FCS Follies, Part 1

In a fit of boredom a few months ago, I wrote a briefing paper outlining what I saw as handful of critical issues related to network-centric warfare that need to reconciled before the Army starts fielding Future Combat Systems. I was planning to hold it until right before I left for the State Department, mostly to avoid becoming persona non grata at PM FCS.

One of my coworkers stumbled upon my two-pager back in May and unbeknownst to me, passed it up to the FCS folks with his name on it. After straightening out the plagiarism issue, FCS sent me a polite, but dismissive 'mind your own business' e-mail. Needless to say, I think I was taken off their Christmas card list.

During this whole affair, my boss was sent a copy of the paper and his reaction was much more positive. He suggested expanding the paper by including some solutions to these issues. I've decided to test each of these expanded ideas on my readers. Here is part 1:

"Lit up like Christmas Trees"

Soon after the summer 2006 skirmish between Israel and Hezbollah concluded, claims surfaced that Hezbollah managed to hack into the IDF's U.S.-made SINCGARS radios. It turned out that Hezbollah hadn't actually hacked the radios, but instead used a bank of modified radio scanners to track the electromagnetic emissions of IDF units.

This example points to a key vulnerability of the network-centric model, namely its vulnerability to electronic warfare support. In order to provide the kind of real-time data exchange and blue force tracking capabilities envisioned in FCS, the density of wireless communication will have to expand manifold.

Individual units and soldiers will not only be swapping a wider variety of tactical information, they will also be giving off a constant amount of positional data. They will be lit up like Christmas trees adorned in intense, but invisible lights. Each tank, truck and soldier will be a beacon of electromagnetic radiation that can be intercepted, triangulated and tracked.

Since it was playing defense on familiar territory, Hezbollah didn't need to crack the IDF's radios to carry out effective operations. They knew where their resources and units were located, so it was only a matter of triangulating IDF locations and feeding the information to nearby assets.

A future reduction in the cost and complexity of compact anti-radiation guidance packages for indirect-fire munitions would pose an even bigger threat to a network-centric force. If a simply seeker package just doubled the accuracy of the simple artillery rockets and mortars favored by insurgents, it could lead to serious casualties. Tactical network hubs will be easy targets at the very least.

There is no easy solution to this problem because it exploits the most indispensable part of network-centric warfare, the network itself. Lasers are the only wireless media that do not 'leak' a traceable amount of electromagnetic radiation, but it requires line of sight. DARPA has been contemplating a laser-based work-around for blue-force tracking called 'Dynamic Optical Tags' or DOTS for short.

In the DOTS system, each vehicle and soldier would be equipped with a tag that functions as a passive light modulator. When the tag's receiver is struck by an encoded laser signal, it modulates the beam to pack it with new information and reflects it back at the point of transmission. A powered version of this process could be used as a two-way interface between the tag and the light source.

This system would still be limited to line of sight and would have to mounted to an UAV (a blimp maybe?), but it would very difficult to intercept and track.

PEO BOONDOGGLE, 1st draft

Well folks, here is my first draft of the Program Executive Officer Battle-Oriented Optical Network Data Operations Ground Geared Linkage Elements (PEO BOONDOGGLE) seal. I think I am going to tweek it some tonight -- seems like I haven't crammed enough platforms into it.

FCS's new name

Ladies and gentleman, I present you with the new name for Future Combat Systems, the Totally Awesome Force. I've even taken the time to put together a new seal that combines all of the elements of what will truly be an awesome force for today -- ninjas, lasers, satellites, UAVs, futuristic tracked vehicles, and most importantly, America! Hooah! Army Strong!

I have even been meditating on a motto for the Totally Awesome Force, but I can't decide between "F*ck yeah!" and "Kicking ass and taking names since 2015."

So why Azerbaijian and does it matter?

I imagine that by now, most of my readers have had a chance to read Noah Shachtman's piece on FCS and Azerbaijan. For those who have not, I will summarize: As part of the Operational Requirements Document used to justify the efficacy of Future Combat Systems, the Army prepared a summary mission profile for a hypothetical set of missions. These hypothetical missions just happen to take place in the oil-rich former Soviet state and now Republic of Azerbaijan.

