-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
DefenseWatch – Jan. 16, 2002 Soldiers For The Truth (SFTT) Weekly Newsletter When we assumed the Soldier, We did not lay aside the Citizen. General George Washington, to the New York Legislature, 1775 In this week’s Issue of DefenseWatch: Protect the Grunts ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- EDITORIAL and ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Ed Offley Editor, DefenseWatch Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] J. David Galland Deputy Editor, DefenseWatch Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] David H. Hackworth Senior Military Columnist Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chris Humphrey SFTT Webmaster Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- TABLE OF CONTENTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Editor's Commentary: Why a Peacetime Debate Over Wartime Mission? by Ed Offley Hack's Target for the Week: Wanted: A Committee for the Protection of the Grunts Article 01 - Going Soft in the Head: Beret Day at Last by J. David Galland Article 02 - Poor Military Weapons Training a Threat to All by John M. Szelog Article 03 - Shrinking Aerospace Industry Threatens Aircraft Fleet by Paul Connors Article 04 - Reflections on a Pentagon Mural by Matthew Dodd Article 05 - Special Report 2 - Chernobyl: Reality and Myth by Robert G. Williscroft Article 06 - Feedback: Missile Defense is Not a Maginot Line by Richard T. Boverie Article 07 - Feedback: Raise Army Priority for Marksmanship by William Sauerwein Article 08 - Feedback to Hack Medal of Honor: Article 09 - URBAN, MATT, Capt. USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- FROM THE EDITOR: Why a Peacetime Debate Over Wartime Mission? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- By Ed Offley For the past four months it has happened like clockwork. I come awake in the darkness and my bedside alarm reads 4:00 a.m. The neighborhood outside my window is quiet and still, and for a moment I puzzle over what has brought me suddenly out of sleep. Then I hear it again: the drone of a turbine jet engine high overhead. It is not the dull, constant murmur of a commercial red-eye flight descending into Dulles International Airport, but rather the ever-changing warble of a fighter jet powerplant as its pilot banks and turns in the sky above me. Twelve hours later, as I jog through my neighborhood, I hear the sound again, and this time see the sparkle and glint of sunlight reflecting off the canopy of the F-16 Falcon on patrol above northern Virginia and Washington, D.C. Most Americans are witnessing the war against terrorism as a multi-media display on television or the Internet, but this is one constant reminder of our changed, wartime world that comes unfiltered from the sky. A debate has begun in the Pentagon and throughout the U.S. Air Force over the need to continue the anti-terrorism combat air patrols that were initiated even before the last of the four hijacked airliners fell to earth on Sept. 11. Given that over 250 Air Force and Air National Guard fighters, AWACS airborne control jets and aerial refueling tankers have been involved in over 13,000 homeland defense patrol flights, requiring the work of 11,000 aircrew and support personnel for a cost of $324 million, it is certainly prudent for senior military commanders to review whether or not the mission should continue in its current size and structure. But one baffling and troubling aspect of the debate caught my eye: News reports by the Associated Press and USA Today this week clearly suggested that the debate is being shaped by "peacetime" issues - operational and maintenance costs, aircraft mechanical fatigue and aging, Pentagon budget constraints - rather than by the "wartime" environment and concerns into which the United States was plunged by the al Qaeda attacks. Citing the wear and tear on aircraft by constant use, one military source noted that some aerial refueling tankers have suffered mechanical breakdowns requiring intensive maintenance, and warned that if the flights continue unabated, older aircraft - presumably early-generation F-16 and F-15 fighters - may have to be retired before planned replacement aircraft are available. Pentagon Deputy Operations Director Rear Adm. John D. Stufflebeem cautiously raised the issue of "system stress" on Monday when he told reporters, "If you overuse military equipment, or if you don't give crews time to train, they may not be ready for what next is on either as a requirement that they have to train to or ready for the next mission that they know they're going to rotate to do." "And so we're watching very carefully to see, are we putting undue stress on a system that can't accept it?" Stufflebeem continued. "And to date, it has been accepted. It's being looked at for how long to sustain it this way." We have been here before. During Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1990-91, and later in the 1999 U.S.