Ralph63
03-29-2003, 04:44 AM
Washington Post 03-02-16; artikeln "Unrivaled Military feels strains of unending war" - PART 1
"PRINCE SULTAN AIR BASE, Saudi Arabia -- An F-15C fighter rips the bone-dry air as it roars down the runway, heat-seeking Sidewinder missiles pointing from its wingtips.
A succession of American technological wizardry quickly follows: an RC-135 "Rivet Joint" reconnaissance plane, for intercepting enemy communications; EA-6B jets, for jamming enemy radars and radios; F-16CJs, which specialize in destroying enemy antiaircraft installations, and, finally, a big tanker aircraft that refuels the "package" of aircraft in midair.
Here on the fringe of the Arabian Desert's forbidding Empty Quarter, this aerial armada, mobilized to patrol the skies of southern Iraq, is emblematic of the U.S. military -- which now stands astride the globe more dominant than any armed force since the legions of the Roman Empire.
Four times over the past 12 years -- in Iraq, in Haiti, in Yugoslavia and in Afghanistan -- U.S. forces have dispatched enemy forces in a matter of weeks. Today, on the eve of a possible new war against Iraq, those forces are exponentially more lethal, and their commanders, who have known little but victory over their careers, are confident almost to the point of cockiness.
"At no time in the history of modern warfare has a force been as well-trained, well-equipped and highly motivated as our Air Force is today," Gen. John P. Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff, said last month. Indeed, one of the Air Force's slogans is "Global Reach, Global Power."
That reach, say military commanders and other experts, may also prove to be an Achilles' heel: The more capable the U.S. military has become, the more it has been asked to do, and now strains are beginning to show. As the Bush administration prepares for war with Iraq, it is also sustaining peacekeeping missions in the Balkans, protecting South Korea from a newly aggressive North Korea and pursuing a war against terrorism that stretches from Afghanistan and the Caucasus to the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia.
This is a period characterized by what seems like continuous warfare, likened by military analyst Ralph Peters to the Thirty Years War that decimated Western Europe in the 17th century, and the effects are beginning to tell on the military's manpower, on its budget, on the nation's treasury, and on a conflict of priorities -- between the need to fight today's wars and the pursuit of means to dominate tomorrow's.
These tensions are partly the legacy of the nation's response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but they will not dissipate any time soon: They are implicit in the administration's new national security strategy. That 33-page document, issued in September, commits the nation both to maintaining U.S. military hegemony and to attacking rogue or terrorist states before they can threaten the United States.
If the United States does attack Iraq, it would be the first preemptive strike this nation has ever launched.
Here at Prince Sultan Air Base, the headquarters of U.S. air operations in the Middle East, there are two different -- but not mutually exclusive -- points of view on the state of the U.S. military.
One warm winter afternoon, Brig. Gen. Dale C. Waters, commander of Air Force operations here, drove his big GMC Yukon SUV past F-15 and F-16 fighter jets lined up on the tarmac and said, "Yeah, I'd say there's a high level of confidence."
Back at Air Force headquarters on the base, Lt. Col. Matt Molloy, an animated young F-15 squadron commander, noted that his men and women flew out of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Iceland and the United States -- nine countries -- last year alone.
"We need to put this thing to the north to rest," he said, pointing in the direction of Iraq. "My airframes are cracking. We are doing too much with what we've got."
A tour of the military, from the sands of Saudi Arabia to the waters of the Mediterranean, and from the halls of Congress to the think tanks of national security strategists and academics, shows the sources and extent of U.S. military might -- and the limitations on it.
'We're Digital Now'
The USS Harry S. Truman, cutting a wide swath through the eastern Mediterranean, is a 97,000-ton, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier whose deck is as long as the Empire State Building is tall. But to get an idea of how far the U.S. military has come since the Persian Gulf War, follow Rear Adm. John D. Stufflebeem into the ship's cavelike Strike Intelligence Analysis Center.
