INTERVENTION GAME-PLANS FOR THE '70s:
Klare, Michael T
INTERVENTION GAME-PLANS FOR THE 70s MICHAEL T. KLARE Will "lightning wars' be fought in strategic locations? In August 1973, 9,000 U.S. Marines from Camp Lejeune, N.C. were flown to the desert...
...And in an unusual show of candor, General Taylor added recently: "As the leading 'have' power, we may have to expect to fight for our national valuables against envious 'have nots.'" What Kind...
...Such forces will have to seize the initiative rapidly—before the enemy can muster his superior manpower...
...The new defense posture favored by top Pentagon officials calls for the formation of elite brigades based in the United States and at key overseas bases (Okinawa, Germany) capable of being transported to distant trouble-spots on a few hours' notice, and armed with the latest guns, missiles and precision-guided munitions ("smart" weapons...
...Unfortunately, the furor over C-5A costs has diverted public attention from issues raised by the actual function of the plane...
...The RPVs, or drones, are small unmanned aircraft controlled by artillery spotters on the ground...
...Consideration is being given to rifles that fire "flech-ettes," or small darts, at very high velocities in order* to literally tear a human body to pieces...
...The emphasis on firepower and technology is considered even more crucial in the light of the Pentagon's shift in emphasis from "low-intensity" operations in a Third World guerrilla environment to "mid-intensity" combat in a European or Middle East environment where potential enemies are armed with the latest Soviet weapons...
...Already, the United States has sold Iran "everything short of the atomic bomb" (to quote one State Department official), and negotiations now underway with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will lead to multi-billion dollar sales of sophisticated armaments to those countries...
...advantage in technology can head off a major military disaster...
...The new Pentagon strategy of using elite shock troops in future interventions abroad can only work, as we have seen, if U.S...
...if the Army is to attract and retain a sufficient pool of dedicated soldiers in a zero-draft environment, it must reduce the risks associated with military service...
...If in some future crisis an American intervention force is routed by indigenous forces, the U.S...
...These weapons do not, moreover, require prolonged training or special skills: the early Egyptian advances were achieved, according to Col...
...And, with such small manpower resources, the most likely form of escalation is in firepower...
...This "Rapid Deployment" scenario was set in motion in October, 1973, when the 82nd Airborne was readied for deployment to Israel during the worldwide military alert called by Henry Kissinger...
...With first round kill probabilities approaching certainty, and with surveillance devices that can continuously track the enemy, the need for large forces to fix the opposition physically will be less important...
...For the participants, however, this exercise—code-named Operation Alkali Canyon 73 —suggested a very real scenario for future U.S...
...troops and equipment can be transported to a distant battlefield rapidly, within hours of the onset of the crisis...
...Other proposed smart rounds will "home in" on light beams bounced off the target by a laser gun or "target designator...
...arid 8-in...
...The Pentagon scenarios indicate that such "lightning wars" will be fought in strategic locations (particularly the Middle East) where major U.S...
...National security," former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Maxwell D. Taylor lamented in 1974, "has fallen into disrepute...
...tank production...
...Israel lost an estimated 420 tanks and 120 aircraft in less than three weeks—a setback that surely would have crippled Israeli defenses if the United States hadn't launched an emergency resupply effort...
...During the unprecedented hearings called by Symington, Pentagon strategists asserted that America's current stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons (7,000 of which are stored in Europe) have extremely high yields —as much as five times the explosive force of the 20-kiloton bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II—and are essentially indistinguishable from the "city-busters" in the strategic nuclear stockpile...
...The Pentagon is also concentrating on techniques for increasing the "kill probability" of existing weapons systems...
...servicemen, and "Argos" was a strip of sand carved out of California's Mojave desert...
...The Pentagon has a computer plan for the invasion of every civilized country in the world," Col...
...Clearly, America's own expeditionary forces are likely to face comparable resistance in any future intervention in this area...
...John T. Burke, "by what was supposed to be an 'unsophisticated' army, and by what probably were, for the most part, green troops...
...Worse still, the unpopular war precipitated the disintegration of America's Cold War ideological consensus which had assured public support for a high rate of military spending and an interventionist posture abroad...
...We cannot afford an Army large enough to do that, nor can we recruit such an Army...
...failure to dominate the battlefield quickly could lead to a protracted war which would be costly and provoke widespread domestic resistance...
...Even the advocates of this new strategy acknowledge, however, that it possesses many risks...
...Once the conflict is contained and allied power restored, the U.S...
...In the new scenarios now being devised at the Pentagon, U.S.- based units—like the famed 82nd Airborne Division—will be loaded onto giant transport jets and flown non-stop to the combat zone and then rushed into battle...
