Waging war requires adapting to ever changing conditions

By Dick Tunison

By 1926, General Billy Mitchell had lost his military career and was eventually court-martialed because he was convinced there was a better way to fight wars than the then current methods of the War Department. He was a gnarly general who wouldn’t give up his desire to change things he thought were wrong. What did he advocate that was so threatening to tradition? He claimed surface ships were obsolete and bombs dropped from low flying aircraft could sink battleships. The top brass couldn’t accept his theory and they deeply disliked his propensity to go against their orders, so they cashiered the futurist and the American Military suffered the consequences for nearly two decades.

Part of Mitchell’s prediction turned out to be correct. Thousands of ships were sunk during the next war, WWII, by aerial bombardment. What he misdiagnosed was the future need for big ships. Aircraft carriers provided the floating airfields for the planes that dropped the bombs that sank the ships and heavy-gunned cruisers and battleships that Mitchell would have discarded, softened up landing beaches before invasions.

The Mitchell case may have been one of the first examples of the battle to reexamine the basics of military science during the last century. Such disputes, as we have found in the Billy Mitchell story, were often based conflicting points of view, petty jealousies or misplaced loyalties, and in some cases the lack of an appropriate proving ground and the reluctance to test.

In many ways the Second World War was fought like the First War. Great masses of ground troops engaged one another. Defensive armies once again dug in – not in trenches as they had twenty years earlier, but in extensive tunnel systems and even tiny foxholes. Heavy armor was king. At the same time, new techniques and innovation allowed bombers to fly, not just a few miles to drop ten pound bombs on enemy trenches, but thousand-mile missions to drop seventeen thousand pound loads on ball bearing plants, shipyards and train yards that would have been unheard of before.

All wars are unpredictable and most commanders know the importance of flexibility in order to respond to the unanticipated twists and turns of their adversaries. But sometimes strategists and civilian planners are not so flexible. The Korean War reminds us that the entry of the Chinese came unexpectedly and our forces were ill prepared. The Chinese joined the North Koreans in astounding numbers, and literally threw their lives into a death mission to the astonishment of our war planners. Nonetheless, this war was a classical extension of what had taken place just five years before during the last days of the Battle in the Pacific when Japanese soldiers chose death over surrender. How could we not be prepared for it?

The Vietnamese War was originally based on new assumptions. After extended periods of hard-fought battles during WWII, there was an effort to keep the fighting contained with a low investment in manpower. But it soon became a battle of escalation. Initially, only training advisers were involved, but over the first several years it seemed to some observers that it was our unwillingness to invest troops in force that hampered our ability to suppress the invaders. So our military and civil leaders quickly reverted to full-force methodology but with unrealistic restraints imposed. That strategy eventually failed, and we entered into an ignominious withdrawal.

As a result, a new doctrine cobbled together in the 1980s by Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger and Joint Chief of Staff Colin Powell argued that the military should fight only wars in which it could apply overwhelming force to destroy the enemy. We saw this technique put to use during Desert Storm and the Second Gulf War. In both instances it was immensely successful. A new term, “shock and awe,” took on special meaning. The enemy was decimated before it could cock and aim.

But neither of these two wars ended in the typical way. In Desert Storm we essentially wrapped up our war machine and went home leaving the Iraqis, albeit with little ability left to wage war, with the same despot in power. The Second Gulf War began much the same way, but this time the enemy forces abandoned their posts, put on civilian clothes and disappeared into the sunset. This left a dangerous hidden threat that cleverly deprived our forces of the ability to identify it. We were then faced with the need for new tactics to neuter an invisible enemy. It had changed to a guerrilla war overnight.

According to an article by Wall Street Journal writer, Greg Jaffe, “A half dozen Vietnam histories – most of them highly critical of the US Military in Vietnam – are changing the military’s views on how to fight guerrilla wars.”

This is an important change that must be made if we are to be successful in the immediate future. Those who have advocated increasing the numbers of our forces in Iraq are erroneously falling back into the old mold that seems not to apply in today’s situation. “Shock and Awe” did its job, but now different techniques are called for. The new argument that the military must exercise restraint is a central element in the Army’s developing counterinsurgency doctrine. According to Jaffe, “it involves everything from strategy development to intelligence gathering.” We need to remind ourselves that wars are variable and tactics and strategies for winning them should not be written in indelible ink.