Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq sic-1 Read online

  Their training was very rote, very set-piece. They did this, then they did that. There were no real opposing forces — or thinking enemy, in what the U.S. Army calls free-play exercises. Our training exercises were dynamic; things are allowed to happen unexpectedly. We demanded of commanders that they deviate from the plan, because the enemy has a mind of his own. But here in Czechoslovakia, it looked as if they were going through a series of tightly scripted one-act plays. They'd move from Point A to Point B and then stop and get into positions.

  Here are a couple of anecdotes. The experience could have been insightful had we fought them.

  A Soviet major general had been escorting Franks and his colleagues around a tank firing range. It was very cold, and it started to snow. As it happened, he finished his tour and presentation about twenty minutes early.

  Did they move Franks and his colleagues out to the buses waiting for them and get them to the next scheduled event? No. They didn't have that kind of flexibility. So there they stood in a blinding snowstorm, waiting for the appointed time when they could load the buses and move to their next station.

  At the next station, they observed what the Soviets called a live fire exercise. Franks sat in warm bleachers that were covered, fully enclosed, with glass in front. Underneath were latrines with running water. It was like a sports stadium box for maybe two hundred people, obviously used time after time for VIPs and officers. And the range in front was full of ruts and tank trails, so you could see that they'd performed this exercise time after time. They'd bring their officers in, sit them down in the bleachers, and then carefully explain how a tank battalion supported by Hind helicopters would attack a position. We would call this a demonstration. They called it training.

  All of this confirmed the wisdom of the United States' own doctrine: Before the Soviets gained mass and velocity to produce the momentum of their attack, the West needed to hit them early and hard and often while they were still getting themselves together and trying to organize their great numbers on limited terrain. The West had to add to the normal confusion, to hit their command posts while they were dealing with the early disruptions. Since nobody would exercise initiative — they were not allowed to — without their command posts they'd be lost.

  Franks came away from there with two impressions:

  One, they weren't supermen. In fact, our ideas about how to fight them, as written into doctrine, were exactly correct.

  And two, with each side visiting the other, something had to give. They would observe our new modern equipment and superb soldiers and NCOs, and they couldn't help but realize that our soldiers were capable of things they could not even imagine.

  But that wasn't really the important thing… showing off or learning how to fight each other. The important thing was that better understanding had to take place. They would see us. We would see them. We'd get to know each other better. And we'd open up little by little. And with that happening, the confrontation simply had to go away eventually. Franks didn't know when or how, but as a result of that visit, he was convinced the Cold War couldn't go on forever. That was the real aim of the visit.

  Soviet and Iraqi doctrine and practice, he reflected later, had many similarities. Although they had equipment from South Africa, Brazil, France, and elsewhere (even from the United States), the Iraqis were equipped mainly with Warsaw Pact equipment. And although, in a curious way, their military was organized more on Western lines (into corps, divisions, and brigades) than on Soviet Warsaw Pact lines (into armies, divisions, and regiments), and although some of their tactics looked more Western than Soviet, in their actual behavior and in the way they laid out their defense and anticipated fighting a defensive battle, their behavior was profoundly Warsaw Pact. The Iraqis exercised very tight control. Everything they did was very, very rote. Every little thing had to go according to plan.

  That meant that if you happened to do exactly what they predicted you would do, and at a place where they predicted you were going to do it, then they could hurt you. They had a lot of firepower. They had excellent artillery weapons. On the other hand, if you did something unexpected — such as time of attack, or speed of attack, or the location of the attack — and caused them to alter the rote pattern that they had anticipated, they had difficulty adjusting.

  In other words, what Franks saw in 1988 in Czechoslovakia, he saw again with the Iraqis in Desert Storm. He saw the strength of our doctrine and the weakness of theirs.

  (The Iraqi army was different from Warsaw Pact countries in one major respect, however: in the brutal way they treated their own soldiers and the savage treatment of their own citizens. That was pure Iraqi.)