...Although the Nixon administration stated that "the U.S...
...intervention forces will be adequately equipped for the new "game" brewing in the southern NATO area, Army Chief of Staff General William C. Westmoreland proposed development of an "Automated Battlefield" utilizing all the latest developments in military technology...
...The Pentagon's new intervention plans, as we have seen, call for small U.S...
...At Symington's insistence, the AEC and Department of Defense agreed to furnish witnesses for an intensive examination of the Pentagon's mini-nuke program...
...Sixteen months later, however, U.S...
...The Syrians, moreover, mounted a stubborn defense to Israeli forces after losing the initiative on the Golan Heights...
...if, however both sides possess such weapons, the level of destruction on each side will be very great no matter who "wins" the engagement...
...were flown to the desert kingdom of Argos to help repel an invasion by Soviet-armed Yar-monian troops...
...This argument has an obvious attraction for Pentagon strategists who have long lamented the widespread inhibition against the employment of nuclear weapons...
...If, as this perspective suggests, the United States will be obliged to engage in further armed conflicts abroad, the key question becomes: What kind of force structure is consistent with current political realities and the probable combat environment of the 1970s and '80s...
...Even the Yarmonian uniform, for instance, was patterned on that of the Libyan Army...
...Many of the new mini-nukes can be carried by one man in a small knapsack...
...Indeed, General Giller has even gone so far as to suggest that in some situations mini-nukes would produce fewer civilian casualties than conventional munitions: "We can make these nuclear weapons small enough," he told the Joint Atomic Energy Committee, "so that the casualties from conventional warfare in some cases will be higher per target attacked...
...Army strength, for instance, was cut nearly in half— from 1.5 million men in 1968 to 785,000 today...
...invasion of the Middle East was not considered particularly plausible and the Mojave exercise was treated more as a "human interest" story than as a serious military event...
...The possibility of armed intervention in the Middle East has given a new lease on life to the U.S...
...Only a handful of the plane's backers have, in fact, understood that the C-5A is nothing more nor less than a machine for intervention, and that even 81 Galaxies provide the United States with a significant capability for rapid force deployment abroad...
...Such weapons combine low-yield (1 kiloton or less) thermonuclear warheads with precision-guided projectiles ("smart bombs") to produce a weapons system theoretically capable of knocking out enemy assault units with minimum "collateral damage" (i.e., destruction of adjacent towns and cities...
...As long as U.S...
...Jerry O'Leary of the Mojave training force explained...
...Such projectiles—the Army calls them "smart rounds" after the "smart bombs" used in the air war against North Vietnam—carry a sensor device (infrared or electromagnetic) which "locks on" to a target by "reading," and corrects the flight of a shell so that it lands directly on target...
...We are trying to fight the enemy with our bullets instead of the bodies of our young men—'firepower, not manpower...
...interventions in the Middle East...
...This outlook, often summarized by the slogan "Firepower—not manpower," was eloquently rendered by General Ellis W. Williamson in a 1971 statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee: "We are making unusual efforts to avoid having the American young man stand toe-to-toe, eyeball-to-eyeball or even rifle-to-rifle against an enemy that might outnumber him on the battlefield...
...The fact is, he warned, "that any troops, no matter how primitive, can become proficient in the employment of precision weapons with relatively little training...
...dependence on access both to markets and to material sources, especially energy sources, beyond our shores...
...To enter this happy realm, he added, the Pentagon only had to accelerate its search for technological breakthroughs that would "replace wherever possible the man with the machine...
...A victim of complications arising from the Vietnam syndrome and from its own internal contradictions, it has come to signify in many minds unreasonable military demands, excessive defense budgets, and collusive dealings within the military-industrial complex...
...While implementation of the Rapid Deployment doctrine has only become practicable with development of jumbo transport jets like the Boeing 747 and the Lockheed C-5A, the strategy itself was first introduced during the last years of the Eisenhower administration...
...troops will be recalled to the airfield and flown back to their bases in the United States...
...The objective here is to achieve "first round kill certainty"—i.e., a 100 percent probability that every bullet, shell or missile fired will hit its target and do a thorough job of incapacitation...
...airlift permitted Israel to regain the offensive and strike back into Egyptian territory...
...The Army's plan to acquire a new stockpile of atomic munitions came to light in May 1973, when Senator Stuart Symington—then a recent appointee to the Joint Atomic Energy Committee—revealed that the Army had requested an appropriation of $904 million for procurement of nuclear ammunition for its 155-mm...
...With a full payload of 265,-000 pounds, the Galaxy can fly a total distance of 2,875 nautical miles without refueling, and with 100,-000 pounds of cargo it can travel up to 6,325 miles...
