 21st-century joint operations - all the services working in much-improved cooperation with one another - and the increasing integration of special operations forces into conventional operations and even tactical encounters.

While the strategic air campaign did not meet initial expectations, it remains a worthy effort to attempt to reach beyond intervening armies and innocent civilians to destroy an oppressive regime's leadership. Attacks against leadership targets, even when the immediate results are disappointing, send a valuable warning to other dictators that they will not be able to hide behind civilians forever.

Practical lessons include the need for the Marine Corps to receive more funding to beef up and refresh its inventory of combat vehicles. Performing valiantly, the Marines have disproved the old adage that the Corps cannot sustain a fight deep inland. But the likely contours of future wars mean our Marines need to be supplied with upgraded equipment for future campaigns. The Marines are particularly good stewards of tax dollars. We are foolish not to treat them more generously.

Our attack helicopter fleet faced unexpected levels of risk on the battlefield, with Apache tactics leaving aircraft more vulnerable to ground fire than anticipated. Yet, the Apache pilots - and those flying all other types of helicopters - swiftly adjusted their techniques, determined to get right back into the fight. No one has been more courageous in this war than our tactical aviators.

Our attack helicopter doctrine will be heavily rewritten after this war, based on lessons learned. That's in the normal order of things. Friendly-fire incidents also continue to bedevil us - a problem that may never be solved entirely on the hyper-velocity, fluid battlefields of this century.

No military gets everything right, no matter the intensity of its efforts to forecast the future. The goal is to get it right to a decisively greater degree than your enemies have done. We have passed that test with the highest marks in history

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/72988.htm