Truths, Lies, and Afghanistan

Wolf Ritter · Feb 16, 2012

How military leaders have let us down[/quote said:

By LT. COL. DANIEL L. DAVIS

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.....
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Link to article on ArmedForcesJournal.com
Link to 80+ page unclassified PDF report for civilians.

And here's what he has to say about the billions of dollars wasted on the Future Combat Systems, a program which he was a part of.

The Army’s senior leaders developed the Future Combat Systems without a rigorous process to even validate whether it was the best or right way to modernize our force in late 1999/early 2000. They subjected it to computer simulation testing to see how it would fare against a capable enemy; it failed utterly. Instead of acknowledging the failure and either making significant changes or outright junking the idea in lieu of something that would work, they suppressed the results and never repeated them, instead changing the testing parameters until they found one in which their program would succeed. Nevertheless, they explicitly created highly sophisticated media campaigns – complete with movie-like videos using actors, special effects graphics, and specially written music – that depicted the system working flawlessly and dramatically in exactly the sort of scenarios their earlier tests indicated would fail. When faced with failure after failure in physical tests, instead of being honest and working hard to find solutions, they willingly and knowingly misrepresented the matter to Congress.

The results of our senior leaders willingness to prevent the US Congress from knowing the truth about FCS literally from its inception has cost the United States almost a decade of lost development and nearly $20 billion dollars (as to date, even the follow-up program to FCS has likewise failed to produce a single functioning prototype).
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Finally:

Conclusion
The United States, along with over 40 NATO and other allied nations, possess the most sophisticated, powerful, and technologically advanced military force that has ever hit the field of combat. We have the finest and most well trained Soldiers that exist anywhere; we have armored vehicles of every type, to include MIA2 Main Battle Tanks; artillery, mortars, advanced rockets, precision guided missiles, and hand-held rocket launchers; we have a wholly uncontested air force composed of NATO's most advanced ground attack fighter jets, bombers, AWACS controllers, spy planes, signals-interception aircraft, B 1 bombers, attack helicopters, and massive transport jets to ferry our troops and critical supplies where they are needed; we have thousands of unmanned aerial drones both for intelligence collection and missile-launching; we have a helicopter fleet for personnel transport and attack support; we have an enormous constellation of spy satellites; logistics that are as limitless as the combined weight of the industrial world; we have every technological device known to the profession of arms; we are able to intercept virtually every form of insurgent communication to include cell phones, walkie-talkies, satellite phones, email, and even some ability to eves-drop on otherwise private conversations; a remarkably capable cohort of intelligence analysts that arc as educated, well trained and equipped to a degree that used to exist only in science fiction; and our various nations have the economic wherewithal to spend $10s of billions each month to fund it all. And for almost 10 years we have pitted this unbelievable and unprecedented capability against:

A bunch of dudes in bed sheets and flip-flops.
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Unfortunately, people will still keep demanding we shovel more money into the DoD without making sure how it's spend or holding our military leaders responsible for lying to our duly elected officals about what's going on on the ground.

As for the FCS program this is nothing new. In 2001 we had a replacement for the then 40-year old M109 just about ready for production, it was canceled for the FCS program's NLOS-C due to being able to fit three NLOS-C into a globemaster. Being that the NLOS-C is built on the same chassis as every other AFV in the FCS program we come to find out it doesn't have enough armor to be able to handle an IED, so we have to pile on more armor and completely redesign the hull. Then we find out the suspension can't handle the added weight so we need to replace it with a heavier one. Oops, now we can't fit three NLOS-C into a C-17 anymore.

Another example was our intended replacement for the Abrams, the Mounted Combat Vehicle, which used the exact same chassis as the IFV that they wanted to replace the Bradley with. I'm sure our tankers would enjoy the idea of engaging in a fight against a T-72S or a T-80UE 125mm with less armor than a (*)(*)(*)(*)ed Patton. Thankfully that's gone and we're working on an M1A3 upgrade for the interim.

IgnoranceisBliss · Feb 16, 2012

Wolf Ritter said: ↑

By LT. COL. DANIEL L. DAVIS

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Armys Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.....
Click to expand...

Link to article on ArmedForcesJournal.com
Link to 80+ page unclassified PDF report for civilians.

And here's what he has to say about the billions of dollars wasted on the Future Combat Systems, a program which he was a part of.

Finally:

Unfortunately, people will still keep demanding we shovel more money into the DoD without making sure how it's spend or holding our military leaders responsible for lying to our duly elected officals about what's going on on the ground.

As for the FCS program this is nothing new. In 2001 we had a replacement for the then 40-year old M109 just about ready for production, it was canceled for the FCS program's NLOS-C due to being able to fit three NLOS-C into a globemaster. Being that the NLOS-C is built on the same chassis as every other AFV in the FCS program we come to find out it doesn't have enough armor to be able to handle an IED, so we have to pile on more armor and completely redesign the hull. Then we find out the suspension can't handle the added weight so we need to replace it with a heavier one. Oops, now we can't fit three NLOS-C into a C-17 anymore.

