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Delta Force: The U. S. CounterTerrorist Unit and the Iran Hostage Rescue Mission
Charlie A. Beckwith, USA (Ret.), and Donald Knox. New York: Harcourt Brace Ivanovich, 1983. 310 pp. Illus. Ind.
$14.95 ($13.45).
Reviewed by Captain Paul B. Ryan, U. S. Navy (Retired)
Throughout history, the military has had its share of colorful combat officers who, if they win battles, also scorn the bureaucracy, cause heartburn for their superiors by their unorthodox methods, and offend conventional types by their barracks language. Colonel Beckwith’s Delta Force contains ample evidence that be qualifies as such a stormy petrel. This book will be remembered as a personal account of a disastrous plan to rescue 53 Americans who were held as hostages in
Tehran.
Colonel Beckwith was the leader of the assault force of 93 commandos, known as the Delta unit in Tehran, which was to storm the U. S. embassy and bring the American hostages to safety. To move the commandos from the desert staging Point to the vicinity of Tehran required six of the eight helicopters which were to be launched from the aircraft carrier Nim- itz (CVN-68). Because of mechanical failure, the original eight were reduced to five, canceling the mission. While preparing to refuel for the return flight, a helicopter sliced into a C-130 transport. Eight men were killed, and the remainder flew to Egypt and then on to the United States.
The operation has remained under wraps. No classified records on the mission plan or execution have been released. All active-duty personnel involved in the operation known as Eagle Claw are under orders to remain silent. Colonel Beckwith, now retired, is the first military officer who has publicly revealed precise details of this dangerous, complex task which the armed forces, at the time, were not prepared to handle on short notice.
Why did the assault fail? Observers familiar with special operations list various reasons: incredible bad luck, insufficient helicopters, excessive compartmen- tation (sealing off the component units from each other to maintain secrecy, thus damaging their team effectiveness), and the planners’ lack of skepticism regarding the suitability of the helicopters for the mission. Colonel Beckwith charges that the main reasons for the debacle were the helicopters’ unreliability, a lack of top- level maintenance, and the possibility that the Marine helicopter pilots were not the best available in the armed services. After the aborted mission, the press reported that Colonel Beckwith had used the epithet “coward” toward the Marine Corps pilots. In his book, he redresses this embarrassing situation by explaining that, if he did use the word, it was because he was emotional at the time and was not a perfect person.
Colonel Beckwith wrote his book with Donald Knox, a professional writer and director of television documentaries. The result is a flawed but entertaining first- person narrative tracing “Chargin’ Charlie’s” career, in which he served with British Army Commandos in England, Corsica, and Malaya; fought in bloody combat in Vietnam; and struggled in peacetime to gain approval from Army generals to form his anti-terrorist group.
This insider’s account of how the Delta unit trained for the operation gives the book unique historical value. But Colonel Beckwith’s critics have contradicted the book’s allegations of less-than-perfect helicopter maintenance. Shortly after the mission, Admiral Thomas Hayward, the Chief of Naval Operations at the time.
Colonel Beckwith, the leader of the assault force sent to rescue the American hostages in Iran, is the first military officer to publicly reveal details of the mission and its failure.
publicly declared that each helicopter had two maintenance crews and that a priority delivery system existed to supply spare parts as required. In response to Colonel Beckwith’s suggestion that the Marine helicopter pilots may not have been the most qualified, Admiral James L. Holloway III, who headed an investigation of the episode, has stated that the 16 pilots were very carefully screened and that there was no reason to think that other pilots could have done better.
On the other hand, many critics of the operation agree with Colonel Beckwith’s contention that more helicopters, perhaps ten or 11, should have been employed. That only eight helicopters were used may be ascribed to President Jimmy Carter’s desire to keep the task force as small as possible for security purposes, and to the questionable reason that the Nimitz could not fit more than eight helos on her hangar deck. There is strong evidence that the Nimitz could have accommodated as many as 11.
President Carter, his Chief of Staff, Hamilton Jordan, and his National Security Adviser, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, all of whom were closely connected with Eagle Claw, have published their versions of the episode. Delta Force supplies additional evidence. Before all the facts are in, historians must wait for the memoirs of the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time; the task force commander, then-Major General James Vaught; the helicopter deputy commander, then-Colonel Charles Pitman (whose name Colonel Beckwith consistently misspells); and Lieutenant Colonel Edward Seiffert, the helicopter flight leader.
Historians will also count on reviewing tapes of the unavailable secret conferences cited in the book, to which Colonel Beckwith makes reference. Until then, and when other participants reveal their sides of the story, historians must reserve judgment, and readers will be left to wonder if Colonel Beckwith was justified in his harsh criticism of some of his military superiors and colleagues.
The debacle of Eagle Claw spurred the Pentagon, the White House, and Congress to beef up the nation’s special forces, which include the Delta Force, the Navy Seal teams, and the Air Force Special Operations squadrons. While Eagle Claw is not comparable in magi"' tude with the successful landings in Grenada, the latter operation almost certainly involved these units. The services learned a costly lesson in Iran but profited fro"1 the disaster.
