"The Academies Can Do Better"
(See B. Fleming, p. 88 February 2005; K. Inman, pp.12-16; B. Latta, pp. 16-18, March; R. Thomas, pp. 19-20, April; D. Forbes, pp. 12-14, May 2005 Proceedings)
Commander William H. Rivera, U.S. Naval Reserve (Retired)-The missions of the military academies are without question, markedly different than those of civilian institutions and, therefore, the requirements are necessarily different. While I would feel entirely assured having the likes of Albert Einstein or John Nash tasked with solving the world's scientific problems, I would be quick to take cover if I had to depend on such intellectual geniuses to lead my platoon up a hostile hill or to count on them to "cover my six." The opposite would be true if I saw the likes of Jim Stockdale, James Webb, or John McCain leading the charge. I would feel equally at ease being led by such Naval Academy graduate minority flag officers (and, yes, Fleming-labeled "set-asides") as Paul Reason, Benjamin Montoya, D.C. Curtis, Anthony Winns, or Art Johnson at the helm. The Naval Academy's primary purpose is to produce leaders for our Naval Services-not "Einsteins"-plain and simple.
After seeing a flood of e-mails about "The Academy Can Do Better" by U.S. Naval Academy English Professor, Bruce Fleming, and now having read his piece myself, I feel compelled to comment. Throughout my life, I have been exposed to virtually all aspects of the issue Professor Fleming attempts to address. I am proudly a Mexican American of humble beginnings from Texas. After earning my commission through the NROTC, I served as a shipboard engineering officer. Later, courtesy of the GI Bill, I earned a doctorate in chemistry. In 1980, I returned to active duty to chair the Naval Academy's Chemistry Department for five years. For more than 35 years I have been involved in the Naval Academy admissions process. I began as a Blue and Gold Officer, took over as the West Texas Area Coordinator and currently serve as a member of the Area Coordinators Steering Committee.
There is nothing I more proudly proclaim than my 33 years of service as an officer in the United States Navy. After so many years of positive strides made in this country to create opportunity for all, I am disappointed to learn that I and others like me are merely "set-asides" in Mr. Fleming's myopic world.
The Naval Academy employs both military and civilian faculty members to produce leaders. This military-civilian mix provides midshipmen with the distinct benefit of first-hand exposure to a healthy blend of hands-on fleet experience and pure professional academics. The combination is certainly different from that found at Harvard and even Haverford. Does that mean it is inferior? Hardly, and therein lies a critical flaw in Professor Fleming's thinking. He seems to think that a high school student's SAT scores and high school GPAs are all that the Naval Academy Admissions Board should look at, as if higher numbers alone correlate to better military leaders. Professor Fleming's view is clearly shortsighted and provides little, if any, value within the Naval Academy walls.
Unfortunately, the mission of the Naval Academy is not always sufficiently understood. In interviewing prospective chemistry department faculty at the Naval Academy, I directed my questions toward determining what the applicant viewed as his primary duty and job description. To those who said they wanted to come to the Naval Academy because they had always wanted to find an institution with highly qualified students whose only motivation was academics, I replied: 'You're in the wrong place.' I recall a distinguished visiting professor in chemistry expressing concern over the Naval Academy's emphasis on activities beyond the classroom. He suggested that we were wasting many wonderful minds. During my tour at the Naval Academy, however, the school's leadership always made clear that the midshipmen were to be our primary focus. This often required "massive applications of extra instruction by the professors"-for which Professor Fleming apparently holds disdain-but which is an essential part of the job.
It was also made clear that, while scholarly activity would be part of the evaluation of faculty performance, any research would likely have to be done without student assistance; the Mids simply did not have the time.
It would certainly be refreshing to read only perfectly crafted literary works by our students. But I doubt there is any school where cries of anguish, which come from reading student reports filled with errors grammatical and otherwise, are not part of a professor's daily life. Science students generally do not like or expect to receive a grammar critique when presenting a scientific report. Every semester I taught began with the use of an incredible amount of red ink to mark up grammatical discrepancies in my students' reports. As the semester wore on, however, I could count on not having to wield the same heavy red pen.
Thinking back, I still find it remarkable that midshipmen would spend their Sunday mornings sitting in my kitchen just to get that extra dose of extra instruction-just trying to graduate and get to the fleet. If Professor Fleming is not similarly inclined, perhaps he made a bad choice 18 years ago when he joined the faculty at the Naval Academy. I hope the many students who have been in his classes over the years have not been slighted as a result of his troubling attitude.
