Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq

by Tom Clancy

  From General DePuy and TRADOC's many briefings and studies, two concepts came out of the lessons of the Yom Kippur War. These concepts became rallying cries:

  * "Fight outnumbered and win."

  * "Win the first battle of the next war."

  These drove the Army's thinking, training, and equipping throughout the Cold War, and they were the basis for much of what happened in Desert Storm.

  THE TRAINING BEGINS

  The training revolution started during the years from 1971 to 1975, and though it was the work of many people, it was principally sparked by Bill DePuy and Paul Gorman.

  Gorman was an innovator, a soldier with a highly fertile mind and a passion for training. Gorman had been General DePuy's G-3 when DePuy had commanded the Big Red One in Vietnam, and it was DePuy who arranged to have then-Brigadier General Gorman assigned to the Infantry School as assistant commandant.

  There Gorman headed the Board for Dynamic Training, and later what became known as the Combined Arms Training Board (CATB), established by Westmoreland in 1971. At CATB, a systems approach to training and what would be called Tactical Engagement Simulation (TES) were developed.

  Working with scientists at Florida State University, the CATB developed a system whereby every major function on the battlefield could be broken into discrete tasks.

  First, you made a front-end analysis to determine what tasks had to be performed by individuals and by teams in the company, then you determined the standards of performance that had to be executed to ensure the mission was successful. The list of individual tasks were then arranged according to the skill levels of soldiers, and these were put into books called Soldiers' Manuals. Soldiers could then study these manuals, and NCOs could teach from them. Next came what was called a "skill qualification test," which required each soldier to demonstrate proficiency once a year in his or her specialty.

  Unit tasks, meanwhile, were put into booklets called ARTEPs (Training and Evaluation Plans--an evaluative list of tasks). ARTEPs permitted commanders to judge better and more systematically their units' ability to accomplish particular battlefield unit tasks.

  TES was simply train as you fight. It was a system of shoot-back simulations that replicated the battlefield with great fidelity, and its concept was both eye-opening and (after the fact) blindingly obvious: If you survived your first combat engagements, you would go on to perform at much higher levels. This was shown to be true of both individuals and units. The Navy created their Top Gun School in the late 1960s, after they realized they needed to train their pilots through their "first fights" before they had their real first fights in the skies over North Vietnam, and the Army decided to build a similar school for land warfare.

  What Gorman wanted to do with TES was to develop simulations that would allow an opposing force to maneuver and "shoot back" in training. Such a system would objectively score target hits and kills in training fire with opposing forces. The problem was that Gorman didn't have the technology for it. Right now, units fired blanks at each other, and an "umpire," or neutral observer assigned to the exercise, judged who won or lost and by how much.

  That all ended when Gorman came upon the technology eventually called MILES--Multiple Integrated Laser Targeting System. It was an eyesafe laser beam that used the normal sights on a weapon, and it allowed units and individuals to "fire" at each other and to "hit" without danger to either side. All individuals and equipment had receivers, and when a laser hit your receiver, you either heard a loud ring or a light went on signaling a "kill."

  Meanwhile at Fort Benning in CATB, Gorman and his group proposed a revision of tasks to make them more relevant and so that they could better meet standards. This came to be called "performance-oriented training," which meant that training was no longer conducted according to some arbitrary time criterion. Rather, you kept at it until standards were met. This was as simple as it was profound: You stayed at it until you got it right. In April 1975, the Army officially changed its training regulations, and from then on, performance-oriented training was the law. It also laid the basis for the evaluation system of the ARTEP. Army training would never be the same again.

  With this kind of training, soldiers and units would become veterans before they actually went into combat. To complete that vision, the Army more than ever needed a world-class national training facility that included rigorous practice battlefields with large-unit live fire.

  OTHER training innovations came out of practical experience in the field, and some of them had long-term consequences.

  Early in 1976, Lieutenant General Donn Starry assumed command of U.S. Army V Corps in Germany. (Starry, of course, had been one of the 11th ACR commanders at the time Fred Franks served with the Blackhorse in Vietnam.) He was immediately faced with two especially daunting challenges: In V Corps, he found a unit that doubted its ability to fight and win against the combined armies of the Warsaw Pact (a serious overmatch, at least in numbers). And the U.S. V Corps was essentially all that stood in the way of a rapid Warsaw Pact thrust over the short 120 kilometers to Frankfurt, the industrial and financial capital of West Germany.

  Deeply troubled by all this, Starry went to work to fix it. His aim was to restore confidence to his corps by showing them how they could fight and win there, even outnumbered.

