Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq

by Tom Clancy

  "Next," he went on, "most savvy tactical commanders wait until the last minute to decide something. Why is that? Well, that gets back to what you are trying to do. That gets back to this: you want to stay out ahead of the enemy. That means you don't want to decide too far in advance what you're going to do. If you do that, by the time you execute, the situation may have changed, and you may have another option available to you. On the other hand, you don't want to wait so long to decide that your unit can't execute.

  "Well, this drives the staff nuts. Why? They've got a lot of details to attend to, so they want the commander to decide very early. So they're always pushing the commander to decide so they can get their work done. So if they don't understand why the commander is doing what he's doing, then they're going to look at their commander as indecisive. In fact, he isn't indecisive at all. What he's looking for is the right intuitive moment to decide to act. Then he executes very forcefully without looking back."

  Before Dick Cavazos led us through this discussion to these conclusions, I had not been able to articulate it, either to myself or to my staff, with anything like this clarity. Now, as a senior tactical commander, he had really let me see myself in a mirror.

  So after I took in what we had all discussed, I told myself, Yes, that's true, that's exactly what I do, that's the way I've been at squadron, regiment, and now as a division commander. I was starting to see tension between me and the staff, most of whom I had long known or personally chosen. Now I understood. Actually, it's normal senior tactical commander behavior.

  General Cavazos, then, was the first person to open up for me why commanders tend to wait till the last possible minute to decide what they're going to do. That had been my tendency, anyway, almost intuitively, and it had been successful. And now he was explaining me to myself, as it were. He saw me as I had not been able to see myself, and he reinforced for me what had been up to then inexplicable intuitive commander behavior.

  Before this exercise, I had not really known Dick Cavazos. But here, our meetings and subsequent work together in other exercises turned into a deep friendship.

  That seminar at Fort Leavenworth was a very valuable week.

  After that, we went on to train for WARFIGHTER, and then, in July of '89, about a month before I moved on to command VII Corps, we ran the actual WARFIGHTER exercise. The exercise was very instructive as well. What it did was prove to me yet again that planning is not fighting.

  In the Battle Command Training Program, you normally set up your command posts out in the field, with all the vehicles and communication gear. And you also have your subordinate colonel-level commands--that is, the commanders of your four maneuver brigades, your DISCOM (division support command), and your DIVARTY (division artillery). You are essentially in your wartime setup, except that all your troops are not out there with all their equipment.

  At brigade, division, and corps, the U.S. Army normally operates with three command posts, as was discussed briefly in the opening chapter: a small tactical command post forward, a main command post, which is much larger, and a rear command post, which deals mainly with logistics. Normally, your assistant division commander for maneuver goes forward to the tactical command post, where he controls the fight that's right up against you--what is called the close fight. Your assistant division commander for support, another brigadier general, is at the rear command post. There he coordinates all the support--the logistics--for the fight, watches over the security of the division rear area against enemy special forces teams, and controls real estate, so two units do not try to occupy the same ground. The division commander normally operates from the main command post or main nerve center. From there, he can synchronize the close fight, the support functions, and also the deep fight, the second-echelon fight as far deep as the division can go.

  When this WARFIGHTER started, I followed doctrine and started out at the main command post, but soon I found that the decision-making agility in our division was too slow with me there. By staying at the command post, I didn't have enough of an intuitive feel of the fight. Now, I'm not comfortable doing that anyway. I don't like to stay so far removed from the actual fight and let someone else do it. But I hadn't commanded a division before in a fight, so I said, "Okay, I'll start out doing what you're supposed to do."

  So what happened? The opposing force began to break through us. As BCTP adjusted the exercise, I made an adjustment to the way I commanded.

  We restarted it.

  "This time," I said, "I'm going to be out where I know I belong, out at the tactical command post, and moving around." From then on, we were very successful. And I never forgot that. It was a great lesson: What I had done during the first day of the exercise was to abandon my intuitive sense of what I ought to do as a commander. Instead, I'd followed what the doctrine expected me to do and stayed in the main command post.

  I remembered that lesson during Desert Storm--and did not stay at the main command post.

  As a matter of fact, we were not particularly dispersed during the BCTP, so I could move around in a wheeled vehicle. Because of the confines of the local training area, everything was fairly close together. If it had been an active operation, I would probably have had to get in a helicopter, the way I did in Desert Storm.

  The main thing was that I wanted to get my subordinate commanders' sense of what was happening, and then give them my own sense and tell them what I wanted them to do in the next twelve to twenty-four hours. When I was there with them, I could look them in the eye and see if they understood what I wanted. That way, there could be no ambiguity in orders. There is an old saying: If an order can be misunderstood, it will be.

  There were other benefits: First, I could try ideas out on my commanders. If I was thinking of doing something different, I could give them a heads-up and get their reaction to it.

