Do Not Doubt the Supremacy of American Military Forces - April 1, 2003

Do Not Doubt the Supremacy of American Military Forces - April 1, 2003. Jim McDana, Washington Post, April 1. With the further expansion of the military campaign in Iraq, side discussions have also increased: that there is a shortage of forces for such a wide front, that firepower is insufficient, and that the number of combat personnel is not adequate. The image of coalition forces in a state of insufficient power, and worse, facing a greater number of stubborn Iraqi forces, has become a popular topic of the day. With changes in technology, the conditions of warfare also change, but the fundamental pillars of combat power transcend time and are no different from the era when the ancient Greeks and Romans crossed the Tigris and Euphrates. To put it simply, combat power is the sum of all the capabilities of a force to move, strike, and protect itself relative to these capabilities in the enemy. In military terms, the ability to maneuver, to employ firepower, and to defend oneself against similar movements in enemy forces. In all these areas, coalition forces have superiority and dominance, especially at the level of combat operations. Within a few days, we managed to reach the gates of Baghdad with all our strength, and the number of these forces increases hour by hour. From the very beginning, we have had complete control of the sky; we can attack freely from land and air, and we move freely in Iraqi waters and most of the territory of that country. We select attack targets with incredible precision, with any level of damage we wish to inflict. In contrast, the enemy can only move by taking enormous risks and is forced to hide among the civilian population or wait for severe weather conditions, and even then can only act at the lowest tactical level. The enemy's striking capability is almost zero and has been reduced to small arms and terrorist explosions or barbaric savagery by resorting to war crimes against prisoners and its own compatriots. Although there is still the possibility of the enemy using chemical and biological weapons, the operational effectiveness of such weapons is in question. Iraq's self-defense is entirely passive, taking refuge deep in underground bunkers and using ordinary Iraqi citizens as shields. If the Iraqi fighting force moves, it is at risk of destruction, and if it stays in place, the risk of its destruction increases even more. However, although the ability to maneuver, firepower, and defense complement each other, what empowers these factors is the leadership's ability to properly combine and measure these factors. If we were to write a mathematical formula for military operations: the components of combat power are summed, but the sum of these components must be multiplied by the leadership's ability to utilize them. When leadership ability trends toward zero (which is the direction of Saddam's regime), the total amount of combat power also trends toward zero, regardless of the weight of the components separately. Let us not allow the desire for a quick victory to lead to haste in achieving a victory that is certain, and let us not pay an excessive price for today's win in obtaining a result that has its time, but in the so-called burning and scorching does not exist. The author of the article is a retired colonel of the U.S. Army and one of the main producers of the military doctrine of the Army in the 1990s.