  Starry came to V Corps from TRADOC, where he had been one of the principal authors of the soon-to-be-published 1976 FM 100-5. He put this new doctrine to use immediately. Using videotapes, he pointed out that the avenue of approach that ran from the West German city of Fulda to Frankfurt had to be hugely tempting to Warsaw Pact planners, and that it was vital to deter such an attack. Starry's presentations called attention to what was forever after referred to as the "Fulda Gap."

  But Starry did more than talk. He instituted an innovative, mission-focused training program that related the specific tasks of training to the specific tasks needed to accomplish a wartime mission. And he started what he and the Army came to call "terrain walks": Once every three months he required all commanders and leaders to go out on the actual ground where they anticipated they would fight. There they would explain in detail to their next-higher commander just how they intended to conduct the fight. (Starry and all his subordinate commanders personally attended these sessions.) Afterward, they were required to construct "battle books." In these, commanders detailed unit and weapon positions, how they intended to manage the flow of battle, and how their actions fit the overall corps plan.

  Starry's training methods, and his terrain walks, proved so effective that they were used in all of Europe up to the end of the Cold War. And they went a long way toward restoring confidence to V Corps and other U.S. units in Germany.

  BY the 1980s, the Army was infused with the objectives leaders had begun articulating in the previous decade: Fight and win the first battle of the next war. Fight outnumbered and win. Fight a "come-as-you-are war"--a war with a short preparation and warning time. Train the way you fight.

  Unit training facilities were being constructed or modified to re-create with great fidelity the modern highly lethal battlefield. Principal among these was the new National Training Center at Fort Irwin, in California's Mojave Desert.

  Three components were needed to make the NTC work:

  * A professional opposing force (OPFOR). Its full-time mission was to emulate in maneuver, in war fighting, and in doctrine the most likely enemy of the U.S. Army. In the 1980s, that enemy was the Soviets. Hence the OPFOR at the NTC became the Red Army, down to the last uniform detail.

  * A core of maneuver experts to accompany the Blue (training unit) and to help and advise them as they learned by doing. The Army called these experts observer controllers (OCs).

  * A system to promote learning.

  At the heart of the learning system was the AAR, or After-Action Review.

  After a training event, the OC led a small seminar for participants during which they could discover for themselves what they needed to do--improve commande
r and unit performance. Generally, AAR seminars used the following framework: What was the unit trying to do? What actually happened? And why the difference? The aim of an AAR was not to blame or judge, and AARs required active participation by all attendees, both commanders and subordinates. Subordinates had the freedom to bring up issues that reflected both favorably and unfavorably on their commander's decisions and actions. Commanders opened up and analyzed their own performance. All of it was based on the objective data furnished by MILES and by the observing and recording instruments that covered the entire maneuver area.

  It required a significant cultural adjustment for commanders to let themselves be openly questioned by subordinates in the presence of video cameras and to overcome the feeling that the NTC experience was training, not an official report card. Many militaries around the world still cannot get over those hurdles. Though it took a while, the U.S. Army did make that adjustment, and in fact, the AAR process led to significant and positive behavioral changes more than any other training innovation. After training and the AAR process, commanders and leaders at all levels have become less arrogant and more willing to listen . . . without sacrificing bold acts and decisions. AARs have reduced the aura of expected infallibility around commanders, without absolving them of ultimate responsibility or taking away their will to win.

  It's no surprise that the AAR method has spread throughout the Army. In fact, it's now required after every event where performance can be improved.

  DURING the 1980s, the Army began to systematically exploit computer simulations in training. For individual weapons crews, for instance, the Army developed conduct-of-fire trainers. In realistically configured crew stations, using computer simulations of the actual fire control in their vehicles and computer-simulated scenarios, crews would engage computer-simulated targets. Following its development by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the Army began a program called SIMNET, or simulations networking. Whole units were placed in simulators and linked in a live scenario. Units drove around and fought, and commanders controlled them, just as they would have done on the ground. AARs were conducted. In time, over linked networks, it was possible to do all this simultaneously, with units separated geographically.

  Other training improvements went forward, as well. For instance, firing ranges all over the Army needed to be modernized to replicate the tasks, conditions, and standards of combat. At Grafenwohr, Germany, a program was begun to put in stationary and moving targetry. Such a system could be varied through software adjustments to allow units to fire according to consistent standards but with tasks varied to resemble wartime situations more closely. Range-firing standards were revised upward, for example, to require individual tanks to kill up to five enemy tanks by themselves. Firing ranges at Fort Hood and other installations in the United States underwent similar modernization.

  Thus, with a combination of simulations using computer-assisted scenarios, actual live training using simulated enemy targets on ranges, and force on force using MILES, the U.S. Army gained combat experience without having to fight a war. This generation of leaders was realizing and carrying on the early visions of DePuy and Gorman.

