-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
ARTICLE 06 – Feedback: Army Leadership Failures Are Not New ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Having read David Hackworth’s column, “Let's Lock and Load Now” (DefenseWatch, Oct. 17), I could not agree more. Let me I cite an incident which occurred during the Persian Gulf War. Our Army commo unit (Bravo Co. 34 Signal Bn. 93rd Signal Bde.) had just deployed out from the docks to a log base to fit out and wait for orders. We were a main communications hub for VII Corps. We had drawn supplies and ammo prior to deploying and had picked up a weapon – the AT-4 anti-tank missiles – that no one in our unit – except myself and two other NCOs who were former 11Bs – were familiar with. When I saw the crates of AT-4 anti-tank missiles, I asked my 1st sergeant if I could get them out and start training the soldiers on how to fire them. He was literally appalled that I would make such a request. His response: “Look, sergeant, we are in the business of doing communications; we will never have to fire those weapons, and I plan on turning those missiles back in unopened once this war is finished.” I couldn't believe what I was hearing! Not only were we forbidden to place a loaded magazine in our M-16s, nor could the M-203 gunners draw grenades, nor were the M-60 teams allowed to break down the ammunition between ball and tracer, nor were we issued hand grenades; now we could not train up on a new weapon that had been issued to us. We received our orders to jump into the neutral zone in preparation of the VII Corps swing north then east … and we convoyed to the neutral zone. As I finished the duty roster for the team, two Hummers came screaming onto the site, one with a TOW launcher on top. The young lieutenant jumped into the back of my commo rig and asked if I were operations. I pointed the frantic lieutenant in the right direction, and he jumped from my rig to ops. Within a minute, my company commander called, telling me we had an Iraqi armor regiment headed in our direction, and that we needed to establish a perimeter immediately. My first thought was to find that 1st sergeant and give him a piece of my mind. Quickly, we started deploying the soldiers around the site, then I went and found the AT-4s. We had 30 missiles for 80 [Iraqi] armored vehicles. The company commander gave the order to prepare for evacuation. A skeleton crew was designated to stay behind to cause a delaying action so that, (1) All communications rigs could be destroyed by thermite grenades, and (2) To give the main body time to get out of the area on a couple of 5-ton trucks. I and the two other NCOs broke down the AT-4s and began issuing the missiles to those designated to stay, and gave each soldier an extremely short block of instruction on how to operate the weapon. I expected we would make five hits out of 30 at best. We knew we were going to be slaughtered. Those who did not have a missile, M203 grenade launcher, or members of an M60 team were instructed to evacuate once the Iraqis were sighted. I remember it started to rain. The site where we were located was a small rise in a relatively flat area. With E-tools in hand, the soldiers began to dig in, but two to three inches down, hit solid rock. Now all we could do was move earth up in front of our positions. I wanted to scream at the futility of the situation, but continued handing out AT-4s. Soldiers lay in cold, wet puddles. Our XO knew we didn't stand a chance and broke the standing order of radio silence to report that in the distance he could see vehicles moving in our direction. Two squadrons of Apache attack helicopters answered the call. The accompanying OH-58s landed next to our site and received a sitrep from the XO, then lifted off in the direction that the lieutenant had reported the Iraqi movement. I remember the 1st sergeant walking around the perimeter giving his approval of our set-up. (I and the other two NCOs had set the whole thing up without guidance from him or the CO. In the end, the Iraqi armored regiment turned around shortly after crossing into Saudi Arabia, the Apaches never did get the opportunity to engage, and our unit went about the business of communicating. The next day, the brigade sergeant-major stopped by the site to see how everyone was doing. I gave the CSM an earful. After hearing my take on the situation, the company commander and 1st sergeant were called into my rig while I was told to wait outside. We received AT-4 training that very next day. I figured that if anyone would understand where I was coming from, it would be my command sergeant-major, for he was a Vietnam veteran. Col. Hackworth’s article struck a chord in me and brought back memories I had laid to rest. In 1996 I decided to ETS from the Army as the political environment was becoming too much to bear. My chain of command was more concerned with my soldiers making board appearances than they were about such basic things as weapons qualification or skill level 1 CTT qualification. I believe his article has identified a problem that has existed for a very long time: the chain of command lacks trust in the soldier. How can a soldier be ready for a fight when the troop has his nose stuck in a “soldier of the month” manual? How can a soldier be ready to fight when he sees the M16 range only twice a year, or the M203 range once a year – and only for familiarization, not qualification? Yes, peace does come at a price, but why should that price be the life of an American soldier because he wasn't trained correctly? I hope the military leadership will address this problem and seek out the money needed to keep soldiers current in their combat readiness. When the time comes, everyone is a rifleman. I just hope they know how to use the weapon effectively. --A.K., USA (Ret.) Table of Contents ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- ARTICLE 07 – Future Limits in Human Intelligence Collection ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Second of Four Parts By J. David Galland The experience gained by the United States and its intelligence community over the past 50 years has prepared us well to identify the problems and limitations we will be facing in the field in the coming decades ahead. The United States is, in fact, already facing these