Unfortunately, the "revolution in military affairs" people forgot something: technological improvement cuts both ways.
You'd think the Army would find some way to weasel out of the post partum abortion that the $120B godsend-to-Boeing known as the Future Combat System will turn out to be and try something more...um...rational?
No, I didn't think so either.
This is really useful, a great post.
Don't forget the Coast Guard. They're part of the Homeland Security Dept now, but some are serving in Iraq as well. Just a little more 'off the books' military spending.
Coast Guard in Iraq:
http://www.uscg.mil/history/
OIF_...GR_Article.html
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/...e.aspx?
id=15336
Rumsfeld believed in silver bullets, like most incompetent executives do. So he went out and bought a lot of expensive snake oil.
Then, of course, there's the systematized and ingrained corruption of the last two entire generations of Pentagon staffers.
Coram's biography of John Boyd gives another view of the Pentagon, and one that doesn't pass through the prism of the corporate media.
Evan,
Thanks for a great post.
Stormcrow,
Great book. It's surprising that some readers break out in yawns after the aerial combat/fireworks phase losing interest in the best, final part as Coram describes Boyd's incredible, evolving mind grappling with the quantum physics of success in war. War's still three parts moral to one material, as Boyd knew in his heart, and legitimacy is the ultimate weapon that the arms industry, corporate media and public diplomats can't manufacture. Hence the American imperial project's last half century of dwindling fortune and that 18 month New American Century.
All the best & thanks again,
Rumsfeld's original plan in Iraq was to drop in 50 thousand airborne on Baghdad. Generals paid with their careers to stop that scheme from happening.
This massive rise in costs occurring is what has been termed as the rise of "network centric warfare", or the building of a technology network based infrastructure to serve as force multipliers. The important thing to remember is that the Pentagon bureaucrats build a strategic vision of the world based on their politics and that of the political masters and that vision right now is based around fighting wars in countries that have not adhered to the wonders of globalized capitalism or those where resistance to it is growing.
Hence the reason for the small forces and large amount of tech centric ideas. In an idealized world the forces of globalized capitalism would have a robot army complemented by a force of "private military contractors", but in this world we currently inhabit they still have to rely on the American soldier and the schilling of sunshine patriotism as well as concocted defense-inspired reasons to launch wars of aggression.
As for the success of such systems I will refer to Steve's analysis of "4th generation warfare" back in 2006 when describing the defeat of the second Israeli invasion of south Lebanon. In this new fad of Predator drones and shock and awe, the purveyors of mass destruction forget that to win a war one must simply remember your Clausewitz and go after the enemy's means and motivation. The Israeli government wanted to punish Hezbollah and all of Lebanon for not attacking them and tried a half-cocked plan of rolling them up quickly. Hezbollah hid in holes, booby-trapped roads and houses and used their limited capabilities to cause a relatively large amount of Israeli casualties. This large amount of sacrifice for a very limited goal shook up Israeli confidence in the Bush-backed invasion and they retreated.
All this money is being spent on systems that will ultimately grind to a halt in sand, run out of oil and rust, and be crippled by a clever teenager's insertion of a backdoor virus. But then again when economies are run on the power and might of systems engineered only to kill then these outcomes aren't only favorable, but are necessary. The 800 pound gorilla in the room that is national defense spending once again IS NOT an issue in either the Republican or Democratic campaigns, and since the exclusion of Dennis Kucinich from the debates only Ron Paul ever even speaks about it.
Good post and hopefully it will revitalize the topic of what national defense really is.
Amazing... Von Rumsfeldt wants to play the same game the Germans did in WW2 - Our technology will smash our enemies!! The Germans wasted a lot of money, time, and materials trying to create the best tanks, aircraft, and small arms.
They made great advances, but the Russians and the Americans had a better answer - we'll make tens of thousands of T-34's (~80,000) and Shermans (49,000), while the total German tank production from 1934 - 1945 was around 25,900 (self-propelled guns not included).
T-34' were first produced in 1940, while the Sherman came out in 1942.
In the words of one captured German Lt., "We ran out of Panthers, but you never ran out of Shermans."
But you fail to realise that where it took many bombers to take out one target in WW2 we can take out many targets with one bomber, so mass seams to loose its attractiveness.
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