Letters


IMPLACABLE FOES
Having read Brig. Gen. Huba Wass de Czege’s in-depth article “War with Implacable Foes: What All Statesmen and Generals Need to Know” (May), concerning engagement in war with an enemy who cannot be appeased or pacified by off-the-shelf means, past, present or future, I ended with a deep feeling that Gen. de Czege’s thoughts warrant careful reading by the highest authority in our land as well as “all statesmen and generals.”

There is no question in my mind and that of many of my friends that if we have arrived at the point in our nation’s destiny where our democracy and values are to be exported, and civil and military responsibility are to be advocated, then there is a need for our civilian leaders who make the decisions on wars to be conversant with de Czege’s ideas. We must acknowledge that going to war has greater implications than just the bottom line in an industrial proxy statement.

Gen. de Czege’s well-rounded article, if time had been given to its study during planning, would without a doubt have paved the way around some of the obstacles (debacles) that have confronted our nation and ground forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. To put it another way, order our priorities and goals from the start based on a bit of human intelligence.

COL. RICHARD E. MACK, USA RET.
Chalfont, Pa.

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Brig. Gen. Huba Wass de Czege’s article, “War with Implacable Foes: What all Statesmen and Generals Need to Know,” is an impressive article and fuel for the debate on how to fight current and future wars. The morphing chessboard analogy provides a wonderful “in the mind’s eye” picture, but there are many non-chess players who may not understand it. For those people, perhaps the weather provides a better thought picture. Even with the best supercomputers and millions of sensors gathering information on the current weather conditions, weather forecasts are based on empirically derived theories, supported by complex equations that yield probabilities. “Today’s forecast will be mostly cloudy with 30 percent chance of rain.” A person betting on the 70 percent probability of good weather is not happy when the planned outing is ruined by the 30 percent chance that turns into a torrential downpour. We are all aware of the impact of the 30 percent in combat.

Now, imagine the challenge faced by the weather forecaster if he or she must face an opponent who is able to control, even for brief moments, elements of the weather. Imagine a foe able to deceive a number of the sensors which inform the forecaster. Sunny skies with no rain in the forecast suddenly become locally severe thunderstorms with hail and damaging winds. Predicted mild temperatures become a killing frost. While localized and transient, these aberrations will cast even more doubt on the stability of the weather models. Fortunately for the weather forecaster, Mother Nature is somewhat predictable. The statesman and the warrior are not so lucky. The enemy is always attempting to “control the weather.” He is cunning and often finds ways to fool our sensors. Furthermore, even when our eyes on the ground tell us the weather is partly cloudy and no rain, the foe’s information campaign attempts to convince those on the home front that cataclysmic weather approaches. We need look no further than Operation Anaconda, the counter-improvised explosive device fight and staged enemy videos for recent examples.

In science, you state the problem, gather data, build a hypothesis, design an experiment to test the hypothesis, establish and control the conditions of the experiment, conduct the experiment and determine whether your hypothesis was correct. Distant sensors and long-range strikes establish some conditions, but they do little to control the conditions. As noted by Gen. Wass de Czege, they are transient phenomena, causing discomfort and a change in the enemy’s behavior, which gives the operational planner a new problem and new data to gather.

Using sensors to build a target array is an inexact science at best. While sensors and targets are critical elements in the war, even the best sensors available today miss the key element: the intent of the foe. We attempt to infer his intent, based on developing predictability models, much like weather forecasting. Without getting into the science of chaos theory, sensors alone will never be able to solve this problem. As noted in “War with Implacable Foes,” the enemy is cunning and often unpredictable. New personalities join the fight. The enemy learns, and changes his method of operation. Given current and planned technology, even a mammoth array of inanimate sensors is unable to gather sufficient information to accurately predict intent, thereby bringing into question the true precision of the long-range fires. They will hit what they were aimed at, but they fail to hit the target, the will of the enemy to resist.

If we cannot solve the problem with distant sensors and long-range precision fires, what is the solution? Gen. Wass de Czege offers one time-tested reliable closure mechanism, that of the soldier and marine engaged in close combat if the mission calls for it. If we visualize war as a distributed grappling match, a metaphor used by Clausewitz, we begin to get the picture. No one scores points in the up position. It is only when we have established contact with the foe that the match can be won. If he has scored the first takedown, an escape by us will not win the match. He wins two to one. We have to stay in contact with the enemy, work for a reversal and then seek to subdue the foe through back points or a pin.

Today in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are fully engaged in this match, supported by headquarters and staffs throughout the world. They are serving on the ground, in combat formations, in transition teams, in combat support and combat service support elements and on headquarters staffs. They are doing their part in establishing and controlling the conditions of the experiment. They are taking the fight to the enemy and engaging in close combat when the mission requires. They are working with the local leaders, national armies and police to limit the options of the enemy. They are informed by the best technology we have, and as intelligent sensors, they are able to quickly adapt to a changing enemy. They are in contact with and grappling with an enemy who is working hard to counter their moves. They are firmly ahead on points, but there is still much time on the clock.

