Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Thinking about our yesterdays today

Here's an interesting military exercise whose hypothetical setting is Baghdad. Jim Garamone of American Forces Press Service describes exercise Urban Resolve 2015, designed to test solutions for combat in cities. "Dave Ozolek, executive director of the Joint Futures Lab at the command, said the experiment is designed to examine solutions for current and future gaps in warfighting capabilities."


He said the experiment is enabling the command to get inside two concepts. First, how does the U.S. military operate in the new urban environment? "Ten years ago, we saw the (military) operating space as the great plains of Europe and the deserts, and we basically avoided operating in the urban environment," Ozolek said. "That's no longer possible. That's where the fight is, that's where the enemy is, that where the center of gravity for the whole operation is."

This is more than the old military operations in urban terrain that the armed forces practiced for years. "We need a new approach, because the environment is not only terrain, it's infrastructure, it's culture, it's governance, it's rule of law, it's legality, food, water, fire and safety and all of those things that make up a complex environment of a city," he said.

The military must make the urban environment "toxic" to the enemy and achieve success in ways other than trying to hunt them down one at a time and kill them, he said.

The second concept is stabilization operations. How does the military stabilize the situation in a city, transition to local control and rebuild a shattered economy? "How do we bring safety and security to the city without destroying it?" Ozolek asked.

Commentary

This exercise is interesting because it illustrates just how long it takes for an institution as large and complex as the US military to reorient itself from an old mission to a new one. For purposes of historical comparison it wasn't until the mid-1950s that the US adopted a coherent strategy on the use nuclear weapons — weapons which had been developed ten years earlier. Although the tank saw use in the middle of the Great War, it wasn't until 1927 that the British created the Experimental Mechanized Force, and not until 1940 when mainstream strategists became convinced armor and mechanized warfare was more than a fad. The French Army, which was the victor of the Great War, took entirely the wrong lesson from its experience and built the Maginot Line.

The same type of phenomenon attended the development of air warfare. While it was clear to everyone that the beginning of a revolution in military affairs had taken place during 1914-1918 even the leading theorists often got it wrong. "In his book The Command of the Air (1921), Douhet argued that future military leaders could avoid falling into bloody World War I-style trench stalemates by using aviation to strike past the enemy's forces directly at their vulnerable civilian population. Douhet believed that such strikes would cause these populations to rise up in revolt and overthrow their governments to stop the bombing." Shock and awe anyone?

One tacit assumption to Urban Resolve 2015 is that the fighting will take place in "enemy" cities. However there is the possibility that some of the urban fighting in the coming decades will take place in Western European cities, such as Paris. In that environment the intelligence, culture, governance and legal aspects of the problem may dominate the purely military. Maybe Belfast would be a better laboratory model than Baghdad. At any rate, it's nice to see the US military trying to think about the problem, which is likely to yield a better result than asserting, as some legislative leaders who may soon lead Congress have asserted, that Baghdad can be controlled from Okinawa.

7 Comments:

Blogger 49erDweet said...

If they can find a usable strategy that keeps "resistors" so busy staying alive they have little time for mischief, the $15M will have been well spent.

10/25/2006 06:32:00 AM  
Blogger Teresita said...

At any rate, it's nice to see the US military trying to think about the problem, which is likely to yield a better result than asserting, as some legislative leaders who may soon lead Congress have asserted, that Baghdad can be controlled from Okinawa.

Baghdad can't even be controlled from Baghdad, even the President is starting to lay the groundwork for backing out, claiming, unbelievably, that he never said, "And, yet, we must stay the course, because the end result is in our nation's interest."

10/25/2006 06:34:00 AM  
Blogger Charles said...

Back in the 80's the military developed the neutron bomb that could clean out a whole city while leaving the structures intact.

Its only a matter of time before such or similiar technology will be available which will clean out --or stun a room or building or block of living beings while leaving the infrastructure intact.

10/25/2006 10:02:00 AM  
Blogger Teresita said...

Back in the 80's the military developed the neutron bomb that could clean out a whole city while leaving the structures intact.

And Bush 41 dismantled all of them because with the fall of the Soviet Union, history was over.

10/25/2006 11:41:00 AM  
Blogger trainer said...

There is nothing intrinsic to modern-day cities that makes them any less susceptible to being pounded into rubble than their ancestors.

Which brings us back to national will. There has probably never been a city so smashed to rubble as Stalingrad...but ask the Germans how that went.

Without a National Will to complete the job it doesn't matter what nice toys or genius strategies we have. All that matters is that people realize that the West is in a war to the knife - something the Moonbats will deny until the rope snaps taunt.

If it makes you feel any better, think of Baghdad as the Spainish Civil War of the current conflict. Perhaps what we learn will help in Paris, London, or New York.

10/25/2006 04:56:00 PM  
Blogger RWE said...

In WWII after the invasion of Normandy the US Army had to develop new urban combat techniques. The tank was held to be useless for urban combat and everyone knew that you had no choice but to proceed down the streets - especially the Germans who covered those avenues with overlapping fields of fire.

So the GIs instead went through the houses, cleaning each one out from the inside and using the Germans own cover to defeat them. And tanks were very useful for knocking the big holes in the houses.

At that time, the problem simply was to defeat the enemy - and after all, it wasn't OUR city. Even if it was French, who cares if we trashed it? Not even the French cared if the alternative was leaving the Germans in charge.

Now, we have to be able to fight in a city - even one that is not ours - and not trash it. It is not just urban combat - it is Politically Correct Urban Combat fought under the Pottery Barn Principle - and in which winning too well is considered to be a War Crime.

10/25/2006 05:19:00 PM  
Blogger Teresita said...

Without a National Will to complete the job it doesn't matter what nice toys or genius strategies we have.

This is Bush's war. There's no national will to stay in Iraq because the President lost the urge to win his own war. He should be bombing the Sunni Triangle back to the 7th Century. But he wont, because there would be a dip in the polls and pictures of dead civilians on the evening news. All he's hoping for now is to keep from losing the war for at least two more years, so he can say it didn't happen on his watch.

10/25/2006 08:10:00 PM  

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