  During the 1980s, while the Army continued to deter Soviet aggression as part of NATO, it fought small wars in Grenada and Panama. And late in 1989, the Cold War ended. The Soviet empire had started the sag toward its final collapse.

  Army leaders looking around at the beginning of the decade could not have easily imagined the incredible events at decade's end. To win the war, the Army had prepared to fight for the better part of two generations. To do it without firing a shot… you can't beat that for success.

  LEADER TRAINING

  There was one final ingredient to the rebirth of the Army.

  From the days of Baron von Steuben during the American Revolutionary War, the NCO has been the "backbone of the Army." It is the sergeant who is responsible for the individual training of the soldier, who leads the soldiers in small units under the command of officers, who is closest to the soldiers, enforces good order and discipline, and provides the example of what soldiers should be to the junior enlisteds.

  Let's make a kind of syllogism: Because Vietnam gutted the NCO corps, many small units went to hell. Ergo, it was necessary to fix the NCO corps. Thus, very early on in the rebirth process, Army leaders decided to change the way noncommissioned officers were trained and educated.

  In 1969, Army Chief General William Westmoreland, having seen firsthand what Vietnam was doing to the NCO corps, directed General Ralph Haines, then his vice chief, to look into the whole situation and devise a solution. The "Haines Board" recommended that, throughout their careers, NCOs attend a series of progressive and sequential leader development schools designed to develop their leadership skills at each step in their advancement. Such a system was already in place for officers. Now NCOs would have a similar system — called NCOES, or noncommissioned officer education system.

  How does the Army grow good NCO leaders? Before becoming sergeants, people showing leadership potential during their first three years in the Army attend a Primary Leader Development Course, or PLDC. Following promotion to sergeant and after serving for a few years, but before promotion to the next grade, NCOs attend the Basic Noncommissioned Officer Course (BNCOC), which is designed for small-unit leaders, such as squad leaders or tank commanders, and devoted to skills necessary to those positions. Following more years of practical experience, NCOs return to the Advanced Noncommissioned Officer Course (ANCOC) to help them make the transition from single-team leader to multi-team leader. By this time, an NCO will have perhaps ten to twelve years of service. Following successful performance of those duties and after demonstrating increased potential, NCOs attend a course designed to assist them in becoming first sergeants, or the senior NCO in a company organization ranging from seventy to two hundred soldiers. Finally, NCOs with senior leadership potential attend the nine-month Sergeants Major Academy at Fort Bliss, Texas, to prepare them for the most senior NCO positions — from command sergeant major of battalions to sergeant major of the Army. In the mid-1980s, the Army linked successful graduation from these schools to promotion.

  This leader development system for NCOs saw its fulfillment on the battlefields of Desert Storm. By 1991, most of the senior NCOs of combat battalions had entered the Army in the mid-1970s and had had the opportunity to attend most of the NCOES courses. Meanwhile, all of the more junior NCOs had had the opportunity to attend these schools as they gr
ew in rank and responsibilities. Their collective performance, and that of their soldiers in Desert Storm, was a direct effect of the long-sustained commitment to excellence of the U.S. Army's NCOES begun almost twenty years earlier. No other army in the world has such a system.

  There were also major changes in the ways officers were educated.

  From studies in the late 1970s, observations of commander and staff performances in NATO and at the new NTC, and renewed emphasis in doctrine on the operational level of war, Army leaders concluded that improvements had to be made in the way officers were developed.

  In the middle 1970s the Army had adopted a central selection board process to pick its lieutenant colonel- and colonel-level commanders. Then, in the early 1980s, a pre-command course was created for those officers, which brought them up to date with the rapidly modernizing Army in the field, and gave them instruction and war-gaming practice (by way of simulations) on their new level of command. The course itself was two to three weeks of instruction and hands-on training in new equipment at the officers' basic branch school (armor, infantry, artillery, etc.), followed by two weeks of instruction in combined arms and issues of command at Fort Leavenworth.

