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A flawed premise (that fuel shortages stalled the VII Corps attack), layered over with misinterpretation (of General Schwarzkopf s actual orders to Lieutenant General Franks, via the Third Army headquarters) led to a flight from reality.
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component headquarters of Army Forces Central Command a position similar to that occupied by Lieutenant General Walt Boomer for Marine Forces Central Command.)
Interestingly enough, Yeosock could still inform his staff as late as the night of 25 February that Schwarzkopf understood the manner in which the attack was being conducted—apparently misreading Schwarzkopfs growing impatience merely as evidence of his well-known mercurial temper.
In the second place, the alleged turn to the south—which is more indicative of Schwarzkopfs cascading inability to follow the action on the battlefield from his bunker in the Saudi Ministry of Defense than the intent of the VII Corps comman-
The evidence contradicts charges that the gas-guzzling propensity of the U.S. M1A1 main battle tank—the world’s best, by any measure- slowed the VII Corps rate of advance. In fact, the very speed of advance, coupled with a shortage of fuelers with cross-country mobility, stretched the operational radius of support vehicles to the limit and caused some juggling of fuel supplies, but did not interrupt the continuous attack.
By COL Richard M. Swain, USA
The Burton article is flawed in logic, fact, and interpretation.
The errors of fact are the most egregious. Most came from the cursory research undertaken to find out w at rea y Pened, before leaping to conclusions about what went wrong. Apparently Colonel Burton has read General H. Norma Schwarzkopf s self-serving account of Operation eser >
and buttressed it only with the early journalistic reports with- °ut confirming their assertions. I offer some examp es.
Burton paraphrases a U.S. News and Wot Id eport article from March, 1992, to say that the decision to attack early caught VII Corps unready, as "Franks had Planned to use those hours to preposition large caches of fuel deep behind enemy lines [emphasis added].
What the U.S. News and World Report article actually said was: “. . . the sudden changes to the existing operations plan prevented some VII orps units from pre-positioning fuel stocks deep inside Iraq temphasis added],” an entirely different situation Spending on what understanding one has ot the wor “deep.” Presumably, Burton believes this accounts tor the fuel shortage that developed during the later phases °f the attack. A far more realistic explanation and °ne based on the facts—is that the very spee o e Iraqi collapse and VII Corps advance pievente t e buildup of intermediate logistic bases, thus stretching the operational radius that support vehicles were required to cross. This was compounded by a general shortage of fuelers with true cross-country mobility, a shortage that had been much less critical w en t e Primary mission of the Corps was the defense ot an area (Central Europe) replete with improved road^ rather than desert tracks. Obviously the rate at which the tanks consume fuel defines the need for such vehicles, but so does the war for which the orce configured. More to the point, does Colone Bu really believe there was an intention to stockp f
fuel behind the Iraqi lines-which would have been forward o the Corps’ combat elements? Clearly, he has taken a poorly « Pressed idea in a journalistic account an '
his chosen nremise—before examining the evidence.
BuZ alsomkes as fact General Schwarzkopfs assertion that Franks intended to turn his forces south rather than continue to attack the enemy to the east, attributing this to a con versation conducted the second day of the ground war, 2 February 1991 In the first place, General Schwarzkopf did not LTk to General Franks until the third day of the ground at^ tack. Before then, he directed his comments to Franks through General John Yeosock, the Third Army commander who was Schwarzkopfs immediate Army operational subordinate (Burton, like many commentators, seems to have missed totally the presence of Third Army, which was both the operational and der—was a reflection of a contingency plan generated by Third Army. It proposed to use one VII Corps division to clear a line of communications behind the corps down the Wadi al Batin, thereby shortening the line haul distance and taking a large concentration of Iraqi forces in the rear, while the VII Corps offensive proceeded at the rate of speed anticipated. This proposal was not General Franks’ plan. It was never executed. It is sad that Colonel Burton takes General Schwarzkopf s assertions of his (Schwarzkopf’s) understanding of the Corps’ intent as a true reflection of what was happening. It was a long way from the Ministry of Defense to the front and seven command nodes stood between the theater commander and the forward elements of VII Corps. It ought not to be surprising that the Commander-in-Chiefs understanding of conditions at the front continued to drop farther and farther behind reality.
Proceedings / August 1993
Pushing Them Out the Back Door
While VII Corps was destroying enemy forces in its zone of action, the mission of trapping the Iraqis could have fallen to General Yeosock (left), General Schwarzkopfs immediate operational subordinate.
Burton’s failure to notice the presence of an Army headquarters leads him to accept Schwarzkopf’s grossly oversimplified argument that he gave Franks the mission to destroy the Republican Guard Forces Command and that VII Corps failed to do so. In fact, in both his order and those derived from it, Schwarzkopf ordered VII Corps to destroy the Republican Guard Forces Command “in zone.” The major armored force credited with escape is the Hammurabi Division, part of which was destroyed by the U.S. 24th Division after the cease-fire. The Hammurabi Division moved into the zone of the 24th Infantry Division while the VII Corps confronted the Iraqi armored units farther west. It became, thereby, the responsibility of either XVIII Corps, or the common higher headquarters—the Third Army—or even the U.S. Central Command itself, where ground movement and air interdiction were synchronized.
