Hi D. Long; Re: "But only 7% of the munitions dropped in the Gulf War were smart weapons." (as an explanation for why only 20% of vehicle kills in Gulf War I were made from the air).
(1) Like I said before, the Gulf War was the best possible display of air power (for our side). Iraq only had a few months to prepare positions, and they were exposed in the worst possible terrain for armor. That was the best possible, what do you think will happen when air goes up against armor in a double canopy jungle? And like I said before, the other side got zero utility out of its air force. When it came down to destroying vehicles, the Gulf War was armor and artillery versus armor and artillery. The primary use of air power was in keeping the other guy's mobility down, not in killing him.
(2) Since man first took to the air a century ago, two things have been constant. (a) The proponents of air power have always argued that air power was more significant against land targets than it really was, and (b) that the next war would be the first one where air power really would be able to control a battlefield without assistance on the ground. In this sense, the Gulf War was simply more of the same. By the way, air power has proven invaluable on the sea, but the fact is that it's a heck of a lot harder to disperse, dig in, set up spoofs, or camoflage yourself at sea.
(3) Iraqis (hardly the most experienced fighters against an air based enemy) figured out how to spoof smart weapons in Gulf War I by using various forms of "deception". Even 7% of the bombs being smart should have been enough to kill all of Iraq's vehicles, but instead the figure was only 20%. The reason for this was that our pilots kept reporting k-kills on plywood targets, and left untouched perfect condition armor vehicles that had a barrel of oil soaked rags putting up smoke next to it. This was in 1992. Since then, every real (i.e. non Taliban) military on the planet has sifted through these experiences, and improved their resistance to smart bombs. If we go back against Iraq, expect to find 20x as many decoys as last time, and expect them to be much better made. Also expect the same against the military of any country that read the reports coming back from the Gulf War. And since the Gulf War was the biggest war since Vietnam, you can bet that every professional military officer on the planet has read as much as he could about it (certainly more than I have). If you're interested in decoys as used by Iraq during the war, and their effects on US smart bombs, here are some good links:
au.af.mil
Especially read:
au.af.mil
A great article on the limitations of air power. It's way too long for me to quote from, but this should be of interest:
Although aircrews reported destroying around 80 mobile launchers, most reports reflected destruction of decoys and objects that provided Scud like infrared or radar signatures.
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Anybody that does a campaign against transportation systems had better beware!
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Poststrike analysis indicated that we achieved little of military value and that the psychological impact was questionable. [against Vietnam] The impact of Desert Storm strikes against command and leadership targets was also questionable.
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Through the ages, airpower apparently has been unable to affect political stability or a population's will to continue the fight.
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Other airpower adherents, including the Air Force chief of staff and the JFACC for Desert Storm, recommended caution, citing the environment in which Desert Storm was fought.
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The search to find the telecommunications “straw that would break the camel's back” continued to the end of the war—but to no avail.
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airpower.maxwell.af.mil
The above article, by the way, has some fascinating comments on the utility of targeting civilians, I'll post them in later. For more on decoys in the Gulf and other recent wars see:
dtic.mil
papers.maxwell.af.mil
(4) What we're really arguing about here is whether maneuver or firepower is more important. This is a question that dates back for thousands of years, and the answer keeps switching back and forth between them. In our case, our maneuver advantage is largely provided by air power. While we can probably rely on the assumption that other nations won't have aircraft that can defeat ours, we cannot also rely on the assumption that they will be unable to develop antiaircraft equipment that can defeat our aircraft. The long term problem, I think, is artificial intelligence (far smarter than what we call "smart bombs") in robotic weapons systems.
(5) The other big weakness of precision weapons is that they're only economical against valuable targets. If the other side has only infantry, and those infantry are reasonably dispersed, precision weapons are not economical useful, at least on the front lines. If we're going up against a country like Afghanistan, that is both weak and underpopulated, we can do stuff like drop $250K precision munitions on jeeps, but the effect of our action will be to make the other guy disperse into targets smaller than jeeps.
(6) Countries that have had time to dig very deep have probably dug so deep that air power will be unable to dig them back out again. Do a search on the .mil sites for "tunnel" and "Korea" and see what turns up. What this means is that the next time we have a real war against a dug in enemy, it is not at all unlikely that a WW1 scenario will repeat. It's been 60 years since the industrialized countries went at it, so we have no recent information to indicate what such a war would really be like.
If you have to deliver a lot of steel to a wide area, and costs are an issue (and in real wars, costs are very much an issue), the cheapest way of doing it is with artillery. Maybe the Crusader isn't the best choice, but I think that the administration is dropping it for the wrong reasons. It should be dropped if it doesn't work, but as far as the weight of it goes, at 40 tons unloaded it's not that heavy. If we can't deliver it by air, we need to improve our air delivery system.
German tanks in WW2:
Panzer V "Panther" Medium Tank: 50 US tons
Tiger I Heavy Tank: 63 US tons
Jagdpanther Tank Destroyer: 50 US tons
geocities.com
From the designs emerged 188 tonnes [i.e. 188000Kg = 206 US tons] heavy monster.
achtungpanzer.com
Modern tanks:
T-72: 49 US tons
fas.org
M-1 Abrams: 60 tons
leyden.com
For God's sake, if 40 ton armored vehicles are useless in warfare, then how come everybody's been making them by the thousands since 1938? The answer is that they're not useless. The places that generals like to control are the places that are most easily resupplied. That means big cities, because big cities have ports and roads that can support trucks. And that means they've got ports and roads that can support heavy armor. This military axiom dates back thousands of years and it is not about to change any time soon. Supply dictates strategy.
When the Rangers and Delta Force got stuck in Mogadishu, it was armor that was brought in to bring them out (M-48s, 52 tons), from Pakistan.
Now, if Pakistan can deliver a 52 ton vehicle to Somalia, why can't the US expect to move 40 ton machines around? No, the reason the administration cancelled the Crusader is not because they're impossible to move around, but instead becaues they're ignoring real war fighting to instead grab for some possible advantages far in the future that would be more useful against terrorists. I think it's a mistake.
-- Carl |