  For captains, the Army took a bolder step, by establishing a combined-arms services and staff school (the Army called it CAS3). Though it was begun as a pilot in 1983, the school wasn't fully operational until it moved into a new, specially designed classroom building built in the fall of 1986. CAS3 was to be attended by all Army captains sometime during their sixth to tenth year of service. Seminar groups of twelve to fifteen students from all disciplines in the Army were led through an intense nine-week course by an ex-battalion commander. There they learned how to solve tactical problems and how to manage a variety of tactical communications, including writing orders. CAS3 immediately produced results in significantly improved staff skills for the student graduates (and for the faculty as well — many of whom went on to senior-level command).

  As CAS3 was getting off the ground, it became apparent that a second-year course was needed at Fort Leavenworth for selected students to study the complexities of the operational level of war with much more intellectual rigor than had been possible in the Army's educational system before. This need turned into the School for Advanced Military Studies (SAMS). Begun in a small converted gymnasium, the school opened with twelve students in 1983-84, and expanded to its current level of fifty-two students by 1985-86. SAMS was, and is, a highly selective operation, with an intensive entrance examination, including interviews. It initially drew only Army student volunteers from the graduates of the one-year Command and General Staff College course, but eventually USAF and USMC students also came out of that course. The curriculum is as rigorous as any graduate-level program in the United States (SAMS is certified to grant master's degrees in military arts and sciences by the Middle States Accreditation Board), and its graduates have gone on to distinguish themselves as operational-level planners in every major U.S. contingency operation from the late 1980s until today. Some of these gained publicity in Desert Storm as the "Jedi Knights," who crafted the basic CENTCOM plan used to liberate Kuwait.

  This explosion of energy at Fort Leavenworth transformed the Army's Command and General Staff College. Long a training ground for future commanders and staff officers, CAS3, SAMS, and pre-command courses made it truly a university for the tactical and operational level of land warfare.

  The entire atmosphere was transformed: Officers from captain to lieutenant general now came to study at Leavenworth, while officers from almost 100 different countries attended the regular course. Authority to grant the MMAS injected a graduate-school rigor into the second-year program. Creation of a combat studies institute attracted civilian faculty with broad academic credentials in the history of military art. Army leadership now looked to Fort Leavenworth for studies of future scenarios, which were then taken to senior-level leader seminars. The Battle Command Training Program also brought division and corps commanders and their staffs to Fort Leavenworth, and a Center for Lessons Learned was created to capture valuable training and war insights. In time, Fort Leavenworth became the symbol of the intellectual heart and soul of the tactical field army. Guest speakers and other visitors enriched the quality of the intellectual environment. Leaders from Congress, media, academia, and militaries around the world came for discussions and exchanges. Just as Fort Leavenworth had once been a frontier to the future of the American West on the banks of the Missouri, so now had it become a frontier to the Army's future.

  RUNNING HARD

  By the middle 1980s, the Army had more than turned the corner. It was running hard. The Grenada invasion, for instance, though demonstrating some difficulties in joint operations, was a success for the Army, and it showed how far it had come from the doldrums of the 1970s. The Army had reason to feel good about itself, and could point to an operational success as proof.

  Meanwhile, the Army came to realize it might have to face situations where armor/mechanized forces (what it calls "heavy" forces) might not be as effective as "lighter," pure infantry forces. And so Army Secretary Jack Marsh and Army Chief John Wickham directed the creation of two light infantry divisions, to add to its sixteen current divisions. In order to do this without increasing the manpower authorizations of the active force, it turned again to the "round-out" concept, where National Guard brigades were folded into active-duty divisions, to "round" them out to full strength.

  These divisions were to be truly "light" — in the spirit of the "light" troops who had stormed the redoubts at Yorktown in our Revolution. They would depend not so much on firepower as on stealth, infiltration, speed of movement through difficult terrain, tough physical conditioning, field craft, and relentless drills on the fundamentals of small-unit soldiering. It was in the latter where they excelled.

