Articles by Herschel Smith

If Afghanistan is the model for contemporary counterinsurgency operations, then the U.S. ought to rethink its strategy.  There is a role for both special operators and regulars in today’s warfare.  Cessation of regular operations too soon is counterproductive.

Bill Roggio is covering the fact that Pakistan has released more than 2500 al-Qaeda and Taliban, most of whom are heading to Waziristan.  Bill also covers the continuing operations in Afghanistan, stating that:

But the Afghan and Coalition efforts may merely be a holding action. Attempts to stabilize the provinces on the Pakistani border has been a difficult task as Taliban and al-Qaeda have used Pakistan’s Baluchistan and North West Frontier Provinces as bases of operations … The fighting in Afghanistan will only intensify.

Vital Perspective is reporting (from Jane’s Defence) that the Army and Marine Corps are putting the finishing touches on a new counter-insurgency manual that is designed to fill a crucial gap in U.S. military doctrine.  Afghanistan has lessons for our struggle in Iraq.  If this manual doesn’t mention and learn from our (at least partially) failed strategy in Afghanistan, then they should go back to the drawing board.

Much has been made about counterinsurgency warfare and the strategy the U.S. uses to attain peace and stability in Iraq.  The Washington Post recently published an article entitled In a Volatile Region of Iraq, U.S. Military Takes Two Paths.  In this article, the Staff Writer compares and contrasts two (allegedly) different approaches to securing peace and stability in the al Anbar province (the problems of which I have written on in my post Will We Lose the Anbar Province?).  I have also discussed the debate over force size and military footprint in my post The Debate Over Diminished Force Projection, which bears on the subject of force size and strategy and how various forces are utilized.

The Washington Post article is similar to those published previously, where the special forces operator is characterized as smart, patient, politically astute, and easily maleable and adaptable in new and challenging situations, while the non-special forces are depicted as dull, stolid, slow to adapt, and hopelessly educated and trained in the age-old military practices and stategy, much of which is too coarse and heavy-handed for the current situation in Iraq.  One is left to conclude that the regulars are knuckle-draggers.  It is an easy article to write — an easy story to tell.

The truth is neither of these depictions, and it is not somewhere in between.  The truth is more complicated.  As I have noted before from the U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Urban Resolve program:

In military operations since World War II, United States forces have preferred to bypass major urban areas to avoid the costly combat expected inside cities.

There is a huge difference between bypassing the troops (both regular and irregular such as the Fedayeen) on our advance to Baghdad, leaving the enemy behind, and killing the enemy if he can be identified and located, when he is identified and located.  The special forces might claim that the entire operation should have been a counterinsurgency operation, while the regulars might claim that we stopped conventional operations too soon, and much of the enemy was still intact when we switched over to counterinsurgency strategy.

There are those who are complaining that the regulars are not taking an approach that more closely resembles newer and more sophisticated counter-insurgency techniques.  But ironically, no one complains that the Afghanistan campaign was too “regular.”  In fact, it was nothing but irregular and Special Forces operations.  We primarily used the Northern Alliance to drive the Taliban from northern Afghanistan and Kabul, while we relied heavily on three tribal leaders / warlords, at least one of whom could not be trusted, to attempt closure with the enemy at Tora Bora.  The attitude of many of the fighters was in part responsible for the failure to close in on the enemy.  From the perspective of one fighter:

Awol Gul was calm and relaxed as B-52s pummeled a mountain behind him and Al Qaeda sniper fire rang out in the distance. “They’ve been under quite a bit of pressure inside there,” he said. “It is likely that they have made a tactical withdrawal farther south. They have good roads, safe passage, and Mr. bin Laden has plenty of friends.

“We are not interested in killing the Arabs,” Mr. Gul went on to say. “They are our Muslim brothers.”

We lost Osama bin Laden and hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Taliban fighters.  When the last cave was taken at Tora Bora:

On Dec. 16, Afghan warlords announced they had advanced into the last of the Tora Bora caves. One young commander fighting with 600 of his own troops alongside Ali and Ghamsharik, Haji Zahir, could not have been less pleased with the final prize. There were only 21 bedraggled Al Qaeda fighters who were taken prisoners. “No one told us to surround Tora Bora,” Mr. Zahir complained. “The only ones left inside for us were the stupid ones, the foolish and the weak.”

Today the Taliban and al Qaeda have control over Waziristan, have recently fought the Pakistani army to a draw, have seen 2500 of their fellow Taliban released, and have managed to inflict enough terror into Afghanistan that 267 schools have been forced to cease operations altogether.  If Afghanistan is the model for special operations, then we ought to rethink how we are conducting these operations.

