Mavericks of War by Ridler Jason

Author:Ridler, Jason
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811767767
Publisher: Stackpole Books
Published: 2018-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

Part IV

Mavericks after Vietnam

At war’s end, the U.S. Army was not interested in looking backward. Vietnam, nation-building, counterinsurgency, massive use of NGOs, innovations, successes and failures in America’s long war effort, none of these subjects had “career success” branded on them for young officers.1 After the “bitter peace” of the Paris Peace Accords and U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975, counterinsurgency and nation-building became stained with failure and bad goals within professional circles. The future of U.S. armed forces would focus on technical excellence and lethality than anything resembling the social sciences or cultural awareness. The knowledge gap would be filled with modern marvels.

Between 1975 and 1989, the U.S. Army re-created itself. It focused its doctrine and force structure to meet enemies unlike those in Vietnam, largely the armed forces of nation-states in the Middle East, or perhaps South America. The CIA would remain in the covert and guerrilla warfare business, but the U.S. Army sought to fight wars against the armed forces of modern nation states armed with high-tech, Soviet-supplied missiles and air power demonstrated by Egyptian forces in the 1973 Arab/Israeli War. As future-war theorists in both the Soviet Union and the United States pondered what nonnuclear warfare might look like between them or medium-sized powers, a belief emerged that modern information and weapon technology was increasing the lethality of weapons and the pace at which information could be gathered, analyzed, and executed. Those who had a modern, flexible, and well-armed command and control system could feasibly not only make decisions quicker but also execute their attacks to disable their rival’s technical infrastructure and paralyze their means of gathering information and making decisions. This state would expose their forces to predatory and decisive attacks. The reorientation of the U.S. Army to what would become AirLand Battle Doctrine was the result of many influential and aggressive military and political champions. The creation of new Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) under Gen. William DePuy took a lion’s share of the effort. DePuy was a Vietnam veteran, but not a student of counterinsurgency, nor was that what the Defense Department considered a priority. High-intensity air and ground combat operations with proper doctrine, technology, and organization mattered. Iterations of DePuy’s 1976 Field Manual 100-5 Operations would continue to refine the army’s approach to future war. They faced resistance and challenges for expensive training and equipment, but all followed DePuy’s lead.2

As the U.S. Army rebuilt its ethos, reputation, and mission, analysts in the mid-1980s began to refer to the “Military Technical Revolution.” This phenomenon was brought on by information and weapons technologies. If one harnessed their doctrine, organization, and technology to optimize their value, one could outpace, outfight, and outstrike their enemy to such a degree that one might cripple their ability to direct battle. Such a revolution was no small task. It required ingenuity, support, and innovation in an army that was suffering from the wounds and stigma of the first major U.S. military defeat (minus the end of the Confederacy) since the War of 1812.

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