Captain Ryan is a Research Fellow at the Hoove Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanfoi University. His book, Disaster at Desert One: VV 1 the Raid in Iran Failed, will be published in 19° •
The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House
Seymour M. Hersh. New York: Summit Books, 1983. 698 pp. Notes. Ind. $19.95 ($17.95).
Reviewed by Edward P. Offley
On the night of 8 August 1974, min-
A Soviet View of the Proceedings
By Norman L. Stone
In the October 1983 issue of the Soviet naval magazine Morskoy Sbor- nik, Rear Admiral B. Yashin, Soviet Navy (Retired), authored, under the title ‘ ‘In A Propagandist Link of the Pentagon,” a critique of 23 Proceedings articles that appeared between April 1982 and April 1983 * His view is that the Proceedings is “not objective or independent” and "is a mouthpiece for the American military administration valuing above all else the strengthening of military superiority of the U. S. Navy for the very purpose of promoting newer and newer spirals of the arms race.”
The article begins with the observation that the credo on the table of contents page of the Proceedings seems to emphasize its independence from the Department of the Navy. He questions how that is possible with the Chief of Naval Operations as the President of the Board of Control.
Admiral Yashin comments on Admiral Thomas B. Hayward’s speech at the 1982 annual meeting of the U. S. Naval Institute.1 He notes the call for improved pro-
♦Complete title listings with appropriate references are listed as footnotes and appear at the end of the feature.
fessionalism and that Admiral Hayward’s important goal is “naval superiority over the Soviet Union,” using “the serious threat to the national interests of the U.S.A. from the Soviet Navy” as his justification for having this goal.
The October 1982 special issue on the Soviet Navy got a reaction. Admiral Yashin says it “lacks elementary objectivity and a sense of measure ... in relation to the natural and legitimate trend in development of the destiny of the Soviet Navy . . . introducing into the articles of that issue a distorted view and, in a series of cases, a hostile tone.” He says that the number of ships on the list of the Soviet Navy in Donald Daniel and Theodore Neely’s article “does not reflect reality,” a practice that he reports “was criticized by the very well-known Admiral Turner, former director of the CIA.”2 Admiral Yashin adds that the article “incorrectly included in the complement of the Soviet Navy not only warships and auxiliaries of various classes but also tugs., scows, harbor craft, and even 50 foot barges.” He indignantly points out that the list even includes 680 “in-shore operators and riv- erboats.” He views the authors as “making their presentation on behalf of the owners of the shipbuilding corporation, Bath Iron Works, . . . juggling figures to confirm that the U.S.S.R. had in its complement by 1980 four times more ships than the U.S.A.” He concludes by commenting, “Commentary, as the saying goes, is needless.”
Reacting with pique to Dr. Robed Suggs’s April 1983 article on the Soviet Navy’s shifting leadership hierarchy- Admiral Yashin says it contains “unjustified conjectures and distortions” and that Admiral Sergei Gorshkov’s article in the July 1983 Morskoy Sbornik “unmasks the unseemly, false, and absurd survey cles on “building and using the U. S- Navy,” Admiral Yashin says that the authors “justify the pretensions of the U.S.A. for a ruling position in the worm and the world ocean . . . tied into the interventionist concept of sea control and forward deployment.”
He characterizes Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger’s speech delivered at the 1982 U. S. Naval Academy graduation and published in the July 1982 Pr0' ceedings as “directing the publication o candid falsehoods in order to substantiate that the U.S.A. does not want war but must arm itself in order to deter the starting of wars by others.”4 He says that Secretary Weinberger’s speech “reflects the military political orientation of the present American administration: that the U.S.A. is not going to remove the possibility of unleashing nuclear war, won t agree to the freeze of nuclear weapons- and won’t ratify SALT II.”
utes after President Richard Nixon had announced his resignation, Gerald R. Ford stepped outside his split-level home ln Alexandria, Virginia, to face the television cameras, newspapermen, and a Cfowd of cheering neighbors. “We’ve been fortunate in the last five years to have a very great man in Henry Kissinger who has had to build the blocks of peace
* have asked Henry Kissinger, as Secretary of State, to continue on. . . . ” This announcement was reassuring for millions of Americans who had witnessed the disintegration of the Nixon White House during the Watergate scandal. Kis- s*nger, whose diplomatic brilliance had brought disengagement from Vietnam, rapprochement with Communist China, and a strategic-arms treaty with the So- V|et Union, represented both continuity and effectiveness in U. S. foreign policy despite the unsettling domestic political Upheavals.
If Kissinger’s reputation emerged intact after Watergate, it faces a more formidable challenge at the hands of Seymour Hersh. If the author were not a renowned journalist whose past accomplishments have played a significant role in the shaping of contemporary investigative reporting, it would be easy to dismiss this treatment of Kissinger and his rise to power in the Nixon White House as fatally biased; former New York Times reporter Hersh, in this anti-memoir, portrays the former national security adviser and secretary of state in an almost totally negative light.