There is a place for special operations, and certainly there is need always to adapt our techniques to the circumstances.  And with counterterrorist tactics being all the rage now, should I be bold enough to say that it is not the answer to all of our problems?

When we lose thousands of Taliban at Tora Bora, fighters are shooting at Marines and Soldiers in foxholes in Ramadi and U.S. forces will not hunt down and kill the enemy in response (while they also take bets as to when they will be attacked again), and no one in the chain of command can make a decision to kill 190 Taliban at a funeral because of “religious sensibilities,” may I suggest that we need to re-evaluate our strategy?  And to reflexively demur to special operations is easy, but not the answer. 

Each Friday night I try to give the readers something less stressful and more enjoyable.  Tonight … the genius of Giovanni Gabrieli.  This is the Tower Brass of Chicago, playing “Canzon septimi toni No. 1.”

Turn up the speakers and enjoy at the link below:

Canzon septimi toni No. 1

Harsher techniques are justified, but should be applied with caution due to possible misinformation.  Not a single person on whom these techniques have been applied has died, and all are still being detained. 

John Hawkins at RWN has an interesting post on the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  He cites a New York Post article by Richard Miniter who was recently at Gitmo.

The high-minded critics who complain about torture are wrong. We are far too soft on these guys – and, as a result, aren’t getting the valuable intelligence we need to save American lives.

The politically correct regulations are unbelievable. Detainees are entitled to a full eight hours sleep and can’t be woken up for interrogations. They enjoy three meals and five prayers per day, without interruption. They are entitled to a minimum of two hours of outdoor recreation per day.

Interrogations are limited to four hours, usually running two – and (of course) are interrupted for prayers. One interrogator actually bakes cookies for detainees, while another serves them Subway or McDonald’s sandwiches. Both are available on base. (Filet o’ Fish is an al Qaeda favorite.)

Thoughtful assessment comes down on the side of supporting the use of harsher interrogation techniques such as “waterboarding.”  The U.S. has been able to gain useful intelligence with these (and other) techniques, and it is manifestly obvious that the prisoners on whom we have used these techniques are alive, and that killing them on the field of battle is far more inhumane than use of harsh interrogation techniques.  But the history of harsher interrogation techniques is mixed, and so they must be applied with caution.  Waterboarding, for example, along with the progressively more harsh techniques, can lead to misinformation:

According to CIA sources, Ibn al Shaykh al Libbi, after two weeks of enhanced interrogation, made statements that were designed to tell the interrogators what they wanted to hear. Sources say Al Libbi had been subjected to each of the progressively harsher techniques in turn and finally broke after being water boarded and then left to stand naked in his cold cell overnight where he was doused with cold water at regular intervals.

His statements became part of the basis for the Bush administration claims that Iraq trained al Qaeda members to use biochemical weapons. Sources tell ABC that it was later established that al Libbi had no knowledge of such training or weapons and fabricated the statements because he was terrified of further harsh treatment.

“This is the problem with using the waterboard. They get so desperate that they begin telling you what they think you want to hear,” one source said. 

But the techniques can be properly used, and when this is so, reliable information is gleaned:

When properly used, the techniques appear to be closely monitored and are signed off on in writing on a case-by-case, technique-by-technique basis, according to highly placed current and former intelligence officers involved in the program. In this way, they say, enhanced interrogations have been authorized for about a dozen high value al Qaeda targets — Khalid Sheik Mohammed among them. According to the sources, all of these have confessed, none of them has died, and all of them remain incarcerated.

There is a chasm between serving up Subway sandwiches and waterboarding.  The U.S. public and especially the government must decide whether we will take the GWOT seriously.  If we decide in the negative, then release the prisoners.  We will get no useful information by serving up cookies and letting them play ball with each other.  If we decide in the affirmative, then we need to cease and desist with the hand-wringing.

Deadly and sinister IED technology perfected by Hezbollah with the help of Iran has made its way into Iraq, with the sole purpose, together with the presence of IRGC forces, of the destabilization of Iraq.  Iran sees itself at the center of a new Middle East Caliphate when U.S. troops depart. 

As I have discussed in previous posts, Iran has IRGC troops in Iraq, and has provided IED technology to Iraqi insurgents.  The most recent development in ordnance type and application in Iraq comes in the form of Hizbollah technology.

A multi-charged roadside bomb, developed by Hizbollah in Lebanon, is being used against British and American soldiers by Iraqi insurgents linked to Iran, according to military intelligence sources.

