Rumsfeld, armor, and reactions: Part 3 (Just when did we realize we needed armor?)

Overview

As I said in concluding the previous post, the conclusion that the Army and DoD reactions to the need for armored vehicles were timely and reasonable depends on "when the Army realized the gravity of the insurgency" and similar issues. One of the related issues is why the powers that be determined there was a need for more armored vehicles. So, this post will examine the reasons given by the powers that be as to why nothing could have been done sooner. My conclusion is that the Army and DoD reactions were far from timely.

The basic explanation and three reasons I say that explanation is not credible

• The basic explanation
  

One of the first items I found on these matters was Phillip Carter’s post which contained excerpts from the March 19, 2004 Wall Street Journal article. This excerpt caused me to say “Bullshit” out loud before I even read Carter’s analysis:

Army officials insist that no one could have predicted that the service would have been involved in such a huge peacekeeping effort, which dwarfs previous missions to the Balkans, Haiti and Somalia. Nor could the Army have predicted Iraqi insurgents would use remote-detonated roadside bombs so effectively to kill U.S. soldiers, says Brig. Gen. Jeff Sorenson, a senior Army procurement official. "We didn't anticipate this threat nor were we prepared for it," the general says.

I said it before, and I’ll say it again: Bullshit.

• Reason 1
  

First of all, anyone who ever thought that there would not be a “huge peacekeeping effort” is either delusional, blindingly ignorant, or just plain stupid. Want some proof? Check out these previous posts: More on Wolfowitz and the blunders of the Bush administration; Time to get back to posting; Wolfowitz's Reason 2 why Shinseki was wrong; Wolfowitz's Reason 3 why Shinseki was wrong. And trust me, those posts do not cover the entire subject. I have yet to write about the other three reasons Wolfowitz gave for why Shinseki was wrong about the number of troops needed for the post war period, but here are the reasons given by Wolfowitless: Many other countries–even those that opposed the war–would send troops for the occupation; Iraqis would provide much of the manpower; and the Iraqis would welcome us as liberators. There was plenty of evidence to the contrary when Wolfowitz made these statements before the war, and time has pretty much proven them to be wrong.

• Reason 2
  

A second reason for calling "Bullshit" was stated concisely by Newsweek: "Predators know to hunt the weakest animal in the herd. So do the Iraqi insurgents." This is common sense. If you are part of an outnumbered force with inferior resources, are you going to attack heavily armed groups or armored tanks that are largely invulnerable? No, you are not. And not only is this common sense, it has the imprimatur of experience in this very war, which is to say before the insurgency started. Let's review...As the war unfolded, the major element with which coalition forces had to deal was attacks made on supply lines and what traditionally has been the "rear area" of the forces. This is significant because the vehicles used in these areas are the unarmored Humvees and trucks that are now the subject of the Rumskull armor furor. Back on February 3, 2003--before the war started--the CIA issued a report warning that Saddam loyalists could be expected to use hit and run tactics against rear units and that such tactics would include use of rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) and small arms fire--which, by the way, are some of the weapons that have been used against the non-armored Humvees and trucks. According to CNN's report, the CIA report was "widely distributed among Bush administration policy-makers and military leaders" in February 2003 and was revealed in late March 2003

in response to questions about whether the tactics that have led to most of the American and British deaths and POWs to date were a surprise to U.S. intelligence officials and policy-makers. An official said the CIA report was "widely distributed to policy-makers and warfighters."

"No surprise here," said a U.S. official.

This raises an obvious question, namely why, if the tactics were no surprise in March 2003, nothing was done about getting more armored vehicles to Iraq starting in March 2003? Did the military truly not see the need until later? Let's get back to events that happened during major combat operations...General Tommy Franks basically admitted that there was no surprise. Here's an excerpt from a March 24, 2003, Washington Post article:

Franks acknowledged that U.S. and British forces, in their race toward Baghdad, have left themselves vulnerable to attacks from behind. He noted that Iraqi soldiers and militias are "milling about" in southern Iraq, where they can do further damage.