Yet, it is premature to dismiss Hersh’s findings solely because of his anti-Kissinger fixation. The reader with sufficient stamina to wade through this exhaustive (and exhausting) work will find his knowledge of the inner corridors of power substantially increased. Military men and women will find Hersh’s book a gold mine of information on how military and civilian officials both interacted cooperatively and schemed against one another at the highest levels of the U. S Government during the tempestuous Vietnam era. The case of the alleged “military spy ring” in 1971 is a pertinent example of Hersh’s journalistic digging: Even a dozen years after it occurred, this bizarre incident has remained an unresolved puzzle, overshadowed and obscured by the trauma of Watergate. When first publicly revealed in 1974, charges that senior military officials in the Pentagon had stolen national security documents from the Nixon White House posed the specter of a serious rupture of civilian control of the military. Equally troubling was the fact that three years had passed since the incident; yet, despite the evidence, neither the Uniform Code of Military Justice nor the civilian legal system had been called in to establish guilt or innocence and to determine punishment, if warranted.
Hersh, who uncovered many details of the story himself in 1974, comes back a decade later with additional evidence to suggest that there was an organized effort within the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to obtain raw national security materials from the Nixon White House. Hersh’s study of the
Captain Richard Laning’s futuristic article in August 1982, in Admiral Yashin’s view, “repeats the notorious myth about the ‘threat’ from the side of the Soviet Navy.”5 He notes in passing that Captain Laning thinks it “necessary • • . to improve the organizational structure of the American Navy with the aim °f combined strike operations.”
Admiral Yashin characterizes Rear Admiral George Miller’s December 1982 article about a new strategic strategy as ‘proposing rejection of all treaty obligations bordering on the sphere of political °cean hegemonism . . . which will impede the Soviet Navy and merchant fleet.”6 He labels Lieutenant Colonel Richard Rothwell’s discussion of the nuclear threat in Europe in December 1982 as irresponsible and provocative when it says “the collective aim of NATO is to restrain Soviet aggression,” and when it depicts * ‘the Warsaw Pact as allegedly superior in power to the countries of NATO in every indication.”7 He also calls the title, “Russian Roulette,” ’exotic.” With some justification, he notes that “American rockets of intermediate range . . . remain strategic in relation to the territory of the Soviet Union.” In Admiral Yashin’s view, Colonel Hammond’s December 1982 article attempts “to mitigate the obvious aggressive spirit of . . . Teddy Roosevelt’s ‘big stick’ doctrine.”8 Admiral Yashin sees the same thing in “another formula” when Colonel Hammond says “a large fleet is needed not only to win battles in wartime, but in peacetime for restraining other countries.”
Admiral Yashin notes a two-and-one- half year trend in the Proceedings of increased attention to improving operational tactics and the growing role of the ship commander. Theodore Taylor’s June 1982 article is “accompanied by an antiSoviet attack and candidly calls for attaining superiority over the Soviet Union.”9 .
The following articles are given a fairly objective review by Admiral Yashin. To the extent that the topics Admiral Yashin selects to comment on are those of most interest to the Soviets, they may tell us something.
Captain Seesholtz’s June 1982 article on the influence of technology is summarized as saying “study World War II, rapidly apply new technology, improve semi-automatic aspects of Harpoon and Tomahawk, and develop high-speed noiseless submarines and smart mines, better ECM [electronic countermeasures], underwater weapon systems and antiair systems.”10
Admiral Yashin deduces from Commander Byron’s September 1982 article “The Captain” that it discusses training, responsibilities of command, and mastery of new weapons.11 He notes that these same topics are also emphasized by Admiral Watkins in his January 1983 contribution to the magazine.1-
Admiral Yashin also notes that, in 1981-82, 17 Proceedings articles were devoted to leadership, “improvement of tasks, and acquisition of experience.” He includes Commander Seaquist’s February 1983 article “Tactics to Improve Tactical Proficiency” in this category.13
Commander Byron’s January 1983 article on reorganization of the armed forces gets a big play in Admiral Yashin’s article.14 He says that “to have a Department of the Air Force is not provided for” in Commander Byron’s proposal.
He points out that five articles in the May 1982 issue were about problems in shipbuilding. He mentions Captain Kehoe's, Kenneth Brower’s, and Herbert Meier’s article15 and its call for ship design innovation, and Captain Baker’s article on the 600-ship Navy.16
In discussing Howard Serig’s May 1982 article on the /owa-class battleships rejoining the fleet, he notes that “Reagan gave the green light to . . . the program ... as different from the [former] naval [officer] Carter.”17
Admiral Yashin remarks that, in the July 1982 issue, Captain O’Rourke, in examining the big carrier issue, “reckons that it is preferable to build less massive ships ... of which the [United States] could possess greater quantities.”18
Kissinger-Nixon era in U. S. foreign policy establishes a plausible context in which such an unthinkable practice as military spying on the White House could—and did—take place. He shows that the Nixon Administration, as a calculated practice, not only abused the military chain of command for its own political purposes, but engaged in its own spying—including illegal wiretaps—on elements of the same military chain of command.
