Posted on 01/31/2004 9:02:38 PM PST by Cannoneer No. 4
January 31, 2004: The U.S. Army has decided that smart bombs and smart shells make a lot of its artillery units unnecessary. So two thirds of its non-divisional (those that that are not part of a combat division) artillery battalions will be converted to other uses (engineers, military police and civil affairs.) That's 36 artillery battalions containing nearly 10,000 troops. Most of these are National Guard units, who report to state governors until they are called up by the federal government. The governors won't mind having fewer artillery, and more engineer, military police and civil affairs battalions, as these units are more useful for the natural disasters the governors usually call upon National Guard units to help out with.
Unsuccessfully is right. We all know the argument. The argument is just horsefeathers. It is buzzword bilge with no relation to actual military facts. Not just your version, the whole groupthink idiocy of only light is modern and "transformative". Newer? Newer is only better if it is an improvement. Lighter? Lighter is only better if it is an improvement. That everything is improved by being lighter is simply false. Instead of asking actual military questions about combined arms and how it works, we weigh things and let a buzzword and branch sexiness decide everything instead.
If it were true that light is always better, we'd send only amazons in their PTs with 22 caliber pistols, because boy are they light. Easier to deploy? A towed 105 will go anywhere on a chopper. Strykers don't - in case nobody noticed, they go by ship in practice. An M109 will fly wherever a C-17 can land - we spent billions on those for what, exactly? So AF types could get high paying jobs for Southwest, or so we could get heavy equipment to theater fast when necessary? Easier to deploy? The 173rd was real easy to deploy. It sat in the Kurdish mountains and watched the war. The 3rd was supposedly hard to deploy. It landed easily in Kuwait and went straight to Baghdad, through everything they had, in a few days. It isn't deployment that takes time anyway, it is diplomacy, and if you don't bring some armor, decision once battle is joined. Somebody is focused on the wrong "D".
It is easy to see why. The heavy types inside the army have no political pull. Everybody else has decided to turn them into a hidebound dinasour strawman and to wail away at them as the uncool geeks on the playground of the funding wars. The marines say they deploy better because deployment is nearly their entire mission. The AF says it will do all the shooting, don't fund anything else, because F-22s and JDAMs are both effective and expensive and the budget is limited in size; they want every scrap of it. The navy says you can't deploy there unless we win. Then the light airborne snakeaters types within the army say "OK OK, we will agree with you and gut the army, as long as we are henceforth forevermore in charge of the remainder, the only guys who'll get promoted, and whatever we want we get".
The reality is the truly effective weapons we have are JDAMs on the one hand, and heavy ground combat systems on the other. That means M-1s, MLRS, Brads, and M109s. Those fight and win the nation's wars. Snakeaters hog the promotions and brownnose the bottom line boys by agreeing to gut everybody else. The marines can get there and fight if the army lends them some M-1s if they ever encounter any actual enemy, or the AF blows it out of their way. They will be a week behind the heavy army, through no fault of their own. Simply because they are built for a dozen other things instead of being specialized at blowing their way through real ground opposition without loss.
They told us you'd need light infantry to fight in cities. Wrong. They told us heavy stuff wouldn't get there in time. Wrong. They told us we'd never need a ground footprint because SF and local allies and the airforce would do all of it. Wrong. They told us a Stryker would fit in a C-130. Wrong. They told us it'd stop a 50 cal round. Wrong. They told us an F-16 could do the work of all fire support. Wrong.
In Anaconda, they dropped multiple 2000 lb laser guided bombs on a single MG in a log bunker 200m away, without actually getting it (men bleed to death in the meantime), because they had nothing between a .223 caliber SAW and an F-16. These days troops in Afghanistan carry AT-4s, unguided with 250m range, just to have something that will KO a mud hut. We've got automatic grenade launchers and ATGMs and smart rounds for 81 and 120mm mortars and flyable 105 and 155 arty, but they didn't bother to bring any of it. Why? They were told to be "light". So all the heavy weapons companies and arty battalions either didn't deploy at all, or remain stationary in base camps.
In the march to Baghdad, in contrast, they went right through multiple armor divisions into the heart of hostile cities, blowing through multiple RPG and HMG ambushes, with a casualty toll that looks like peacetime traffic accidents. What in God's name will it take before any of the mindnumbed robots droning on about "lighter, more deployable" see that armorand firepower win wars and saves lives, and funding fight buzzwords do neither?
What will you get in response? You will get on call fire timed in seconds not hours, exactly where you want it, powerful enough to neutralize any target you care to name. Then the light guys up front will have some real combat ability - as forward observors, not as a terror to snakes. They won't have to wait hours for it to come in, and it'll have infinite "loiter time". It will kill stuff as fast as you can see it and phone home, and as fast as completely unsexy trucks can haul the ammo up to the guns.
Why are we in this mess? It is clear the present revolution in military affairs is all about smart weapon firepower. Firepower has increased in importance drastically. And range. Instead of doctrine running with this, outside the airforce it is all razzle dazzle maneuver warfare theory instead. That is the real hidebound idea - it is so 1940.
A big part of the reason why is that the important arms for it are the least sexy in the force. Why are they unsexy? Because sexy is synonymous with needs lots of courage, and it doesn't take a lot of courage to feed a gun or truck it ammo. It works just fine. But because it works so well it doesn't really even involve serious risk to life and limb, military culture turns up its nose at it. It is geeky. No snakes are eaten. At least in the air force, the officers go off to fight in risky ways. Arty is a bureaucracy by comparison. Move guns into position, set up guns, process fire support requests, feed guns, enemy evaporates. Not sexy. Just extremely effective death-dealing.
