Fighting The Next War
By Michael R. Bowen (04/08/03)
The other day I came across a fascinating bit of news from Iraq. The allies have deployed their latest high-tech weapons material: concrete.
Both the RAF and our Navy have taken to dropping blocks of concrete cast in the shape of conventional bombs, complete with up-to-date precision guidance, to destroy targets such as tanks and infrastructure with less risk to nearby civilians. Instead of the conventional huge explosion and flying shrapnel, a half-ton of concrete simply smashes the target. One calculation has it that 1,000 lb. dropped from 10,000 feet will have 10 million ft. lb. of kinetic energy when it strikes. This is dropping the Mother of All Hammers, without hammering anything but the designated hammeree.
Bunker busters. Unmanned drones. Precision guided munitions. Special forces inside enemy cities, identifying precisely which building holds the bad guys. Never in history has an army taken such pains to spare civilians the horrors of war. To develop, manufacture, and deploy such weapons has required an outpouring of treasure and ingenuity completely beyond the reach of almost all the world's economies, all for a purpose which would never have crossed the mind of any enemy we have ever faced in the field. We are seeing the electronic-age equivalent of the triumph of American industry which made D-Day possible. America is at once more humane and more deadly than ever before.
Meanwhile, on the ground, ordinary (or, rather, not-so-ordinary) soldiers and Marines can call down this destruction immediately, to strike exactly this tank or that artillery piece while avoiding that mosque or schoolyard. And, in a refreshing change from the bloody head-on assaults of previous wars, our generals and admirals are fighting more like MacArthur and Patton than Haig or Foch, sweeping past cities and strong points and focusing more on destroying the enemy than on taking ground. Casualties are strikingly low.
To the consternation of the nay sayers, example after example of the fundamental kindness of our servicemen filters back to the folks at home. Here a Marine places his body between enemy fire and a wounded Iraqi woman while the Corpsman tends her wounds. There GIs quietly disregard orders and cram their vehicles with extra water for the suffering civilians they encounter. On the beach, Seabees are running a desalination plant ostensibly exclusively for the water needs of the fighting forces, but somehow part of their product keeps finding its way into civilian basins as well. And as Saddam's regime crumbles, more and more Iraqis dare to welcome their liberators.
It's hard to imagine good news arising from something as horrible as war, but that's what's happening. We're finding out that our generals are smart, our soldiers brave and skilled, and our weapons are as formidable as we thought. It hasn't always been this way when America went to war: generals stumbled, still fighting the last war, while our soldiers found themselves inadequately trained, with weapons that didn't work. This war, and the Afghan campaign before it, are red-letter days for our servicemen, our president, and the American spirit. This time, we really are fighting the next war. The old Navy adage is true: it's not a crisis—it's another opportunity to excel.
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