The device consists of an array of up to five armour-piercing “explosively formed projectiles” or EFPs, also known as shaped charges. They are fired at different angles at coalition vehicles, resulting in almost certain death for at least some of the soldiers inside.

The bombs are easier for insurgents to use because, unlike single EFP devices, they do not need to be carefully aimed and so can be planted beside a road within a few seconds. Their killing potential is also enhanced because more than one EFP is likely to hit a single vehicle.

Some have been painted to look like concrete blocks – a modification of a tactic used by Iranian-backed Hizbollah, which hollowed out imitation rocks, bought in Beirut garden centres, to conceal bombs targeting Israeli vehicles.

A senior defence source said: “There are clear signs of Iran’s sinister hand, and through that, Hizbollah, in this development.”

A Pentagon document obtained by The Sunday Telegraph describes the devices as “well manufactured by experienced bomb makers” and “pioneered by Lebanese Hizbollah”. It adds: “The United Kingdom has accused Iran of providing these devices to insurgents in Iraq.”

Triggered when an infra-red beam is broken, the projectiles are capable of penetrating the armour of 60-ton Abrams tanks. Warrior armoured vehicles and Land Rovers, used by British forces in southern Iraq, offer almost no protection against them.

In February, John Negroponte, America’s director of national intelligence, blamed the Iranian government for the spread of such weapons throughout Iraq.

He told a United States Senate committee: “Teheran is responsible for at least some of the increasing lethality of anti-coalition attacks in 2005, by providing Shia militants with the capability to build IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices] with explosively formed projectiles, similar to those developed by Iran and Lebanese Hizbollah.”

Coalition forces recently intercepted an infra-red EFP device being transported into Iraq across the Shatt al-Arab waterway from Iran.

Courtesy of the Telegraph, this picture below offers a primer on the devices.

But even as deadly as this technology is to U.S. troops, to see this in the aggregate is to fail to grasp the larger Iran strategy for Iraq.  Iran’s strategy is twofold, and it is dangerous to misunderstand their intentions or underestimate their willingness to go forward with their plans.

The first prong in the Iran strategy involves retaliatory strikes and armed conflict in Iraq proper should the U.S. use military force to secure or destroy nuclear facilities in Iran.  The Washington Post a couple of months ago reported on Iran’s Iraq strategy:

The most likely theater of operations in the initial stages of a U.S.-Iranian conflict, however, would be next door — in Iraq. Since the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Iran has methodically built and strengthened its military, political and religious influence in Iraq. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has extensively infiltrated Iraq’s Ministry of the Interior and police force, both mainstays of Shiite power. The hundreds of Iranian mullahs and businessmen who have slipped across the border have a commanding presence in southern Iraq’s commercial and religious sectors.

[ … ]

Iran’s paramilitary and intelligence buildup in Iraq would put some members of the “coalition of the willing” to shame. Over the past three years, Tehran has deployed to Iraq a large number of the Revolutionary Guard’s Qods Force — a highly professional force specializing in assassinations and bombings — as well as officers from the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security and representatives of Lebanese Hezbollah.

[ … ]

Iranian personnel have established safe houses throughout southern Iraq. They monitor the movement of coalition forces, tend weapons caches, facilitate cross-border travel of clerics, smuggle munitions into Iraq and recruit individuals as intelligence sources. Presumably, Tehran has recruited networks within U.S. military bases and civilian compounds that could be activated on short notice. Iran is also believed by regional intelligence agencies to have armed and trained as many as 40,000 Iraqis to prevent an unlikely rollback of Shiite control.

In my post Iran Muscles in on Iraq, I said:

With close enough cooperation, enough largesse spread around by Iran, and enough meddling in the affairs of Iraq, the hope apparently is that Iraq would become more like Iran, a place hostile to Western influences and militant against Western values.

Iran is not for a single second interested in stability in Iraq.  Iran is interested in a world Caliphate, and Iraq is less seen as a stumbling block to that end and more and more seen as another pawn to use to that end.

In a remarkably similar assessment, the Strategy Page about the same time reported:

Al Maliki is trying to convince the Iranians to stop supporting (with money, weapons and technical advisors) radical Shia militias in Iraq. The purpose of this support is to prepare these radical Iraqi groups to stage a coup and take over the Iraqi government. Iraq would then be turned into an Islamic republic, like Iran. This kind of takeover worked in Iran because it was done in the middle of a war with Iraq (in the 1980s), a war begun by Saddam Hussein, who thought he could rush in and grab some Iranian oil fields while Iran was distracted by its rebellion against the Iranian monarchy. The Iranian religious radicals have held on to power since, despite only having the support of a minority of the population, by establishing a police state. Most of the cops are Islamic radicals out to impose proper Islamic lifestyles on all Iranians. Democracy is not considered properly Islamic, nor are a lot of things from the West, including movies and accurate news. But the Iraqis, al Maliki is apparently trying to convince the Iranians, are different. While about 30 percent of the Iranian population supports the religious dictatorship, the percentage is lower in Iraq, and the pro-democracy crowd is armed and willing to fight. The Iranians believe that, as soon as the U.S. troops leave, the Iraqi Islamic radical militias can make their move and, in effect, unite Iran and Iraq as a Shia axis for Islamic radicalism that will conquer the world for the Shia brand of Islam.