In 1991, the Navy carried out airborne photo reconnaissance with "wet" film, which was flown off the ship in canisters for development and interpretation. Days passed before the intelligence could be put to use.
But the day of the canister is done. "We're digital now," Stufflebeem said as he walked across the strike center, which was chockablock with computers and other information systems. One wall was dominated by a screen displaying real-time black-and-white video images from an unmanned Predator drone over Afghanistan.
Today, every ship in the Truman's battle group, commanded by Stufflebeem, is linked to the other -- and to the world beyond -- by satellite-uplinked data networks. The carrier's strike aircraft and reconnaissance planes beam pictures back to the ship, where they are immediately interpreted by eight "point droppers" -- eight sailors whose jobs didn't exist 12 years ago.
Sitting in the semidarkness of the ship's analysis center, they consult constantly with intelligence analysts back in the United States, sometimes using a secure chat room set up for that purpose. Then they determine coordinates for targets.
Stufflebeem walked to the "precision targeting" workstation to tap a computer screen displaying the image of a tank. "We can send this information into the cockpit [of a fighter jet in flight] and say, 'Here's the coordinates; go strike this target.' " The process, from sensor to shooter, has been compressed to hours -- and, in some cases, minutes.
This ability -- to add velocity to data -- is the most dramatic improvement in the U.S. military over the past decade, the one that underlies overwhelming advances in the speed and accuracy with which those forces can bring ordnance to bear.
Many military analysts and historians believe that U.S. precision-strike capabilities, first seen in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, represent the third "revolution in military affairs" of the 20th century, during which emerging technologies and new war-fighting concepts changed the nature of war.
The first took place between 1917 and 1939, with the combination of internal combustion engines, improved aircraft design, radio and radar; it produced the German blitzkrieg, carrier aviation and strategic aerial bombardment. The second came at the end of World War II, with the advent of nuclear weapons. The third is all about precision strikes, information dominance and near-real-time targeting as the U.S. military leads to the way from Industrial Age warfare to Information Age operations.
There was a time when mass on the battlefield meant military strength. But now, with 24-hour battlefield surveillance and instantaneous targeting, mass on the battlefield is a liability, because it makes forces easier to track and target.
"High-quality intelligence is the American 21st-century version of mass," said Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the National Security Agency. "With it, we have replaced mass on the battlefield with knowledge and precision."
In Afghanistan at the end of 2001, the fusion of precision weapons and information dominance produced a new war-fighting concept in which small numbers of Special Operations soldiers on the ground used laser pointers and Global Positioning System receivers to designate targets for attack by bombers and fighters. That war will also be remembered for the U.S. military's first use in combat of an armed, unmanned aerial vehicle: a Predator drone equipped to fire laser-guided Hellfire missiles at targets its own sensors had identified. In that case, sensor and shooter had become one and the same.
In any war against Iraq, U.S. military planners would be expanding on the lessons learned in Afghanistan.
The View From Above
If they do attack Iraq, U.S. commanders would have an unprecedented view of the battlefield, provided by a network of spy satellites at 400 miles in space, Global Hawk reconnaissance drones loitering at 65,000 feet, manned JSTARS aircraft with moving-target indicator radar at 40,000 feet and Predator drones with video, infrared and radar sensors at 20,000 feet, all feeding data back to command centers and, in some cases, directly to combat aircraft.
In 1991, such real-time intelligence wouldn't have mattered much: During the Gulf War, more than 90 percent of the bombs dropped were "dumb" bombs, unguided, and they often fell hundreds of feet from their targets.
Now, using the same aircraft, U.S. pilots will be dropping either laser-guided bombs or the Pentagon's new smart bomb of choice, the satellite-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM. Unlike laser-guided munitions, JDAMs cannot be blinded by weather or the dust of the battlefield.
With this new precision-strike capability, a single aircraft carrier's complement of 50 fighter jets can hit more targets in one night than hundreds of aircraft did on the opening night of the Gulf War -- and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has deployed five carriers to the Persian Gulf region.
