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By Lieutenant Colonel David Evans, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
Colonel Evans recently returned from several weeks in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf where he interviewed national officials and members of the U.S. armed forces.
The U.S. decision to defend Saudi Arabia'in the aftermath of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait—backed by real force— was all that stood between the Kingdom and disaster. Saudi officials admit they could have done little on their own to stop Iraqi forces moving south along the coast.
Saddam Hussein may have miscalculated by attacking on 2 August 1990. just moments before the fiscal ax fell in Congress. Now, he will face U.S. divisions redeployed from Europe and the United States—divisions that were previously on the chopping block for demobilization.
The first squadrons of Air Force F-15 lighters and the ready brigade of the Army’s 82d Airborne Division lifted off
gade’s worth of weapons, equipment, and supplies on board reconditioned transports. It was just such a squadron of ships, dashing up from its anchorage at Diego Garcia, that brought the first heavy tanks to Saudi Arabia—not Army M-ls, but Marine Corps M-60s.
“The Saudis didn’t comprehend the magnitude of 16,000 people in one of these . . . brigades,” recalled Colonel Robert Redland, a logistics officer on the staff of the I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF). “They offered us the use of one building and four warehouses and were amazed when we told them the quantity of stuff we were bringing,” he said. The Saudis gave the Marines virtually the entire port of Jubail to use. “Three ships pulled up simultaneously, and we had all the gear off in 36 hours,” said Redland.
In many respects, the efficiency was serendipitous. During the past decade, the Saudi government has spent a staggering $650 billion on the nation’s infrastructure of ports, airfields, and roads. The maritime prepositioning squadron (MPS) ships, for example, were able to come alongside piers to unload, rather than anchoring in the stream and using vast pierside parking aprons at the port of Dhahran for the move inland.
Much of the 197th’s gear was loaded onto dozens of Mercedes Benz flatbed trucks obtained from the local economy. The Army, notoriously short of trucks, profited from the ready availability of locally obtained ones.
The move to defensive points in the interior was marked by an inevitable sense of letdown, however. “The troops thought they were going to come off the ramp locked and loaded. 1 had one guy with five knives. He was going to cut himself. There is just a psychological impact of getting issued real live rounds,” said First Sergeant Terry Spain, an 18-year veteran. Spain was serving with the 82d Airborne Division’s Sheridan light tank battalion, the first armored unit sent to the Kingdom.
In a country where the relentless monotony of the desert is painted in solid colors—cloudless blue sky and off-white sand everywhere—his reaction to the deployment was fairly typical, “Good thing there’s oil under all this sand, because there’s nothing on top.” The primordial common sense of the troops is
within hours. Overall, the deployment of roughly a six-division force was set in motion, involving the equivalent of a wartime mobilization of America’s air and sealift assets.
The deployment also featured the maritime prepositioning squadrons, in which ihe Navy and Marines staged entire bri- lighters and barges to ferry cargo ashore. The Air Force’s C-5s landed on 12,000 foot concrete runways and fuel for the return trip was readily available from nearby refineries. Army units, such as the 197th Mechanized Infantry Brigade from Fort Benning, Georgia, were just as fortunate—their gear was unloaded onto the
The United States brought the ships and planes that ferried troops and equipment to Saudi Arabia, but modern Saudi port facilities and airfields made rapid unloading possible. The Saudis even supplied many of the trucks required to move troops and supplies forward.
not to be underestimated. Indeed, many of them apprehend that, ultimately, they’ll be sent north to liberate Kuwait. As one Army private first class confided, “You don’t put this much force on the ground and just sit.”
That force reflects all the strengths and shortcomings of the fiscal cornucopia of the Reagan years. The speed of the deployment was made possible by the 50 extra C-5Bs, the three squadrons of MPS ships, and the eight fast SL-7 transports acquired during those years.
The highways of the Eastern province were crawling with new Army and Marine “hum vees,” the high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle (HMMWV) that replaced the venerable jeep. Overnight, tank crews were issued with Nomex jumpsuits for protection against fire. Army Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Bruno pointed to the hefty straps on the back of the suit. “You use these straps to pull an injured crewman out of the tank,” he said, demonstrating the procedure.
The 197th Mechanized Infantry arrived with M-l tanks purchased during the Reagan years. The USS Wisconsin (BB- 64), one of the four battleships recommissioned during the same period, lurked offshore to provide naval gunfire support. Everything from Marine AV-8B Harriers to Air Force F-117 stealth fighters crowded the airfields throughout the Kingdom.