And this is the second prong of the Iran strategy.  The first prong is proximate and has immediate consequences, i.e., the deaths of U.S. troops and the destabilization of Iraq.  The second prong is more theoretical but just as dangerous.  Iran wants to control the Middle East, and sees itself at the center of a new Caliphate.  Iraq is a pawn in the strategy to begin this process.

The U.S. will not win in Iraq until Iran is driven out entirely.  Furthermore, driving Iran out of Iraq will not address the possibility of a nuclear Iran.

Deadly and sinister IED technology perfected by Hezbollah with the help of Iran has made its way into Iraq, with the sole purpose, together with the presence of IRGC forces, of the destabilization of Iraq.  Iran sees itself at the center of a new Middle East Caliphate when U.S. troops depart. 

As I have discussed in previous posts, Iran has IRGC troops in Iraq, and has provided IED technology to Iraqi insurgents.  The most recent development in ordnance type and application in Iraq comes in the form of Hizbollah technology.

A multi-charged roadside bomb, developed by Hizbollah in Lebanon, is being used against British and American soldiers by Iraqi insurgents linked to Iran, according to military intelligence sources.

The device consists of an array of up to five armour-piercing “explosively formed projectiles” or EFPs, also known as shaped charges. They are fired at different angles at coalition vehicles, resulting in almost certain death for at least some of the soldiers inside.

The bombs are easier for insurgents to use because, unlike single EFP devices, they do not need to be carefully aimed and so can be planted beside a road within a few seconds. Their killing potential is also enhanced because more than one EFP is likely to hit a single vehicle.

Some have been painted to look like concrete blocks – a modification of a tactic used by Iranian-backed Hizbollah, which hollowed out imitation rocks, bought in Beirut garden centres, to conceal bombs targeting Israeli vehicles.

A senior defence source said: “There are clear signs of Iran’s sinister hand, and through that, Hizbollah, in this development.”

A Pentagon document obtained by The Sunday Telegraph describes the devices as “well manufactured by experienced bomb makers” and “pioneered by Lebanese Hizbollah”. It adds: “The United Kingdom has accused Iran of providing these devices to insurgents in Iraq.”

Triggered when an infra-red beam is broken, the projectiles are capable of penetrating the armour of 60-ton Abrams tanks. Warrior armoured vehicles and Land Rovers, used by British forces in southern Iraq, offer almost no protection against them.

In February, John Negroponte, America’s director of national intelligence, blamed the Iranian government for the spread of such weapons throughout Iraq.

He told a United States Senate committee: “Teheran is responsible for at least some of the increasing lethality of anti-coalition attacks in 2005, by providing Shia militants with the capability to build IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices] with explosively formed projectiles, similar to those developed by Iran and Lebanese Hizbollah.”

Coalition forces recently intercepted an infra-red EFP device being transported into Iraq across the Shatt al-Arab waterway from Iran.

Courtesy of the Telegraph, this picture below offers a primer on the devices.

But even as deadly as this technology is to U.S. troops, to see this in the aggregate is to fail to grasp the larger Iran strategy for Iraq.  Iran’s strategy is twofold, and it is dangerous to misunderstand their intentions or underestimate their willingness to go forward with their plans.

The first prong in the Iran strategy involves retaliatory strikes and armed conflict in Iraq proper should the U.S. use military force to secure or destroy nuclear facilities in Iran.  The Washington Post a couple of months ago reported on Iran’s Iraq strategy:

The most likely theater of operations in the initial stages of a U.S.-Iranian conflict, however, would be next door — in Iraq. Since the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Iran has methodically built and strengthened its military, political and religious influence in Iraq. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has extensively infiltrated Iraq’s Ministry of the Interior and police force, both mainstays of Shiite power. The hundreds of Iranian mullahs and businessmen who have slipped across the border have a commanding presence in southern Iraq’s commercial and religious sectors.

