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Network-Centric warfare vs 4GW... here we go again.
By Charlie
General Charles Dunlap in the NYT:
... fans of the counterinsurgency manual are using it as a bludgeon against anyone who wants to plan to fight the next war rather than the last one. Their line of thinking holds that our next war will be a replay of Iraq, and thus most of our armed forces should be structured for counterinsurgency.But this ignores other potential threats. Should we simply wish away China’s increasing muscle, or a resurgent Russia’s plans for a fifth-generation fighter that would surpass our top of the line jet, the F-22 stealth fighter? Moreover, does anyone really believe that creating corps of civil affairs officers will deter North Korea or Iran?
Yes, there is always the possibility that we may again find ourselves battling an insurgency, and the manual has many great ideas. Furthermore, the proposal for a 20,000-strong adviser corps to help Iraqi local forces fight insurgents ought to be green-lighted.
The enormous cost of the Iraq war, not to mention the loss of life on both sides, would seem to counsel against the idea of a similar operation elsewhere. Looking ahead, America needs a military centered not on occupying another country but on denying potential adversaries the ability to attack our interests. This is not a task for counterinsurgents, but rather for an unapologetically high-tech military that substitutes machines for the bodies of young Americans.
OK, I've got some thoughts on this analysis, so here we go. The world is becoming more urbanized, and governments in the third world are becoming less stable. Wars now are increasingly fought inside states rather than between states, but I understand that the legacy of the Red Menace still bothers Cold Warriors, so let's look at China and Russia.
China's challenge is certainly conventional, but it is also challenging us in unconventional and unrestricted ways such as cyber-warfare. Russia just fielded new ballistic missiles, but their country remains challenged by Islamist radicals in the south, restive former satellite countries in the southwest, and has massive internal problems like underpopulation, organized crime, and unemployment. So China and Russia should remain on our radar screen, but they just aren't our "near-peer" competitors yet. Give China 15 years, and give Russia a civil war, and we'll talk.
Moving on to Dunlap's next point, Iran and North Korea are much more dangerous and current threats than China and Russia. Iran is the chief state sponsor of terrorism in the world, is on its way to developing nuclear weapons, has fielded what amounts to a mediocre attempt at a conventional military force, and has a ballistic missile force capable of putting distant capitals in its cross hairs. North Korea is led by a maniac, and while it may be playing ball now on its nuclear program, that hasn't been the case in the past and they could walk away from the table at any moment. North Korea threatens ally Japan with ballistic missiles, and threatens us by exporting their technology to anyone that will buy it. So for these two cases, yes, I am in favor of a high-tech, high-end force full of warrior trigger-pullers, and not a "corps of civil affairs officers."
Not so with the rest of the world. Here's where we part ways on how the military should "deny potential adversaries the ability to attack our interests." The top threat, now in 2008, is terrorism. The US homeland isn't going to be directly attacked by Russia, China, North Korea, or Iran. If it is directly attacked, it will be by a terrorist group (that may of had some level of state support) based in a lawless area, with support networks throughout the world.
Technology alone is not the answer to our future conflicts, people are the answer. Now, you can use technology to empower those people, much as rifle company commanders in Iraq are empowered by the ability to call in precision air strikes. The issue is that the focus should not be on the aircraft, the munitions, or the technology, it should be on the commander and the soldiers/Marines/airmen/sailors that wield them in the greater scheme of things.
We (in the service) don't get to pick the wars we have to go fight. If so, most would choose a "straight up fight" instead of a "bug hunt." Looking at the world today, and at the threats we face, we have to recognize that missions like foreign internal defense, counterinsurgency, military cooperation agreements, training missions, and counter terrorism are the best ways to deter attacks against our homeland for the near term. The next attack on America won't be planned in some war room by generals of an enemy nation, it will be plotted like the last attack -on the slopes of a mountain in Pakistan, relying on human networks to leverage the most casualty-causing weapon on the weakest point in our target profile.