  Second, at the division tactical command post, you get the best, the freshest, information. By the time information moved from the units in contact, through their headquarters and the tactical command post, and then back to the main command post, it was hours out of date. So when I was at the tactical CP, and not visiting commanders, I was able to get a better view of the tactical situation and to make better, quicker decisions.

  Third, senior commanders really get to make only a few key decisions during the fight. What you want to do, then, is to inform yourself so that you can determine the best time to make those decisions. By being forward, talking to my subordinate commanders, and being with the troops, seeing and sensing the fight, I better informed myself.

  By being up front, you gain immediacy. But you also gain something else: Soldiers are getting hurt, wounded, killed in action. Commanders shouldn't be staying in their command post. They should be out and around the soldiers, where they can be feeling the pain and the pride, and where they can understand the whole human dimension of the battle. That way of operating has practical, tactical consequences. It will better inform commanders' intuition about what to do; it will suggest alternative courses of action that will accomplish their mission at least cost to their troops.

  And so that's what I found myself doing on both the practice battlefield and the real battlefield. And so it turned out that in this BCTP we were very successful in the end and defeated the OPFOR.

  Early on in this fight, in this scenario, we had to make the following decisions. We had to determine which way the major enemy force was coming; how we were going to win the counterfire fight (that is, defeat the enemy's artillery); and where and when we were going to commit the division reserve to stop the enemy attack and regain the initiative. To do all this, you have to read the battle quickly. Tactics during battle is a series of adjustments to stay ahead of the enemy.

  In the BCTP, after I moved up front, I read the battle quickly, then saw the enemy forces coming, and we committed our reserves, stopped the enemy cold, and began a series of counterattacks against them.

  That BCTP exercise capped an intense period of command experi
ence in the 1st Armored Division. Franks and his division chain of command had been the umpires for the annual two-week fall 1988 REFORGER exercise of V Corps vs. VII Corps. There he had seen two corps in action, made tactical judgments as the senior umpire with his commanders and staff, and observed General Butch Saint command an Army Group. He would also gain experience in commanding the division both at Hohenfels in their own training maneuver exercises, and in their training exercises on their actual wartime terrain near the German border. The 1st Armored Division was also undergoing force modernization, receiving new M1A1 tanks, Bradleys, and Apaches. Because of his strong belief in the importance of fundamental skills, Franks trained as an individual tank commander with a tank crew and successfully went through the annual M1A1 tank crew qualification exercises at Grafenwohr to ensure that, as an armored division commander, he could command a tank. It was a tight combat-ready team in "Old Ironsides" (the 1st AD nickname). Franks was seeing for himself how far he and the Army had come since the early 1970s.

  BIG FIVE

  None of this could have been possible, of course, without the right equipment--and that was another major element in the rebirth of the Army.

  In 1972, even before the '73 Mideast War, the Army was already aware of its urgent need for new and better fighting equipment. Under the leadership of General DePuy, then the Assistant Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, the Army adopted an approach with Congress and the Department of Defense that communicated this urgent need in a focused and disciplined way. They called this program the "Big Five," for the five new systems the Army could hardly live without: a new tank, an infantry fighting vehicle, an attack helicopter, a utility helicopter, and an air defense system. These would become the M1 Abrams, the Bradley, the Apache, the Blackhawk, and the Patriot. With the help of the 1973 Mideast War and James Schlesinger's continuing focus on restoring credibility to U.S. conventional defense in Central Europe, all five systems were approved.

  Though today these systems have shown themselves to be hugely successful, none of them went through the acquisition process without serious debate, downright skepticism, and opposition inside the government and out. (Critics have been hard to find since Desert Storm.)

  Let's look briefly at three of the five--the Apache, the Bradley, and the Abrams.8

  --During Vietnam, the U.S. Army pioneered the concept of air assault and attack helicopters. There, because its air assault capability added a third maneuver dimension, the 1st Cavalry Division proved a superb tactical success. Likewise, rocket-firing helicopter gunships, and later the Cobra, proved equally effective. Later still, the Army attached TOW (Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided antitank) missiles to both the Cobra and the UH-1 (Huey). These proved effective against NVA tanks and other targets during the Easter offensive of 1972.

  From the beginning, the Army had wished to build an attack helicopter equipped with a combination of rockets, antitank missiles, and cannon; and so was launched the Cheyenne program. The Cheyenne was designed for speed, but costs escalated and a prototype crashed, and so the program was terminated.

  The Army still wanted an attack helicopter, though--a helicopter capable of day and night and adverse-weather operations against enemy armor and other hardened targets, and so the Apache program was launched.

  The Apache was to be a true attack helicopter, able to fight in close direct fire battles or to go deep into the enemy rear. Its design emphasized the ability to fly at low level, sort out its targets, and launch weapons from long range, outside the enemy's antiaircraft range. At the same time, Apaches made no compromise in the areas of sensors, weapons, agility, and survivability. The airframe structure, for instance, is designed to take a 20-g crash without killing the crew, and the fuel tanks are self-sealing and crash-resistant.