The Army is completely dependent on the Navy and Air Force (including the Civil Reserve Air Fleet) to project its forces into the fray.
Is it useful to have some emergency forces that e.g. could get to South Korea in a day or two rather than in a month? Of course. But we aren't going to lose because we don't have a month to send ships. There isn't anybody out there who can mount that kind of threat against us.
People talk as though the end of the Warsaw Pact means now deployability is everything. The truth is only the Warsaw Pact was enough of a threat to hurt us rapidly that rapid deployability (e.g. refogger) mattered. With all the third rate dictators, we've got time to set up the sucker punch, because they aren't coming for us we are coming for them.
Does anybody stop to think about these things? No. They just get a buzzword that fits a preconceived notion and they run with it. Do they look at what we actually do, and whether it actually works, and react to those lessons? No. They force war strategies to fit their funding games instead of the other way around.
Deployable guys in Mogidishu needed back up from Pakistani armor. They'd been there for months. Marines had their own armor, but had already left, for the most part. It was army snake-eaters that were left. The 173rd sat out of the war up north. 3rd went through the strongest defenses twice as fast as the Marines went through lighter ones. In Gulf I, 24th Mech and the ACRs did the lion's share. The heavies have performed every time they've been used.
Our lighter guys are supposed to get everywhere faster. In practice, they rely on choppers instead of ground vehicles. We lose choppers to low tech arms continually, and that accounts for a high portion of our KIA. They are clearly the most vulnerable part of the force. If you must get there instantly, choppers are vital, of course - also in high country (though too high, we've found in Afghanistan, and the UH-60 can't make it). But we fly just because the stuff that can go on the ground has been left behind, despite month and year long deployments. Then they don't want tracks because of POL usage. Um, choppers don't exactly run on MREs.
But a buzzword substitutes for thought. Somebody just had the management guru brainstorm to label anything heavy as "old", and it is supposed to be useless just because that magic wand has been waved. Experience be damned, reasoning be damned. It is mindless and it will eventually get a battalion's worth of people killed. That is probably what it will take before anybody wakes up.
Based on my 2 years as an ALO working with artillery officers - this sounds like they just created a lot of deaf engineers and police.
Bad idea, IMHO.
No? The Army's job doesn't have anything to do with the projection of land power?
(there are only 2 divisions of them)
There are four Marine Divisions, three active and one reserve.
it makes no difference which branch of service controls the lift
OK, give the sea lift to the Air Force and the airlift to the Coast Guard. Think that'll work? No? Why not? Only the Army has to beg a ride to the war. Everybody else can get there on their own.
all major wars are supplied by sea
The Army is getting out of the major theater war business and reconfiguring itself for operations other than war, peacekeeping, stability and support operations, and delivering the pizza for UN Meals On Wheels missions. The Army's likely adversaries are no longer other armies.
Nobody is going to fly it all in when a ship gets it there for a tenth the cost.
Tell that to the Airborne. Not too many ships getting to Afghanistan these days.
Does anybody stop to think about these things?
Only you have a clue. Everybody else has their head up their ass.
No, the Marine corps can't hold Korea, Taiwan, Afghanistan, Iraq, the gulf, and the Balkans simultaneously. It is nice to have air supremacy but Kosovo is not much of a recipe, and whenever the NCAs actually want to change things they need men on the ground in numbers, and that means the army.
As for "the major theater war business", one side cannot decide to get out of it. It only takes one. If NK decides it is in that business, then we are in that business. Also, the US NCAs show no sign whatever of getting out of the remaking of countries business, which tends to be preceeded by the MTW business, not all tyrants being willing to go gently into that good night.
It is obviously absurd to pretend the nation doesn't need an army. Anyone who doesn't acknowledge that has no place in a rational debate about force structure. None of the services is going to simply disappear, because they all exist for reasons which have not changed and are not going to change.
Neither can the active Army.
The US Army is not on Taiwan.
The Army is moving out of Korea. They have already moved out of Seoul. The reason the first Stryker Brigade was designated 3rd Brigade, 2ID, was because it was originally intended to relieve the two brigades there now.
whenever the NCAs actually want to change things they need men on the ground in numbers, and that means the army.
So that's why Rummy and Schoomaker don't want two more divisions?
As for "the major theater war business", one side cannot decide to get out of it. It only takes one. If NK decides it is in that business, then we are in that business.
If the NK's started the invasion tomorrow morning, what role would the US Army play? What reinforcements would Eighth Army get? 172nd Infantry Brigade? Nope, they are transitioning to Strykers and are undeployable and one of their battalions is in Afghanistan. 25th ID? Nope. They have one brigade transitioning to Strykers, one in Afghanistan and one fixing to go. Maybe somebody smarter than us isn't too worried about the NK's right now.
Who besides the NK's?
The Syrians, the Iranians, then who? The Pakistanis? The Chinese? You want to fight a land war in Asia?
It is obviously absurd to pretend the nation doesn't need an army.
Obviously. Who is pretending any such thing?
None of the services is going to simply disappear, because they all exist for reasons which have not changed and are not going to change.
Warfare has changed. Technology has changed. Americans have changed. But you don't think the armed forces are going to change?
The Army is not going to disappear, but it is going to transform into a very different organization. The most likely enemy is no longer another army.
What's driving a lot of this is the insecurity of the Army's leadership. You don't see admirals and Marine and Air Force generals writing about how to remain "relevant."
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