  The Army also upgraded its special operating forces (SOF), expanding the Rangers to a regiment of three battalions. These would be the elite among elites — fit volunteers, trained to a razor's edge and beyond, to operate in small units behind the lines. As an elite force, they were given ample training budgets, stable personnel policies (less rotation in and out than normal units), their pick of volunteers, and leaders and commanders who were already experienced company commanders.

  The Army's ambitious fielding of two light infantry divisions was a success. Schools for "light fighters" were established. Bold commanders such as Major General Ed Burba in the 7th Division at Fort Ord, California, would seize on the light fighter concept and transform their new divisions to operational reality in short order. Because light infantry soldiers drilled and trained hard on fundamentals of fitness and basic infantry close-combat skill, it wasn't long before they became a world-class fighting force. Their proficiency and zeal for combat fundamentals soon infected the Army — an unexpected bonus that has lasted. Convinced that light fighters needed an NTC-like facility to train to realistic battlefield conditions, General Richardson successfully pushed hard for a Joint Readiness Training Center. The JRTC was opened in 1986 in temporary facilities at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. Later it was moved permanently to Fort Polk, Louisiana.

  At Fort Hood, Texas, General Bob Shoemaker, then Lieutenant General Dick Cavazos after him, as III Corps Commander, formed training units to teach the Army how to employ the new Apache to attack deep and en masse. Resisting those who would parcel the Apaches out in small units throughout the tactical Army (reminiscent of the "penny packaging" of tanks in the 1920s), they became strong advocates of aviation brigades to add a new maneuver and deep firepower dimension to the tactical Army.

  At Fort Hood, in 1985, a young Lieutenant General Crosbie "Butch" Saint assumed command of III Corps. Saint had previously commanded the 11th Armored Cavalry in Fulda, Germany, had been deputy commandant of the CGSC during the formulation of AirLand Battle, had recently commanded the 1st Armored Division in Germany, and was soon to become well known in the Army as an advocate of mobile armored warfare. III Corps's new missi
on in Northern Army Group in NATO was to attack to restore the territorial integrity of Germany after an initial Warsaw Pact attack. In order to accomplish this mission, Saint set out to utilize the corps's significant additional combat power and to create what he called a "mobile armored corps." III Corps drilled and practiced attacks, made long unit moves and attacked from the march, worked on the logistics of refueling on the move, and even published a tactical handbook to supplement the existing doctrine and further lay out the tactics. By now, they had Apaches in the brigade organization and employed them deep and massed.

  Saint's ideas influenced a generation. In 1990, as the commander of U.S. forces in Germany at the end of the Cold War, he put the whole of U.S. Army Europe on the same tactical training regimen he'd started with III Corps.

  GOLDWATER-NICHOLS

  Never has national security legislation brought such sweeping — and wise — changes to the U.S. military as the Goldwater-Nichols National Security Act of 1986. It transformed the relationship of the service departments to the Joint Staff; it promoted operational "jointness" by legislating service for officers on joint assignments; and it streamlined the command authority from the President and Secretary of Defense to the Unified Commanders worldwide.

  Goldwater-Nichols essentially removed the service departments from operational matters. Under the law, they still had their budget authorities, but now, under Title 10, their sole responsibility was to man, equip, and train forces, which would then be provided to the unified CINCs (commanders in chief) worldwide for employment in missions assigned by the President and the Secretary of Defense. The Joint Staff now no longer answered to the collective body of the Joint Chiefs, but only to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and the Secretary of Defense. This simplified staff procedures and did away with the need to gain all service agreement on operational matters. In other words, before offering military advice to the President or Secretary of Defense, the Chairman JCS no longer required the total agreement of the service chiefs. Though the service chiefs were still senior advisers on national strategy, they were no longer involved in the day-to-day operational role. Meanwhile, because they were now free of individual service involvement, the authority of the Unified Commanders in areas around the world was significantly strengthened.