-led air war over Kosovo, major aircraft mission surges took place that, in one general's apt phrase, led the Air Force "to fly the wings off" its inventory of combat and support aircraft. Kosovo, in particular, turned out to be a major war (rather than a small-scale conflict) in the weary eyes of aircraft mechanics, jet engine technicians and other support personnel. What comes across as strange - and to be blunt, flatly unacceptable - is to debate a major wartime military operation only in terms of a budget ceiling. Has the U.S. intelligence community concluded that it is safe to reduce the air patrols or even return them to a five-minute ground alert, or not? Is there a presumed chance, however remote, that additional al Qaeda terrorist cells may be lurking inside the United States preparing for further suicidal hijackings? Is the constant murmur of the F-16 over my neighborhood a concrete response to a real threat, or has it devolved into a political gesture and a psychological placebo? If the security situation has abated, then bring the aircraft back to earth. But if it requires ongoing combat air patrols over American cities, the Pentagon must address the issue of aircraft "system stress" by requesting - nay, demanding - an emergency congressional appropriation to fast-track the procurement of new fighter aircraft and other military systems that are being rushed into obsolescence by the demands of war. That is the only acceptable course. Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Table of Contents ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Hack's Target For The Week: Wanted: A Committee for the Protection of the Grunts ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- By David H. Hackworth When the Afghan campaign was red-hot and bombs and missiles were exploding with deadly precision in every direction, all that gee-whiz smart weaponry the military-industrial-congressional complex has been pushing since the Vietnam War was front and center on the tube. We saw $2 billion B-2 state-of-the-art long-range bombers stay in the air longer than an Irish wake, and saw unmanned aircraft armed with missiles bring death and destruction with the push of a long-distance button to targets as small as individual enemy soldiers on donkeys. Push another button and presto -- there was Gen. Tommy Franks from his Florida command center, courtesy of video conferencing. No question that smart weapons and systems help win battles. But a critical component of war is still the grunt - and his place in the metaphorical mud seriously sucks. Bush and boys need to begin with the basics and start doing better for our guys out there on the line. Take the glimpses we caught of our Marines and Army soldiers digging foxholes in Afghanistan. Their entrenching tools were basically the same as that sorry shovel - about the size of a child's beach toy - the grunts used at Normandy and Iwo Jima and in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. Having dug more than a few foxholes, I know firsthand the pain and exhaustion of digging in. Which brings to mind a 1932 Fordson tractor I once owned - and treasured - that dug 10 good holes in an hour with its auger. One auger-outfitted Hummer vehicle could dig in a rifle platoon in an hour. Then there's the CH-46 helicopter, a 40-year-old dinosaur held together by green duct tape, wire and Marine dedication. Not exactly the right stuff for the extreme dust and danger of Afghanistan. Why the Marines don't ground this accident-waiting-to-happen and borrow Blackhawks from non-deployed Army units is another one for the SecDef's list. The grunt's M-16A2 rifle has also been around since Vietnam, where our troops uniformly damned it. Updated, with most of the bugs ironed out, this 5.56-mm. fly swatter still rates only average in reliability, functioning and grunt confidence. Given a choice, most Special Forces soldiers would go with the upgraded World War II Soviet AK-47. A top SF warrior with whom I shared a foxhole in Desert Storm says, "We have no doubt that come hell or high water, the AK won't let us down." The standard issue Beretta pistol is worse than a Saturday night special, while the "new" machine gun - not much of an improvement on the World War I model that I had in my weapons squad in Korea! - has been in use since 1962. The Marines have just issued a boot that every leatherneck I've talked to loves, but soldiers call the Army's "lousy." They say it's "too heavy," "soaks up water and takes hours to dry" and has "insoles made of flimsy pieces of material" that most grunts throw away and replace with a self-purchased civilian product. And the "soles chip, clog with mud, wear out quickly and don't absorb much shock," making them bad news during long hikes. No, these beauts aren't made by our enemies, but by Altama Footwear, which has got such a sweet deal with the brass that it's OK for soldiers to display the name tags as if they were Tommy H. The Army, which just spent $35 million on the equally hated black beret, claims it wants to replace this circa 1969 boot, but there's no dough. The generals and congressional porkers prefer gold-plated stuff like the B-2 - which flew only six missions over Afghanistan because it's not waterproof and needs more maintenance than Joan Collins - to foxhole diggers, rifles, pistol, machine guns and boots. Smart weapons and smarter systems always get priority because porker power bucks are always part of the package. Grunt gear throws off only chump change. The Senate has three surviving combat grunts - Max Cleland of Georgia, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Conrad Burns of Montana. As a legacy, they should form a Committee for the Protection of the Grunts to make sure the folks who pay the high price on our behalf finally get better weapons and tools. There are committees for everything else: birds, trees, whales. Certainly, our Grunts - and we've been burying a lot of these brave warriors lately - are our most precious endangered species. Let's start treating them as such. http://www.hackworth.com is the address of David Hackworth's home page. Sign in for the free weekly Defending America column at his Web site. Send mail to P.O. Box 11179, Greenwich, CT 06831. *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. 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