Along with that capability, the military has significantly upgraded several key weapons systems.
"PRINCE SULTAN AIR BASE, Saudi Arabia -- An F-15C fighter rips the bone-dry air as it roars down the runway, heat-seeking Sidewinder missiles pointing from its wingtips.
A succession of American technological wizardry quickly follows: an RC-135 "Rivet Joint" reconnaissance plane, for intercepting enemy communications; EA-6B jets, for jamming enemy radars and radios; F-16CJs, which specialize in destroying enemy antiaircraft installations, and, finally, a big tanker aircraft that refuels the "package" of aircraft in midair.
Here on the fringe of the Arabian Desert's forbidding Empty Quarter, this aerial armada, mobilized to patrol the skies of southern Iraq, is emblematic of the U.S. military -- which now stands astride the globe more dominant than any armed force since the legions of the Roman Empire.
Four times over the past 12 years -- in Iraq, in Haiti, in Yugoslavia and in Afghanistan -- U.S. forces have dispatched enemy forces in a matter of weeks. Today, on the eve of a possible new war against Iraq, those forces are exponentially more lethal, and their commanders, who have known little but victory over their careers, are confident almost to the point of cockiness.
"At no time in the history of modern warfare has a force been as well-trained, well-equipped and highly motivated as our Air Force is today," Gen. John P. Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff, said last month. Indeed, one of the Air Force's slogans is "Global Reach, Global Power."
That reach, say military commanders and other experts, may also prove to be an Achilles' heel: The more capable the U.S. military has become, the more it has been asked to do, and now strains are beginning to show. As the Bush administration prepares for war with Iraq, it is also sustaining peacekeeping missions in the Balkans, protecting South Korea from a newly aggressive North Korea and pursuing a war against terrorism that stretches from Afghanistan and the Caucasus to the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia.
This is a period characterized by what seems like continuous warfare, likened by military analyst Ralph Peters to the Thirty Years War that decimated Western Europe in the 17th century, and the effects are beginning to tell on the military's manpower, on its budget, on the nation's treasury, and on a conflict of priorities -- between the need to fight today's wars and the pursuit of means to dominate tomorrow's.
These tensions are partly the legacy of the nation's response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but they will not dissipate any time soon: They are implicit in the administration's new national security strategy. That 33-page document, issued in September, commits the nation both to maintaining U.S. military hegemony and to attacking rogue or terrorist states before they can threaten the United States.
If the United States does attack Iraq, it would be the first preemptive strike this nation has ever launched.
Here at Prince Sultan Air Base, the headquarters of U.S. air operations in the Middle East, there are two different -- but not mutually exclusive -- points of view on the state of the U.S. military.
One warm winter afternoon, Brig. Gen. Dale C. Waters, commander of Air Force operations here, drove his big GMC Yukon SUV past F-15 and F-16 fighter jets lined up on the tarmac and said, "Yeah, I'd say there's a high level of confidence."
Back at Air Force headquarters on the base, Lt. Col. Matt Molloy, an animated young F-15 squadron commander, noted that his men and women flew out of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Iceland and the United States -- nine countries -- last year alone.
"We need to put this thing to the north to rest," he said, pointing in the direction of Iraq. "My airframes are cracking. We are doing too much with what we've got."
A tour of the military, from the sands of Saudi Arabia to the waters of the Mediterranean, and from the halls of Congress to the think tanks of national security strategists and academics, shows the sources and extent of U.S. military might -- and the limitations on it.
'We're Digital Now'
The USS Harry S. Truman, cutting a wide swath through the eastern Mediterranean, is a 97,000-ton, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier whose deck is as long as the Empire State Building is tall. But to get an idea of how far the U.S. military has come since the Persian Gulf War, follow Rear Adm. John D. Stufflebeem into the ship's cavelike Strike Intelligence Analysis Center.
In 1991, the Navy carried out airborne photo reconnaissance with "wet" film, which was flown off the ship in canisters for development and interpretation. Days passed before the intelligence could be put to use.