In many respects, though, this impressive panoply of hardware reflected the self-inflicted weaknesses in America’s military. Cannibalization of aircraft left behind was the order of the day to get the others to Saudi Arabia.
Some of the first Army units into Saudi
Arabia, including the 82d Airborne, found themselves asking the Marines for rations, validating the observation of one colonel that the combat ready—but lightly supported—Army paratroopers are “a bunch of guys who show up with their bag lunches looking for dinner.”
New gas-turbine powered main battle tanks got their share of criticism. A captain in the 197th Mechanized Infantry said the M-l tanks are fuel-critical after about 50 miles, at which point the fuel tanks are down to 40% capacity. His figures suggested a fuel-consumption rate of about nine gallons per mile. Senior Army officers said not so, that the M-l was burning fuel at a rate comparable to the older diesel-powered M-60, about three gallons per mile, and they had more than enough fuel trucks to sustain this rate of consumption.
The younger officers and the tank crews, however, aren’t saying the same thing. On a day-long visit to one M-l tank outfit, I got inside the tank with the crew, away from the officers and the public relations escorts (the ‘thought police’), and inquired about fuel consumption.
The tank commander, an impressive young sergeant, confided, “We’re burning about nine gallons per mile.”
An Army colonel in the Pentagon said flatly, “There aren’t enough fuel trucks in those battalions to support those tanks for extended operations.” For a strike deep into Kuwait, or farther, the U.S. Army seems to be in the position of an athlete preparing to run a marathon on the Pritikin diet. Moreover, while Army troops were eating mostly combat rations—the meal-ready-to-eat, (MRE)— ings, it was also obvious that many unit staff officers tried to anticipate the problems they would experience in the desert.
Tank units brought extra power packs—■ the engines and transmissions that drop in as a single unit—expecting that desert sand would exact a toll on turbines and gears. One unit brought high-pressure (10,000 pounds per square inch [psi]) grease guns, which were described as better than the Army-issue 3,000 psi- model for “getting the salt and crud out of the joints.”
And certainly no trenches, bunkers, or firing positions are going to be dug into the sand without lumber reinforcing the sides to keep the walls from collapsing. “We brought plenty of extra lumber; our stockpile would fill a basketball court to a height of six feet,” said Major Larry Moore, the executive officer of an Army logistics support battalion. In one case, the Iraqis donated to the American buildup. At an airstrip northwest of Jubail, young Seabees, carpenters from Mobile Construction Battalion 5—who appeared to be the most physically fit people in the Navy short of the SEALs— were pulling fresh two-by-fours off an enormous pallet of lumber marked “Kuwait in Transit to Basra or Baghdad." In the hands of the energetic Seabees, the lumber was being turned into hardback frames for the Marines’ tents.
As always, the American serviceman has demonstrated his capacity for intelligent improvisation. Field radios were kept cool by draping them in wet towels.
In the 1st Battalion of the 320th Field Artillery Regiment, Sergeant Major Kalub Duggins said, “Our hum-vees are great, but we had to turn down the volt-
!
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The “Hum-vee” has replaced the Jeeps of earlier wars. The AV-8B gives Marine attack pilots the inertial navigation system they’ve needed for years—it may be the key to effective close air support in the desert. Air Force F-117As will probably be targeted against missile sites.
the Marines were enjoying at least one hot prepared meal each day.
“It’s becoming a morale issue,” admitted a sergeant in the 101st Airmobile Division, who said in the two weeks his unit had been training at a remote desert oasis only one hot meal had been sent out from the rear. Despite these shortcom- age output on the alternators because the batteries were overheating. You won’t find this trick in any of the tech manuals.” The M-l tank crews found that they had to clean the air filters for their turbine engines daily, instead of the monthly cleaning prescribed for Stateside and European-based units.
The infamous Saudi dust was getting into everything. Maintenance personnel for the Army’s helicopters found to their dismay that the microscopic dust was seeping into vital “black boxes” on the Apache attack helicopters. On the other hand, the Marines were pleasantly surprised to find that the navalized” seals and other features on their aircraft, designed to block salt water intrusion, also kept the insidious dust out of vital electronics. Amazingly, the dust drifted far out into the Persian Gulf, where the battleship Wisconsin was cruising. Gauze, held down with duct tape, was stretched over virtually every air inlet—on the topside turrets, on equipment below— everywhere. Much of the ship’s equipment comes with filters, but when one of the sailors was asked about the gauze, he replied, “We’re finding we need that extra layer of protection.”
