A Reference Work for a Current Conflict

Aircraft, Tanks & Artillery of the Ukraine War. Martin Dougherty. Amber Books. 128 pages. $27.99

By Scott Gourley, Contributing Editor

Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine put a spotlight on both the tactics and military hardware that has been employed on both sides of this ongoing conflict. Aircraft, Tanks & Artillery of the Ukraine War, by Martin Dougherty, provides a broad overview of the equipment and related capabilities being employed during this war. 

The book begins by placing the conflict at the end of a timeline dating to the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. From there, the introduction identifies the early buildup to the war, noting how regional disputes in 2014, including the annexation of Crimea, were addressed by multiple ceasefires and agreements, “none of which survived.”

From there, readers are given an overview of the 2022 Russian invasion that was met by Ukrainian counteroffensives that initially employed domestically produced weapons but increasingly were supported by military equipment donated from Western sources.

The examination of this donated equipment, combined with domestic Ukrainian production as well as opposing Russian hardware, provides the basis for this technical guide.

In terms of Russian hardware and domestically produced or modified Ukrainian systems, Dougherty tackles the somewhat challenging task of differentiating equipment where variants are deployed on both sides. One example of this is in the description of the Russian T-64 tank and the modernized Ukrainian version known as the T-64BM “Bulat.”

Systems that might have been employed in small numbers, such as Ukraine’s T-84 “Oplot,” which is based on the Russian T-80, are not called out in this guide.

The task of identifying vehicles or weapons used by either side is complicated and challenging, since Ukraine has recovered and employed large numbers of former Russian combat vehicles. 

In the case of cannon artillery, for example, the book not only incorporates 122 mm and 152 mm weapons in use by both Russia and Ukraine, but also some British, German and U.S. 105 mm and 155 mm systems. While the list of donated systems is not complete, it does provide the reader with a flavor of some of the diverse platforms.

While Aircraft, Tanks & Artillery of the Ukraine War primarily focuses on aircraft, armored vehicles, small arms and artillery, the rapidly changing nature and employment of many battlefield systems also has been addressed, in part, through the addition of brief chapters describing approximately a half-dozen battlefield drone designs as well as some naval weapon system platforms in use or recently sunk.

The book is not without a few errors, ranging from incorrect data table entries to more significant identification mistakes.

For example, the Abrams M1A1 tank is equipped with a 120 mm cannon, not the 105 mm used in prototypes. And one of the headlines in the small-arms section incorrectly states that the AK series of rifles was “named after its creator, Anatoly Kalashnikov.” The firearms designer was not named Anatoly, but rather Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov.

Typographical and minor factual errors aside, Aircraft, Tanks & Artillery of the Ukraine War provides a good basic reference to many representative weapon systems and combat capabilities employed on both sides of the Russia-Ukraine war.

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Recognizing Those Who Serve the President

The No-Fail Mission: The Men and Women Behind the Presidential Service Badge. Anthony Knopps. University of Toledo Press. 178 pages. $28.99

By Col. Cole Kingseed, U.S. Army retired

Established by President Lyndon Johnson, the Presidential Service Badge is awarded upon recommendation of the military assistant to the president to any member of the armed forces who has served at least a year in the White House or to military units that support the office of the President. In The No-Fail Mission: The Men and Women Behind the Presidential Service Badge, author Anthony Knopps profiles 10 American heroes who have demonstrated meritorious service “above and beyond” the normal scope of a service member’s duties.

Knopps is an eight-time Emmy Award-winning storyteller with more than 30 years of print and broadcast journalism experience. A Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) speaker, he is a longtime instructor at the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Knopps’ purpose, he writes, is “raising understanding and appreciation for those who have toiled away, out of the spotlight, not for their own personal glory, but for the glory of a nation.”

There is no one picture of a typical recipient of the Presidential Service Badge. Duties of service personnel who are eligible for the badge include work in the White House Situation Room, support for certain military family support teams, and communications and technology support of presidential briefings and international trips.

Take, for example, the stories of Sgt. 1st Class Ivan Lagares-Gomez, Staff Sgt. Jonée Coleman and Sgt. 1st Class Roy Flores. Lagares-Gomez served the office of the president across the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. He was on duty with Bush on September 11, 2001. “All hell broke loose,” Lagares-Gomez recalls. “When they told the President that America is under attack, you can just see his face that he was mad as hell.”