limiting parameters and conditions and they are expected to become more serious and more complex as we proceed well into the new millennium. The anticipated problems that the intelligence community expects to face in the realm of clandestine human collection are many. What is arguably one of the most serious encumbrances to mission accomplishment is the changing foreign perceptions of U. S. capabilities and intentions. The reader may find this hard to believe, given the many years of military and intelligence cooperation with the former West Germany, but in today's Germany, intelligence collection by the United States is considered a hostile act if collected on German soil. This is a diametrically opposed position to the fertile collection environment and bi-lateral operations, which were to prevalent in West Germany only twelve years ago, by many counties allied with The Bundesrepublik Deutschland, more commonly known as West Germany. Given the popularity of the many Hollywood renditions of espionage stories notwithstanding, it is rare to have an intelligence source who enters into and continues in that role for reasons of venality. Material considerations do, naturally, constitute an established form of motivation for many intelligence sources. However, since these sources are human, their motivations are normally complex and frequently extremely so. For example, an 82-year-old source, released from Poland in 1988, to travel to the West, became a bountiful source with a long-term quality intelligence "take." He was motivated because over the years, as he worked as a medical researcher in Poland, he and his colleagues were poisoned by KGB medical teams. The KGB teams had concealed deadly levels of mercury in his laboratory to measure the long term, highly elevated exposure of humans, and the resultant medical complications. A source who considers himself an employee or appendage of his home country's government, may feel compelled to become a U.S. intelligence agent primarily by idealism, genuine or rationalized. The source, or potential source, may be acting chiefly on the strength of such a basically emotional stimuli as despair over the policies and actions of his own government. Or, it may be the internal situation in his country or bitter resentment at what the source perceives to be his unjust treatment by his employer. The source may, without the knowledge or the consent of his employer, view his assumption of his ascribed role of a U. S. intelligence source as the most available and logical means of communicating the plans of his government to well placed officials in the U.S. government. Without official sanction of his government, this source acts to ensure that the United States both comprehends what his government is doing and in so doing, ensures U. S. support of his own country's positions and policies. Whatever the source's motivation, however, his perception of U. S. defense capabilities and/or governmental policy intentions will, almost exclusively, not be the critical operative factor or impetus particularly in the case of the source who is motivated by genuine idealism. Another contemporary example might concern a source in the Middle East. This source may vehemently deplore what he construes as a one-sided U. S. support for Israel. In fact, the source may have a bitter hatred for the United States because what he perceives to be one-sidedness by the United States on the Arab-Israeli conflicts. However the source may also grudgingly view the United States as the only government that has the influential capability to bring this long-term discontent to a solution since it is the only country in the world that can exert leverage on Israel to accept compromises which Arabs consider absolute prerequisites to any potential peace. In a somewhat narrower Arab-Israeli context, a functionary of a Palestinian national organization might well be motivated to accept or even actively seek the role of a human source for U. S. intelligence (USI) and not only for the aforementioned reasons. However, because of the strong desire of Palestinians to have the United States accept, embrace, and recognize Palestinian nationality and eventually, a Palestinian state, the functionary’s motivations may be considered well founded and worthy of maturing in the role as a USI source. Situations such as the Arab-Israeli conflicts or the levels of Russian current or previous expansionism, or perceived American expansionism and aggression, generate their own particular forms of motivations in the minds of potential human collection sources. Note that foreign perceptions of U. S. defense capabilities and policy intentions will always constitute important positive, or negative, motivational factors. Certainly not to legitimize Osama Bin Laden's views or beliefs, however, it is obvious that a person who is driven to incomprehensible extremes must, in his mind, have important motivational factors, in spite of an apparent clouded thought process. Whatever his background or nationality, a potential source [delete: is a citizen or functionary of a friendly, neutral, or hostile foreign country], if he is sane, is almost surely bound to ask himself how relevant will his covert collaboration with USI be to the larger purposes he seeks to serve. The potential source's perception, that if the U. S. is neither willing or able to act decisively to protect its national interests in the area of his concern it is likely he will be unwilling to undertake the personal inconvenience and risk that the role of a covert human source may inevitably entail. Perceptions abroad of U. S. capabilities and intentions tend to be rather widely shared among both pro- and anti-American elements in a given country of focus. If this general perception is that the United States is a proverbial paper tiger, it will impede our human intelligence collection effort and just as surely, will favor the human collection efforts of our adversaries. J. David Galland, Deputy Editor of DefenseWatch, is the pen name of a career U.S. Army senior Non-Commissioned Officer currently serving in Germany. He can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! Write to same address to be off lists! <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! 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