Defense Articles

The strategic plan, which was released in late August, focuses on alignment with the needs of the warfighter. The objectives have been developed along the lines of providing vision and guidance, with explanations of why each focus area is important. Johnson discussed the focus on the war against Islamic extremists.
“This long war we’re currently engaged in is more dangerous than World War II,” he said. He explained that the United States is no longer protected from an enemy by ocean barriers.

Enemies can come here, and they are using unconventional tactics. Population increases step up the competition for resources, providing a source of friction among nations. Wars are fought at cyberborders as well, a factor that was not present in previous conflicts, Johnson said.

Specific areas of concern include the need to distinguish between counterinsurgencies and extremist efforts. Training and equipping the Iraqi army and police forces, and working with Iraqis to restore the nation’s infrastructure remain highly important.
Working with local Iraqi governments and providing them with “how-to” advice are not typically thought of as military functions. However, Johnson noted that this type of assistance is necessary, along with providing supplies, fuel and logistical help.

Science and technology contribute to the effort in the form of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, among other applications.

Johnson stated that results of the science and technology innovations used routinely in the field today are the products of past research and development, and he cited several examples, such as robotics and the Global Positioning System. (See text box below.)

Due to continuous technological improvements, there is an expectation for fast responses to warfighters’ needs, Johnson said. However, merely sending more equipment can cause problems as well as solve them. It’s not unusual for some warfighters to carry 100 to 1 0 pounds of equipment. This not only slows them down, but in the extreme heat of Iraq, carrying excessive weight can cause health problems as well. Significant effort is now going into lightening warfighters’ loads.

When you’re sending S&T to the field, you have to manage your efforts, said Johnson. “You can’t just send a jumble of stuff.” Miniaturizing equipment and making it more efficient is one way to approach this problem, but existing technologies can also be used in better ways. For example, using equipment that runs on a standard type of battery can reduce the need to carry many kinds of specialized batteries.

If you absolutely have to carry a lot of equipment, having a low-maintenance assistant to carry part of your load could be useful. Robotic assistants such as BigDog don’t eat, sleep or require R&R, and they can handle rough terrain too.

In addition to robotics, unmanned vehicles for ground, sea, air and space with integrated sensors save lives, gather intelligence and provide attack capability for high-risk missions. One such UGV, Multifunction Utility/Logistics and Equipment, or MULE, offers extraordinary capability in unmanned vehicle technology to tackle dangerous missions such as detecting and neutralizing anti-tank mines.

MULE’s highly advanced six-foot by six-foot independent articulated suspension, coupled with in-hub motors powering each wheel, provides extreme mobility in complex terrain, far exceeding that of vehicles with conventional suspension systems. The MULE vehicle is also an essential component of the Army’s Future Combat System to support dismounted and air assault operations.

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The S&T strategy addresses not only technologies, such as aviation and sea-basing, but also “human performance” and training. Human performance spans the areas of physiology, nutrition, cognition and kinetics.

Immersive training takes advantage of the Millennium Generation’s familiarity with video games and virtual reality, coupled with ever-increasing computing power. This training is useful not only for bringing new recruits up to speed, but also as a means of training experienced personnel to use new technologies.

Modeling and simulation provide a means of out-thinking an enemy and for assessing new weapons under various situations and conditions.

The strategy balances attention to the needs of today with anticipation of future needs. Marine Corps leadership is convinced of the necessity of S&T–”They’ve caught the bug,” Johnson said.

This story may not be true. Although it is widely posted on the Internet, mentioned in the compendium From Shield to Storm and cited in an anti-DU book called Metal of Dishonor, an extended search of Lexis-Nexis finds no reference to it before 2000. Calls to the U.S. Army’s public information office brought no further clarification. Metal of Dishonor author Dan Fahey says he regrets citing the incident.

But the story is plausible. Although many accounts of the Gulf War credit U.S. air bombardment with the lopsided American victory, the overwhelming superiority of U.S. and allied tanks, armor and DU ammunition were also factors. U.S. and coalition ground forces destroyed 1,000 Iraqi tanks and thousands of armored personnel carriers during the ground war. Iraqi forces destroyed zero Abrams tanks.
The mystery behind the three-to-one incident mirrors the larger controversy enveloping depleted uranium weaponry. Despite its success on the battlefield, in the past decade DU has been implicated in health problems suffered by thousands of U.S. soldiers and blamed for a five-fold increase in the cancer rate among civilians in Southern Iraq. Since the U.S. military’s widespread use of DU in the Gulf became known in 1991, the Pentagon has struggled to sup press mounting evidence that DU munitions are simply too toxic to use. It has cashiered or attempted to discredit its own experts, ignored their advice, impeded scientific research into DU’s health effects and assembled a disinformation campaign to confuse the issue.