But the day of the canister is done. "We're digital now," Stufflebeem said as he walked across the strike center, which was chockablock with computers and other information systems. One wall was dominated by a screen displaying real-time black-and-white video images from an unmanned Predator drone over Afghanistan.
Today, every ship in the Truman's battle group, commanded by Stufflebeem, is linked to the other -- and to the world beyond -- by satellite-uplinked data networks. The carrier's strike aircraft and reconnaissance planes beam pictures back to the ship, where they are immediately interpreted by eight "point droppers" -- eight sailors whose jobs didn't exist 12 years ago.
Sitting in the semidarkness of the ship's analysis center, they consult constantly with intelligence analysts back in the United States, sometimes using a secure chat room set up for that purpose. Then they determine coordinates for targets.
Stufflebeem walked to the "precision targeting" workstation to tap a computer screen displaying the image of a tank. "We can send this information into the cockpit [of a fighter jet in flight] and say, 'Here's the coordinates; go strike this target.' " The process, from sensor to shooter, has been compressed to hours -- and, in some cases, minutes.
This ability -- to add velocity to data -- is the most dramatic improvement in the U.S. military over the past decade, the one that underlies overwhelming advances in the speed and accuracy with which those forces can bring ordnance to bear.
Many military analysts and historians believe that U.S. precision-strike capabilities, first seen in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, represent the third "revolution in military affairs" of the 20th century, during which emerging technologies and new war-fighting concepts changed the nature of war.
The first took place between 1917 and 1939, with the combination of internal combustion engines, improved aircraft design, radio and radar; it produced the German blitzkrieg, carrier aviation and strategic aerial bombardment. The second came at the end of World War II, with the advent of nuclear weapons. The third is all about precision strikes, information dominance and near-real-time targeting as the U.S. military leads to the way from Industrial Age warfare to Information Age operations.
There was a time when mass on the battlefield meant military strength. But now, with 24-hour battlefield surveillance and instantaneous targeting, mass on the battlefield is a liability, because it makes forces easier to track and target.
"High-quality intelligence is the American 21st-century version of mass," said Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the National Security Agency. "With it, we have replaced mass on the battlefield with knowledge and precision."
In Afghanistan at the end of 2001, the fusion of precision weapons and information dominance produced a new war-fighting concept in which small numbers of Special Operations soldiers on the ground used laser pointers and Global Positioning System receivers to designate targets for attack by bombers and fighters. That war will also be remembered for the U.S. military's first use in combat of an armed, unmanned aerial vehicle: a Predator drone equipped to fire laser-guided Hellfire missiles at targets its own sensors had identified. In that case, sensor and shooter had become one and the same.
In any war against Iraq, U.S. military planners would be expanding on the lessons learned in Afghanistan.
The View From Above
If they do attack Iraq, U.S. commanders would have an unprecedented view of the battlefield, provided by a network of spy satellites at 400 miles in space, Global Hawk reconnaissance drones loitering at 65,000 feet, manned JSTARS aircraft with moving-target indicator radar at 40,000 feet and Predator drones with video, infrared and radar sensors at 20,000 feet, all feeding data back to command centers and, in some cases, directly to combat aircraft.
In 1991, such real-time intelligence wouldn't have mattered much: During the Gulf War, more than 90 percent of the bombs dropped were "dumb" bombs, unguided, and they often fell hundreds of feet from their targets.
Now, using the same aircraft, U.S. pilots will be dropping either laser-guided bombs or the Pentagon's new smart bomb of choice, the satellite-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM. Unlike laser-guided munitions, JDAMs cannot be blinded by weather or the dust of the battlefield.
With this new precision-strike capability, a single aircraft carrier's complement of 50 fighter jets can hit more targets in one night than hundreds of aircraft did on the opening night of the Gulf War -- and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has deployed five carriers to the Persian Gulf region.
Along with that capability, the military has significantly upgraded several key weapons systems.