At this point, some of my readers are probably asking themselves: "Azerbaijan, is that like where Borat goes for summer vacation or something? Why did the Army pick that place?" To be certain, Azerbaijan wasn't selected for political reasons. Azerbaijan isn't exactly the most democratic ex-Soviet state, but the government of President Ilham Aliyev is pretty friendly with the United States. Plus, the U.S oil firm Unocal (now part of Chevron) also owns about a 9% stake in the $3.6 billion Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.

Azerbaijan may be a friend, but is one of the roughest and most volatile neighborhoods in the world. The Azeris and the Armenians fight over Nagorno-Karabakh, the Georgians and the Russians fight over Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and the Armenians and the Turks fight over whether the Ottoman Empire committed genocide against ethnic Armenians in 1915-1917 (I am definitely not going to wade into that one). To top that off, all of this strife crammed into a small mountainous region sandwiched between Iran and Chechnya. Sometimes I'm surprised that countries stopped bickering long enough to allow the 1776 kilometer Baku-Tiblisi-Ceyhan pipeline get off the drawing board.

Small, U.S.-friendly, oil-producing state locked in a far-off, volatile region of the world. Doesn't that sound like another country in the Near East, one that we've successfully liberated before? Kuwait perhaps?

In my view, Azerbaijan was picked because its size, terrain, and political environment fit the assumptions that shape FCS. They picked a relatively small country to accentuate the ability of a single FCS Brigade Combat Team to rapidly achieve "decisive maneuver" against a larger opposing force in 48-60 hours. Azerbaijan is also a relatively remote, mountainous area bordered by few U.S. allies. This reflects the Army's emphasis on performing combat operations on short notice and without pre-positioned equipment. Finally, there is the potential (however remote) that the Army may be called upon to one day liberate the Azeris from an encroaching neighbor. Remind anyone of an incredibly successful "left-hook" the Army pulled off a little more than 15 years ago?

My main concern with the Azerbaijan scenarios is that they highlight a fundamental flaw of FCS. This billion-dollar force recapitalization project is focused on refining existing capabilities at a time when the Army needs to develop entirely new capabilities. To me, being able to successfully conduct stability operations campaign the day after a 72 hour blitzkrieg is worth far more than shaving that blitzkrieg down to 48 hours. Does the Army honestly expect a brigade of 4000 troops trained and equipped for maneuver warfare against a modern opposing army to manage 8 million people spread over a country the size of Maine? We have multiple brigades in Baghdad (a city of 7 million) and they can't even keep the peace without support from the Iraqi military.

At the very least, one would hope that as soon as images of the National Carpet Museum in Baku being looted by anonymous brigands are splashed across CNN the hypothetical Secretary of Defense overseeing one of these imagined combat operations would have something more conciliatory to say than 'Stuff happens.'

I'm not saying the Army doesn't need to recapitalize the force and I'm not exactly opposed to the idea of network-centric warfare either. I'm just arguing that the Army's vision of the future force is shackled by a set of overly narrow assumptions about what kind of wars it will fight. As Colin Gray asked in a great monograph published by the Army War College back in 2005, if the Army is putting all of its development dollars into FCS, is FCS robust enough to counter the broadest set of future war scenarios? In terms of fighting a major urban counterinsurgency campaign (Iraq) or managing a fractured, poor state (Afghanistan), I think the evidence is pointing towards 'no.'

I'm no Ralph Nader

In response to the deluge of e-mails: I promised Noah Shachtman that I would hold my comments on his intriguing poll on Future Combat Systems until after Wednesday.

C'mon folks, Noah is a great journalist and I bet he busted his hump on whatever story will crop up tomorrow. It wouldn't be fair to interfere in his work.

Note to the Army: About those dropships...

David Axe highlighted an interesting piece about efforts to refurbish the old S-64 Skycrane for modern use. Nestled down at the bottom of the article is a paragraph that caught my eye:

But there is a potential new role for which the Aircrane may be perfectly suited. The U.S. Pentagon is exploring a concept called Joint Heavy Lift, which calls for an aircraft capable of carrying 20 to 28 tons of combat systems to the battlefield. To that, Fraenkel was equally forthcoming. "We are at the beginning phase of making appropriate contacts within the military," he said. If the green light is given for re-start, Fraenkel said, "we would partner with M7 to produce center sections for us."

The Joint Heavy Lift has an interesting story behind it. The program was originally intended to provide a vertical-take-off-and-landing (VTOL) heavy lift vehicle for the Marines and Army. It has been having trouble "getting off the ground" (pardon the pun) because the services want something vastly different. The Marines merely want a replacement for their CH-53 Super Stallions with something that can carry an external load of 14 tons over a 130 mile range.