...Many Pentagon officials also describe small nuclear warheads as being essentially interchangeable with large conventional munitions in an effort to blunt popular sensitivity to their use...
...balance-of-payments difficulties by selling advanced military equipment to the oil kingdoms and other potential adversaries...
...Top-level Administration policymakers," the magazine reported in its December 2, 1974 issue, "are not holding back from candid discussions of the possibility of armed action by the U.S...
...Government has no intention whatsoever to treat such tactical systems as interchangeable with conventional arms," many critics—including Swedish disarmament expert Alva Myrdal—have charged that the deployment of low-yield nuclear artillery shells threatens to obliterate the critical "firebreak" between conventional and nuclear weapons...
...In the troubled world I have postulated," Taylor wrote in Foreign Affairs, "we shall need mobile, ready forces to deter or, in some cases, suppress such conflicts before they expand into something greater...
...landings in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Libya...
...Although the rapid tempo of technological advance suggests that Westmoreland's "automated battlefield" is just around the corner, it is less certain that it will bring all the benefits he attributed to it in 1969...
...Unlike the situation it faced in South Vietnam, the Pentagon cannot raise or lower troop levels in response to enemy initiatives but must employ increasingly potent and lethal weaponry...
...We can carry an army, fully equipped and ready for operation, with great speed to any place in the world" (Emphasis added...
...Thus while the tank and the fighter-bomber may not have yet lost their battlefield supremacy, Richard J. Levine wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "they face new and difficult challenges from defensive missiles that threaten to make future battles much more costly...
...A calculated, surgical strategy of this sort has, in theory, distinct advantages for the Military Establishment: the fighting will commence and terminate quickly, and the troops returned to their home bases, long before any significant domestic or international opposition has a chance to mature...
...In order to insure that the mobile fire brigade could be transported abroad in sufficient strength, McNamara ordered the production of 284 Lockheed C-141 transport jets and authorized the development of the jumbo C-5A transport...
...Recognizing that this strategy does contain certain risks, Taylor joined the Pentagon leadership in calling for the development and acquisition of low-yield battlefield nuclear weapons ("mini-nukes") to provide a final hedge against defeat...
...data provided by such robot planes could be fed into computerized fire control systems, or used to guide other drones carrying rockets and bombs...
...Vietnam had nearly destroyed the internal cohesion of the Armed Forces, and had forced the Nixon administration to abolish conscription and order massive cuts in military manpower authorizations (U.S...
...and, if the United States is to triumph in such a confrontation, it must have sufficient superiority in mobility, firepower and communications to compensate for the manpower advantage of potential enemies...
...On the battlefield of the future," Westmoreland told the Association of the United States Army in 1969, "enemy forces will be located, tracked, and targeted almost instantaneously through the use of data links, computer-assisted intelligence evaluation and automated fire control...
...News & World Report: "The Arabs must be made to realize that 800 million people in America, Europe and Japan are not going to permit their industrial societies to be destroyed by 80 million Arabs...
...Thus Israel clearly triumphed on the Sinai battlefield during the October 1973 fighting—yet Israel's losses in manpower and material were so great as to call into question its capacity to survive another such "victory...
...News let it be known that Pentagon officials had already developed scenarios for U.S...
...command will have no alternatives but surrender or escalation...
...In a characteristic statement of this new consciousness, one top-level administration official told U.S...
...if the oil crisis becomes unmanageable...
...News & World Report disclosed that Alkali Canyon 73 is being carefully reviewed by Pentagon planners, who have been charged with the task of Michael T. klare is a staff member of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) and author of War Without End: American Planning for the Next Vietnam (Knopf...
...By categorizing mini-nukes as front-line weapons that could be used to avert an all-out thermonuclear exchange, these strategists hope to promote the "thinka-bility" of atomic warfare...
...Both the "Argosians" and the "Yarmonians" were played by U.S...
...Between October 14 and November 15, Air Force C-5A's flew a total of 145 missions to Israel, carrying tanks, air-to-surface missiles, antitank weapons, and other munitions needed on the Suez front...
...The C-5A Galaxy jet transport is the world's largest and most powerful airplane...
...Taylor and other national security managers insist, however, that America's privileged world position compels it to prepare for future wars abroad...
...forces possess an effective monopoly in such systems it is safe to assume that America will dominate future battlefields...
...The Army now seeks to procure ammunition of this sort for its field artillery and such short- and medium-range tactical missiles as Lance and Pershing...
...McNamara, who was undoubtedly familiar with the Rockefeller Brothers Report, proposed formation of "a mobile 'fire brigade' reserve, centrally located . . . and ready for quick deployment to any threatened area in the world...