As with Lagares-Gomes, Coleman’s time in the White House spanned two presidential administrations, that of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The daughter of a computer engineer and educator in Anderson, Indiana, Coleman arrived with some trepidation in Washington, D.C., to join the White House Communications Agency. Coleman states, “When you walk into that environment (The White House), the weight of who you represent is actually overwhelming. You instinctively understand what that means when you cross that threshold.”

Flores was destined to be a soldier. “I grew up on G.I. Joe and other cartoons,” Flores says. Joining the military at 17, Flores spent over half his 23 years of service overseas. During his time at the White House, Flores supported over 600 travel operations of the president, vice president and first lady. In the spirit of the Presidential Service Badge, Flores now works with veterans in a program called Merging Vets and Players, which is designed to help combat veterans and athletes who are transitioning into their new uniform and their new life.

Since its inception in 1964, just over 20,000 people have received the Presidential Service Badge. If there is a thread common to recipients of the badge, it is that failure to support the president is not an option—hence the book’s title.

The recipients who shared their personal stories in The No-Fail Mission are men and women of strong character and ethical foundations. We are in Knopps’ debt for making their stories accessible to the American public.

Col. Cole Kingseed, U.S. Army retired, a former professor of history at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York, is a writer and consultant. He holds a doctorate in history from Ohio State University.

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Dissecting the All-Around Failures in Southeast Asia

The Vietnam War: A Military History. Geoffrey Wawro. Basic Books. 672 pages. $40

By Martin Clemis

America’s failed military and political endeavors in Afghanistan at the dawn of the 21st century beg the question: Why, despite possessing an overwhelming advantage in military and economic power, did the U.S. lose a war against an enemy that was grossly overmatched in resources, technology and warfighting capability?

The importance of this query is self-evident, particularly as it relates to Washington, D.C., policymakers, the U.S. Army, its sister services and the American public. However, this is not the first time such an inquiry has been made. The identical question was asked in the wake of the Vietnam War—a conflict that, much like Afghanistan, ended in American failure, revealed the limits of national power and produced painful postmortems into the reasons for such an unlikely and unexpected defeat. Geoffrey Wawro’s The Vietnam War: A Military History is the latest in a long list of historical works seeking to assess America’s lost war in Southeast Asia. 

For Wawro, a seasoned military historian, the reasons why the U.S. lost the Vietnam War are manifold and largely human. Blinded by an irrational fear of communism and plagued by a host of character deficiencies including hubris, deceitfulness and overweening ambition, Wawro writes, America’s civilian policymakers and the military lied and stumbled their way through a war that was, in Wawro’s estimation, a futile and catastrophic blunder.

Over the span of three presidential administrations, top officials from the White House and the National Security Council down through the State Department, DoD and U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam went to war in Southeast Asia without a firm understanding of the enemy or the war’s true character. These oversights, when combined with poor and dishonest decision-making, produced an incoherent and ineffective strategy that not only failed to align means and ends, but also was unsuited to the conflict in Vietnam, Wawro says.

According to Wawro, the faulty assumptions, personal shortcomings and policy failures of America’s war in Vietnam were evident throughout the conflict. Nonetheless, Washington policymakers and the military lacked the requisite moral courage to admit, let alone address, the uncomfortable strategic realities in Vietnam, he asserts. Instead, President Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Gen. William Westmoreland, President Richard Nixon and a host of others forged ahead despite repeated mistakes and miscalculations, a lack of genuine progress and an inability to achieve stated policy goals.

In the end, the U.S. was unable to coerce or persuade Hanoi to abandon its war to topple the Saigon regime. Nor was it able to destroy the southern insurgency, build a legitimate functioning government in Saigon or create a South Vietnamese military capable of defending its own nation.

South Vietnam’s military and civilian leadership was likewise largely responsible for the war’s outcome, Wawro asserts. Corrupt, incompetent and ineffective, the Saigon regime and its armed forces were unable to effectively counter Hanoi’s war machine, build bridges with the civilian population or articulate a cause that would inspire the South Vietnamese people to fight. Hanoi and the southern insurgency also played a major role in the war’s outcome.