The Army wants something far more ambitious. They want to produce a Heavy Lift VTOL system capable of hauling a 20 ton internal payload over a 1000 mile range. Just look at these wonderful computer-generated concept pictures available on Globalsecurity.org. It looks like a C-130 Hercules that has been mounted with a rotor blade that is the width of its wingspan.

At this point, you are probably asking yourself, "So What? This isn't the cockamamie proposed military platform out there." True, but the HLVTOL's unbelieveability is important because it is the unspoken Achilles' heel of Future Combat Systems.

The U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command issued a pamphlet entitled "The Army in Joint Operations: The Army Future Force Capstone Concept" in April 2005. This document is intended to provide a conceptual framework for how the Army intends to fight behind the helm of FCS. Here is an excepted paragraph from section 5.3 entitled "Intratheater Operational Manuever:

The Future Force executes intratheater operational maneuver (see Figure 5-3) to extend the reach of the joint force thereby enabling the joint force commander to respond to opportunity or uncertainty, isolate portions of the battlefield, exploit success, and accomplish key campaign objectives. Operational movement of the force by ground, sea, or air can secure positions of advantage to destroy key capabilities and forces, extend tactical reach, achieve surprise, preemptively seize key terrain, overcome or avoid difficult terrain, accelerate the advance of the overall force, and block enemy forces. Such operational maneuver repositions forces in depth for immediate attack, substantively changing the geometry of the battlespace to U.S. advantage, and increasing complexity for the enemy. It also potentially exposes the entire enemy area of operations to direct attack, prevents resynchronization of enemy combat power, and denies reinforcement and sustainment. In all cases, forces must have the capability to reorient against follow-on objectives, with minimum delay. The process is repeated in rapid succession, and in concert with other ongoing operations, until enemy cohesion is destroyed beyond recovery.

So the future Army will be depend on a network of air assets that allow them around the 'hop' around enemy ground forces -- like an airborne blitzkrieg. It is certainly an interesting idea, but what will the Army do if those assets do not materialize in time? For that, you have to flip to the back of pamphlet to read section E-2 entitled "Alternate Futures." Specifically, a failure to "develop advanced lift capabilities to enable the use of unimproved air and sea entry points for force projection, operational maneuver, and sustainment" would:

Should these conditions continue into the future, the capstone concept this pamphlet describes will not be achievable. True joint interdependence would remain out of reach, with the current level of joint and multinational integration remaining in effect. Similarly, the capability to effectively combine new defeat mechanisms of dislocation and disintegration would be compromised. Land operations would almost certainly be constrained to traditional linear frameworks in major combat operations against effective adversaries. Significant improvement in the strategic responsiveness and operational agility of the Army would remain out of reach, particularly for the heavy force. The net effect would be one of stagnation and perpetuation of existing joint and Army doctrine into the foreseeable future, with only modest improvement in capability and operational utility.

So let me get this straight: The success of FCS, in all of its $200 billion, network-centric glory, is dependent on this thing getting off the ground? And the Army says that I am the one with the crazy ideas about the future force...

FCS quote of the month

From Renae Merle's article in last Friday's Post (which I can't believe I missed):

In a statement released Wednesday, the White House said that it "strongly opposed" the cuts to FCS, asserting that it would "force the Army to retain its Cold War hardware (developed in the 1970s and fielded in the 1980s) well beyond 2040, preventing our soldiers from fielding the best available equipment in the future."

That's funny. If you read their latest Modernization Plan, the Army clearly feels its "Cold War hardware" is good enough for 30 of the Army's 45 active-duty Brigade Combat Teams to use through 2030. Its not even clear that the Army plans to eventually replace all of its BCTs with FCS after 2030.

I'm amazed to see the White House play the same procurement shell game that they shot down back in 2002 when the Army tried to save the XM2001 Crusader self-propelled howitzer. This is all beside the fact that the Army is procuring hundreds of new tanks, trucks and aircraft to replace ones that were damaged, destroyed or worn down in Iraq -- to the tune of $17.1 billion in 2007 alone.

Army turns up the rhetoric on FCS

After taking a $800 million hit on its fiscal year 2008 Future Combat Systems (FCS) spending request, the Army is punching back by turning up the rhetoric [Update: The broken link is now fixed. Sorry about that.]:

“The cost in modernizing is first of all a cost in dollars, but failing to modernize is a cost that is sometimes registered in lives,” Lt. Gen. Speakes said today during a roundtable with Pentagon reporters.

