Adaptability to the fast-changing requirements of war is the critical difference between US and Iraqi forces, writes Col E. D. Doyle
For armed forces, "adapt or die" is not just an aphorism, but a warning to be taken literally, as history proves. If we adapt to change, we do it in several ways. Notably we:
Study the changes and work out counter- measures;
Adopt the changes, with the necessary mental adjustments, and procure or make the required equipment. This can be slow, difficult and expensive for smaller forces.
The charge of the Norman armoured knights once carried everything before it, especially in the Middle East in Crusader times.
Salah ed-Din, the great Kurdish leader, was born in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown on the Tigris. He studied the armoured charge and worked out an answer. In 1187, at a twin-peaked hill near the Sea of Galilee called the Horns of Hattin, Salah ed-Din kept the Frankish army away from water and then manoeuvred them into charging uphill on thirst-weakened horses.
His troops opened their centre so that the armoured knights went charging through. Mounted Turkish archers galloped on the flanks, shooting at the horses' legs. When the knights fell off their collapsing horses they could not rise under the weight of armour. It was a crushing victory.
Debate about the proper use of tanks and aircraft went on from 1920 to 1939. The arguments about how they should be used - attach tanks to the infantry and attack at foot-soldiers' speed, or group them into formations for independent action (with lorried infantry support as necessary) were bedevilled by nostalgic affection for horses. Efforts persisted to find a place for them, despite the barbed wire and machine-guns. An American general had large horse buses built to move them quickly.
Cavalrymen often fought as infantry in the first World War. Horses had a bad time. "Pray for the horses," an Irish cavalry sergeant wrote to his small sister. As late as 1908, Douglas Haig (considered a moderniser) was supported by Lord French in the view that "only the old knee-to-knee cavalry charge with lance or sword" would decide the wars of the future. Such views "resulted in two old-fashioned cavalry divisions being included" in the troops sent to France - nearly a quarter of the fighting strength.
Erich Hampe, German general of technical troops in the second World War, headed an organisation which restored power, water and sewerage over and over again in bombed German cities. He probably helped to keep Germany in the war longer than was good for it or anyone else. He was surely a modern man, in his time.
Yet he loved horses and his memoirs . . .als Alles in Scherben fiel (When Everything Fell to Pieces) describes the destruction of his Kaiser's fine Guards Cavalry Division - Uhlans, Hussars and Dragoons - as they attacked on foot in Messines in 1914.
In The Challenge of Change: Military Institutions and New Realities, some American military writers have considered how the five leading countries reacted. The "ability to tolerate dissent and balance it with the ever-present requirement for discipline and obedience . . . the sine qua non of effective combat performance" is vital.
For about four years (1928-32) a group of revolutionary but now forgotten thinkers, like Gens Fuller, Hobart, Martel and Capt Liddell Hart, won and lost Britain's world leadership in tank tactics and organisation. Their careers did not prosper, in many cases. Fuller, a wayward genius, left the army and became a "blackshirt fascist". (He was also interned. His attack on Winston Churchill's policy of setting up what would now be called "terrorist movements" in Europe is not mentioned. "Perhaps more than any other . . . this activity barbarised the war"). Hobart survived the feat of dropping from regular major-general to Home Guard corporal.
It is difficult to block change in America, but it was tried. The doctrine was that "the tank and the airplane existed solely to support the ground infantry battle". That doctrine eventually changed, but before that, in 1920, the young Capt Eisenhower and the older Major Patton were both in tank units. They advocated wider roles for tanks.
Eisenhower was told to keep his wrong ideas to himself and went back to the infantry. Patton returned to cavalry. No doubt they remembered those experiences when they both became senior generals and could influence doctrine and its necessary counter-balance, soundly based and disciplined dissent.
In the Middle East and North Africa, states and colonies with oil resources had many willing protectors. Essentially, Europe, and to a lesser extent, America, were interested in stability and in pliant governments.
The British solution for Iraq (air policing, i.e., bombing, and machine-gunning) has been described previously. Most of the second World War's senior RAF officers got experience there, including the famous Air-Marshal Harris. Some of that experience was useful - Iraq provided real targets like camel trains and villages for about 15 years. But it was too easy: there was no anti-aircraft fire or fighter aircraft.
When the RAF started bombing in Europe the accuracy was low. Good bomb-aiming sights had not been needed in Iraq. Targets were just not found - again, deserts are comparatively easy.
Action was taken to improve matters, but in Air War over Europe 1939-1945, a historian of the RAF, Chaz Bowyer, says, "if the US Air Force had gained a marked supremacy in the skies of Europe by day, the same could never be said of the RAF's plodding, stubborn assaults by night". Bowyer is a fan of Harris and the RAF. He may be a little hard here. Nevertheless, the dead and injured victim of inter-war air policing played their unwilling part.
After 1945, and more particularly after Desert Storm in 1991, the rich oil countries of the Middle East were seen as good potential customers for the West. Expensive arms were procured and one wonders how well the procurement was organised. The "arms for Iraq" case was a fiasco in which a supplier faced jail, but for the honesty of the maverick British minister, Alan Clark, who refused to sign what seems to have been an incorrect document.
We can now see something that should have been clear from the beginning. Forces must be integrated. It is little use buying expensive tanks and ships without taking on the horrendous expense of adequate air cover. This is beyond the resources of even the richest Arab states without seriously damaging their welfare and health programmes. The maintenance required for high-tech aircraft now would be a tremendous strain on the technical manpower resources of the Arab world.
Iraq might have approached it once. They did have sophisticated Mig 29 fighter aircraft but sent them to Iran in Desert Storm. They have lost many technicians since.
The US owes its overwhelming supremacy to high expenditure, first-class research and development, and a large pool of highly skilled technical manpower.