The Persian Gulf was no refuge from the heat, either. The boiler and turbine rooms on board the Wisconsin are not air conditioned. Big, industrial-size thermometers were taped across vents providing fresh air from topside. The “cooling” air blowing out of one had pushed the mercury all the way down to 104°.
The air was even hotter in August and Lieutenant Greg Clark, one of the Wisconsin's engineering officers, confessed.
“We had a real problem with heat stress then. You just couldn’t stand it down here more than two hours at a stretch.” Indeed, standing beside one of the enormous boilers, which was painted with a huge, fire-breathing dragon, one felt four inches from hell. But the 1,500 men on the Wisconsin could escape, at least briefly, to their berthing spaces for some air-conditioned relief.
On land the heat—which often soared to 120° in the noonday sun even in late September—forced a complete reversal of the troops’ daily routine. Like the Saudi scorpion, which lies dormant during the day and rises at night to hunt its prey, ground units were doing most of their training and operating at night.
“If it’s 120° outside, it’s another 10-20° hotter inside the tank, so we just shut down from noon to about 4 o’clock,” said Staff Sergeant Lawrence Clark, an M-l tank commander in “C” Company, 2 Battalion, 69th Armored Regiment (“The Panthers”).
The tanks of Charlie Company, like those of other units dotting the desert, were arranged in a large circle, or laager. Each tank was under a large overhead camouflage net. The dark brown nets provided little real concealment but made a tremendous difference in the temperature. It was 20° cooler under the net.
For those who couldn’t sleep during the day, Radio Baghdad was a welcome if perverse diversion. “Baghdad Betty” came on every day at about 2 p.m. and First Sergeant Rick Mathes was an avid listener. “Get this. Yesterday she said it’s a known fact that 10% of us are having regular sex with our fellow troops. Another time she said U.S. officials were concealing the fact that the bodies of 120 soldiers were in the morgue and they were afraid to send them home. She’s hilarious,” Mathes concluded.
Logistics is the key to war in the desert, and fuel for vehicles ranks with ammunition and water. Refueling both diesel-powered Marine Corps M-60s (top) and gas-turbine- powered Army M-ls (below) engaged in maneuver warfare will tax the system. Critics contend that the highspeed M-I’s fuel requirements exceed the system’s capabilities. Proponents reply that the refuelers can do the job. Desert Shield may decide.
(Some Marine units will get M-ls.)
There is also serious business afoot, and troops are giving considerable thought to the problems of desert warfare.
Sergeant Francisco Colon, a tank commander in the unit’s Delta Company, said, “The major problem with gunnery is the heat—you have to compensate for things like miraging. When it’s hot, you aim a little high, and in the cool of the day you aim a little low.” The tankers have reduced this to an aphorism known to riflemen for ages: “Sun up, sights up. Sun down, sights down.”
The real practice, however, takes place at night. At sunset the camouflage nets come down and engines sputter and whine to life. The tidy circles of the daytime laagers melt into tactical formations.
“We expect to fight at night,” said Major Lee Flake, the executive officer of the 1st Battalion, 320th Field Artillery. “We’re practicing a mobile defense, where we’ll shoot, fall back, and keep pounding him until he stops,” he explained.
Cyalume light sticks are used to mark the routes for travel at night. They’re dropped every 200 yards or so, making a trail across the otherwise trackless desert. The light sticks stand out like torches when viewed through the night-vision goggles worn by what seemed to be every driver in the battalion.
For most movements, the light sticks were not used. Instead, units simply followed a compass azimuth, checking their location periodically with a global positioning system (GPS) receiver. The GPS receiver, a box about the size of a small lap-top computer, receives signals from satellites overhead to calculate the ground position. GPS receivers were apportioned one per firing battery in the battalion, and were usually found on the passenger side of the lead vehicle.
The combination of GPS and night vision goggles was impressive. In “A” Battery, the 105-mm. howitzer crews hooked guns to their hum-vees, fell into convoy formation, and headed off into
The two-seat AH-64 Apache attack helicopter was designed to kill tanks at night and carries laser-guided Hellfire missiles as its main armament. Like much of the sophisticated U.S. equipment in Saudi Arabia, it has yet to face the challenge of sustained combat. The desert subjects the helicopter’s dynamic components to severe stress.
the pitch-dark desert with phenomenal confidence. The naked eye could see nothing, but with the night-vision goggles it was possible to see all the way to the horizon.