There are a number of time-and-distance factors involved in understanding the time taken by the 24th Division to come up on the VII Corps flank, not least of which was the need to accomplish the missions assigned to them before the Iraqi collapse—missions that were not revised later. While Schwarzkopf did impose a limit of advance on the 24th Infantry Division, there is little evidence that Major General Barry McCaffrey allowed it to slow his advance—and the limit was lifted by the time the division finished its race through the relatively empty desert to the river valley. Had the war continued beyond 0800 28 February, the 24th Division and VII Corps would have controlled more of southeastern Iraq, and indeed would have killed more Iraqis. But if existing plans were followed, a pocket would still have been left around Basra into which some, perhaps many, Iraqi armored forces would have retreated (and still quelled the Basra revolt, in all probability).
The most serious canard is the argument that the Iraqis escaped because VII Corps failed to take the road junction at Safwan. This is a sheer post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy: VII
Corps did not take the road junction and the Iraqis got away____
therefore, the Iraqis got away because the road junction was not taken. Where were the escaping Iraqis? The order to take the junction was not issued until 0300 on 28 February, for execution by 0800. Moreover, even if the road junction were not taken, the 1st Infantry Division had elements across the major route from Kuwait City to Basra by the end of the attack, about 15 kilometers south of the Safwan junction. There was indeed a reporting problem between the corps and army-level staffs, but that still does not place Iraqis on the road to be interdicted by ground forces on the morning of the 28th. What is, in fact, most telling in Schwarzkopf’s book is his admission (p. 471) that he knew the surviving Iraqi tanks, all of which had to retreat across a water obstacle to get out of the Basra pocket, would get away—indeed, that he recommended they be permitted to go, at the suggestion of his chief of staff. Blocking retreat out of the theater of operations would seem to have been the theater CinC’s responsibility rather than that of a corps commander without deep surveillance and targeting capabilities, or authority over dedicated air interdiction.
There is more foolishness that should be discussed. Setting aside Colonel Burton’s comments about retired Air Force Colonel John Boyd’s contribution to military reforms (Boyd’s
theory was an argument scarcely more than briefing-slide deep, though admittedly not without some abstract conceptual de' gance), there are even more practical howlers. Burton credits the Marines with using maneuver concepts, while the Army did not. He seems to be referring, however, to subunits of two Marine divisions involved in minor tactics on one hand, as op" posed to operations of divisions as subunits of what became a five-division corps, involved in grand tactics, on the other. One of the fundamental flaws in the maneuver-warfare concept is its failure to recognize the difference between maneuvering a squad of nine men and a corps of thousands of men and vehi' cles in a restricted space. It may be that the Iraqi infantry’s lack of will to fight the Marines stemmed as much from the outcome of the month-long air campaign as the tactics used by the Marines. Is maneuver still maneuver when it kicks off after preparation of more than a month?
It is interesting to read that some tanks fueled every three hours, though most armor com' manders (to whom I have posed that question as Third Army historian) gave a figure of seven hours as the norm, and that figure as' sumes seeking an opportunity to refuel before the tanks are bone dry- How often tanks had to refuel is n0t the issue, because that could be done frequently for some units while others continued the advance- What really is important is what happened when divisions ran out of fuel, how far they had moved, in how short a period of time before the problem developed—and that is a more complex matter. It is true that the 3rd Armored Division gave a fuel infusion to the 1st Armored Division, but the 1st Armored had been rather preoccupied killing Iraqi tanks for more than 24 hours of almost-continuous action by then. The movement of tactical units had exceeded that of the supporting logistics base, as well.
Finally, it is ludicrous to assert that unsynchronized operations conducted into a narrowing area—by thousands of systems capable of killing beyond the range they can tell friend from foe—will reduce the amount of fratricide. It ought not be surprising that VII Corps suffered the highest density of fratricide cases when it had the highest density of long-range, direct- fire systems and the largest number of enemy armored forces to confront.
Maneuver theorists are romantic idealists who create abstract, ideal types of battlefields. By necessity, soldiers are pragmatic realists, whose environment is highly contingent and absolutely context-bound. Every decision a commander makes is a choice among difficulties and a compromise between competing idealistic abstractions. Burton’s criticisms ignore the implications of the global strategic context, which ultimately asserted its superiority over the operational ideal—total destruction of all Iraqi armored forces—and accepted conflict termination short of the theater commander’s desired goal. Schwarzkopfs goal remained valid only as long as it served the wishes of the national and coalition policy makers. The moment it exceeded these political expectations, it became irrelevant. If this frustrates Schwarzkopf and the maneuverists after the fact, that also is largely irrelevant to the decisions of the moment.
Colonel Swain is currently stationed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Proceedings / August 19 93