“The program is on track,” he said. “We have met our performance standards and we are on the eve of some really great developments that are going to start hitting the Army literally overnight.”

[snip]

The Future Combat Systems also is fielding robots that can save lives. If robots make mistakes in defusing improvised explosive devices and the devices explode, no one dies, Lt. Gen. Speakes said. The robots are in use with units in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The proposed cuts to the program would effectively prevent the development of Future Combat Systems manned ground vehicles. This means Soldiers would operate Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles “indefinitely,” he said.

[snip]

Another concept that would be eliminated is called the Mule. This is a small wheeled vehicle that follows Soldiers carrying supplies, spare parts, ammunition and water. This is on the cusp of testing and would have to stop if the cuts in the system are made, he said. Another unmanned aerial vehicle would also be canceled.

Soldiers would be very negatively affected by these cuts, Speakses concluded.

“We will be doomed to spend the next 20 to 30 years with the existing combat platforms we have today,” he said. “It’s a betrayal of our trust to Americans when we don’t invest in them.”

I thought the Army was above exploiting force protection arguments, but I guess I was wrong. It isn't too surprising though, considering how the Army uses FCS as an all-or-nothing tactic to foist more than a dozen unproven platforms on the American taxpayer.

The phrase I hear the most around my office is "FCS is Army modernization," which implies the Army is actively not preparing a Plan B for its future force. FCS is a Swiss watch and the Army is gambling that the Congress or Secretary of Defense won't try to pare it down out of a fear that even a small change will cause the whole thing to fall apart.

The most galling part of this article is that the Army is threatening to drop the most innovate parts of FCS in response to the budget cuts. Why sacrifice great ideas like the MULE or the Class IV UAV just to save carbon-copy replacements for current platforms, such as the M1 Abrams or M2 Bradley? Shouldn't the Army be more concerned with generating new capabilities than just recapitalizing its fleet of armored vehicles?

The new wisdom of technology on the battlefield is that in the world of guided-weapons warfare, platforms don't matter as much any more. As I've pointed out before, precision-guided munitions have changed the traditional calculus of warfare. Platforms (and unmounted soldiers) can fire munitions farther and with such a degree of accuracy that metrics like rate of fire aren't important anymore. If the XM982 Excalibur makes the M109 Paladin more effective than modern howitzers, why design a new one?

I have one last parting shot for FCS advocates: Since the Army plans to equip the 3-year old Stryker with mortar, reconnaissance, and infantry carrier packages, why do they need the No-Line-of-Sight Mortar, Infantry Carrier Vehicle, and Reconnaissance and Surveillance Vehicle? This seems like a pretty clear duplication of effort.

Not the 'Son of Crusader,' but so what?

I think David Axe is a fantastic journalist, but his recent assessment of the Army's proposed Non-Line-of-Sight Cannon (NLOS-C) failed to address some critical questions about the system's efficacy.

I'll complete agree with the notion that the NLOS-C is many ways is a step up from the ill-fated XM2001 Crusader both in terms of design and technology. I'm also impressed with the Army's decision to adapt the Navy's Advanced Gun System instead of building a new barrel from the ground up. Leveraging the AGS and FCS's investment in an electric-hybrid engine has undoubtedly saved the Army time and research cash. Setting aside the fact that NLOS-C can not hit the field until its Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) radio is ready, I'm still left asking myself "Where's the need?"

The NLOS-C will definitely have advantages over the Army's current M109A6. The AGS will allow the NLOS-C to fire a handful of shells in a quick succession and have them all land on target simultaneously, also know as a Multiple Rounds Single Impact (MSRI) fire mission. In theory, NLOS-C will also only require 2 men to operate and will weigh in at 23-25 tons, as opposed to the M109A6's 4-man crew and 32 ton weight.

The NLOS-C will also take advantage of the XM892 Excalibur, a a revolutionary artillery round that integrates fin-stabilized GPS guidance into an extended-range base-bleed design. There are also plans to include a small radar sensor on the NLOS-C that will allow it to track shells all the way to impact.

The problem is that many of these advantages seem to justify the cost of the NLOS-C at first, but do not hold up under further scrutiny. The first issue is the vehicle's misleading name. There is nothing about the NLOS-C chassis or cannon that allows for its 'non-line of sight' capability. The NLOS function of the NLOS-C is contained entirely in its magazine of GPS-guided Excalibur rounds. Since the Army and Marines intend to use the Excalibur in all of their 155mm howitzers, one of the vehicle's selling points is actually a bit overblown.