We live in the greatest country in the world, and I believe that we have the capability to maintain a high-tech, high-end conventional force to deter the Chinas and Russias of the future, while confronting the Irans and North Koreas of the present -while at the same time using our troops to build up parter nations in the third world and make them more resilient in the face of terror groups. That's my high-tech solution to the problem: empower struggling nations to deal with their own problems, because a US-trained Pakistani soldier conducting counter terrorism in the tribal areas is probably going to be more effective in securing his homeland than a US soldier there would be, that takes people, not machines, to accomplish.
We live in a dangerous world, and today it is filled not only with dangerous armies, but with dangerous networks of people that can do just as much damage. The idea that we can just send in the robots to deal with all of our future problems does not match up with how the world looks today.
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Comments
I agree that we need more emphasis on the average grunt - good weapons, good ammo, good support systems, better pay and the best training, including language and culture. I think we also need the hi-tech/conventional war capability as well. Who knows when China is going to ready to fight? DIA and CIA have proven unreliable in accurately predicting these things. I think we need to spend more relative to GDP on defense. We also need more human intel sources, like during the good old Cold War days. We knew the Soviet Union was headed for disaster because we had lots of people out looking for contacts and gathering info. Whatever the threat - terrorists, peer competitors, what or whomever - we need to understand it, prepare for it and educate our citizens about it.
"Somehow, we always seem to be getting ready to fight the last war, or two wars ago.
We should be evaluating the future threat and developing ways in which to counter it. We don't do that so well."
bullnav, the trouble is, the United States is so incredibly powerful that only a madman would take her on in a fight she is prepared for. Thus, most of America's wars will tend to be carefully chosen to occur in unexpected ways. America probably *can't* prepare for the next war, because the very act of making the preparations will ensure that it isn't fought.
Just my 2 cents.
The Problem with the Peace Corps is that you could only send it someplace that wasn't going to be a problem.
While I realize that the thought of "Nation Building" tends to send everyone in the DOD into spasms...the State Dept doesn't have the muscle and never will...as soon as it's "Dangerous Their" it becomes either a DOD problem or "NoOnes(UN)" problem. Unfortunately..."NoOne(UN)" isn't exactly a pro-active kinda guy.
The Task Force on the Horn of Africa is the Model.
I'll have to read his article in depth when I get a chance.
Having read Robert Kaplan's books (Imperial Grunts etc) it seems like we should keep up our [human] presence in for lack of a better word "hot" areas (Columbia, Phillipines, etc.). Our presence enables us to practice COIN and gain more contacts to keep tabs on larger States posing a threat to US.
That being said I think more needs to be done to bring technology to our Ground Forces - i.e. better coordination-commo w/air support, devices for clearing rooms (like those spider things in Minority Report). Robots or other similar devices should used to aid Ground Forces (like those small glider planes).
That being said it will really come down to basic soldiering skills. All machines break and communications can be lost. I thought Armed Conflict by Brian Steed (2002??) was a good read about this subject and analyzed different combat situations.
"So for these two cases, yes, I am in favor of a high-tech, high-end force full of warrior trigger-pullers, and not a "corps of civil affairs officers."
So what I'm reading this to say is that our State Department, which is really our national civil affairs corps, is so incredibly inept and ineffective that people are now looking to the military as the tool of choice for dealing with international problems.
Or maybe I'm just reading my own prejudice into this.
In either case, a significan number of people are again looking to the military as the only capably effective government entity to deal with our international problems.
I agree with bullnav; we need to find a balance. We can't prepare for every eventuality, budgets being what they are. We need to balance between planning to fight the hi-tech war that may never happen (but our preparedness for it might just be what prevents it from happening) and planning to fight an insurgency that probably will happen and the consequent need to ensure the basic "grunt" is adequately trained and equipped.
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Somehow, we always seem to be getting ready to fight the last war, or two wars ago.
We should be evaluating the future threat and developing ways in which to counter it. We don't do that so well.
It seems to me that the majority of wars this country has fought have been COIN or small wars, yet we in the military become enamored with big, fancy, expensive weapons systems when as you say, Charlie, it comes down to the people.
We need to find a balance. To fight now and in the future. But we also need to realize that it isn't always the future we want.