The Price of Power concerns the Nixon Administration’s foreign policy development, but focuses on its principal architect, Kissinger, during 1969-72.
From the first day the Nixon Administration was constitutionally in existence, Hersh notes, the President and his national security affairs assistant were intent on total control of the government’s powers: “He [Kissinger] and Nixon had seized the government from the beginning, and less than a month after the inauguration they were in the process of applying a joint stranglehold.” A principal target of this effort, but by no means the only one, was the Office of the Secretary of Defense, whose incumbent, Melvin Laird, was not viewed as a loyal Cabinet member, but as a dangerous bureaucratic enemy with independent views on vital issues: Vietnam, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), crisis responses to North Korea, and others. The means by which Kissinger and Nixon moved to bypass Laird was to erect a backchannel directly to the new chairman of the JCS, recently promoted from his position as chief of naval operations, Admiral Thomas H. Moorer.
When questioned by the Senate Armed Services Committee in February 1974 about the alleged military spying, Admiral Moorer denounced the news reports as “ludicrous and ridiculous,” citing the existing National Security Council (NSC) system as offering the military a complete mechanism for submitting its recommendations and receiving information necessary to carry out responsibilities. Despite Moorer’s public disavowals, evidence from other sources indicates that he and other military leaders felt excluded from policy decisions affecting the armed forces. According to Admiral Elmo M- Zumwalt, chief of naval operations during 1970-74, “ . . . Moorer’s view °‘ the net effect of this [NSC] system was that it did not give the JCS a chance to participate in decisions that by law we were required to participate in and so we were forced to react after the fact.” When the SALT negotiations were proceeding during 1971-72, the issue ot
negotiating limits to submarine-launched
ballistic missiles (SLBMs) was of strong concern to the Navy. The Soviets had argued not to include SLBMs in the accounting of offensive systems. Zumwalt wrote in his memoirs, On Watch (Times Books, 1976), that “the unanimous position” among the members of the JCS was “that if SLBMs were not included in the [SALT] agreement there should be no agreement, offensive or defensive- Their assumption was that any U. S. lea° in missile submarines could be rapidly overtaken by Soviet construction pr0" grams. Hersh points out Kissinger’s usurpation of the SALT negotiating process-"
Summarizing “The Missing Link,” also in July 1982, he notes that Commander Libbey calls for wider use of guided-missile boats in the Baltic and Black seas.19 He acidly remarks that Commander Libbey “considers it preferable to use U. S. forces in remote ocean regions, but close to the territory of the U.S.S.R.—the forces of other NATO countries.”
Admiral Yashin says that Colonel Jaroch’s November 1982 article “along with two earlier articles . . . frightens the readers by bringing up figures and facts allegedly giving evidence that the Soviet Naval Infantry recently surpassed the Americans in their numbers.”20
The future U. S. warship building plan in Commander Alden’s January 1983 article is noted with interest, and a summary of planned ship types and quantities is given.21 Admiral Yashin considers Captain Lacouture’s February 1983 article on space to be “tendentious” and to contain a “knowingly false presupposition that the Soviet Union has far surpassed the U.S.A. in this regime.”22 He says Captain Lacouture “calculates to secure military supremacy of the U.S.A. in the cosmos.”
Admiral Yashin also duly reports Richard Boyle’s September 1982 recommendation for “restoring the prestige” of the naval scientific research and development community together with the excellent idea that naval developers should go to sea themselves.23
Behind Admiral Yashin’s article we can see many of this season’s obligatory themes that are repeated by nearly all Soviet military and political writers and speakers. There may well be a list of “themes for this year” that Soviet writers must follow, so closely do they correspond from publication to publication. These themes are evident in every Soviet political or military publication.
Theme One: The Soviets do not present a “threat” to anyone but seek only peaceful coexistence with the West as a precondition for Soviet internal prosperity. The idea of a Soviet threat is a “myth” invented and spread by Western propagandists for selfish purposes.
Theme Two: There exists a rough balance of military power between the Warsaw Pact and NATO (or the Soviet Union and the United States), and the United States has no valid reason, to upset that balance by modernizing or increasing its forces, thereby causing another round of escalation in the arms race. The deployments of neutron bombs, Pershing II missiles, and ground-launched cruise missiles in NATO countries are destabilizing. The resources would be better spent on improving the human condition.
Theme Three: The Soviet Union has suffered the ravages of war more than any other nation, because of military weakness. The Soviets must constantly remind themselves of what happened in World War II and never permit such weakness to occur again.
Theme Four: The long-range aim 01 the United States is to secure world domination, and it is preparing for a nuclear war. The Soviet aim is to prevent such a war.
Theme Five: The United States clearly regards the Soviet Union as its enemy- and, without justification, says so in a threatening tone through speeches and publications, which only serves to heighten world tensions.
Theme Six: Nearly all the threats to world peace come from the capitalist nations which are exploiting their own workers and those of the Third World without concern for the people’s welfare- The United States is the ringleader, and behind the U. S. Government are the large corporations that supply military equipment, seeking only to line their pockets without regard for the potentially disastrous consequences of a major war- The strengthening of the U. S. Navy |- only another manifestation of the ruthless capitalist thrust for profit and power through a world hegemony pushed W major shipbuilders and other military' industrial interests.