  Apaches were fielded in the mid-1980s, and they quickly proved themselves to be the main battle tanks of the Army's air fleet at both division and corps.

  --The Bradley is a well-armed armored fighting vehicle, designed to permit infantry to fight mounted or, in another role, to drop its rear ramp and let the infantry fight dismounted in small teams, while supporting them with fire as necessary. It can also provide scouting for cavalry units, and infantry support for armored units on the battlefield. It's not designed to take the kind of heavy punishment a tank can, nor is it designed to deliver the kind of heavy blows a tank can deliver (though its punch is in no way light--with TOW missiles and a 25-mm cannon). Its versatility, however, clearly complements the tank-infantry team to produce a potent battlefield combination.

  Like Apache, Bradley was created out of the failure of another program--this one called MICV (Mechanized Infantry Carrier Vehicle), which was designed to accompany M1 Abrams tanks into battle. It was not a wonderful piece of equipment. The one-man turret was inadequate, and the vehicle was as high as an early World War II tank, making it a vulnerable target. In early 1975, after the TRADOC studies of the 1973 Mideast War, General DePuy recommended killing the MICV. In his view, it wouldn't survive on the modern battlefield.

  Out of the ashes of the MICV, the Bradley program was born. Like MICV, Bradley had doubters, and it would continue to have doubters right up to the attack on Desert Storm: "It's underpowered. The transmission doesn't work. The turret is too complex. The vehicle is not survivable." And on and on.

  In the end, it worked superbly.

  --The Abrams was likewise built on the ashes of failed programs (the U.S.-German MBT-70, and then the U.S. MBT-80). The Abrams likewise took its share of criticism, which in the end was not justified. Not only is designing a tank no small matter, but the United States had not built a completely new tank since the late 1940s. In tank design there are always trade-offs between survivability, mobility, and firepower. You have to lose something; you can't have it all. Large, heavily armored tanks with large cannons weigh a lot. That means they tend to be slow, they break bridges, and they can't get through underpasses. A tank like that isn't useful. Very quick light tanks without enough firepower to engage enemy armor and enough armor protection to survive are equally useless. So judgments have to be made in order to hit the right balance. How do you design a twenty-ton turret with fire-control equipment so precise it will allow gunners to track moving targets day and night and hit what they aim at, yet so rugged it can be used for days at a time without having to be taken to a shop for repairs? You also have to consider costs and maintenance. How many miles will your tank go between major failures of components?

  The Abrams was a controversial machine, with a new and untried turbine powerplant, new armor, new electronics, and a new interior turret design. It was a tribute to American engineering that it took only eight years from the written requirements in 1972 to bring the first tank off the production line. Along the way came the questions and criticisms. Some worried about weight. Some worried about dust and sand getting into the turbine engine. Some worried about survivability. Some wondered if the new interior turret design would really work.

  In the end, it turned out to be the world's best main battle tank. If you went out onto a used tank lot, where all the world's best tanks were lined up for sale, the Abrams would be the one you'd pick. Its 1,500-horsepower turbine engine will drive it across a battlefield at speeds in excess of forty miles an hour; it has great dash speed, accelerating to twenty mph in less than ten seconds; and it will do it quietly. (Some early opponents in NATO exercises called M1s "the Whispering Death.") The M1A1 that VII Corps took into Iraq carried a 120-mm smoothbore cannon as well as a .50-caliber and two 7.62-mm machine guns.

  Crew protection is superb. Primary armor protection for the M1 comes from its Chobham armor (named after the British research facility in Chobham, England). The M1 is also equipped with an automatic fire-detection /suppression system, and the M1A1 additionally has an atmospheric overpressure system to allow the crew to survive and fight on a battlefield contaminated with toxic chemicals, biological agents, or nuclear fallout.

  In Desert Storm, M1A1s kil
led many Iraqi tanks. "When I went into Kuwait, I had thirty-nine tanks," a captured Iraqi battalion commander reported. "After six weeks of air bombardment, I had thirty-two left. After twenty minutes in action against M1s, I had none."

  By the end of the 1970s, the Army in Europe had grown weary of staring down the superior Soviet equipment from their lightly armed M551 Sheridan light tanks and their 1950s-technology M60-series tanks. All that changed by the early 1980s, when the Army started to field the Big Five. They were a shot in the arm for the confidence of the Army in Europe.

  DOCTRINE

  Not only was it necessary to have new tools and new training, but it was crucial to learn a whole new way to fight. The ideas with which an army fights are only slightly less important than the ideas for which it fights. Doctrine is a statement of how the Army intends to fight. It gives the Army a common language and a common reference point that allows shorthand professional communication. It's not a dogma; it's a guideline, a statement of principles that should prove helpful in solving battlefield problems. But the solutions themselves will be dictated by the specifics of the situation. For an Army with a degree of complexity caused by the lethality and speed of modern battle, such a common work plan is invaluable.