How do you spell "Air Force?" ARTILLERY! The lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq are finally getting us back to the mission that the Air Force hates. CAS. (close air support.)
Military Alters Plans For Possible Conflicts
Focus Is on Ending Wars More Quickly
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 18, 2003; Page A18
U.S. military commanders, working with the Pentagon's Joint Staff, have revised plans for potential wars on the Korean peninsula, in the Middle East and elsewhere based on assumptions that conflicts could be fought more quickly and with fewer American troops than previously thought, senior officers said.
The changes reflect advances in precision munitions, greater use of Special Operations forces, and improved coordination between air, ground and sea forces tested in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. By incorporating these and other new elements in all U.S. war plans, Pentagon authorities hope to make them permanent features and gain greater combat efficiency, the officers said.
Although many specifics remain classified, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has alluded to the revised plans in recent statements, saying they show the Pentagon would be able to deal with other conflicts while U.S. forces stay heavily committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has rejected calls from lawmakers and others to increase the overall size of the armed forces.
In the case of a North Korean attack on South Korea, one senior Joint Staff officer said, the new plans would allow the United States to respond without waiting for as many ground forces to arrive, by substituting air power for artillery and getting such critical equipment as counter-battery radars -- for pinpointing enemy mortar and artillery fire -- on scene ahead of the rest of their divisions. The resulting force might not be as "elegant" as planners would like, but "it will certainly be capable," the officer said.
Still, the new planning does not appear to have addressed issues of postwar stabilization and peacekeeping, which in the case of Iraq have imposed huge burdens on the Pentagon that were not foreseen by Rumsfeld and many of his top aides. Instead, it has focused on how to win wars fast.
"It has shown so far that overwhelming force can be provided faster and with fewer individuals," said Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He noted that initial plans for invading Iraq called for about 500,000 troops but that ultimately only 160,000 were used.
War plans for other parts of the Middle East as well as for Korea, Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America are being refined with the help of an ongoing study headed by Pace. The study, called Operational Availability, is analyzing how changes not only in technology but also in foreign basing of troops, pre-positioning of combat equipment abroad and routine rotations of U.S. forces overseas can increase the U.S. military's speed in achieving victory.
The study has presented Rumsfeld over the past year with more than 60 ideas for improving combat efficiency, Pace said. Among them is a recommendation to change the command structure under which specific Army divisions, Navy ships and other forces are assigned to four-star commanders in various regions for war planning. Instead, a new central authority, based in the United States, would be given responsibility for apportioning and monitoring forces.
Pace said Rumsfeld initiated the review soon after taking office in 2001.
"When he came in, he looked at the war plans on the shelf and thought they were dated and did not take into account all the improvements that had been made in U.S. war-fighting capabilities," the general said in an interview last week. "So he directed his combatant commanders to go out and revise them."
They were told to emphasize speed in defeating aggression.
A series of war-gaming exercises last year, starting with the old plans for Iraq and Korea and incorporating "about 84" scenarios, found that timelines for U.S. victories could be shortened significantly, Pace said. The speedier wars meant that many of the forces called for in the plans -- up to two-thirds in some instances -- would never have fought.
"This was pretty revealing for us," said the other Joint Staff officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We had too much, and a lot of what we had never reached the battle anyway, because it was either placed in the wrong area or couldn't be flown or shipped there in time."
Another new factor that war planners had to take into account was a broadening of the Pentagon's mission. In place of the Cold War focus on the Soviet threat or the 1990s focus on potential wars in the Middle East and the Korean peninsula, the U.S. military has been directed by the Bush administration to be ready to confront terrorism around the world and to deal with a greater number of possible trouble spots.
"We're moving worldwide from a static defense to a different footprint," Rumsfeld told reporters Thursday en route to Asia, "a footprint that recognizes that it's not possible today to predict with precision where a threat may come from or exactly what kind of a threat it might be." This will require more agile forces, Rumsfeld added, and more access to a larger number of locations abroad.
To achieve those goals, Pace said, the Operational Availability group has recommended looking at, among other things, building faster Navy cargo ships, providing more Air Force cargo planes and creating modular, interchangeable Army units that would blur the distinction between "heavy" armored divisions and "light" infantry divisions.
The Pentagon is designing a dramatically changed basing strategy, with a network of smaller outposts in Eastern Europe, Africa and elsewhere as an alternative to the large, permanent bases in Germany and South Korea set up during the Cold War.
Additionally, the military services have been directed to look at ways of reducing the number of troops constantly deployed, with the Navy taking the lead. Instead of keeping three of its 12 aircraft carriers on overseas duty in heel-to-toe rotations, the Navy is developing a plan that would allow ships to remain closer to their home port but ensure a majority of the fleet could be put to sea quickly if needed.
The proposal to set up a new central authority for monitoring the status and availability of forces strikes at the long-standing organization of U.S. troops around the world. Under the old system, every military unit was assigned to a theater -- whether Europe, the Pacific or the United States -- and every force was apportioned to a potential war in either Korea or the Middle East.
"The idea that you're only trained for one fight just doesn't work in the construct of a global war on terrorism and multiple things going on," the senior officer said.
Another complication of the old approach was that it appeared to vest four-star regional commanders with ownership of the forces assigned to them. So if, for instance, the general in charge of forces in the Middle East needed an additional carrier in the Persian Gulf, he would feel compelled to seek permission to borrow it from either the European or Pacific theater commanders.
Under the proposed change, "the idea of ownership would no longer be there," the senior officer said. Instead, responsibility for overseeing the assignment of forces would rest in one of several places still to be decided: the Joint Staff, the service chiefs, or a combination of Joint Forces Command, Special Operations Command and Strategic Command. Such a change, the officer said, would afford Rumsfeld and his successors a better means of assessing the risks involved in moving forces from one part of the world to another.
washingtonpost.com |
