Unencumbered Air Power Key to Afghan Successes, Says Moorer
Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Thursday, Nov. 22, 2001
newsmax.com
"President Bush has not imposed a lot of rules on the military commanders directing the American air offensive in Afghanistan,” retired Adm. Thomas Moorer told NewsMax on Wednesday. "As a result, our air power has quickly interdicted the supplies and leadership of the Taliban.”
Moorer, who over a 45-year Navy career served variously as commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet, chief of naval operations, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Vietnam), said he appreciated and admired President Bush’s pragmatic let-the-commanders-command approach to the air war in Afghanistan.
"That’s why it’s working,” Moorer summed up.
"We never showed the enemy in Vietnam what a superpower could do,” Moorer said. "There were all kinds of stops and starts to the air campaign in that war. No military man in his right mind would have run that war in the way it was run.”
As a young lieutenant commander aviator at Pearl Harbor, Moorer scrambled his plane, a PBY "flying boat,” after the Japanese attack. He and his crew flew for 17 hours in search of the retreating Japanese fleet, radioing intelligence back to U.S. commanders.
Moorer has been sharing intelligence with presidents, Congress and the military leadership ever since.
After a long period of being stymied by President Lyndon Johnson’s micromanagement of the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon turned control of the Vietnam War over to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Moorer on Dec. 14, 1972 with simple marching orders: "Win this war.”
"The bastards have never been bombed like they’re going to be bombed,” warned Nixon.
On Dec. 18, 1972, Operation LINEBACKER II began, hallmarked by 3,000 sorties, 11 days and 40,000 tons of bombs decimating targets in North Vietnam and elsewhere.
Eleven days after the intensified air war, America’s involvement in Vietnam changed forever.
Stalemated peace talks in Paris resumed on Jan. 8, 1973. North Vietnamese envoy Le Duc Tho and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger reached a final agreement and signed the Paris Peace Accords on Jan. 27, 1973.
Within 60 days after the signing, 591 American prisoners of war were released and returned to the United States.
The new policy of letting the military run the war was key, said Moorer. "It took us eight years to get permission to mine Haiphong harbor. Afterward, not one ship entered or left the harbor until we took up the mines.”
The bombardment campaign wrecked North Vietnam’s economy, brought its transportation system to a halt and overpowered its air defenses. "The media so often overlooks the key element of logistics,” Moorer said.
After the war, a candid enemy agreed. "This war [LINEBACKER] was different than the first war of destruction,” concluded historians of the People’s Army of Vietnam. "This time the enemy [U.S.] massed larger forces and made massive attacks right from the first day of operation, using many types of modernized technical weapons and equipment.”
IS Air Power the Total Solution?
Moorer admitted that, sooner or later, American forces may get into the serious business of ground combat. However, air power will still be the key, he qualified. "Our trained special forces on the ground will be directing air power to targets.”
And that’s where the carrier-based fighter-bombers will continue to show their stuff, Moorer said. Strategic bombers have to fly thousands of miles, he explained. Tactical targets are fluid and may not be around by the time the bombs fall. The carrier planes can be circling over the target in minutes or hours.
Moooer referred to the four carriers in the Afghanistan theater as "complete packages,” the very able point of the American sword. Ironically, he said, it always takes two or three years to push a new carrier through the budget process.
Combining air power with forces on the ground was always a reality in the Vietnam War. In Capitol Hill testimony just before the saturation B-52 bombing of Haiphong, Moorer suggested amphibious assaults behind North Vietnamese lines as an option.
Prior to Nixon’s unleashing of massive air power, a 1972 congressional report concluded: "This study calls into serious question the efficacy of strategic and interdiction bombing against a highly motivated guerrilla enemy in an underdeveloped country.”
Reminiscent of early critics of the modern Afghan campaign, the report lamented the scarcity and nature of targets and the cost of the bombing operations. The dollar value of the attacks greatly exceeded the dollar value of the value of the targets destroyed. Chinese and Soviet supply shipments to North Vietnam were exceeding the damage done by a 6:1 margin. U.S. intelligence studies indicated that the bombing would not bring the war to a successful conclusion.
Much of that pessimism dissolved after the unencumbered air campaign began. Objectives that had been long excluded were added to the target lists. Additionally, new American "smart bombs” came into play that could hit within 10 meters of the target.
Key bridges in North Vietnam that had withstood numerous American strikes fell.
In May 1972 just four flights of F-4 Phantoms dropped one span of the Thanh Hoa bridge with smart bombs. There were no losses in the attack compared with the previous 871 attacks that cost 11 U.S. aircraft downed – but did not get the bridge.
Moorer discussed the lessons learned. Former Secretary of Defense Robert "McNamara and Johnson tied our hands with stupid rules of engagement. There’s always the potential for provoking a larger war. You must fight a game plan that accounts for how you are going to end the war.” |