There are 3.6 million personnel in the Soviet armed forces compared to our two million. The Soviet tank and armore
Using a backchannel which excluded even lhe formal SALT negotiating team—as another area in which the formal offices the government were suborned. Poorer alone attended a 17 March 1972 meeting at the White House where he was l°ld that the President might order the JCS to support a no-SLBM decision even though the military leaders opposed it. Significantly, Kissinger had already communicated that bargaining posture to the Soviets through his “backchannel” in 'ite talks with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, Hersh points out.
Needless to say,” Zumwalt wrote,
neither I nor any other Chief participated in a meaningful way in the discussion leading up to the appalling SLBM numbers. ...”
When leaked minutes of the White House crisis-management team appeared m journalist Jack Anderson’s column in December 1971, at the height of the Indo-Pakistani War, White House inves- hgators quickly zeroed in on a Navy yeoman assigned to a liaison office serving ‘he Joint Chiefs and the NSC. When confronted with the accusation by investigators for the White House and Department of Defense, the yeoman, Charles E. Radford, denied leaking the material to the columnist, but countered with the disclosure that he had been supplying the chairman of the JCS with national security documents stolen from senior White House aides, including Kissinger and his assistant, General Alexander M. Haig. One Pentagon investigator later said that when he first learned of the matter, “We had no idea what was going on. We walked out [of an initial briefing] thinking that this was Seven Days in May.” No charges were ever brought against the yeoman, under military or federal law. The spying allegations were suppressed until 1974, when Watergate spawned a flood of investigations and news leaks. Why? Hersh’s explanation is plausible: The White House unit which was assigned to investigate the December 1971 news leak to columnist Jack Anderson—and which stumbled onto Radford— was none other than the special unit known as the “Plumbers,” whose illegal activities during 1971 and 1972 would later destroy the Nixon Administration.
Presidential Assistant John Ehrlichman headed up the Radford investigation, and, for motives which Hersh and officials whom he interviewed described as self-protection, Ehrlichman seized upon the discovery as an ex-post facto justification for the “Plumbers.”
How effective a spy was the yeoman? Hersh quotes an authoritative source— Nixon. “Radford knew everything,” the former President told Watergate prosecutors during testimony in June 1975, “He was in all the sensitive meetings.”
The Price of Power is a flawed, yet still impressive look at the formation of national security policy. But the book’s flaw—its incessant negativity—is nothing more than a reversed image of selfserving memoirs by which players on the political stage proclaim their successes, sidestep their failures, and ignore their own excesses.
Ed Offley is Associate Editor of The Ledger-Star in Norfolk, Virginia.
vehicle production rate is five times ours. Their military aircraft production rate is ‘wice ours, and they build twice as many nuclear submarines as we do annually. One might wonder whether the Soviet ‘military-industrial interests” just might also have some political influence.
I also find theme five particularly interesting, not only because there is a good deal of truth that our attitude is belligerent, as theirs often is. but some Soviets seem genuinely hurt by the realization that they are considered the enemy. For Sample, at a recent Washington, D.C., hlavy League show, a Soviet military officer, probably a military attache, approached the representative from my company and objected to our use of the Soviet tank photo as the target in our antitank gunner video training system.
As for the rest of their themes, we unfortunately do not live in a safe, simple, 0r ideal world. Given the different cultural, economic, and ideological backgrounds of the Soviet Union and the United States, some conflict is bound to e*ist. Setting rhetoric aside, one can hope that the peoples of both countries will Work toward some accommodation.
It is difficult to tell a trained warrior not to brandish his sword or shout war cries, but it seems to me that many of the °ne-sided articles written by authors of both countries damage the probability of Peace rather than encourage it.
One of the most valuable things we can do is to try to understand what the other side is thinking, and because Admiral Yashin’s article reflects today’s world situation with its ideological conflicts, it is an illuminating insight.
'Adm. Thomas B. Hayward, USN, "The Naval Institute President's Annual Address to the Members,” Proceedings. August 1982, pp. 17-21.
'Donald C. Daniel and Theodore A. Neely, Jr., "Their Navy in 1981,” Proceedings, October 1982, pp. 109-120.
'Robert C. Suggs, "The Soviet Navy: Changing of the Guard?” Proceedings, April 1983, pp. 36-42. 'Caspar Weinberger, “Peace Has Her Victories,” Proceedings, July 1982, pp. 70-71.
5Capt. Richard B. Laning, USN (Ret.), “Elevation of the U. S. Fleet.” Proceedings, August 1982, pp. 33-37.
6RAdm. George H. Miller, USN (Ret.), “Flight from Reality,” Proceedings, December 1982, pp. 44-48.
7LtCol. Richard B. Rothwell, USMC. “Russian Roulette,” Proceedings, December 1982, pp. 49-55. 8Col. James W. Hammond, Jr., USMC (Ret.), “A Fleet for All Seasons," Proceedings, December 1982, pp. 66-72.