[ … ]

Iran’s paramilitary and intelligence buildup in Iraq would put some members of the “coalition of the willing” to shame. Over the past three years, Tehran has deployed to Iraq a large number of the Revolutionary Guard’s Qods Force — a highly professional force specializing in assassinations and bombings — as well as officers from the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security and representatives of Lebanese Hezbollah.

[ … ]

Iranian personnel have established safe houses throughout southern Iraq. They monitor the movement of coalition forces, tend weapons caches, facilitate cross-border travel of clerics, smuggle munitions into Iraq and recruit individuals as intelligence sources. Presumably, Tehran has recruited networks within U.S. military bases and civilian compounds that could be activated on short notice. Iran is also believed by regional intelligence agencies to have armed and trained as many as 40,000 Iraqis to prevent an unlikely rollback of Shiite control.

In my post Iran Muscles in on Iraq, I said:

With close enough cooperation, enough largesse spread around by Iran, and enough meddling in the affairs of Iraq, the hope apparently is that Iraq would become more like Iran, a place hostile to Western influences and militant against Western values.

Iran is not for a single second interested in stability in Iraq.  Iran is interested in a world Caliphate, and Iraq is less seen as a stumbling block to that end and more and more seen as another pawn to use to that end.

In a remarkably similar assessment, the Strategy Page about the same time reported:

Al Maliki is trying to convince the Iranians to stop supporting (with money, weapons and technical advisors) radical Shia militias in Iraq. The purpose of this support is to prepare these radical Iraqi groups to stage a coup and take over the Iraqi government. Iraq would then be turned into an Islamic republic, like Iran. This kind of takeover worked in Iran because it was done in the middle of a war with Iraq (in the 1980s), a war begun by Saddam Hussein, who thought he could rush in and grab some Iranian oil fields while Iran was distracted by its rebellion against the Iranian monarchy. The Iranian religious radicals have held on to power since, despite only having the support of a minority of the population, by establishing a police state. Most of the cops are Islamic radicals out to impose proper Islamic lifestyles on all Iranians. Democracy is not considered properly Islamic, nor are a lot of things from the West, including movies and accurate news. But the Iraqis, al Maliki is apparently trying to convince the Iranians, are different. While about 30 percent of the Iranian population supports the religious dictatorship, the percentage is lower in Iraq, and the pro-democracy crowd is armed and willing to fight. The Iranians believe that, as soon as the U.S. troops leave, the Iraqi Islamic radical militias can make their move and, in effect, unite Iran and Iraq as a Shia axis for Islamic radicalism that will conquer the world for the Shia brand of Islam.

And this is the second prong of the Iran strategy.  The first prong is proximate and has immediate consequences, i.e., the deaths of U.S. troops and the destabilization of Iraq.  The second prong is more theoretical but just as dangerous.  Iran wants to control the Middle East, and sees itself at the center of a new Caliphate.  Iraq is a pawn in the strategy to begin this process.

The U.S. will not win in Iraq until Iran is driven out entirely.  Furthermore, driving Iran out of Iraq will not address the possibility of a nuclear Iran.

Either indecision cost the U.S. the opportunity to achieve effective kill, or decision did not consider moral ramifications of leaving the Taliban alive to kill NATO troops. 

In my post Lost Chance to Kill Taliban: Two Mistakes Were Made, we learned only a few facts about the drone that captured the picture of the approximately 190 Taliban who were in formation for a funeral.  The image is below.

We have since learned a little more about this incident.  Regarding chain of command:

Every airstrike, whether from a manned aircraft or a Predator, must be at least approved by commanders at the regional Combined Air Operations Center, or CAOC. If an intended target is particularly sensitive, the decision could go all the way up to a general officer serving as top combat commander.

When an organization gives too much latitude, it suffers from apoplexy.  When it gives too little latitude, it suffers from indecision and ineptitude.  With ROE that require approval of remotely located senior officers, it certainly must be considered indecisive and inept.

Continuing:

The current rules of engagement, likely developed by senior Pentagon officials, do not rule out an attack on religious gathering but do generally prohibit an attack on a religious site such as a cemetery or mosque, military analyst and retired Army Col. Jack Jacobs told MSNBC TV. 

In my post GIs Attack Militants in Ramadi Mosque, I discussed the fact that GIs who were fired upon from insurgents inside a Mosque returned fire and “finally unleashed several rounds from M1 tanks.”

So it apparently is not correct that the troops doing battle cannot fire upon religious structures or gatherings (the report documents the fact that the GIs didn’t know whether prayers had begun when they returned fire).