"I can assure you that contact with those forces is not unexpected," Franks said.

Over the weekend, Iraqis faked surrenders, staged ambushes and employed other guerrilla tactics to capture or kill American troops.

So, during major combat operations in March 2003, hit and run tactics using small arms and RPGs against vehicles in the non-front line combat areas were being used and no one was surprised. And yet in March 2004, an Army general said such a threat was not anticipated. I'm confused.

Oh, but wait a minute...the Army general did not mention small arms and RPGs. Instead, what was mentioned was roadside bombs. That takes us to Reason 3.

• Reason 3
  

The third reason I say "Bullshit" as to the above excerpt from the WSJ concerns the statement about an inablity to anticipate that the insurgents would so effectively use roadside bombs. See, in the summer of 2003 I did a boatload of research and writing on Millenium Challenge 02 (MC 02), the major war games held prior to this war. For now suffice it to say that the Opposing Force (OPFOR) in MC 02 (which was set in a "fictional" Middle Eastern country) used all sorts of unconventional tactics, and, in my opinion, from MC 02 alone, the powers that be should have realized that something like roadside bombs could have been utilized. I had that opinion before reading Carter's analysis and checking out the links therein.

Before discussing Carter's analysis, let's look at the official rationale for the basic explanation, beginning with Rumskull. The day after his statements about armored vehicles, Rumsfeld made these statements in New Delhi, India:

This has been an issue that, obviously, as circumstances changed on the ground the military reaction to those changed circumstances follows. And that is the way war and insurgencies and combatants operate. You go in, you have an enemy with a brain that does things, and then you make adjustments. They then see what you are doing and they make adjustments. As you make adjustments it requires different kinds of equipment, different kinds of tactics and different kinds of approaches, in some cases different kinds of troops with various types of skills sets and training. Now, does everything happen instantaneously as the brain in the enemy sees things and makes changes? No, it doesn’t happen instantaneously. But it has been happening pretty rapidly and I have been briefed on, for example, we are doing whole host of things with respect to these explosive devices, whether they are roadside or vehicle born, and we have teams of people in Washington who have been working on it for months and months and months. We have put a lot of money behind it and we have developed different ways of dealing with it and had varying degrees of success -- in some cases considerable success.

(emphasis added). In a December 15, 2004 interview on a Tampa, Florida radio station, Rumskull said this:

Now what happens is that on the battlefield, the situation changes from time to time. And as that happens, the type of equipment has to adjust and change. And of course, there’s a gap frequently between if you begin with very little armored Humvees and you suddenly decide you need them because the enemy has decided to use tactics that take advantage of the fact that you have very few armored Humvees, just for an example. Then you have to get about the task of getting additional ones and you have to look at your tactics, just as they change their tactics – the enemy – we have to change our tactics. And tactics have to fit the equipment available.

(emphasis added). Rumsfeld obviously felt that the need for armored vehicles was due to changes in circumstances on the battlefield and changes in tactics used by the enemy. But just what were these changes? General Whitcomb (who was with Rumskull at the town hall meeting in Kuwait where Rummy made his original comments) held a press conference on December 9, 2004, and he shed light on the "changing circumstances:"

First, a little background on how we got there. Really, about August of 2003 last year, we began to see an increase in improvised explosive device attacks against our forces, primarily against convoys that were moving throughout Iraq. Those attacks took many forms, some very simplistic using unexploded ordnance, bombs, explosive packages that were put together, using the bodies of dead animals up along rail guards on highways -- you name it, and the enemy dreamed up a way to use it. And they began having an impact on our soldiers, a deadly impact, as we all know.

*******

Okay. The first question is, you know, what was the state of affairs in August of 2003? We were coming off the high end major combat operations, where our heavy ground fleet, in concert with our air forces and naval air forces, conducted that major combat operation.

What we saw with the enemy in the August/September 2003 time frame was a shift in their tactics. They knew that if they came face to face with the troops, they would be killed. That was a given. They would not succeed in a type of military operation man to man, woman to woman, fighting face to face with American troops.