Theodore C. Taylor, “A Basis for Tactical Thought,” Proceedings, June 1982, pp. 27-33. l0Capt. J. R. Seesholtz. USN, “Is Technology the Culprit?” Proceedings, June 1982, pp. 46-50. "Cdr. John L. Byron. USN, “The Captain,” Proceedings, September 1982, pp. 39-45. l2Adm. James D. Watkins, USN. “The Principle of Command,” Proceedings, January 1983. pp. 32-33. "Cdr. Larry Seaquist, USN, “Tactics to Improve Tactical Proficiency,” February 1983, pp. 37-42. "Cdr. John L. Byron, USN, “Reorganization of the U. S. Armed Forces.” Proceedings, January 1983, pp. 68-75.
l5Capt. James W. Kehoe, USN (Ret.), Kenneth S. Brower, and Herbert A. Meier, “U. S. and Soviet Ship Design Practices, 1950-1980," Proceedings! Naval Review, May 1982, pp. 118-133.
1<’Capt. Brent Baker, USN, “Counting the 600-Ship Navy.” Proceedings/Naval Review, May 1982, pp. 209-210.
"Howard W. Serig, Jr.. “The ton a Class: Needed Once Again," Proceedings/Naval Review, May 1982, pp. 134-149.
‘“Capt. Gerald O'Rouke, USN (Ret.). “CVNs Forever! Forever?” Proceedings, July 1982, pp. 20-26. ,9Cdr. Miles A. Libbey III. USN, “The Missing Link," Proceedings, July 1982, pp. 36-41,
20LtCol. Roger M. Jaroch. USMC, “Amphibious Forces: Theirs and Ours,” Proceedings, November 1982. pp. 41-48:
2lCdr. John Aldcn, USN (Ret.), “Tomorrow’s Fleet,” Proceedings, January 1983, pp. 109-121. 22Capt. John E. Lacouture, USN (Ret.), “Space Race," Proceedings, February 1983, pp. 51-57. 21Richard Boyle, “The Fleet Connection," Proceedings, September 1982, pp. 57-61.
Mr. Stone translates Russian and has written many articles on military topics from a Soviet point of view. He has written three Proceedings articles, including one that was awarded a bronze medal in the General Prize Essay Contest. Mr. Stone holds a BS in electrical engineering from Lehigh University and an MS in applied physics from Adelphi, and is a Licensed Professional Engineer in New York. He is Director of Systems Application Engineering for Sanders Associates in New Hampshire and is a member of the antisubmarine warfare executive committee of the National Security Industrial Association.
The Third World War: The Untold Story
General Sir John Hackett, British Army.
New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1982. 372 pp. Maps. Notes. Ind. $17.95 ($14.36).
Reviewed by Thomas H. Etzold
In this sequel to The Third World War (Macmillan, 1978), General Sir John Hackett—assisted again by many obviously well-informed associates—has
advanced significantly beyond his earlier work in several areas of great importance to military professionals. The current work amplifies considerably its predecessor’s treatment of Soviet doctrine, thought, capabilities, and limitations. It also provides more extensive treatment of the roles of important peripheral states and areas, including Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Israel, Libya, and Central America, and of the elements of air war in NATO’s Central Region. The result is
An F-14 Tomcat moves forward for launching from the USS Independence (CV-62) off the coast of Lebanon in December 1983, its pilot helping to prevent the Third World War, which General Hackett’s book has breaking out in August 1985.
at least as important as its well-publicized antecedent.
This book teaches a single lesson: “If, in a dangerous and unstable world, we wish to avoid a nuclear war, we must be prepared for a conventional one.” As in his previous work, the author purports to explain the course and results of a 16-day world war occurring in August 1985. He develops a partly counterfactual explanation of the technical, operational, and political steps through which, in the early 1980s, the Western allies made themselves just able to win a narrow victory without more than token use of nuclear weapons.
General Hackett points to a number of concerns in operational and technical areas which are important enough to determine the West’s ability to sustain itself in a conventional war against the Soviet Union. The solutions to these concerns include providing for much more extensive battlefield and fixed-site air defense, equipping U. S. combat commanders with powerful strike elements analogous to the rockets and artillery at Soviet military commanders’ disposal, and expanding helicopter forces both for tactical mobility and for weapon platforms. The author emphasizes Western needs for many “assault-breaker” types of antiarmor weapons, adequate deterrents or counters to chemical attack, augmented air refueling capacity, vastly extended secure communications (particularly narrow band), increased antimissile defenses, and greatly improved kill probabih- ties for threat-oriented ordnance.
In interesting miscellaneous points, General Hackett stresses the importance of Western advantages in information technology; calls for the revival of the draft in the United Kingdom and the United States; criticizes the West for disposing of, rather than storing, obsolescent military equipment that might, Soviet-style, be employed in war even if ata lesser standard of performance; and advocates the early use of NATO’s dualcapable aircraft in conventional missions-
The author also points out the risk ot unauthorized nuclear weapons employ' ment if one or another of the superpowers were to collapse in war. General Hacked suggests that both Western success in the war and the length of a World War III might depend heavily on Warsaw Pact and Soviet force reliability—or, rather, unreliability. He also points to potentially important shifts in postwar relationship5 between Europe and East Asia.
