Rumsfeld's Vindication Promises A Change in Tactics, Deployment
By GREG JAFFE Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- Victory in Iraq promises to offer a big boost to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's mission to transform how the U.S. military fights, what it buys and where it goes.
A triumph would amount to a vindication of the emerging Rumsfeld Doctrine, which envisions faster forces, with lighter equipment, fighting quicker wars than in the past. This new way of war poses a challenge to the Powell Doctrine, which called for the use of an overwhelming force and guided the U.S. military for more than a decade.
The success of the U.S. strategy in Iraq, with its emphasis on speed, is likely to have immediate consequences. Instead of concentrating ground forces in Germany and Korea, Pentagon planners are likely to spread them around so they can be deployed quickly to hotspots. Mr. Rumsfeld has noted that Austria's refusal to allow Germany based U.S. forces to pass through that country hindered the Pentagon's ability to get a force to the Persian Gulf quickly. If the U.S. had had a larger presence in Eastern Europe or Central Asia, Austria's refusal would have had far less impact.
Mr. Rumsfeld also is likely to push the Army and Marine Corps to invest more in lighter, more lethal ground forces that can be airlifted to combat zones. When Turkey refused to allow passage to U.S. troops, the best the U.S. could do to open a northern front in Iraq was to airlift in soldiers from the 173rd Airborne. These air assault troops didn't pack enough combat punch to take on Iraqi Republican Guard forces in the north or to capture oil fields around Kirkuk.
"What you see in Iraq in its embryonic form is the kind of warfare that is animating our desire to transform the force," says Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence and a close adviser to Mr. Rumsfeld.
The core of the Rumsfeld Doctrine is that the speed of the invading U.S. force is more important than its size. "Speed matters. Speed kills. It leads to less collateral damage and fewer U.S. casualties," says retired Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski, head of Mr. Rumsfeld's Office of Force Transformation. The goal is to move more quickly than the enemy can react, cutting off his options.
It isn't clear that the success U.S. troops experienced in Iraq will translate elsewhere. The Iraqi army, while large, was hobbled by poor morale and a decade of international sanctions. Opposing forces already may be plotting new tactics to counter the Rumsfeld approach. The guerrilla attacks by Iraqi Fedayeen, though not well coordinated, hampered the U.S. advance. A more adept enemy could do more damage.
With the Iraqi regime collapsing, fans of the Rumsfeld doctrine are already crowing. Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking Wednesday to newspaper editors in New Orleans, declared that Iraq is "proof positive of the success of our efforts to transform our military."
Mr. Cheney quoted historian Victor Davis Hanson's early assessment of Iraq: "By any fair standard of even the most dazzling charges in military history, the Germans in the Ardennes in the spring of 1940 or Patton's romp in July of 1944, the present race to Baghdad is unprecedented in its speed and daring and in the lightness of its casualties."
Vast improvements in gathering and distributing information, the same technology that transformed the civilian economy, are quickening the pace of warfare. Today better communications and surveillance equipment what Mr. Rumsfeld's advisers call the "unblinking eye over the battlespace" allow U.S. troops to see what an enemy is doing more quickly than in the first Gulf War.
To take full advantage of this knowledge, U.S. forces must move faster than ever. But the quickening pace at which the military can transmit information isn't matched by the speed of its ground forces. The Army's primary battle tank has a top speed of 42 miles an hour, no faster than a decade ago.
To achieve greater speed in this conflict, Mr. Rumsfeld took risks that made many Army officers uncomfortable. He pushed military planners to reduce the number of heavy tanks they were bringing to the battlefield and to employ the forces they did bring in new ways.
The resulting 125,000 person ground force in Iraq was about half the size of the one that fought the first Gulf War and far more dependent on air power. It was also a force that violated a central tenet of the doctrine of overwhelming force, which was devised by Colin Powell, the 66 year old former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who is now Secretary of State. In the first Gulf War, military planners took more tanks and troops into battle than necessary and saw that as a strength of their strategy; it slowed U.S. forces, but it protected them against unforeseen attacks or resistance.
"If you are in the lead tank you always want a reserve force 72 hours behind you to bail you out," says a general, reflecting standard Army doctrine.
For Mr. Rumsfeld, 70, such excess is more vice than virtue. "In the past it was always assumed there was no penalty for taking too much to the battlefield. In this new way of war there is a penalty. You sacrifice speed," says retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, a military historian. Instead of overwhelming force, the Rumsfeld doctrine calls for "just enough force to strike at the enemy's brain," Mr. Scales says.
Senior Army officers, schooled in the Powell doctrine, have been debating Mr. Rumsfeld over the merits of mass versus speed since the defense secretary returned to the Pentagon two years ago. When Mr. Rumsfeld's advisers 18 months ago proposed paring the active duty Army to eight divisions from 10, they argued that a smaller, faster force, if married to precision air power and better information, could be as powerful as a larger one. A few months later, the defense secretary canceled the Army's program to build a 42 ton Crusader artillery gun because it was too heavy.
The rift between Mr. Rumsfeld and the Army surfaced again over the war plan for Iraq. The defense secretary and his senior aides battled Army officials throughout the summer and fall over how large a ground force would be needed in Kuwait to initiate an invasion of Iraq.
Mr. Rumsfeld and his aides wanted to ensure that the deployed force was as small as possible. In part they were concerned that a large number of troops amassed in Kuwait would be vulnerable to a chemical weapons attack. But they also believed that a quicker buildup would give Saddam Hussein less time to rig oil wells with explosives, restock his weapons and prepare his soldiers.
