It's interesting to see who comes out of the woodwork when the army is threatened.
In this case it's funnier to see who takes what stance. Face it folks, this isn't arriving on your doorstep out of nowhere. Gen. Chung (sp?) was establishing the basis of the rapid deployment doctrine for the last 6 years. The Gulf war ended with the US command structure quietly agreeing that they needed massive and fast changes before ever deploying another combat force of that level. Military Opfor was proving for the last 10 years that US armed forces operating without the full infrastructure of armor/airforce/artillery was incredibly vulnerable to ending up in a situation where casualties were on parity to the enemies and accomplishment of even minor objectives would lead to unacceptable losses.
Now your army realises it has to adapt. Schwartzkopf (sp?) wrote after the gulf war of an overwhelming need to change the trend of american armed forces sustaining huge losses and defeats entering into a major conflict and adapting to achieve victory. His beliefs were probably one of the core reasons why the Gulf war was the only conflicts of the modern century US armed forces broke that trend.
Now your armed forces are going to try and adapt before the next major conflict. Besides their training and organization they are going to use the Land Warrior program to give them technical advantages over their foes. I have seen this dismissed as "60 pounds of electronics does not a good soldier make" which is false. It's a centralizing of the current GPS and Night Vision equipment in use into less bulky and easier to use packages. It's not meant to replace the elements of a good soldier it is meant to give that soldier better equipment, better weapons and protection than his enemy will have. To NOT give your soldiers the advantages you can is almost criminal. By the end of Land Warrior concept each soldier will have integrated night vision and GPS with his gear, allowing him to position himself exactly and see where others cannot, he will have ceramic and kevlar protection enabling him to survive and be less in danger from low calibre high velocity bullets. And he will have weapons integrating more firepower into an infantry grunt than ever before! How is this a bad thing? I wish TO HELL CANADA COULD DO THIS FOR OUR BOYS!
Of course there is a price, no longer will the armed forces support the concept of winning two front lines concurrently. The US simply cannot maintain the manpower to do this anymore. Thats not my conclusion- it is the Pentagons.
And gone soon will be the overwhelming firepower of the armored divisions. To equip, deploy and use these proved to take to long, and be too expensive in the Gulf. They work, but need to take a different form to be used in combat anymore.
Instead we see the US move to a force that concentrates firepower into a faster moving better co-ordinated package that can deploy and smash any opponent in a matter of weeks instead of months.
Gee whiz weapons cannot replace our armed forces or the ability to project power in more than one area of conflict at a time.
Yes it can. Believe me, what the US did in the gulf would be nothing to the power they would project 10 years from now when they can do even more punishing damage in a time frame of 1 month instead of 6 or more.
But reality rears it's ugly head... you don't win a war of attrition with technology. By the end of the gulf war we were OUT of Tomahawks, could no longer load med/long range AA missiles on our fighters and were criticly short of everything from Durandels to Mavericks.
Towards the end, we were dumping 30 year old iron eggs; eyeball aimed...
How we gonna do against China? India?? The CFS? Survival means we must HONOR THE THREAT. That does not mean we attack; that means we continue to project what any possible future agressor could do; and plan accordingly.
Toys are neat.. but yah still need an Army; a Navy, A Marine Corps, and Air Force; all fully equipped and trained, with logistical support consistent with the mission... and that mission remains "take the fight TO the enemy".
Well said Hang, but some points to make back- sure we aere out of missiles- but by that time we had relied on the airforce to do a job for over 3 months longer than they should have had too. Do you really want to fight any war of attrition? in modern war they just never happen. The supplies ran out because the armored divisions took too long to setup and supply to do their job on the ground.
I don't think the objective is to reduce the infrastructure of the armed forces. I think it is just a transition that is part of adpating them. And I think that the US armed forces in 5-10 years will have even more functionality, power and equipment than any US standing army has had since the height of the cold war.
Sorrow