"Hit My Virtual Smoke"
(See D. Fuquea, pp. 64-69, May 2005 Proceedings)
Chuck Myers, President, Aerocounsel, Alexandria, VA-In one respect, I agree with Col. Fuquea's opening statement: " Given the success of precision-guided munitions (PGMs) we must question the use of manned tactical aircraft for close air support." With the exception of the A-10 and the GAU-8 30-mm. gun, the tactical aviation (TACAIR) family of aircraft, munitions and the tactics they dictate afford little opportunity to provide ground units the full measure of support they need and deserve, especially for small-unit actions involved in maneuver or urban warfare.
In addition, our air-ground command-and-control system has wandered into a mode that fails to provide anywhere near the "immediate" response that is often needed. It has been so long since TACAIR's pilots have been equipped to perform vintage air support that our young infantrymen have little basis for knowing what is possible or what to request in the way of air support. TACAIR today merely provides a vulnerable target for commercial and political interests promoting alternative solutions. The astounding cost of TACAIR, however, is a self-inflicted wound driven by an unbridled requirements process encouraged by an overly optimistic technical community. Relative to the "success" and cost of the unmanned systems and air-delivered PGMs, the performance (support burden, cost and friendly fire incidents) suggests that the author's optimism is premature.
Colonel Fuquea anchors his thesis on the cost of TACAIR by referring to the numbers presented in my July 1991 Proceedings article, "Time to Fold 'em," with the suggestion that I was making the case for replacing TACAIR with unmanned systems to perform close air; he should read it again because clearly I was not. I was, in fact, repeating myself as in a dozen previous papers and articles dating to 1971, which remind that the missions of deep strike, strategic bombing, deep attack (conventional weapon air attacks against fixed, prominent, usually heavily defended assets) have historically provided marginal return for the investment and are prime candidates for unmanned systems, surface-to-surface missiles, etc. I am aware that with today's smart weapons, less ordnance is required to take out a target. 1 would remind readers that during WWII, we seldom failed to take out any targets; in fact, we obliterated not only the "key targets" but also all the surrounding territory and near by inhabitants. The point to ponder is that it seldom seemed to matter-nor did the terrible attrition we suffered (58,000 airmen over Europe alone). What does matter?
In "Time to Fold "em" and a banner article titled "The Domain of the Pilot" (Armed Forces Journal, October 1996), I offered my oft-repeated assertion that the combat missions where a pilot is of most value are those where there is often uncertainty, opportunity for confusion, and a bit of chaos. On the other hand, if you can eliminate the confusion, the uncertainty, some of the chaos, and simulate the mission with good fidelity, it probably does not need a pilot in the loop. Two key combat missions where the pilot pays his way are: air-to-air over the beach (especially in the case of many v. many) and providing air support to grunts in contact (or trying to initiate or break contact).
That the carrier-based air warrior, the heart of naval aviation, has become an endangered species can be attributed to five decades of leaders who failed to recognize the value of the essence of carrier aviation. In an effort to compete with the U.S. Air Force for budget dollars, naval aviation in the years after World War II emphasized long-range strike (particularly nuclear attack) as the raison d'etre for its carriers. It was the wrong reason then and it's the wrong reason now.
The carrier is a primary war machine that can transport fighters into a remote area to gain the level of air superiority required to permit orderly insertion and supply of joint ground forces. The mission next in importance is to be able to provide the help those ground forces will need until land-based air is in place. If sea-based air can accomplish this halfway around the world against a peer enemy, the cost is irrelevant. I have long maintained, however, that if the choice is to consume deck space and dollars on deep strike, the outcome will be a naval aviation death spiral-albeit side-by-side with the Air Force.
We will go out colorfully (down in flames, so to speak), taking turns flying our $100 million airplanes from unaffordable carriers to the drum beat of the unmanned air combat vehicle technologist who will have fertile ground for deception re the real combat utility and life-cycle cost of unmanned systems. And, my parting words to the real victim, our grunt community: you are going to be on your own.
Lieutenant Colonel Jay A. Stout, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)-I am stunned. Colonel David C. Fuquea is preposterously far off the mark when he suggests that the Marine Corps' manned aircraft be eliminated and that cruise missiles be used to execute close air support (CAS). I suspect that by now he wishes he hadn't written the article. He is not alone when he decries the escalating costs of operating an air wing, but he forgets that providing close air is only one part of the six functions of Marine Corps aviation. Even if cruise missiles could effectively perform close air (they can't), they still could not execute the myriad of other aviation missions that the service requires.