The Vietnamese communists, Wawro argues, possessed an iron will and an unwavering determination to destroy the Saigon regime and expel the U.S. from Vietnam despite the war’s immense costs. Moreover, they developed an effective strategy that allowed them to outlast and eventually triumph over their enemies. 

Overall, the book delivers a scathing, though well-worn, critique of the Vietnam War, a conflict that, for the author and many others, was unethical, unnecessary and unwinnable. 

Martin Clemis is associate professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He has contributed chapters to several anthologies and has written articles for Army History magazine and Small Wars & Insurgencies. He is the author of The Control War: The Struggle for South Vietnam, 1968–1975.

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Legacy of Struggle for Manila Still Endures

The Battle of Manila: Poisoned Victory in the Pacific War. Nicholas Evan Sarantakes. Oxford University Press. 528 pages. $29.99

By Brian McAllister Linn

The February to March 1945 struggle for Manila, Philippines, between Japanese, American and Filipino forces was one of the bloodiest, most destructive and controversial battles of World War II. Casualty estimates approach some 100,000, the majority of which were Filipino civilians massacred by rampaging Japanese. The capital city, known as the “Pearl of the Orient,” suffered irreparable damage from the intense house-to-house fighting, cataclysmic fires, largely unrestricted American firepower and wanton destruction by Japanese defenders.

The battle’s legacy continues to this day both in the Philippines’ political and economic dependency on the U.S. and America’s ongoing commitment to defend its oldest Asian ally against an encroaching China. Even at the time, there were questions of whether the victory was a poisoned one, as author Nicholas Evan Sarantakes argues in The Battle of Manila: Poisoned Victory in the Pacific War.

At over 500 pages, Sarantakes’ study of the Battle of Manila is an impressive operational history. The book begins with the funeral of Douglas MacArthur, an appropriate choice since the general remains at the center of much of the controversy—in large measure due to his insistence on monopolizing the narrative. Then, after a brief overview of events leading up to the American landings at Lingayen Gulf, 160 miles north of Manila, Sarantakes provides a detailed, thorough and exhaustively researched study of operations up to the end of the battle.

With exemplary balance, Sarantakes moves between high-level strategy, division and regimental operations, and the individual experiences of Americans, Filipinos and Japanese. The extensive bibliography reveals the author’s wide-ranging and thorough research. He incorporates many combat veterans’ accounts conducted in the postwar years by the U.S. Army Infantry School.

With commendable courage and evenhandedness, Sarantakes explores the more controversial aspects of the battle. He believes both the American invasion of the Philippines and the decision to drive to Manila were justified. He is appalled at the destruction wreaked on the city and its inhabitants, but justifiably places the greater share of blame on the frenzied barbarity of the Japanese defenders and, to a lesser extent, the inevitable devastation of urban warfare. His assessment of MacArthur probably will not please either the general’s devotees or critics. He praises MacArthur’s strategic abilities in making the liberation of the Philippines a national priority, along with his initial operational decisions.

But as the campaign went on, the general’s propensity to disregard evidence that challenged his preexisting convictions (or ego) had increasingly deleterious effects. Convinced that the city would be an easy conquest, MacArthur relentlessly drove his commanders to undertake risky operations with inadequate forces, thus contributing to the battle’s length, casualties and destruction.

Although not oblivious to their mistakes, Sarantakes gives a fair and often sympathetic portrayal of the army, corps and division commanders tasked with executing MacArthur’s vision. Sarantakes is even more sympathetic to those Filipinos caught in the carnage of the battle. Although he gives moving accounts of individual Japanese, he condemns their chaotic, feuding and dysfunctional command system that allowed officers to defy orders. He is even harsher in highlighting the almost bestial cruelty of Japanese combatants who raped, tortured and slaughtered defenseless civilians.

The Battle of Manila is an important operational history of a conflict whose legacy still troubles relations between Japan, the Philippines and the United States. The author has performed a commendable service in producing a work that not only is deeply researched and engagingly written, but also provides much relevance for today’s military audiences.

Brian McAllister Linn is the former Ralph R. Thomas Class of 1921 Professor in Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University. His latest book is Real Soldiering: The US Army in the Aftermath of War, 1815–1980.