In a stunning defense of the decision not to fire at the Taliban gathered for the funeral, the military issued this statement:

“During the observation of the group over a significant period of time, it was determined that the group was located on the grounds of a cemetery and were likely conducting a funeral for Taliban insurgents killed in a coalition operation nearby earlier in the day,

The U.S. Military establishment needs to find a compromise position between dollars for new boots-on-the-ground programs, training and equipment, keeping the Battleships operational, and new Destroyers for the Navy.  We should do some of all of it rather than a lot of one of them.

In my post Squad Rushes and War Gaming, I argue that the money spent towards the U.S. Joint Forces Command program “Urban Resolve” is wise money.  I promised in that post to give you an example of unwise money.  But before I get to that, let me give you one more example of smart money.  The quote below is long, but worth the read.  The Stategy Page is reporting:

The U.S. Army currently has a battalion of infantry testing the “Land Warrior” gear. Many of the troops involved are combat veterans, and their opinions will carry a lot of weight. The army wants to get this stuff to Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as possible, but only if it passes muster with the troops. So far, there have been some communications problems. This is not unusual, but the “Land Warrior” system depends on continuous communications to provide accurate position information for all the wired troops, and their commanders.

What the field tests are trying to prove is whether the usual imperfect communications, which have long been common in combat, before and after radio was introduced, render “Land Warrior” not- worth- the- effort. This is where using combat veterans is so important. Troops who have not been in combat have to guess if certain test conditions would result in a battlefield disaster, or just an annoyance, especially in light of the potential advantages from using “Land Warrior.”

Indications are that the new gear will pass the test. That’s because similar equipment (Blue Force Tracker and the wired Stryker) have already proved worthwhile, despite commo and reliability problems common with this kind of equipment.

It was the use of the new Stryker wheeled armored vehicle in Iraq that accelerated the development of the Land Warrior equipment. The Strykers were using a partial set of the “Mounted Warrior” equipment, a version of Land Warrior for the crews of armored vehicles. The troops liked all their new electronic gadgets a lot, just as commanders took to Blue Force Tracker in 2003.

While the current Land Warrior gear includes a wearable computer/GPS/radio combination, plus improvements in body armor and uniform design, the original, 1990s, Land Warrior concept was a lot more ambitious. But this version had a science fiction air about it, and was not expected to appear for two decades or more. The brass eventually got more realistic, especially since September 11, 2001. That, plus the unexpectedly rapid appearance of new computer and communications technology, caused them to reduce the number of items included in the initial Land Warrior release. At the same time, this all made it possible for the first version of Land Warrior to undergo field testing right now and, if that’s successful, appear next year in combat.

In effect, the first beta of Mounted Warrior was installed in the Stryker vehicles headed for Iraq last year. That gear worked well, and the troops were enthusiastic about using a vehicle that was booted, rather than simply started. The main idea with this new gear was to provide the troops with superior “situational awareness.” That’s a fancy term for having a good sense of where you are. The Stryker troops always knew where they were, by looking at a computer screen. There, a GPS placed the vehicle on a detailed map of the area.

Over half a century of studies have revealed some key information on what an infantryman needs to be more effective. They need to know where they are, quickly. Having a poor idea of where you are proved to be one of the main shortcomings of armored vehicles. The crews are even more easily disoriented, with most of them inside the vehicle. When the shooting starts, even the commander, instead of standing up with his head outside the turret, ducks back inside to stay alive. Infantry aren’t much better off. Although they can see their surroundings, they are often crouching behind something. When getting shot at, standing up to look around is not much of an option.

So Land Warrior gives the infantryman a wearable computer, using an eyepiece as a display (attached to the helmet, and flips down for use), and a small keypad to control the thing. GPS puts the soldiers location on the map shown in the eyepiece. Tests so far have shown that this works. More extensive tests are taking place now.

Even in Iraq, infantry officers and NCOs, equipped with PDAs, have found the map/GPS combo a tremendous aid to getting around, and getting the job done. Land Warrior will also provide a wireless networking capability, so troops not only see where they are in their eyepiece, but can receive new maps and other information. Land Warrior troops can also use a vidcam  to transmit images to headquarters, their immediate commander, or simply to the other guys in their squad. Perhaps most importantly, the Land Warrior gear will provide the same capability as the 2003 “Blue Force Tracker”, and show each grunt, via his eyepiece, where all the other guys in his unit are. When fighting inside a building, this can be a life saver.