The Army should be familiar with this criticism because it was one that the Secretary of Defense's Program Analysis and Evaluation directorate levied against the Crusader.

NLOS-C advocates also argue that a new self-propelled howitzer (SPH) is desperately needed because the M109 is 40 years old. The M109 chassis design may be 40 years old, but the A6 design is only dates back to the Reagan build-up in the 1980s. In fact, most of the current A6 fleet is less than 10 years old and the Army even intends to keep A6 in the inventory for another 10-15 years (only the 15 FCS-equipped brigades will get the NLOS-C, the other 30 or so will be stuck with this supposed 'dinosaur').

Personally, I'm also concerned about how the Army is keeping the NLOS-C so light. They've cut 2.5 tons off of its cross weight by reducing its magazine by a third, but it isn't clear where the other 3-5 tons went. When critics said the Crusader's 60 tons was too much, the Army reacted by stripping down its armor and I'm afraid they followed the same strategy with NLOS-C. I don't see why weight has been such a big issue since the Rumsfeldian era. SPHs can't be deployed by C-130s because Army doctrine prohibits the deployment of artillery in units smaller than a six-gun battery.

In the end, the only advantage that the NLOS-C has to offer is its advanced rapid-fire barrel. I'm not saying MRSI isn't a great capability. I'm just wondering if it isn't smarter to retrofit the A6 chassis with the AGS barrel since we are planning to keep them in the force for another decade. I can see a need for the new barrel, but is there a pressing need for a new SPH chassis? Deferring procurement of a new SPH for a few more years would free up Army R&D cash for other more important Army programs (like a replacement for the HMMWV) or the truly revolutionary pieces of FCS (like the Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System).

What's really ironic about the NLOS-C is that it really smacks of an Air Force affliction known as 'pilot-centric thinking.' When evaluating a system pilots (or in this case, drivers) tend to focus on improving the element that they directly control, the vehicle. This has become problematic in recent years because it has become far cheaper to create smarter, faster and better munitions than to build a smarter, faster and better vehicles. In the same way that the JDAM closed gap in the relative value between old bombers (B-52s) and new bombers (B-2s), the Excalibur is going to close the gap between the Paladin and the NLOS-C.

Israeli defense firms and why the Army doesn't care for Trophy

Much has been made of the Army's cold feet towards the Israeli active defense system called Trophy. I've done enough research over the years into the marketing practices of defense firms and each recurring story about Trophy ends up smelling like a typical strategy used by Israeli vendors. Since every Israeli is essentially a citizen soldier, the public is very sensitive to military casualties, each one frequently resulting in extensive coverage in the Israeli press.

Israeli defense firms like Rafael or Israeli Military Industries have a reputation for taking the case for a particular piece of defense equipment (especially defensive equipment) to the streets. By constantly hammering home the message of that the widget in question is essential for protecting the average soldier, they try to stir up public pressure on the Knesset and procurement authorities in the Israeli military.

Since popular domestic narratives about the U.S. military frequently center on themes of preeminence, the "saves lives" strategy usually doesn't work as well. The series of mini body armor contraversies that cropped up over the last two years demonstrate that this maybe slowly changing. Politicians on the left and right have cleaved themselves to the "support our troops" mantra like a bunch of snake-handling fundamentalists. It wasn't surprising to see Rafael testing the waters again by pushing Trophy to the media. Unfortunately, RPG protection didn't play well with the U.S. public because IEDs and other roadside bombs have been a much larger source of casualties.

More importantly, I wanted to lay down an alternative to current theses on why the Army has spurned Trophy: U.S. military culture. To steal a page from Carl Builder's classic military ethnography The Masks of War, a military plans it force structure and weapons system around the priorities of its mission. Since the mission of the U.S. military is inherently expeditionary, it is not surprising that the Army gave active defense technology a pass this year. I will use the differences between Israel's Merkava tank and the U.S. M1 Abrams tank to illustrate my point.

The Israeli army's mission is to defend the Jewish state from adversaries, all of which have traditionally been at or near its borders. The Israeli army, therefore, tends to emphasize protection and survivability at the cost of speed because it expects extended conflict over short distances. The Merkava's design reflects many of these expectations. The tank has a slopping front with lots of angles designed to deflect shells and weighs in at whopping 70 tons. It is also one of the few tanks with the engine placed at the front of the vehicle, which ostensibly offers the crew additional protection.