  As far as I'm concerned, the most interesting battlefield simulation is in the Battle Command Training Program (BCTP) for division and corps commanders, which was developed at Fort Leavenworth in 1986-87. BCTP did for those commanders what the NTC did for smaller units--but all in simulation. The idea for BCTP came from Lieutenant General Jerry Bartlett, commandant of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. Fred Franks was the deputy commandant at the time, and together they named the program, and Franks selected Colonel Dave Blodgett to give the idea form and substance. In 1987, General Carl Vuono made the program part of the Army's combat training centers.

  Here is Fred Franks describing a BCTP WARFIGHTER exercise in Germany just before he left command of the 1st Armored Division to command VII Corps:

  In the Army's Battle Command Training Program for divisions and corps, there are three distinct phases. The first is a weeklong seminar, where commanders and staffs solve tactical problems and record the solution in operations order format in a classroom environment on a ten- to twelve-hour-a-day schedule. You do this at a deliberately slow pace, so you can perfect your command and staff problem-solving apparatus.

  Sometime after that, you go through the second phase of the BCTP, which is a practice WARFIGHTER, with an opposing force. There you take your command apparatus out into the field with their normal vehicles and communications setup (you use the same radios and other communications devices you would use in combat). Then a computer simulation translates actions and orders into unit icons on screens, and when units make contact with the enemy, the computer has a set of algorithms and formulae that solve the battle outcome and sets up new problems.

  Units do this practice for themselves. It allows you to make the transition from the seminar to the actual war-fighting environment, and it also allows your people to practice interfacing orders with computer simulations.

  In the third phase, you go through your actual WARFIGHTER. This time you have a professional opposing force (housed at Fort Leavenworth), and they play whatever opposing force you want them to play, but they do it electronically, from Fort Leavenworth. It's beamed to your particular location--Germany, Korea, somewhere in the United States. The exercise is free play to be decided on the skill of the Blue side (the training unit) or the OPFOR.

  You also get a team of observer-controllers (also permanently stationed at Fort Leavenworth but who travel to your location). They take notes, teach your staff, and conduct the AARs. When the observer-controller's team arrives, they are assigned to various places around your unit, some to the staff, some to subordinate units.

  And finally, you get a senior observer-controller. The senior OC is a retired three- or four-star general, who has commanded at your echelon. He watches the whole process, advises the OCs, and mentors the division or corps commander.

  Senior observer-controllers were an invention of Army Chief Carl Vuono. Vuono wanted the best mentors he could get for his division and corps commanders, people who had credibility with serving division and corps commanders. So senior OCs tend to have a lot of wisdom, based on their long time of service, their understanding of the doctrine, their command of the echelons they're observing, and on going around the army as senior OCs for various units. Over a period of a year or two, they build up a lot of savvy about what commanders and staff should and should not do.

  Our initial seminar in the 1st Armored Division was held at Fort Leavenworth in March 1989. General Dick Cavazos was the senior observer-controller assigned to our exercise. During the course of that week, as we were going through commander and staff problem solving and decision making, he was there giving us advice and assistance--both to my staff and to me personally.

  Dick Cavazos is a veteran of the Korean War. He was a company commander there; a battalion commander in Vietnam; a division commander of the 9th Infantry Division at Fort Lewis, Washington; and a corps commander, of III Corps at Fort Hood, Texas. He retired as a four-star general, commander of FORSCOM. He is a very wise and experienced field commander. Additionally, Dick loves soldiers . . . he has an intuitive feel for them, genuinely from the heart, so he's a great observer of human behavior and interaction. At the same time, he's very skilled in analyzing problem-solving techniques and an expert tactician. He knows how to get the most combat power on the battlefield at a particular point in time. In terms of temperament, in his feel for the mind and the heart of being a soldier, in his feel for the battlefield, I personally identify with him in my own approach to commanding units and leading soldiers in battle.

  So General Cavazos and I hit it off right away.

  Almost immediately, he spotted a few things in my own problem-solving and decision-making techniques that were causing some friction between me and the division staff. The way I like to work with my staff is to ask a lot of questions, open thin
gs up, and choose a course of action that presents the most options for a given mission. Sometimes that takes time. This didn't always sit well with my staff, and Dick Cavazos noticed. He led some back-and-forth discussion in an AAR.

  "What we discovered was this. What your commander is trying to do is generate options continually as the battle moves on. He doesn't want to run out of options. What you've got to do is to keep giving them to him so the commander always has a viable option to use against an enemy move. So don't be bothered by your commander asking you a lot of questions, by driving you to come up with additional alternatives. What he's trying to do is think his way through the situation, just like you're trying to do. He's problem-solving, just like you are. Commanders just don't passively sit around and wait for the staff to solve the problems.