The debate over today’s war continues as to the size of the team, composition of the team and the length of the match. It is a good debate and one that needs to be had. With a military in transition, the same debate is ongoing with respect to the future fight. Gen. Wass de Czege’s article provides a viewpoint shared by many in the ground component. I hope it will not be dismissed as old thinking, but instead, will be used to inform the debate and assist in shaping planning for the future.

COL. CHRISTIAN E. DE GRAFF
Mcdonough, Ga.


SURVEILLANCE
The article “Blue-Collar Warriors” (April) about A/1-502 Infantry soldiers patrolling Routes Peggy and Sue was instructive and sounds familiar to Vietnam veterans—same problem, different location. If a route must be patrolled regularly to allow vehicular traffic, wouldn’t it be smart to have it under 24/7/365 observation since we have the ability to do that? It requires neither aircraft of the manned or unmanned type nor satellites to do this. Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom units could use aerostats with sensor packages hanging from them. An aerostat anchored in a FOB floating at an altitude of 1.5 kilometers can watch a lot of terrain. Aircraft can be warned to not fly in a certain area and radar reflectors or warning beacons can be affixed to the tether and power cables.

Sensors look for heat anomalies at night or unusual movement during the day, and get an azimuth/distance from the aerostat to the location via a laser rangefinder (a polar plot artillery observer mission). An unmanned aerial vehicle, manned aircraft or ground patrol can be dispatched to observe the anomaly and take appropriate action. A light grey aerostat is invisible to ground observers and out of range of most weapons. This would allow large border areas in Iraq and Afghanistan to be watched, along with the oil fields and pipelines. Does it stop infiltration or attacks? No, but it certainly slows them down and makes attempts more vulnerable to discovery. A light Kevlar® covering will make an aerostat almost bulletproof.

The Coast Guard uses radar carrying aerostats along the South Florida coast to watch for smuggler aircraft, so aerostats have a NSN. A sensor package useable in Iraq or Afghanistan can be put together rather quickly by the Army; if they can’t, they can find competent personnel who can do it in a short time frame. It is a technical problem that is eminently resolvable. If the package is too heavy for one aerostat, use two.

The same concept could be used by the border patrol to help secure the Mexican border, but there seems to be precious little in the way of willpower to do that, either. Military personnel are needlessly placed in harm’s way in areas where terrorists are known to operate; this is one way to reduce recidivism quickly.

LT. COL. LARRY A. ALTERSITZ, USAR RET.
Westville, N.J.


SUPPLY REGULATIONS
I shuddered, then laughed at the article “50 Years Ago in ARMY: Consolidate the Supply Regulations” (May).

In May 1945, I had conned my way out of the hospital because from D-Day, in the European Theater of Operations (ETO), they knew they were going to need a lot of second lieutenants whether they could walk or not. I was sent to Infantry Replacement Training Center at Camp Robinson, Ark., to train a company. I arrived mid-term. They dropped the bombs, and people started getting out on points. I was executive officer of the company. One bright, shiny day the captain called me in and said, “It is all yours. I am gone. Sign here.” No inventory, nothing.

We graduated the troops, and then I was ordered to deactivate the company. First I took in the bedrolls, many of which had cigarette burns on them. The first lieutenant at the supply depot was going to charge me for all the damages, and I had not even been on the bivouac. I told my men to put them back on the truck.

I made a phone call, and went to the Little Rock Tent and Awning Company with a damaged bedroll and a surplus comforter of the same color. I said to the sweet lady, “Can you cut the burned square out of the bedroll and fit in a square from the comforter?” She said, “Sure.” I took all the damaged bedrolls to her with matching color surplus comforters from the supply room, and she did the job. You could not see the patches. I paid for them from company funds.

This time when I went back to supply, I wore my combat infantryman badge, Purple Heart, and ETO ribbon with two stars on it. I unloaded the bedrolls; the supply guy looked at them and started to scream that I had exchanged my bedrolls for good ones. He even accused me of stealing them. I told him to prove it—sign the receipt—which he finally did. That took care of that.

We were short on all kinds of equipment, so I bought a bottle of Jack Daniels and went to see the master sergeant at the salvage warehouse.

I put the bottle on his desk and said, “I have a problem. I am closing out my company. I did not have a chance to do an inventory when I took it over, and I am stuck. Can you help me?” He told me to give him a list of what I needed, and get a truck and come back, which I did. I came out clean, with no charges for lost stuff.

Then I was sent for my overseas physical to go to Japan. The battalion surgeon took one look at my left knee and said, “What are you doing out of the hospital?” I was back in the hospital that night—retired for disability in September 1946. It broke my heart. I loved the Army, and my battle plan at that time called for me to be a retired 0-8 today. So it goes.

SECOND LT. JACOB E. WAY, USA RET.
San Angelo, Texas