Likewise, his exercise in cost-comparison was less than well-considered; he quotes the price of a Tomahawk Block IV at only $569,000, while ignoring that this one-time-use munition also carries the burden of supporting infrastructure, transportation, maintenance, training, etc.-all of which will make it much more expensive. Advanced sensors, terminal control, mid-flight retargeting, etc. These will only increase the system's complexity with accompanying escalations in risk and cost.
Cruise missiles can hit pinpoint targets, but this doesn't make them suitable for close air support. For one, cruise missile systems lack the responsiveness that manned aircraft provide. Col. Fuquea cites the 1,000-nautical-mile range of the Tomahawk. Certainly he doesn't expect CAS to be provided from such a distance? And what if the cruise missile fails en route, or misses the target? Should two or more be launched-just in case? How long will it take to mount a second attack? And what about moving targets-does the colonel really expect a forward air controller to be able to take control of the missile and guide it onto a moving vehicle during the final few seconds of flight? The command, control, and deconfliction issues associated with using cruise missiles for close air support would border on the intractable.
Certainly, as Colonel Fuquea describes, cruise missiles could be made to loiter over the fight to increase responsiveness, but if they aren't used they are money down the drain-at a half-million bucks a pop! A related consideration: What do you do with a winged bomb with a 1,000-pound warhead when it runs out of fuel? Additionally, the mix of weapons that aircraft provide-each appropriate for a given instance-cannot be matched by cruise missiles. In short, whereas aircraft provide flexibility and responsiveness, the cruise missile is but a one-trick pony-good for what it was designed for, but unsuitable for CAS.
The author also seems to believe that cruise missiles are nearly invulnerable. The first cruise missiles, however-the Nazi V-1s of "Buzz Bomb" fame . . . only slightly slower than the Tomahawk-were shot down in droves by World War II antiaircraft artillery and aircraft; Tomahawks also have been blasted out of the sky.
Nevertheless, there are emerging concepts and systems that take advantage of the unmanned technologies that Colonel Fuquea favors: the DARPA-sponsored J-UCAS unmanned aerial vehicle comes to mind. This system's stealthy, long-endurance capabilities make it ideally suited for a number of missions-CAS included. Unmanned air vehicles have already successfully performed CAS-like missions in combat over Iraq. Humans in the loop able to respond in real time to a spectrum of mission requirements will make advanced platforms such as J-UCAS eminently useful while operating alone or in concert with manned aircraft.
But assume all the mission of Marine aviation? Hardly.
"No 'Stab in the Back' In Iraq. . ."
(See M.F. Cancian, pp. 30-34. April 2005 Proceedings)
Michael D. Atkinson-I have been a Proceedings reader for about 20 years and a subscriber for approximately ten years. Although I have frequently disagreed with articles in the publication I have never felt the need to write until I read Colonel Cancian's article. I have seen the standard defenses of the Bush administration's senior leadership many times in publications that have a right-wing bias. I tend to dismiss arguments such as Colonel Cancian's in those publications. I consider the source a part of the administration's propaganda arm. However, when I see a former service member turn on his profession in a publication such as Proceedings, my outrage forces me to respond to deconstruct the core of his arguments.
I was a SEAL lieutenant and served in the first Gulf War. Today, I run an investment partnership where it pays to follow the money. Motivations always become clearer when one sees where players have skin in the game. As none of my income comes from the government, or entities that do business with the government, and I have no role with any political party, I hold that my opinions should be considered less biased than many.
I agree with Colonel Cancian's points about an effective after action process and detailed lessons learned that are applied to future operations. However, I feel he grossly misses the mark on assessing the majority of blame for high-level errors associated with the conduct of OIF [Operation Iraqi Freedom]. This was a war of choice. In particular the choice of when to fight this war was predominantly driven by the U. S. presidential election cycle. As such, all talk of blame needs to go back to the peak of the chain of command.
The title of his article wickedly misses the mark. Equating informed critique of OIF to the post-WWI "stab in the back," is gross hyperbole to which I take great exception. There is no stab in the back. There was only an attempt by those who have the courage to try to influence policy in the first place, and to set the record straight after the fact, as to who was driving the bus on when and how the war was fought.