It would be easy to quibble with this view of World War III—whether in terms of scenario, technology, tactics, or operations. In these two Third World War volumes, General Hackett covers a lot of territory, but not everything that military professionals might wish. Ground warfare is depicted the most effectively, with air war in the Central Region coming id next. Naval matters take a backseat, and attention to space warfare, with all of ds implications for communications, command, control, and surveillance, remains rudimentary at best.
As was said after the earlier volume appeared, this work does not exhaust nuclear weapons issues in any important respect. One might argue that General Hackett has avoided the issue of nuclear weapons—yet Western force disposition and Soviet operational concepts make nuclear and conventional warfare difficult to separate so simply.
The fundamental virtue of a book such as this is that it raises more questions than it answers. While military art and science must focus largely on how to operate current forces in today’s circumstances, military professionals have no more important obligation than to anticipate and prepare for the next war. Thinking about the issues this book and its companion work raise is indispensable to the professional development of U. S. military officers, whatever their service.
Dr. Etzold is the Director of Strategic Research at d1 Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval W' College.
Books of Interest
Compiled by Lieutenant Commander Thomas J. Cutler, U. S. Navy
Advice and Support: The Early Years,
The U. S. Army in Vietnam
Ronald H. Spector. Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1983. 391 pp. Illus. Bib. Ind. Maps. $18.00 ($16.20) (hardcover) *11.00 ($9.90) (paper).
This first volume in an intended series on tl. S. Army operations in Vietnam covers the Period 1941-60. There are three major sections: first, the little-known events in Vietnam during and immediately after World War II; second, U. S. support of the French during their war with the Viet Minh; and, third, the advisory effort in South Vietnam prior to the eommitment of combat troops. Enjoying ac- eess to formerly classified documents of the Army, State Department, and Central Intelligence Agency, the author provides new information and insight and offers a carefully devised analysis of the U. S. failure in Vietnam.
Almanacco Navale 1983-84
G. Giorgerini and A. Nani. Genoa, Italy: Istituto Idrografico Della Marina, 1983. 788 pp. Illus. Ind. Append. Tables.
Italy’s version of Jane’s, this book is written entirely in Italian. It includes an insert card which translates column headings and ship- type names into English, French, German, and Spanish, but a full appreciation of this book requires some knowledge of the language—or a dictionary and a large measure of patience. The bulk of the book is a fact, figure, and Photo summary of each nation’s naval capability with special sections depicting naval and merchant flags in full color and ship silhouettes. Separate appendices address aircraft, missiles, guns, torpedoes, and radars. Molto buono.
Beam Defense: An Alternative to Nuclear Destruction
The Scientific Staff of the Fusion Energy Foundation. Fallbrook, CA: Aero Publishers, Inc., 1983. 154 pp. Illus. Tables. $7.95 ($7.15).
In March 1983, President Ronald Reagan startled the world with his call for the development of defensive weapons which would “ . . . give us the means of rendering . . . nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.” This hook explains, in laymen’s terms, the feasibility of this concept using high-energy lasers and particle beams. Through the use of diagrams and color illustrations, high technology is brought within the grasp of the average reader, and the case for pursuing these developments is convincingly presented. The book also describes how this pursuit will pay dividends by
bringing us “ . . . into the plasma age with the unlimited, cheap energy of fusion.”
Historic Architecture of the Royal Navy: An Introduction
Jonathan Coad. North Pomfret, VT: Victor Gollancz/David and Charles, 1983. 160 pp. Illus. Bib. Ind. Maps. $32.00 ($28.80).
This book is not about ships but about the royal dockyards, the victualling and ordnance yards, and the naval hospitals which played a vital, if less glorious role in the supremacy of the seas which Britain enjoyed from the 1690s until World War I. The emphasis is on the facilities supporting the sailing Navy, and there is interesting insight into the manufacturing performed within these yards long before the Industrial Revolution. Replete with photographs, plans, and drawings, this unusual treatise is a thorough study of the bases in England and in the far comers of the once-thriving British Empire.
Jane’s Merchant Shipping Review
A. J. Ambrose, Editor. Boston, MA: Jane’s Publishing Company, Ltd., 1983. 159 pp. Illus. $17.95 ($16.15).
In its first year of issue, the latest book from the authoritative Jane’s Publishing Company is a compilation of articles written by various recognized experts in the field of merchant shipping. It includes “A Maritime Chronology of 1982” and a nation-by-nation review of 1982 shipbuilding, as well as articles on the merchant ship role in the Falklands Conflict and recent developments in the cruise-ship industry, among others. Photographs and scale line drawings complement the informative exposition.
H Knight’s Modern Seamanship
Capt. John V. Noel, Jr., USN (Ret.). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., Inc., 1984. 740 pp. Illus. Ind. Append. Tables. $37.00 ($25.00).
