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By Captain John L. Byron, U.S. Navy
Operation Desert Storm is a wonderful laboratory of war. We won compelling victory in the nightmare scenario—ground war in the Persian Gulf. Our task now is improving the future Navy and Marine Corps by properly applying the lessons of the Iraq War.
Emphasize the word “properly.” Learning the lessons of this complex war will require discipline, scholarly ob: jectivity, a dedicated work force, and much effort. Required also are two up-front decisions at the service’s highest level:
► We won’t bury the results, even if we don’t like the answers.
► We will audit the lessons we learn and track them through the bowels of the service bureaucracy until the hardware or training or procedures or whatevers that need improving are, in fact, fixed.
With sponsorship from the top, the right team composition, and access to information at all levels of classification, a Lessons-Leamed Task Force can produce superb results. We need this. We also need the warfare communities, service colleges, sponsored think tanks, and operational commanders conducting their own studies of the war, with results shared. To all seeking to learn Desert Storm’s lessons, I offer nine guidelines.
1. Do it right. Casual study is useless. A lessons-leamed team needs experts, leadership, access, computers, travel money, and sponsorship. What you put in will determine what you get out.
2. See the obvious. We won. Why? What do we need to capture and keep for future war? What is the codification of simple, straightforward lessons to preserve, lest we ignore the basic elements of success in the future?
3. Look for the show-stoppers. What nearly lost the war? What needed great luck to avoid disaster? Where were lives needlessly at risk? What big things do we need to fix for future mission success? These answers are critically important and will deserve highest prominence.
4. Dig for details. An accumulation of little things can also cost lives and lose battles. Proper study of Desert Storm will include all those nitty-gritty problems that we can fix easily if we don’t lose track of them. It will be a long list.
5. Don’t start with answers. Keep the proponents and the spinmeisters away from the study until the facts and their logical analysis are permanently preserved. Yes, one can artificially steer a study of Desert Storm to prove that it Was platform Alfa, weapon Bravo, community Charlie, or Program Delta that really won the war. That’s ultimately a disservice, though. The facts will speak. Let them.
- Don’t avoid pain. Not everything went well. Weaknesses showed up. Parts performed poorly. Some elements were useless. Find out these things and write them down. Do so—even if somebody gets scorched or a sacred cow looks sickly.
- Don’t over-learn the lessons. Put focus on fighting well the next war, not the last one. One certainty of Desert Storm is that we will never fight this war again. Lessons learned must be suitably detuned from Desert Storm for proper application to future threats, future combat, generalized geography, and uncertain geopolitics.
- Hammer the lessons in place. We seek proper application of a balanced, detailed understanding of Desert Storm. This may require mind-changing and heart-breaking in the various service constituencies. Let’s be realistic: fixing things won’t happen without top-down direction and discipline. We will be forced to overcome the bureaucratic inertia and community hubris that always resist change imposed from outside. The boss will have to insist that his system respond to the lessons of Desert Storm.
- Get the word out. Over-classification or strict distribution control will cripple the value of any good study of this war. Give thought to the packaging: tightest control of the highly sensitive information, broader distribution of lessons at the secret level, and open availability for the unclassified study. And let’s plan on producing some good articles for Proceedings and other responsible journals.
Desert Storm gives us the opportunity to update our understanding of the art of war in the modern era, with a rich collection of facts and data points to steer what we buy, how we support it, and how we use it. All aspects of our profession can benefit from intensive study of this combat: strategy, operations, tactics, logistics, training, procedures, maintenance, automation, research, and development. Desert Storm can validate these and more. We are talking change here: new budgets, new priorities, new practices. Properly done and put to use, good study of this war’s lessons is a powerful engine to pull the Navy and Marine Corps into the future. Don’t miss the train. And don’t stand on the track.
Captain Byron commands the Naval Ordnance Test Unit at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
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Proceedings / Naval Review 1991