A rchive Date
[ 13-04-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_apr13.html
Air power makes U.S. almost invincible
By ERIC MARGOLIS - Contributing Foreign Editor
April 13, 2003
SAN FRANCISCO - In February, I wrote a pre-war analysis of how the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq would develop. My tactical and strategic predictions were fairly accurate, but my timing was off. The war, I estimated would take 10-15 days. In fact, it took 21.
The Second Oil War has been a brilliant and intimidating display of U.S. military technology, now an entire generation ahead of Europe, China and Russia, and two generations (30 years) ahead of Iraq's obsolete, run-down forces. The Iraq campaign is now being hailed by what a reader aptly terms the "Monica Lewinsky" media as one of the greatest military campaigns in history.
Glory and honour in war are determined by the strength, courage and skill of one's adversary. Fighting Germans, Russians, or Japanese brings glory. Blowing apart Iraq, a small nation of 17 million (deducting five million rebellious Kurds), without any air cover or effective air defences, its military eviscerated by a crushing 13-year embargo, bombed daily for a decade, is not in the league of Napoleon or Fred-erick the Great. Repeated Mideast and Balkan wars have confirmed that any attacker enjoying total air supremacy will slaughter its opponents.
Iraq was a superb test bed for the U.S. military's integrated technologies: deadly accurate satellite-guided bombs; bombers and strike aircraft with re-programmable war loads, waiting above battlefields for targets of opportunity; cruise missiles and Patriot anti-aircraft missiles of astounding accuracy; wide-area anti-armour weapons that destroy entire tank columns. Sensors that see through night, rain and haze - even sandstorms.
Equally important, the U.S. military managed the extraordinarily difficult task of data-linking its aircraft, armour, ships and recon units, so that commanders, both high-ranking and junior, had total situational awareness, knowing, for the first time in military history, the location of moving friendly and enemy units.
For obsolete, paralyzed Iraqi forces, war against the U.S. was like a blind man taking on a prizefighter.
U.S. forces delivered unprecedented firepower. The military again showed its unrivalled command of strategic and tactical logistics, the source of America's triumph in World War II. Most importantly, the Iraq war demonstrated that no nation dare challenge the U.S. to war unless a way is found of degrading the near omnipotent power of the U.S. Air Force. Only enemy forces operating under dense tree cover or very rough, wooded terrain can hope to lessen destruction from the air.
USAF criticism
Interestingly, the main criticism of the Iraq campaign - aside from its dubious legality, morality, negative worldwide effect, and smell of imperialism - is being made by the USAF. The Army and Marines should have been in Baghdad in 10-15 days, says the air force, and, as this column had also predicted, except for violent sandstorms and the U.S. Army and Marine Corps' failure to secure their lines of communications from Iraqi guerrilla attacks.
Such attacks, claims the air force, could have been broken up had the ground troops called for close air support. They, apparently did not, preferring to use their own Apache and Cobra helicopter gunships while the air force was heavily bombing Baghdad. The reason: military politics. Air power won the 1991 Gulf Oil War; ground forces played a very minor role chasing retreating Iraqi units out of Kuwait.
This time around, the army and Marines wanted the lion's share of battle trophies without the air force, but got a nasty surprise: counterattacks and delays, becoming over-extended, and short of supplies, in their rush for Baghdad.
Combat operations showed a number of important points. The army's much vaunted, super-expensive Apache attack helicopter is simply too vulnerable to ground fire, as was found in Kosovo. The U.S. would do better to buy the nearly indestructible Soviet-era MI-24 Hind armoured gunship, a.k.a. "the flying tank." The ground forces' shoulder-fired anti-tank weapons proved very useful. An updated, lighter-weight version of the venerable Soviet/Chinese RPG anti-tank rocket used to good effect by the Iraqis should be standard issue for U.S. troops.
The army's M1 Abrams heavy tank is difficult to destroy or disable without modern 120-mm anti-tank guns and tandem-warhead heavy anti-tank weapons. The Iraqis simply could not stop U.S. armour: the shells of their most modern tanks, 1980s-era T-72s, bounced off, as did most Iraqi A/T weapons. Hence, the easily accomplished rush into Baghdad. The Pentagon is considering slashing heavy tank units and replacing them with lightly armoured wheeled vehicles - the new "Striker" divisions. But the heavy Abrams tank and its British equivalent proved decisive in Iraq both in field combat and storming cities. Lightly armoured vehicles would have been destroyed by Iraq A/T weapons and tanks. So in the next neo-colonial war against a Syria or Iran, the U.S. had better bring along its heavy tanks.
America's and Britain's professional armed forces performed brilliantly and with remarkable efficiency. Accidents and loss to friendly fire were minimal. Wars are full of accidents and disasters; this one, on the U.S.-British side, was a benchmark of fine military management.
In conclusion, a jolly good example of what 19th century British imperialists in Asia and Africa used to call "small wars."
But getting into Iraq, like Afghanistan, was easy. The hard part will be getting out.
Eric can be reached by e-mail at margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com or visit his home page
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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