Knight’s Modern Seamanship has been a staple of the mariner’s bookshelf for more than three-quarters of a century. In this, the 17th edition, the latest technical advances in navigation, communications, cargo handling, propulsion, towing, and salvages are included. The latest changes to the Rules of the Road are addressed, including the most recent amendments to the International Rules (COLREGS) which became effective in midsummer 1983. Reproduced as an appendix is a complete copy of the 1980 Inland Rules which are required by law to be carried on board all vessels greater than 12 meters in length.
S3 The Sea in Soviet Strategy
Bryan Ranft and Geoffrey Till. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1983. 240 pp. Illus. Bib.
Ind. Tables. $21.95 ($17.56).
Two eminently qualified British authorities on maritime affairs have collaborated to produce this carefully developed assessment of the Soviet Union as a world sea power. By a study of available Soviet writings, the mission characteristics of the ships and aircraft they are building, the types of exercises they conduct, and the patterns of employment and deploy
ment, the authors assess the current strategy and future roles of the Soviet Navy. The results are logical interpretations which assist the reader to his own conclusions rather than attempting to preach irrefutable doctrine.
Shiphandling for the Mariner .
Daniel H. MacElrevey. Centreville, MD: Cornell Maritime Press, Inc., 1983. 241 pp. Illus. Bib.
Ind. Tables. $20.00 ($18.00).
With an adroit melding of science and practical experience, this book is designed for anyone involved with shiphandling professionally. The author relies upon knowledge accrued through years of experience as a pilot and merchant master to address the unusual and the mundane aspects of shiphandling. Discussions of simulator training, maneuvering through canals and locks, the shallow water
hydrodynamics of large vessels, and the master-pilot relationship are some of the more unusual aspects of this book, but the treatment of the more commonplace maneuvers is fresh and enhanced by clear diagrams and humorous cartoons.
Ship Structural Design: A Rationally- Based, Computer-Aided, Optimization Approach
Owen Hughes. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1983. 566 pp. Illus. Ind. Tables. $74.95 ($67.45).
Written as a comprehensive textbook focusing on the most complex aspect of ship structural design—that of preliminary design—this volume in the Wiley series on ocean engineering applies to both naval and commercial ships. It is the first text explaining the use of computerized design techniques in naval architecture. Not for the average reader, the pages abound in formulae, and the prerequisites to comprehension are a background in the mechanics of solids, strength of materials, and basic aspects of matrix algebra and statistics.
Space Applications at the Crossroads:
21st Goddard Memorial Symposium
John H. McElroy and Larry Heacock, Editors. San Diego, CA: American Astronautical Society, 1983. 296 pp. Illus. Ind. Append. Tables. $45.00 ($40.50) (hardbound) $35.00 ($31.50) (paper).
A compilation of the scientific papers offered at the 21st Goddard Memorial Symposium, this book is listed as volume 55 in the American Astronautical Society’s “Science and Technology Series.” These symposia have been conducted annually since 1961 (excluding 1963 and 1964) to update the latest advancements and predicted trends in the U. S.
space program. Six sections, each containing several articles, include topics such as “25 Years of NASA,” “Applications of Satellite Observations to Climate Research,” and “50 Years of Space Astronomy.”
Time for Action
General Robert Close, Belgian Army. Oxford, England: Brassey Publishers Ltd., 1983. 233 pp. Bib. Tables. $13.00 ($11.70).
This Belgian general and Senator of Brussels has written a follow-up to his previous work Europe Without Defence? (Pergamon, 1979). Asserting that current trends of Soviet expansion and weakening of the West must be reversed or the fate of Europe, and perhaps even the world, may be decided by the end of this decade, the author proposes a plan for the establishment of an adequate equilibrium of available forces. With emphasis upon the “. . . involuntary collusion between idealistic Christians, irreproachable Socialists and unconditional Communists ” he advocates
the need for a “ . . . firm political will and a public opinion which is convinced of the necessity of marching forward if we wish to avoid the appalling dilemma of nuclear holocaust or capitulation.”
Warships of the U. S. Navy
Samuel L. Morison and John S. Rowe. New York: Jane’s Publishing Inc., 1983. 242 pp. Illus. Ind. Tables. $19.95 ($17.95).
Those familiar with Jane’s Fighting Ships will recognize this as a one-navy version of that reference work. This single-navy concentration permits a more detailed analysis than is found in the parent volume. The treatment is by ship type listed in order of perceived potency from submarines, through carriers and battleships, to service and special-purp°se craft. The U. S. Coast Guard and Military Sealift Command are included.
Weapons of Tomorrow
Brian Beckett. New York: Plenum Press, 1983.
160 pp. Illus. Ind. Tables. $14.95 ($13.45).
NBC (nuclear, biological, and chemical) warfare weapons are discussed in detail by this British journalist. In an attempt to clarify corn' mon misconceptions about these weapons design and usage and to delve into the political ramifications of their existence, the author provides a detailed explanation of existing and predicted weapons technology. A chapter on “beam weapons” has particular relevancy >n light of President Reagan’s call for their development in March 1983.
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