So their tactic was to adopt the ambush tactic. And the ambush tactic of engaging with rifles and pistols and RPGs wasn't going to work either, not in the big scheme of -- big picture, not for the long term.

So one of the tactics they came up with was this explosive -- improvised explosive device, this mechanical ambush, if you will. And we saw that begin, and we saw it increase over time to where we really saw a peak near the start of the first of the year and throughout the time period that we've got now. And so that's why we addressed the issue.

Now we're getting somewhere. According to Whitcomb, the tactic which prompted the need for armored vehicles was the roadside bomb, or improvised explosive device (IED), and that began in August/September 2003. With this in mind, let us now look at Phillip Carter's analysis of the WSJ excerpt that said that the Army could not have predicted the effective use of roadside bombs.

Really??? That's a planning failure of the most basic kind -- the failure to anticipate the threat. And I find it quite hard to believe, honestly, that the Army could fail to appreciate this kind of warfare after watching all of the brushfire conflicts of the 1990s. From Somalia to Chechnya, it was clear what kinds of wars we'd be fighting in the next century to anyone with a clue about history and the population trends that were moving towards urban centers. Moreover, as one of my NSRT colleagues points out, the Army recognized these trends and incorporated them into exercises at the Joint Readiness Training Center as early as 1993. Roadside IEDs were a known threat, and the Army trained for it -- it just didn't buy the gear it needed to have to meet this threat effectively.

(links in Carter's post). I checked out the links in Carter's post, and the second one really stood out for me. It is a response from Christopher M. Coglianese to the WSJ excerpt above:

This goes back to one of my pet causes regarding lessons unlearned. The previous CSA, love him or hate him, testified before the Congress the likely extent of the Phase IV requirements based on his experiences as the SFOR Commander and extrapolating the area and population numbers of Iraq. So at least ONE person in a position of authority predicted the extent of the peacekeeping effort.

They have been replicating these road side bomb scenarios (often with quite good pyrotechnics) since at least my first JRTC rotation in 1993 at Fort Polk. The bad guys in Iraq have not even come close to some of the other legitimate techniques employed by the OPFOR for YEARS!!!!

I thought our job was to anticipate, prepare and mitigate.

(italicized emphasis added). And I was thinking that only a war game from 2002 supported my opinion. Every war game has an OPFOR, and often part of the OPFOR's task is to "think outside the box" so that our military can then learn and adjust to threats. As I will explain in a post sometime in the future, this was definitely done in MC 02, and apparently roadside bombs have been part of the OPFOR's tactics since 1993. And we're supposed to believe that in this war there was no way to anticipate this threat or prepare for it. Right.

And another thing...Does this mean that beginning in September 2003, there was no threat from small arms and RPGs?

Conclusion

The official company line is that there was no way to know that Iraq would require such a huge peacekeeping operation after the war, the only reason there is a need for armored vehicles is that the insurgents starting using roadside bombs, there was no way to foresee the effective use of roadside bombs, and the need for armored vehicles was not discovered until August/September 2003.

This post shows that 1) anyone could have foreseen that the peacekeeping operation would be huge; 2) before the war the CIA predicted the use of guerrilla tactics on rear area units (that use unarmored Humvees and trucks); 3) experiences in the major combat operations (which ended May 1, 2003) indicated that attacks on unarmored vehicles would occur; 4) no one was surprised when we faced such attacks during major combat operations; and 5) training for roadside bombs have been part of military war games since 1993.

In other words, the "basic explanation" does not have credibility, which in turn means that the "production and capability" explanation is weakened because while the lag time between demand and ability to ramp up production could not be avoided, that effort could have and should have started long before September 2003.

UPDATE: Back in Part 2, I said "remember that the shift of up-armored Humvees began in July 2003. I will explain the importance of that fact in a subsequent post." Here's the explanation. As shown above, Gen. Whitcomb said that the need for armored vehicles was identified in August 2003. If that was really the case, why then did the shift of up-armored Humvees begin in July 2003?