The night movement revealed one of the major attributes of the hum-vee. It is extraordinarily quiet—an enormous advantage in the desert, where sound travels great distances at night.
Despite this equipment, the main convoy was unable to link up with the “A” battery commander, who had been scouting ahead for the next position. The latest in electronic and optical equipment is useful, but things still go wrong, suggesting that American technical advantages over the Iraqis have to be considered in the context of the inevitable tendency of the battlefield to bring out the hidden flaw.
In the area of chemical warfare the U.S. equipment appeared to be distinctly second-rate.
The Marines were scrambling to acquire S-10 gas masks (to replace their M-17, a 20-year-old design), and a new, lighter, protective coverall, both made by British firms. Better protection from enemy chemical agents, however, is contingent on adequate detection equipment.
According to Warrant Officer Jim Lee, a chemical warfare specialist on the I MEF staff, the primary detection equipment is the Mk 256 kit.
“It takes about 12-15 minutes to do a complete test for nerve gas,” Lee said.
Timothy Otter, a retired British Army major consulting with the Saudi Army on chemical warfare, said the Mk 256 isn't as good as the latest hand-held electronic devices, which can provide an instantaneous readout of the agent—mustard or nerve gas—and its concentration.
“The Mk 256 represents 1950s technology. It’s a wet chemical system that works sort of like litmus paper,” Otter said, explaining that pads like handi- wipes are used for liquid agents, and a puffer bottle is used to collect aerosol samples.
“Even if that Mk 256 equipment registers ‘all clear’ against, say, a nerve agent, then someone still has to do a sniff test because the concentrations are different in the air,” Otter said, indicating that this risk is not likely to produce very many volunteers.
If American technology and investment have lagged in chemical warfare, there also are plenty of unknowns about the performance of some of the latest in high-technology munitions.
Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William Pitts pilots one of the A-10 “Warthog” close-air-support jets rushed to the Kingdom. “The A-10 is like an ugly girl at an all boys’ school—she’s not much to look at but everyone likes to have her around,” he said. The main reason is the deadly 30-mm. antitank cannon buried in the plane’s stout fuselage.
AGM-65 Maverick missiles were strapped under the wings, and their performance in combat could be a big “if.” Operational tests in the mid-1980s showed the pilots were able to get a “lock” on their targets in only 6% of their firing passes.
Pitts and other A-10 pilots conceded they get to shoot only one costly Maverick a year. Those shoots are not done over a battlefield filled with exploding, burning tanks and vehicles, either. A Pentagon official with long experience in weapons development said the infrared- guided Maverick may be easily confused and home on burning tanks instead of its intended targets.
Artillery officers also voiced concern about the unknowns surrounding the munitions they might fire in battle.
First Lieutenant Steven Miller, an officer in the 320th Artillery said, “We expect to do 75% of our shooting with RAP rounds.” RAP stands for rocket-assisted projectile, which boosts the range of the 105-mm. howitzer from 11 to about 15 kilometers.
Miller said, “We’ve never fired the RAP, and we need to know what happens to the baseplate, to see how much shifting will occur on the sand. We also have no feel for the potential loss of accuracy, firing RAP.”
Indeed, of nine different kinds of shells, ranging from “plain vanilla” high explosive to the RAP rounds, his battery has never fired five of them, and they are all the advanced munitions: RAP, a direct-fire antitank shell, a shell filled with antipersonnel flechettes, chemical shells, and the so-called improved conventional munition, or ICM, which bursts in the air and rains bomblets on the target below.
“We haven’t fired any of these shells here, and we never fired them in the States, either,” Miller said.
In a shooting war, however, few troops expect to be fighting from fixed positions. They anticipate a very fluid situation, perhaps best described by Lieutenant Colonel Rick Sanchez, the commander of the Panthers.
“We see a battle being fought out here as essentially the same as a naval battle at sea. We’ll vector in on him and try to outmaneuver him in the vast expanse of the desert,” he said. The prevailing mood among all hands, at sea and on the ground, was summed up by one of Sanchez’s non-commissioned officers, Sergeant First Class Richard Hawk: “The troops are itching to hurt somebody and go home.”
In Saudi Arabia, that bastion of Islam where the word “Christmas” is censored, the feeling is understandable.
Lieutenant Colonel Evans is the military affairs editor for the Chicago Tribune. He was a career Marine Corps artillery officer who saw combat service in Vietnam.