“The cover-up started with the infamous Los Alamos memorandum sent to our team in Saudi Arabia during March 1991,” claims Doug Rokke, a retired health physicist who the Army tasked with the dean up of the nine U.S. tanks and 15 Bradley Fighting Vehicles that had been destroyed by “friendly fire” from DU shells. The memo suggested to Rokke that he downplay any environmental dangers or health hazards he might find. “There has been and continues to be concern regarding the impact of DU on the environment,” the memo says. “Therefore, if no one makes a case for the effectiveness of DU on the battlefield, DU rounds may become politically unacceptable and thus, be deleted from the arsenal.”

Rokke, the Army’s lead expert on DU in the 1990s, directed the cleanup effort and then developed a rigorous, 12-hour training program in DU safety and handling for U.S. soldiers. But the military never implemented the program. Between 1991 and 1996 Rokke also urged the military brass to test veterans for exposure to DU, and treat and monitor those who had been exposed. He says the Pentagon ignored him, along with many other military medical experts and a 1993 congressional order. He was fired from his post. Rokke blames his own persistent respiratory problems and a cataract on DU exposure.

Rokke wants DU banned, as do many Gulf War vets, peace and environmental activists around the globe. In 1996 a United Nations subcommittee passed a resolution urging that its use be banned, along with other weapons of mass destruction. The measure was adopted by a vote of 15 to one, with the U.S. the sole dissenter.

In 1999, the European Parliament voted to urge NATO to suspend the use of DU munitions. The request was ignored. In March, 6,000 activists rallied in Hiroshima, Japan, calling on the U.S. not to attack Iraq again and to stop using and selling depleted uranium weapons. Protestors used their bodies to spell out the words “NO DU.”

The U.S. has had DU ammunition since the 1970s, but never used it on the battlefield until the Gulf War. The U.S. and allied British fired 340 tons of DU in anti-tank shells in that conflict, by their own accounting. Tons more were used in the Balkans and Afghanistan.

The 1990s saw a tremendous proliferation of DU munitions around the world. In 1991 only the U.S., Great Britain and (probably) Israel had DU; by 1999, it was in the arsenals of a dozen countries. Both the U.S. and Russia sell depleted uranium weapons on the world arms market, providing a lucrative outlet for what had been expensive-to-dispose-of nuclear waste.

In the U.S. arsenal, DU is used not only in armor penetrators, but also in large bunker-buster bombs, cruise missiles and, according to Rokke, even light arms. “We have these things down to machine gun rounds,” he says. “This concept that DU is only used against tanks is totally wrong. It works great against any soft targets. When it comes out of the barrel it is already on fire.” That radioactive firestorm is the reason DU is so effective at piercing armor. It is also the reason DU is so dangerous to soldiers and civilians after the battle. The uranium ignites on impact.

Substantial elements of a real-time, theater-wide surveillance system capable of covering a region 1,000 kilometers (roughly 600 miles) across already existed in the mid-1980s. These elements would be supplemented by a robust theater-wide communications system. Surveillance would be carried out in part by forward observers on the ground and in part by small drone aircraft, equipped with global positioning system (GPS) navigation and with television cameras or other sensors that could obtain precise knowledge of the target position. Once a target was identified and located, attacking weapons were available that could be guided to the target by using a navigation grid common to the sensors and to the weapon.
As demonstrated in U.S. actions in Afghanistan in 2001 and in Iraq in 2003, this capability has been functionally achieved. The laser-guided bombs used during the Vietnam War have been augmented by the addition of highly accurate Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs). These devices are guided by GPS systems and do indeed “bomb by navigation” on coordinates provided by ground observers, aerial surveillance, or satellite observation. A typical JDAM is a 2,000-pound Mk 84 bomb. A much larger JDAM, a 21,000-pound device called Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or MOAB, was used in Iraq after its first test in 2003.

Despite the advances demonstrated by the U.S. Navy and Air Force, the Army has not yet seen the merit of largely replacing tube-fired artillery shells by GPS-guided rockets. Developing such weapons would be possible within the constraints of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which prohibits the United States and Russia from possessing ground-based ballistic or cruise missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. A ballistic missile with a range of 480 kilometers would give the Army the ability to mass accurate fire from secure areas onto targets across an entire theater. In contrast with a conventional howitzer, which has a range of only about 40 kilometers and might miss its target by as much as 150 meters, the probable error for GPS-guided rockets of any range is likely to be in the 5-meter range. The rockets also can be arranged for simultaneous arrival on target, with final approach from any desired angle.