Another example was our intended replacement for the Abrams, the Mounted Combat Vehicle, which used the exact same chassis as the IFV that they wanted to replace the Bradley with. I'm sure our tankers would enjoy the idea of engaging in a fight against a T-72S or a T-80UE 125mm with less armor than a (*)(*)(*)(*)ed Patton. Thankfully that's gone and we're working on an M1A3 upgrade for the interim.[/QUOTE]

The last line of the article is very silly to me and hurts the authors credibility. The idea that our technological superiority should help us easily defeat insurgents in silly. Very few of the previously described weapons systems are heavily used in Afghanistan. Counter-insurgencys come down to Infantry and Politics. The Mounted Combat Vehicle wouldn't have made a bit of difference in Iraq/Afghan.

Wolf Ritter · Feb 16, 2012

IgnoranceisBliss said: ↑

The last line of the article is very silly to me and hurts the authors credibility. The idea that our technological superiority should help us easily defeat insurgents in silly. Very few of the previously described weapons systems are heavily used in Afghanistan. Counter-insurgencys come down to Infantry and Politics. The Mounted Combat Vehicle wouldn't have made a bit of difference in Iraq/Afghan.
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That's exactly his point. We're wasting money on weapons intended for a counter insurgency role that don't work. And we're wasting our time, money, and military in pointless adventurism in Afghanistan and Iraq.

IgnoranceisBliss · Feb 16, 2012

Wolf Ritter said: ↑

That's exactly his point. We're wasting money on weapons intended for a counter insurgency role that don't work. And we're wasting our time, money, and military in pointless adventurism in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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Not every future adversary will be so light on firepower and low on morals.

Wolf Ritter · Feb 16, 2012

IgnoranceisBliss said: ↑

Not every future adversary will be so light on firepower and low on morals.
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Do you even bother to read? He is arguing that the FCS program is a waste of money, said FCS program was attempting to replace actual tanks with what were essentially stretched hull Bradleys with a 120mm gun. What you are saying exactly what the author of the article and I were saying.

Here's an example of an experiment they did:

According to Mr. Welo, there were three iterations of the experiment. The “Blue Force” (the US side) was composed of an FCS Brigade Combat Team (FBCT) equipped with all the threshold capabilities expected to be fielded in the 2016 timeframe. The “Red Force” – the enemy force – was a larger force than Blue, and primarily composed of “legacy” forces, which means they were outfitted with current or old equipment. It also, however, included a number of “enhanced” forces composed of expected future capabilities including advanced tanks, artillery and APC platforms, as well as UAS and anti-aircraft systems currently under development in various countries. In the first run of the simulation, the Red force “played very cautiously,” but still rendered Blue force combat ineffective “before they were even halfway to their objective,” Mr. Welo recalled. The next iteration, however, proved catastrophic for Blue:
“In the second run, the Red commander decided to be very aggressive. First, we waited until the air was full of Blue Force UAVs, ground attack jets, and other aviation assets. We had previously deployed our anti-air assets but up until that point had kept them turned off. We then simultaneously turned them all on to overwhelm Blue’s ability to counter them and destroyed virtually all of the Blue air assets within 5 minutes. Next we launched all of our UAVs. Although many were shot down by Blue, we had more UAVs than they did missiles. We then massed all our legacy and enhanced forces in the area together in a massive armored spear-head

attack and charged at the assembly area with about two battalions. The Global Hawk (used by the Blue Force) continued to fly so that blue forces could use precision fires to destroy many of our elements while they were still out of direct fire range. But Red had precision fires of their own and the surviving Red UAVs identified the most critical elements of the Blue force, which we then engaged with artillery and guided missiles (ATGM) from the tanks.
“When the charge came within 4 km of the Blue forces,” he continued, “the (Red) tanks began to engage with direct fire and it was like shooting fish in a barrel. When Blue attempted to maneuver away, their signature reduction was neutralized and they were immediately shot. Their Active Protection System was unable to help them against the tank’s ATGMs (guided missiles) and Sabots (tank main gun rounds). Blue suffered unbelievable casualties and the run was ended.” As previously mentioned, though this exercise was conducted in support of what’s known in the Acquisition world as “Milestone B” – which determines if the system is valid and is funded to the next level – no changes were made to either the mix of platforms nor to the concepts behind FCS. Mr. Welo provided a possible explanation as to why this might be.
“The green suiters (uniformed members of the Army) that were in charge of the gamers were split in their opinion on the implications of the results,” he explained. “Those who participated in my Red camp said we should run more simulations against an enhanced threat because of the possibility that in the future this could become a real-world disaster, and those that fought with the Blue camp argued that the simulation data and parameters were flawed and that the USA would not be this outmatched any time within the next 50 years. The “neutral” green suiters seemed puzzled at the power of the enhanced threat, and seemed to believe that the result was unlikely to ever happen in real life and not a scenario that was very profitable.”
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Albert Di Salvo · Feb 16, 2012

Americans don't need weapons systems any more. We are not going to fight foreigners. We need clubs and rocks to fight each other.

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