Wednesday, January 7, 2009

A laboratory known as 'war'


By PAT MURPHY

Most military analysts agree that Israel's relatively small armed forces are the best in the world.

Aside from having top-of-the-line U.S. equipment, Israel maintains its edge by constantly being in real combat, as it now is in Gaza, not merely practicing make-believe war, and by requiring all young male and female citizens to serve.

Disregarding the bitter controversy over whether Israel is guilty of overkill with superior weaponry to subdue lightly armed terrorists and causing massive civilian casualties, every time the Israeli air force and army are involved in a shooting episode, they come away with some new insight into enemy tactics and weapons.

U.S. air, ground and sea forces are engaged in the same critiques as never before, when troops return from Iraq and Afghanistan with entirely new concepts of the combat Americans will face in the future.

European and Pacific battlefields of World War II experienced heavy daylight bombing, infantry-armor assaults backed up by tactical air support and the development of napalm bombs. The Korean War led to new winter clothing for combat troops, jet aircraft dogfights and tactical support, frontline MASH medical units and training to resist enemy brainwashing.

Vietnam saw the introduction of lighter, faster-firing small arms and enemy ground-to-air missiles.

Gulf War I was a laboratory for preparing for chemical, biological and nuclear attacks by equipping troops with special life support gear, defending against Russian-made SCUD missiles.

And Iraq and Afghan action has seen the introduction of unmanned aerial vehicles capable of real-time TV surveillance of enemy activities as well as firing rockets, advanced frontline medical trauma units and dealing with the horrors of improvised explosive devices.

Ghoulish as it seems, exploiting war as a laboratory for testing new equipment and tactics is utterly necessary. Moreover, all armed services have institutions producing hundreds of papers and books on tactics and weaponry written by personnel fresh from combat.

One of the questions being raised in Congress because of battlefield studies is whether increased spending on a new generation of nuclear warheads and on the $137-million-per-plane F-22 Raptor fighter is justified when terrorists with low-cost weapons are the primary global threat.

(Personal aside: I was invited as a newspaper publisher in the 1980s by the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., to help inaugurate a media-and-the-military training program for senior officers to create better understanding between the military and the press, an outgrowth of festering tensions that damaged the flow of public information.)

Since war probably can never be eliminated from humankind's evils, perhaps ways can be found to fight without humans.




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