The contribution of JDAMs has been realized in conjunction with an integrated targeting and communication system, including the possibility of changing the target coordinates in the individual weapons while the delivery aircraft is in flight. Similar in accuracy to laser-guided bombs, JDAMs offer the important capability of being able to work in cloud or smoke, and they can attack dozens of individual targets in a region tens of kilometers across from a single release of multiple bombs by a B-52 or other large aircraft.

Only extra care will prevent guided bombs from “accurately” destroying the wrong targets by mistake, as happened with the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. But it would be highly desirable in any case to add a feature to ensure that such weapons explode in the air rather than on the ground if their guidance system malfunctions or if surveillance shows a civilian bus approaching the target area.

The problem with missile defense

The Bush administration has placed great emphasis on National Missile Defense (NMD), focused on a possible North Korean attack on the United States using intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) bearing nuclear warheads. But as early as 1968, Hans Bethe and I warned that a missile defense that cannot deal with feasible countermeasures is worse than no defense at all. That, unfortunately, characterizes the midcourse interceptor system under development by the Pentagon. My colleagues and I have shown, for example, how balloons released by an ICBM could serve as credible decoys for a tumbling warhead, itself encased in a similar balloon, thus preventing intercept of a nuclear payload.

On the other hand, boost-phase intercept (BPI)-striking the missile before its rocket engine has driven it to full ICBM speed-has a real capability against the Taepo Dong 2 ICBM that North Korea has been expected to test since 1998. BPI would work against North Korea because the territory is small and almost surrounded by international waters. But progress has been slow in developing BPI, in large part because the administration has emphasized the ineffective midcourse system and to some extent because BPI would be more difficult to use against a missile launched from the much larger territory of Iran and, until the recent war, Iraq. Yet solving the most urgent problem first-North Korea-has some merit.

At the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC), the above scenario must be the most flexible in the battalion. the platoons’ mobility and lethality continually boost the task force’s agility and flexibility. During sustained operations, hasty missions are the order of the day. To help their platoons in ensuring success, Delta Company commanders should develop a “15-minute” checklist for the platoons. This checklist should contain mission-critical items for each member of the platoon to execute prior to starting the mission. Sample events are shown in Table 1. These actions are not surprising. They are in everyone’s precombat inspection (PCI) checklist. But units must carry compressed checklists and be able to use them effectively in 15 minutes or less. All too often, platoons move out from point A to point B without any real preparations because of higher headquarters’ emphasis on “moving out now!” Subsequently, there is no individual situational awareness, weapon system readiness, or contingencies for making contact.

All drivers must know the route. All Soldiers need to know a frequency and call-sign they can reach if they need indirect fire support. Every vehicle needs to know updated minefield locations and the locations of friendly forces they may be passing through. Leaders need to know a scheme of maneuver (movement formation, transitioning to bounding overwatch, preplanned indirect fire targets, etc.).

Commanders need to drill their platoons with sample scenarios so that they will be able to respond effectively. The difference between “speed” and “haste” has to be emphasized. When platoon members become proficient at conducting key pre-mission tasks, their success, confidence, and ability to execute aggressively will improve significantly.

Demonstrating exceptional resourcefulness and quick thinking, the team implemented a new and novel idea to minimize the chance of wasting scarce tax payer dollars or damaging vital equipment by deploying unnecessarily. By carefully scrutinizing real-time photos taken by the responding officers, the team was able to determine that the rocket was not 100 percent safe for the local authorities to handle. SSgt Futrell and SrA Strom directed the local officials to stay clear of the area, checked their equipment, loaded their response vehicles, and completed a thorough Operational Risk Management (ORM) assessment to ensure they were fully prepared to deploy, perform their duties, and return safely. The team was acutely aware that many illicit drug labs raided previously had been booby-trapped to discourage intervention. They also realized that the individuals responsible for assembling this particular lab had demonstrated at least some familiarity with military ordnance. After driving to the scene, the team cautiously entered the site using integrated combat tactics. While completing their initial reconnaissance, the team encountered no other weapons other than the AT-4 launcher. After securing the immediate area, they ensured the 2,000 square-foot house and adjoining 3-acre lot were safe and turned over the crime scene to local law enforcement officers for investigation. Upon closer inspection, the AT-4 launcher was found to be empty, something which could not be determined from the photographs reviewed back at the base. This team demonstrated exceptional ORM techniques, professionalism, selfless courage in a potentially hostile environment, and an unrivalled commitment to safety, underscoring Barksdale’s strong safety partnership with the surrounding civilian communities.