...As an example this would apply to conventional area bombing and to artillery barrages...
...military action would not be ruled out if the OPEC countries threatened "some actual strangulation of the industrialized world...
...Clearly, we are headed to a "point of no return" where no U.S...
...military establishment...
...Once a target was identified, personnel at the ground station would be able to activate on-board lasers to illuminate targets for attack by laser-guided weapons...
...Although military intervention is considered a "last resort" if diplomatic and economic efforts fail to head off another Arab oil embargo, U.S...
...According to General Abrams, "the drone would carry television cameras and infrared sensors which can be monitored at a ground station...
...Achievable new weapons of lower yields and of greater accuracy could increase military effectiveness while reducing possible collateral damage, thereby increasing their utility as well as the acceptability in NATO planning for employment in the NATO countries and the adjacent areas in which they would most likely be used" (Emphasis added...
...intervention forces with an unprecedented degree of mobility and airpower, they cannot insure the success of an invasion once troops land on the ground...
...With a smaller army, and political constraints on the employment of ground forces in protracted campaigns, the Pentagon must insure that any troops sent abroad possess a sufficient advantage in combat effectiveness to overcome superior enemy forces in a relatively brief period of time...
...This incident was, of course, nothing but a training exercise conducted by the Pentagon to familiarize troops with desert warfare conditions...
...Our smaller Army," General Abrams observed in 1973, "will not be able to match potential enemies man-for-man and weapon-for-weapon in many likely areas of deployment...
...The fear that America's ground forces may be "outgunned" in future interventions abroad has given added impetus to Pentagon efforts to acquire a new generation of small tactical nuclear munitions—or "mini-nukes...
...This assessment was vindicated, according to Pentagon officials, during the 1973 Mid-East war, when C-5A transports carried over 10,000 tons of weapons and ammunition to the hard-pressed Israeli army...
...To provide civilians with some sense of the plane's enormous capacity, Senator Barry Goldwater told the Senate in 1969 that "the C-5A could easily accommodate 67 Cadillacs, or six Greyhound buses, or 1,000 people, or 88 Volkswagens...
...Such a course can only lead to widespread civilian destruction (as in the December 1972 B-52 raids on Hanoi) and the danger of precipitating a nuclear conflict...
...This dangerous situation is further complicated by the administration's policy of easing U.S...
...In order to insure that future U.S...
...If the new strategy is to succeed, he argued, "we require a modern sea lift and air lift capability we do not now possess...
...In mid-1973, a U.S...
...Thus George Murphy, in a 1970 Senate speech, explained that the C-5A "was designed to satisfy the requirement rapidly to deploy fully equipped Army troops anywhere in the world, without the need for intermediate servicing stops, or without the need for sophisticated airport facilities when they arrived at their destination...
...Giller suggested that the new atomic shells—costing $100,000 or more apiece—would provide "a sharpened nuclear sword with a lot less attendant casualties...
...Mini-nukes, on the other hand, are viewed as precise battlefield weapons whose use could be confined to discrete military targets—thus making them more acceptable to our European allies...
...Various components of the machine-oriented "New Action Army" are now undergoing operational testing and evaluation at selected Army combat laboratories...
...What we need, he asserted, "is the qualitative edge that will provide our smaller forces with the combat advantage necessary to insure success" (Emphasis added...
...In the area of small arms, for instance, Army scientists are working on the development of ammunition that will produce certain death no matter what part of any enemy's body is hit...
...Terminal homing systems, according to one Army enthusiast, "could produce a quantum jump in cost-effective combat power and a major, perhaps revolutionary change in tactical concepts and organization...
...This strategy has many obvious dangers, but surely the gravest is the desperately narrow margin of safety that has been built into the manpower/firepower equation...
...In defending these plans, General Abrams told Congress in 1974 that the Army urgently needs "an improved family of tactical nuclear artillery weapons to provide the field commander the precise ability to inflict damage on his enemy with greatly decreased collateral damage to non-military targets...
...Egypt committed 100,000 infantrymen and 2,000 tanks to its initial cross-canal assault, and only a last-minute, $1 billion U.S...
...Even America has felt the pinch—the 1,000 tanks sent to Israel during and after the conflict represent three years of U.S...
...As the October 1973 Mid-East war demonstrated, America's potential adversaries may include powerful, well-trained forces armed with the latest Soviet and European weapons...
...Opponents of the program, including Senator William Proxmire, have criticized the contractual arrangements with Lockheed, but tend to avoid discussion of the strategic issues...
...And while President Ford has denied that such planning is underway, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told Business Week in January, 1975, that U.S...