"If you can deliver five divisions anywhere in the world in 90 days, might you have the same impact by getting three divisions there in 30 days? Speed is a force enhancement," Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last fall.
Reshaping Future Strategy
The focus on speed is shaping decisions about the future. The Marines now are investing billions in what they call "sea basing." Marines and tanks will be transported directly from ships to the battlefield, bypassing neighboring countries. Ammunition, fuel and water will be airlifted directly to the fight. "We want to put just the teeth ashore and leave the logistical tail at sea," says Marine Corps Col. Arthur Corbett. By 2015 the Marines want to able to move about 2,000 Marines and their armor 110 miles into enemy territory by air.
The Army is making a similar push to rid itself of its cumbersome supply lines and fly armored troops directly into battle. Instead of driving 300 miles to engage the Medina Division of the Republican Guard, the Army wants to be able to airlift a mechanized force into a hostile country to find the enemy and fix them in place, making them easier targets for precision air attacks. This force of the future, which Army officials hope to begin fielding by the end of the decade, should be lighter than the Army's current heavy armor force, but more capable of defending itself than today's lightly armed airborne troops.
Instead of relying on heavy armor for protection, this future force will depend far more on speed and information to avoid the enemy.
Adm. Cebrowski, meanwhile, is pushing the Pentagon to begin researching blimp like "air ships" that could carry more cargo than a plane and travel faster into a country than a ship.
Finding money for these high risk endeavors will be difficult. The biggest fear of the Army's brass is that Mr. Rumsfeld will see the swift U.S. victory in Iraq as further proof that the Army is too large, and propose cutting it back to pay for a lighter, faster force in the future.
Catching the Iraqis Off Guard
In the weeks leading up to the war in Iraq neither Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, nor Mr. Rumsfeld knew they would begin the war with just one U.S. Army heavy division. Gen. Franks's war plan initially called for having at least two U.S. heavy armor divisions, 65,000 Marines and 40,000 British troops in the region when the war began. But when Turkey refused to give access to U.S. troops, Mr. Rumsfeld and Gen. Franks were faced with a tough call: Whether to delay the ground invasion for at least three weeks to give the Fourth Infantry Division, the U.S. Army's best heavy division, time to unload in Kuwait or to start the fight with just one U.S. heavy division.
Mr. Rumsfeld decided on the second option. Eager to catch the Iraqis off guard and protect critical infrastructure, U.S. troops moved into Iraq before the air war even began.
While special operations forces seized oil wells, soldiers from the Third Infantry Division and the Marines drove quickly toward Baghdad and the battle with Mr. Hussein's Medina Division, the best trained of his Republican Guards.
As Third Infantry Division troops fended off surprisingly fierce attacks from Fedayeen guerrilla fighters, senior Army officers in the Pentagon and Kuwait began calling for a pause for reinforcements to build the kind of overwhelming force envisioned by the Powell Doctrine. Mr. Powell steered clear of the debate. "I think that they will bring decisive force to bear. There is no doubt in my mind," he said a week into the war.
Many of his contemporaries, now retired, were vocal about their opposition to Mr. Rumsfeld's strategy. "We should be fighting this battle with three U.S. armored divisions and an armored cavalry regiment to provide rear air security," Gen. Barry McCaffrey wrote on the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal.
In the Pentagon, however, Mr. Rumsfeld and his aides insisted a pause was not only unnecessary, but potentially catastrophic. Although the Fedayeen attacks had been a surprise, they were never able to inflict significant casualties. Many in the military, both at the Pentagon and in the Persian Gulf, believed the guerrillas were ineffective because Iraqis could never get a clear fix on where the U.S. troops were.
"The speed of the advance was so dramatic it unhinged the enemy. I think Saddam had full intent of interdicting the U.S. force, but he couldn't ever track them," says Gen. Jack Keane, the Army's vice chief of staff and a Rumsfeld favorite.
Those who were calling for reinforcements also underestimated the killing power of precision weapons from planes, helicopters and rockets, say Rumsfeld aides. In the first Gulf War the ground force was the primary killing force. This time the ground troops' job was to drive toward the enemy and force it to concentrate its troops in order to repel the U.S. advance. As soon as the Medina Division forces pulled together to battle the U.S. at the Karbala Gap, a 12 mile passage where U.S. forces were most vulnerable, Air Force jets and Army helicopters pounded them.
In previous wars, air power softened up enemy forces so ground troops could close in for the kill. To ensure victory in such battles, Army officers wanted to make sure they had a significant advantage on the ground. This time, thanks to better intelligence and more precise satellite and laser guided bombs, more of the killing blows came from the air.
"We're in the midst of a transition in the way we fight," says Gen. Keane, a leading proponents of change in the Army. "We used to measure combat power by mass. We wanted to achieve a three to one advantage at the point of attack." Now mass on the ground may be less important, Gen. Keane says.
The question now is how much mass still matters. Senior Army officers warn about drawing too many lessons from Iraq. Though large in numbers, the Iraqi military hasn't been able to get spare parts for its tanks for more than a decade and couldn't get its fighter jets into the sky. That allowed U.S. bombers to fly circles over the battlefield.
Army officials add that the Fedayeen attacks were tactically incompetent. Instead of setting up ambushes, they rushed headlong at U.S. armored vehicles in what amounted to suicide missions. "This was not a terribly smart enemy," said one senior Army official.
Write to Greg Jaffe at greg.jaffe at wsj.com