Here we go again. As the guns fall silent, we forget the hard-learned knowledge of why protection is a key factor that makes our armored forces effective killers and war winners:
More than a year before the beginning of our recent military unpleasantness in Iraq and Afghanistan the latter not yet concluded, we should remember the Washington Post reprinted a Constitution column resulting in its brief notoriety in military circles.
Entitled "Rethinking The U.S. Army's Need For Speed," the column argued that overemphasis on strategic mobility risked fielding an Army that, however rapidly deployable, might prove ineffective and even unsurvivable on arrival in the battle area.
"Successful deterrence," the column argued, "may depend far less on the speed of external intervention than on the perceived inevitability of its results. Not how quickly U.S. forces confront an aggressor, therefore, but rather how powerfully, may be the vital factor in deterring a war just as it is in winning one."
An article this week in the on-line journal DefenseNews recalled that column. It reports a renewed effort by service planners to "lighten" Army forces with a view to making them more "expeditionary" that is, more readily transportable to future overseas trouble spots.
"To that end," the article notes, "the service is looking for technologies that will allow it to piggyback on existing communications networks while deployed, and wants lighter vehicles that can be quickly shipped to a hot spot should US ground forces be called upon for combat or stability operations."
The author of this article is against this new (old) thinking.
I feel his pain. For the Persian Gulf War's tenth anniversary, I entered a Military Review contest on lessons from Desert Storm. Alas, the contest was dropped during editor transition. But I reproduce it here:
The single-minded focus on speed in deployment logically led to criticism of our heavy divisions and the determination to replace heavy armor as the core of our war winning forces. Decisive battlefield victory in Desert Storm appeared to give us the luxury of discounting heavy armor. The heavy forces that smashed their way into southern Iraq are now judged dinosaurs unable to reach a theater in time to do any good. Task Force Hawk's lengthy deployment confirmed this lesson and reinforced the trend to lighten the Army. Surely, the theory goes, our vehicles can be lighter and still deliver victory if we compensate with other advances. This lesson assumes overwhelming victory as a constant in the equation and holds that the only thing left to do is speed up the process to get a better result. Victory is not a given. The lighter forces that result will need to replicate VII Corps' clenched fist driving into the Republican Guards with smaller fingers poking the enemy individually as they arrive. We believe technology will allow this to work. We shall see.
In my 2006 introduction to the proposed article, I also noted the problems with the light Stryker if it was the stand-in for a light vehicle to replace our tanks and infantry fighting vehicles:
I was skeptical of the Stryker as a replacement though I conceded that having a medium force to bridge the gap between leg infantry and heavy mechanized forces was in order. I did draw the line at some of the criticisms like complaints that the vehicle could not drive off the ramp of a C-130 in fighting form. What kind of cluster would we be getting into if our troops have to fight their way off the plane ramp?
A year before the Iraq War, in an article examining the notion of the 19-ton Future Combat Systems to replace our heavy armor, I questioned how the Abrams/Bradley team could be replaced without losing combat capabilities:
A dangerous assumption is to think victory is certain and the only challenge is getting to the theater fast enough. If MBTs maintain their dominance with suitable modifications, enemies will have a tremendous advantage over the revolutionary FCS. The Army will get many FCS to the theater, but they may well die in large numbers against evolved dinosaurs. Although the Army would like the upper weight limit to be 39 tons so a C-17 could carry two, increasing the weight beyond 40 tons has been considered.34 This alone suggests that having MBTs that are strategically deployable without sacrificing survivability may be impossible. ...
The collapse of the Soviet Union transformed our strategic environment overnight. More than a decade later, the Army still fields systems designed for that era. A new, lighter vehicle suitable for a wide range of missions is necessary. The FCS may solve the Army’s strategic mobility problem, but it threatens to truncate the Army’s dominance of the conflict if it is not as good as it needs to be. Even at 39 tons, the FCS may be too light if evolved MBTs retain their place on the battlefield. In addition, small numbers of FCS-mounted hyperinfantry will not be able to exploit their killing power in peace operations.
And we did see. In Iraq, heavy armor led the way. But we forgot and then relearned the lesson of passive protection:
Once upon a time, in the period between the decisive American battlefield victory over Iraq in 1991 and the Iraq War of 2003, the dominant view of military reformers was that armor was obsolete and simply too heavy to get to a distant theater in time to harvest our victory.
Strykers were the answer. They were light, wheeled, and networked. They would show us how to fight and the experience would lead to a future combat system that will be light, lethal, and survivable.
Then the Abrams and Bradleys of 3rd ID stormed up and into Baghdad, setting a Middle East land-speed record, with the Iraqi army bouncing off their armor on the drive up. The value of armor had been shown and recognized. And the ability to have 19-ton survivable vehicles became a little questionable.
But then the heavy armor was called inappropriate once Baghdad fell. The calls went out to get the heavy armor out and put in lighter Humvees that are more mobile. Indeed, the call went to get our soldiers out of the body armor and kevlars and put on soft caps to patrol on foot.
But then the Iraqi Baathists started an insurgency and in time the cry went out that it was terrible that we didn't have armored Humvees in Iraq. As we put in every one we could find and set out to up-armor the rest, the cry went out that it was not fast enough.
I thought we had learned our lesson. Just three years ago, I even lamented the weight--at 70 tons--of the Bradley replacement! But I at least thought the debate on armor was settled:
I've waged what has sometimes seemed like a lonely campaign in defense of heavy armor.
Future thinkers wanted light air-deployable "tanks" and other vehicles because it took too darn long to move our Abrams and Bradleys to a distant theater where they could roll forward and collect our assumed victory from an enemy that knows it is doomed and will just go through the motions of fighting us before giving up.
I protested that protection--with the logical consequence of weight--is necessary to fight. I defended the dinosaurs against the evolved furry little mammals that would make tanks obsolete, at long last.
So let me enjoy this story on the plans for the new Ground Combat Vehicle, which is to replace the Bradley Fighting Vehicle[.]
Yet now we want to lighten up the Army's mechanized fist again to reach distant theaters faster. This is ridiculous. We have the Marine Corps. We have Army Rangers and paratroopers. We have Army light infantry and we have Army Stryker brigades. Being too heavy is not a problem.
Yet we are thinking that our few remaining heavy brigades deny America the ability to quickly deploy to a distant theater? Excuse me, but WTF?
We have plenty of troops that we can get to a distant theater fairly quickly. And when we put them down where the might face enemy heavy forces, our light troops (Army or Marines) need to know that if they can hold out long enough, heavy forces capable of smashing enemies as they did in Kuwait and Iraq in 1991 and in Iraq in 2003 will reach them to do the same.
Will it really be reassuring to those light early deploying forces that instead of a heavy force next month that another force of speed bumps will arrive next week?