The U.S. Army, on the other hand, has been an expeditionary force since the end of the Cold War and plans to be deployed rapidly across the globe. As such, the Army tends to emphasize speed and penetrating firepower over armor and survivability. The most striking characteristic of the Abrams is its gas-turbine engine. This jet enginer gives the Abrams a cross-country speed of 48 kph and a recorded top speed of 100 kph.

Much like the ill-fated Land Warrior, the current level of technology is just too immature to allow for a robust, low cost active defense system. The Israeli army may be comfortable accepting the limitations of today's technology, but the U.S. Army apparently calculates costs and benefits differently. Frankly, I can't blame Army planners if they feel that the incremental advantage offered by Trophy is outweighed by its obvious limitations.

More Land Warrior fun

Special thanks to Anonymous, who sent me a link to this gem of a PR package for the Land Warrior. At 125 pounds and under $300 million a piece, the only ones to lose are the terrorists!

How sweet it is...

At least for tonight, my favorite words in the English language are: Project Terminated.

That was taken from the Army's R&D budget request documents for FY2008 (available here, page 4). I have nothing against the good folks at PM Land Warrior, but I think the U.S. Army's civilian and military leadership have finally realized the program wasn't realistic. The scope-cam was definitely a great idea, but many of Land Warrior's other functions seemed superfluous at best.

As the JASONs presented back in 2005, the military's obsession with high-tech gear and C4ISR integration has distorted procurement priorities for soldier systems. I'm always amazed at how the Army can blow millions trying to push pie-in-the-sky projects like the Land Warrior out into the field 5-10 years too soon and not at least issue every soldier a radio.

DOD planners dream up expensive systems that are probably already copyrighted by Ubisoft and ignore the obvious success of modern digital device formats, such as cellphones, PDAs and even iPods. You may not be able to tap out a text message on a cellphone during a firefight as easily as with the Land Warrior, but what are you doing text messaging anyways? That's what the radio is for!

Then again, maybe I'm just crazy.

Update: Lots interesting news and discussion going on around DefenseTech and FCW. I wanted to stress that I am not essential against future soldier systems - I just think that the technology isn't mature enough yet. Being able to review mission data at will or look around corners is great, the Land Warrior (as it is) is way to cumbersome and power hungry to actually be fielded or reach low-rate inital production.

I agree with Ralph Peters (Quick, take a picture!)

I only read the Armed Forces Journal when one has been left sitting in the lobby to my office for a week or two, so J. Sigger gets a big hat tip for calling Ralph "The Hearts and Minds Myth" Peters's latest commentary to my attention. I normally find myself at odds with Mr. Peters on topics of counterinsurgency to professional military education to politics in general (I'm much closer to Tony Corn on those subjects). His "Killing with Kindness" piece wins big points with me though because it 1) knocks on Future Combat Systems and 2) highlights the poverty of Bush policy in Iraq. Here are some choice passages:

The problem here isn't the FCS, which shows great potential — as long as the Army doesn't fall into the Air Force practice of promising more than any system ever could deliver. The troubling aspect is the instinctive political correctness of the goofball counterinsurgency video (which undoubtedly cost the taxpayer as much as a good indie film, whether funded directly by the Army or by a contractor who wrote it off as a business expense). What's the fundamental purpose of FCS? One would assume it's intended to kill our enemies and destroy their ability to carry on the fight while shattering their will. That would justify the cost. But a single Special Forces A-Team could do everything in that counterinsurgency video more dependably, with a much smaller footprint and $100 billion cheaper. Has the Army forgotten what war is? (The No. 1 complaint I now hear from officers in Iraq is about "green-zone generals" who have no idea what the streets outside their bubble are like — our military leaders are beginning to sound uncomfortably like World War I's "chateaux generals.") Is the always-dutiful, ever-unimaginative Army signing up for the Air Force's claim that technology can win the wars of the future without disturbing our enemy's beauty sleep? Do the Army's senior leaders now believe in the myth of bloodless war? Hasn't Iraq taught them anything?