There are several other issues that need to be worked out. The battlefield wi-fi system takes about ten seconds to update everyones position. That will eventually get down to a third of that, but real-time updates may be a decade away. The troops can work around that. For the moment, just knowing where everyone is before you move out (or into a building) is useful. The troops are providing lots of feedback, and the changes to the equipment are being made quickly. For example, the troops want a keypad, at least similar to a cell phone, so they can more easily send text messages (like many of them do now with their cell phones.) The small vidcam mounted on the end of everyones rifle will, in a few months, have the ability to send still pictures to anywhere.

If Land Warrior 1.0 proves durable and reliable enough to work in combat, it will change the way troops fight. Everyone will be able to move around more quickly, confidently and effectively. This model has already been demonstrated with the Stryker units. Captured enemy gunmen often complained of how the Strykers came out of nowhere, and skillfully maneuvered to surround and destroy their targets. This was often done at night, with no lights (using night vision gear.) When you have infantry using Land Warrior gear to do the same thing on foot, you demoralize the enemy. Hostile Iraqis already attribute all manner of science fiction type capabilities to American troops. But with Land Warrior, the bar will have to be raised on what’s science fiction, and what is just regular issue gear. This is typical of what happens in wartime, where the demand for better weapons and equipment, and a realistic place to test it, greatly accelerates the development and deployment of the new stuff.

I am the self-appointed protagonist of the grunt.  So in what may be the surprise of the century, I will go on record saying that the program described above is a good idea.  It is well worth the money beng spent on it.  The only problem with this type of program is that it tends to take too long to validate, quality assure, field test and implement in the U.S. forces.  My bet is that it will not be available for years.  Because of the line of work I am in, I am qualified to say that the tendency is to make systems perfectly functional 100% of the time and in all circumstances, to perform failure mode and effects analyses, to quality validate and verify the input data and assumptions forever, and evalute and assess performance test results forever before putting a system into service.  It is how engineers do business.  The military and defense contractors need to put someone other than engineers in charge.  The system needs to be functional sooner rather than later.  And 95% is good enough.

Finally, to the unwise money.  Small Wars Journal has had a discussion thread based on Robert Novak’s column at Townhall, Marines vs. the military-industrial complex.  The Navy wants to retire the USS Iowa and USS Wisconsin in favor of building and commissioning new destroyers.  Novak says:

“The Navy wants shiny new equipment,” Bartlett told me. That desire comports with intimate ties between defense contractors and senior naval officers, who may be looking forward to retirement jobs. The Navy brass’s antipathy toward battleships dates back to destruction of the big ships by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. Over objections by the admirals, battleships have served effectively in the Korean, Vietnam and Gulf wars.

Regardless of the less rational reasons for or against retirement of the battleships, the history of the engineering and construction of these huge ships, and indeed, the very nature of engineering and construction, argues for the continuing viability of these vessels and against wholesale replacement.  This is true regardless of whether destroyers are constructed and commissioned.

Whether it is a bridge, large building, hydroelectric project (such as the Hoover Dam), nuclear power plant, or large sea-going vessel, these things end up being once-in-a-lifetime, unparalleled projects that can never be precisely duplicated.  First of all there is the so-called “tribal knowledge,” or things that are not writtten down, codified, or even necessarily passed on to successors, that contributes to huge projects.  This tribal knowledge has to be re-created and re-learned with each new project, especially with projects that are separated in time 50+ years.

Second, there is the well-known demise of the steel and shipbuilding industry in the U.S.  Many large steel components, including ships, are now constructed in the Rotterdam Shipyard.  Battleships literally could not be constructed in the U.S. today (at least, not without re-training, re-tooling and significant changes and modifications).

Retirement of Battleships is profoundly unwise, but here we need to hedge a bit in how we aim at the future.  The shipbuilding industry in the U.S. is not only in a dire condition, it may not survive without the infusion of defense dollars to — yes, you guessed it — build things like new destroyers.

We are in the unenviable position of saying that we need to find middle ground.  The Battleships should not be mothballed, but defense dollars should be found for newer, well-armed destroyers, even if not in the numbers that the Navy has requested.

Cool Hand Luke: “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”

Iran has been involved militarily in the region, and is now turning up the political heat to influence future events.  The U.S. State Department is woefully inept to counter Iranian influence.

I have been watching Iran for some time now.  Even with the most clinical of assessments, one can only conclude that the hard line extremists in Iran are pathological liars.  Iran denied that they had supplied Hezbollah with equipment, while almost simultaneously Iranian-made equipment was captured in Lebanon by the IDF.  While denying that they were in any way assisting Hezbollah, Iranian soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon.  Contrary to repeated denials of Iranian involvement in Iraq, the more complicated IED technology has an unmistakable Iranian signature.  While denying that Iran has meddled in the affairs of Iraq, even prior to the war, huge sums of money and Iranian intelligence assets poured across the border in an attempt to effect a post-war outcome favorable to Iran.  Again while denying that Iranians have done any harm to people or infrastructure in Iraq, Iranians involved in sabotage of oil pipelines have been arrested by Iraqi security forces.  U.S. border forts have not been able to supress the Iranian influence in Iraq or close the porous border.