...This requires, in the view of most Defense analysts, the utilization of America's advanced technology to overcome its deficiency in manpower...
...Furthermore, such interventions can be justified on the basis of threats to specific "national valuables" rather than as in Vietnam, on the pursuit of ambiguous political or strategic considerations...
...In the report of Panel II of the Rockefeller Brothers Report on America at Mid-Century, Henry A. Kissinger (then a professor at Harvard) wrote that efforts to develop a limited war capability were being hampered by "our lack of mobile forces capable of intervening rapidly and of restoring a local situation before matters get out of hand...
...After five days of intense combat in peak summer heat of 120°, the Leathernecks forced the last invaders across the border into Yermo, thus permitting the peace-loving Argosians to return to their profitable work of pumping oil into jumbo tankers...
...It [also] means minimizing the awesome reality that formidable military force is in the hands of leaders whose ideologies and purposes are not yet compatible with ours...
...valuables"—oil fields, refineries, mines etc.—are threatened by insurgent forces or nationalistic governments...
...At the height of popular enthusiasm for detente, Army Chief of Staff General Creighton Abrams asserted that "It would be very comforting to view the world as some sort of emerging Utopia, but to do so one must blot out the problems associated with the growing U.S...
...This C-5A "success story" is now being celebrated by Air Force officials, who seek Congressional approval for additional C-5A squadrons or for acquisition of militarized 747 jumbo jets...
...Yields of this magnitude, they argued, would produce enormous civilian casualties on both sides in any European conflict as well as increase the risk of an all-out nuclear response by Moscow, and thus their use would probably be deemed unacceptable by most NATO members...
...Production of such munitions has become possible in the past few years as a result of an intensive Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) effort to produce light, compact atomic explosives...
...When the Kennedy administration took office three years later, one of the first acts of the new Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, was to order a substantial expansion of America's airlift capabilities...
...Detente, Vietnam, and a succession of military procurement scandals have eroded the public's willingness to subsidize a large, forward-based military apparatus...
...Perhaps the greatest innovation of the October War was the massive use of lightweight Soviet precision-guided missiles like the SA-7 heat-seeking missile and the Snapper, Swatter and Sagger wire-guided antitank missiles...
...In this manner, enemy strongpoints can be neutralized without exposing G.I.s to hostile fire...
...preparing U.S...
...On the Ground Although the C-5A and carrier-based aircraft will invest U.S...
...This emergency supply effort—the biggest on record—enabled the Israelis to assume the offensive in the Sinai and finally to break through the Egyptian lines along the Suez Canal...
...forces to seize the initiative quickly and to employ every advantage in firepower, mobility and communications to overcome more numerous enemy forces...
...In testimony before the Joint Committee, the AEC's Assistant General Manager -for military programs, Air Force General Edward B. Giller, acknowledged that the Pentagon planned to acquire several thousand mini-nukes over the next few years at a cost of "a couple of billion dollars...
...The Middle East is the obvious powder keg, and we'd be fools if we didn't prepare...
...These weapons, which can be carried well into the front lines by small infantry units, proved effective against even the most advanced and powerful offensive weapons...
...At Fort Monmouth, N. J., for instance, the Army Electronics Command is testing the use of sensor-equipped "remotely-piloted vehicles" (RPVs) to scan the battlefield for enemy positions...
...invasion plans for future Middle East crises...
...artillery pieces...
...Thus the proliferation of such systems in Third World armies threatens to neutralize the superior firepower and "professionalization" of America's machine-oriented "Army of the Future...
...The development of a highly-armed, capital-intensive infantry is also considered essential to the success of the Volunteer Army (VOLAR) program, which relies on material rewards rather than patriotism or fear of the draft to induce enlistments...
...Much of our current (tactical nuclear) inventory, based on the technology of 10-20 years ago, consists of weapons with unnecessarily high yields," former NATO commander General Andrew J. Goodpaster observed...
...forces can achieve victory quickly, before the fighting escalates into a major prolonged conflict like Vietnam...
...A careful analysis of Pentagon statements and field exercises like Alkali Canyon 73 suggests that the national leadership is preparing for short, intense wars in selected Third World areas where small but heavily-armed U.S...
...From an original target price of $3.4 billion for 120 aircraft in 1965, C-5A programs costs jumped to $4.8 billion for only 81 aircraft by 1970...
...Despite these impressive statistics, the C-5A is probably best known by the public for its mammoth cost "overrun...
...In the area of tube artillery and missiles, the emphasis is on the design of "terminal homing" devices that can steer a shell to its intended target with pinpoint accuracy...
Vol. 101 • March 1975 • No. 16