I may grind an axe or two about some of my least favorite members of Army leadership, but I have nothing against General Cartwright. The guy is great manager and incredibly perceptive, which is probably why he ended up with reigns of FCS. I'm afraid the problem is that FCS is just too big of a beast for a two-star to lead. There are just too many players involved in this proposed complete recapitalization of the U.S. Army. It needs more direct involvement from all aspects of the Army secretariat and rigorous scrutiny from the Office of the Secretary of Defense and his Inspector-General. As Peters points out from the wildly unrealistic videos churned out by FCS's media consultants, it has become all edge and no substance. The Army has defended FCS for the last five years by overpromising on its potential capabilities. Got an transnation terrorist problem? FCS will let a luck President peer through the gunsight of a sniper who has Osama in his sights. Insurgency ruining your war plans? FCS's all-knowing web of information and communcations has those troublemakers on lockdown. Nevermind the fact that some of the FCS components currently in the field aren't getting rave reviews from its enlist and junior officer users. Or that some its pie-in-the-sky concepts, such as the recently doomed Land Warrior, aren't even popular as technology demonstrators. A new fleet of overweight, under armored, tracked vehicles will cure all of the current Army's ailments. Pardon my skepticism, but I bet we'd get a better return on investment by giving each combat soldier a cell phone, a GPS tracker, a PDA, a decent kevlar vest and a year's worth of language training (focusing on Arabic, French and Dari - leave Chinese to the Navy). As Krulak was getting at in his soliloquy about the "The Strategic Corporal," a soldier's best weapon is not the gun in his/her hands, but the grey stuff between his/her ears. This brings me to the second bit about Peter's article that I really appreciated:

The Army's knee-jerk, politically correct reaction to any suggestion that evil men need to be killed so that the innocent might prosper is the disingenuous statement that "you can't just kill everybody," as if the only alternative to uniformed pacifism is genocide. Anyway, our enemies are perfectly willing to try to "kill everybody" until they reach their goals. In material terms, we remain by far the most powerful military on earth. In terms of strength of will or intellectual integrity, our enemies put us to shame. The terrorists are honest about their goals. We mumble platitudes and send our soldiers off to face more improvised explosive devices. [snip] We've come a long, long way — downhill — since then-Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood wrote, almost a century ago, that "The purpose of an army is to fight." According to that goofball here's-why-we-need-FCS video and the draft of the counterinsurgency manual, the purpose of an army is to put Band-Aids on boo-boos. Let's all hope that the promised revisions to the manual will inject some intellectual integrity and sobriety — but, frankly, some is all we can hope for. Although the draft manual mentions the importance of understanding foreign cultures, it carefully avoids religion, which is the fundamental determinant of any culture: Men and women are what they believe. [snip] The apostle of an Islamo-fascist insurgency needs only to activate a disposition that already exists in a potential recruit, to portray the faith as under threat or betrayed and call the faithful to arms. And then you've got trouble in Kabul River City. Religious believers aren't blank slates but potential sleeper-agents, every one. It's virtually impossible to convince a man or woman anywhere that his or her religion is wrong. And, in the end, it comes down to what men are willing to die for: Faith tops the list, followed by blood ties as a close second. Ideology is way down the list and dropping. You might convert a weary guerrilla in Latin America from Marxism to democracy and capitalism (or, at least, to narco-trafficking), but you can't persuade an Arab to become Persian, or a Kurd to become Arab. Religious and ethnic insurgencies — which often overlap — are fundamentally different from and far tougher to defeat than ideological movements. Ideology is kid's stuff. Blood and belief are the real things.

Although Peters's agonizing about the unique qualities of religiously-motivated Arab insurgency smacks of Orientalism (I could write a whole post on that subject alone), he does make some great points. To those I would like to add a few of my own: 1. If you can't bring yourself to go "all the way" when fighting a counterinsurgency (i.e. go as far as depopulating entire towns and countrysides, Callwellian-style) then go home. Half measures just make the insurgents more powerful at the expense of blood and treasure. The all-volunteer force has performed miracles in the past, but there are just some things beyond its capacity. 2. Relying wholely on the local leaders willing to take bribes only attracts the corrupt. I thought we learned that one in Vietnam, but apparently not. Sometimes the most reliable and effective leaders are on the other side, meaning political concessions are the only currency they will accept. 3. The "touchy-feely" approach to counterinsurgency outlined in the Army's new counterinsurgency manual works for about the first 3-6 months of an occupation. First impressions are usually etched in the stone of culture consciousness. 4. If you have to "pick a winner" in Iraq, you have lost. Go home. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.