In stepped up political maneuvering (by Iran), Iraqi Prime Minister Malaki visited Iran yesterday, attempting to tell him that the Iranian meddling must stop.  First, it is troublesome that he would visit Iran, since Iraq should see Iran as its most entrenched enemy — the one who would work towards a one-world Caliphate that would mean the diminution of trivial things like Iraq-Iran borders and state sovereignty.  But it is more troublesome that Iran seems to be playing the political game with Iraq.  The Ayatollah Khamenei weighs in on his position regarding the U.S. presence in Iraq:

Khamenei told al-Maliki that Iran “considers it an obligation to support the Iraqi government in practical ways,

Michelle Malkin informs us of the New York Post story of an opportunity to kill a significant number of Taliban.  Two mistakes were made in this sad episode.  As the Post reported about losing this opportunity:

U.S. intelligence officers in Afghanistan are still fuming about the recent lost opportunity for an easy kill of Taliban honchos packed in tight formation for the burial, NBC News reported.

The unmanned airplane, circling undetected high overhead, fed a continuous satellite feed of the juicy target to officers on the ground.

“We were so excited. I came rushing in with the picture,” one U.S. Army officer told NBC.

But that excitement quickly turned to gut-wrenching frustration because the rules of engagement on the ground in Afghanistan blocked the U.S. from mounting a missile or bomb strike in a cemetery, according to the report. 

The first mistake is that the rules of engagement prohibited killing the enemy.  I don’t care whether it is a Mosque, a cemetary, someone’s house, a school, or someone’s bath tub.  If the enemy is there, he should be killed.  If the officers are afraid to craft such ROE, I will be happy to assist them.  All they have to do it call me.

The second mistake is that the senior officer didn’t override the ridiculous rules of engagement and order the killing of the Taliban.  This is simply unacceptable, and points to officers who will not make hard decisions because of careerism.  I have addressed this careerism before in my post Patriotism, Big Flags and Military Regression:

To be frank, for those who have their career as the premier concern, they should just step aside and save their reports the trouble of cleaning up their mess and suffering the consequences of their careerism.

There is no reason that these Taliban should not be dead; not ROE, and not the officers present and their lack of willingness to make hard decisions.  As it stands, these Taliban are alive to injure or kill NATO troops, and the officers who are responsible still have careers.  They shouldn’t.

Note: Original edited for typographical error.

I hate to complain to my readers, but I have this wrist-hand thing going on.  I get tired from blogging, and it is, in my humble opinion, entirely the government’s fault.  Clearly, if the GWOT was not taking place, I would not have to blog so much.  Now, at Michael Fumento’s blog, we read this concerning the Gulf War Syndrome:

Since 1993 I have been arguing that Gulf War Syndrome, or “Gulf Lore Syndrome” as I titled one of my articles, is a myth. I wrote almost 30 articles on the subject. And I received the sort of invective you’d expect, questioning my patriotism and loyalty to the troops for putting science ahead of hysteria and political considerations. Now the Institute of Medicine has released a report based on a review of 850 studies and found “the results of that research indicate that … there is not a unique symptom complex (or syndrome) in deployed Gulf War veterans.” Of course, out of 700,000 men and women who went over some have fallen ill and some have died. It’s been 15 years, after all. But they don’t have anything non-deployed vets have, or for that matter civilians. Not that this will stop the activists, one of whom, Cpt. Joyce Riley, is being routinely identified in stories about the IOM report as a Gulf vet even though she never got closer to the war than San Diego. Riley, who also claims Henry Kissinger ordered the invention of HIV/AIDS, sees this latest report as nothing more than part of a grand conspiracy. In fact, “GWS” is actually part of a conspiracy of sorts — a conspiracy to continually fabricate one syndrome after another by pretending that normal background rates of illness combined with hysterical reports (such as one vet’s claim to have glowing vomit) indicate mass mystery illnesses. It began with Agent Orange and in its most recent guise is called World Trade Center Illness. But it’s all the same nonsense. And nobody suffers more than the exploited alleged victims whose lives can be ruined by the constant psychological battering of being told they have or may have a disease that doesn’t even exist. 

Sigh.  Well, there goes my lawsuit.  And it was such an open and shut case too!  Hangs head  … shuffles off.