A principle that was drilled into me during my short time of service was that juniors followed the orders of seniors. A corollary to that rule was if one was to disagree with higher authority in a substantive way, their career was over. I am amazed Colonel Cancian never picked up on this concept during his far lengthier career. How was there to be a great deal of resistance to the secretary of defense and the president? General Eric K. Shinseki, Army Chief of Staff, tried and was thrown under the bus in a four-star sort of way. He was allowed to serve out his term, but the secretary of defense took the unusual and emasculating step of letting the world know-significantly before his departure-that General Shinseki was going to be replaced, thus making him an instant lame duck. In deference to the lack of support of the defense secretary's policies among senior Army leadership, secretary Rumsfeld had difficulty getting an active duty service member to take the chief of staff position. In the end, he had to bring General [Peter J.] Schoomaker in from retirement.
To dismiss General Shinseki's critiques of the war plans as Colonel Cancian does by saying he was "not in the operational chain of command" greatly belittles the second most important uniformed decision maker behind General [Tommy] Franks.
Marine Corps Lieutenant General James T. Conway said the following in a speech made at the Marines Memorial Club and Hotel in San Francisco (8 October 2004): "I announced to my Army boss, lieutenant General Dave McKiernan, that Marines are assault troops, that we don't do nation building, and we're ready for backload."
The Marines had no plans on sticking around after the "major combat" was finished. The long-term stability of Iraq was going to be left to the Army. Thus troop requirements were very much an issue for General Shinseki to comment on as it was going to be his issue as Chief of Staff of the Army to sustain a force necessary to successfully pacify Iraq.
Colonel Cancian's article includes the following quote from a Daily Telegraph interview with Daniel Goure, a Pentagon advisor: "On the morning of March 13, six days before the first coalition air strikes on Baghdad, Donald Rumsfeld attended a crucial war meeting. 'It was detailed stuff, and there was not a word of dissent from anyone in that room,' said Daniel Goure, who attended the meeting. "Not from anyone. And remember the whole armchair-general crowd was there. No one said: 'Are you sure you've got enough troops?' Everyone was on board with the plan."
Using this to justify that there was no dissent to the war plan is nonsense. At that high level, that late in the planning process, expressing dissent is the equivalent of a SEAL Team disagreeing with the assault plan just as the door is about to be kicked in. It was far too late for anyone to have raised substantive issues that would have changed the plan in any degree. To use this quote to support the idea that everyone was on board is a matter of someone not understanding the freight train nature of a plan that close to being put into play.
The military is set for certain tasks with destruction of enemy forces in the field being at the top of the list. It accomplished this task brilliantly during OIF. As secretary Rumsfeld so poignantly said in Kuwait, "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you wish to have." The civilian leadership grossly misassessed the threat and misapplied the military. In response to that reality, the military now confronts a mission that it was ill-trained, ill-equipped, and ill-staffed to accomplish. Under the circumstances, it is performing admirably.
To talk about reform as Colonel Cancian does without the majority of the blame being conferred on the civilian leadership is pointless. The military did its job to the best of its ability. The opportunity for reform was the president firing secretary Rumsfeld or the public voting the president out of office. With those opportunities gone, the only thing for the military to do at this time is to salute smartly and to continue carrying out the mission in Iraq as best it can. To go off and work on some "reform" that misses the key issues with respect to civilian failings runs the risk of coming up with a set of "mistakes" that need to be "fixed." Our over-stretched military has other priorities before it spends five minutes on the reform advocated by Colonel Cancian designed to protect high-level reputations over and above getting the real story into the history books.
James M. Dempsey, former Lieutenant, U.S. Naval Reserve-Colonel Cancian has made important recommendations for learning from our experience in Iraq. However, he does not address the fundamental issue underlying much of the criticism of the war, and that is the belief by many that this war was not necessary. If "Saddam was effectively contained," as one general asserts, or if it is true that "Sec. Def. Donald Rumsfeld and his inner circle of civilian advisers. . . had been chiefly responsible for persuading President Bush to lead the country into war. . . ," then the question that needs to be asked is, "What were their real reasons for wanting military action against Iraq?"
The reasons given to the American people were that Iraq supported terrorist organizations and that their WMDs [weapons of mass destruction] posed a threat. Deputy secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz began advocating the forcible overthrow of Saddam in the early 1990s. At that time terrorism was not a major issue for our country and Wolfowitz knew that Iraq had no capability to strike the U.S. with any weapon. Why then did he want to go to war?
While some have been criticized for poor planning or faulty execution, underlying most of this criticism is an awareness by many of our senior military leaders that this war could have been avoided. We need to be asking, "What is the proper role of our military leadership when they believe that a military action proposed by the civilian leaders of the Pentagon is not justified?"