Opening Guns

Now that the war with Iraq has begun, The Estimate will seek to provide analysis of the conflict that does not repeat the intensive coverage being provided by the daily media and the all-news television networks. We assume our readers are current on the details of the campaign, and offer an analysis based on that assumption. This issue, for the first time in our history, offers a six-page Dossier rather than the usual four-pager, in order to provide a number of maps for our analysis of the problems involved in a campaign around Baghdad. There is also a two-page Defense Briefs, so some departments do not appear in this issue.

As frequently promised, there are innovative elements in the campaign against Iraq, but so far at least the actual operations have not been as revolutionary as prewar commentary suggested. The “shock and awe” element of the air war has received a great deal of attention, largely because it became a catchphrase, but for operational reasons does not appear to have been as extensive in the first hours as originally envisioned. The most dramatic aspect of the land campaign, the Third Mechanized Infantry Division’s race from the Kuwaiti border to the Baghdad region in a matter of days, with dramatic pictures on the first day of the US 7th Cavalry spearhead charging its Bradleys across the desert at high speed, has indeed gone farther and faster than any such offensive before it, but that is largely because of the speed of its tanks and armored vehicles and the unobstructed nature of much of the terrain on its first days. Considered as a military operation it may be a highly successful application of mobility, but not such a revolutionary one. Other than the improved speed, the assault is in the direct lineage of the great, high-speed tank attacks of Heinz Guderian, Erwin Rommel, or George S. Patton in World War II, or of the “left hook” of VII Corps during Desert Storm, or non-armored classics of high-speed mobility as General Yamashita Tomiyuki’s drive down the Malayan peninsula to Singapore in late 1941 and early 1942 (in part at least on bicycles). And it suffers from some of the same vulnerabilities as those assaults.

When German tankers first honed the idea of the blitzkrieg in the 1930s, it appeared to violate some of the fundamental principles of warfare, particularly the concern of traditional commanders with protecting their forces’ flanks. The highly mobile assault avoids being outflanked not by cautious protection of its flanks but by moving faster than any flanking force can hope to match: as Patton once put it, he did not care so much about protecting his flank as about making the Germans protect their flank. The drive becomes so fast and so fierce that the enemy is stunned and the penetrating force sweeps all before it.

But the history of such movements also shows that there are some vulnerabilities, and early indications seem to be that the 3rd Infantry’s assault may face similar problems. One is that the element of shock and surprise demands that there be no pause. The German onslaught against France in May 1940 shattered the French and Belgian Armies, but Adolf Hitler’s order for a 48-hour halt in the attack allowed the British to successfully evacuate the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk. That “halt order” has never fully been explained. Similarly, Patton’s great race across France figuratively ran out of gas when it literally ran out of gas: when there was insufficient fuel available to sustain it.

Those two problems seem less likely to affect the current campaign because no halt order is likely and the logistics are well-planned, except for the danger demonstrated on March 23 when a US supply column was ambushed near al-Nasiriyya. One danger of such rapid advances is that, by leaving enemy formations behind on the flank, the less-well-protected supply trains may be vulnerable in a way that the rapidly moving vanguard is not.

Another problem is the simple one of bypassed enemy formations. As the 3rd Infantry spearhead raced toward Baghad, it had to leave elements of its own or other allied forces in front of Basra, al-Nasiriyya, and was likely to have to do the same at several cities from Najaf up to Baghdad. It has become a fundamental principle of mobility doctrine to bypass major enemy formations and neutralize them by isolating them, but this requires substantial follow-on forces to reduce the enemy formations over time and prevent their becoming a threat to supply lines. This doctrine of bypassing enemy units in favor of rapid advances, more colorfully known to the troops as the “bypass and haul ass” approach, works well so long as there is a sufficient follow-on force available to eventually reduce the enemy positions left behind and so long as these cannot become a threat to one’s supply lines. The fact that Basra did not fall as quickly as some had imagined might occur, and that defections of units and commanders were far less common than had been hoped, means that significant forces will continue to consolidate in the rear areas and seek to take other cities while the spearhead concentrates on Baghdad. But this is, by some standards, a rather light force. The 4th Armored Division is not ashore yet as this is written, and without a northern front, the spearheads face a concentration of up to seven Republican Guard divisions. Is the force too light to protect its flanks and take Baghdad? That is not yet clear.

Already before the war was even four or five days old there was talk in the press of things not going as anticipated. In fact, as the US Central Command noted, the forward elements of the 3rd Infantry went farther than the longest maneuver in Desert Storm in less time, but of course, they had much farther to go to achieve their objective. This war is not an attempt to shift Iraq out of Kuwait but an attempt to defeat and occupy Iraq, which means that the Iraqi Army must be defeated in detail and the major cities eventually taken. That will not happen overnight. Those prophets of a “cakewalk” or a “three-day war” were never military officers, and the military and intelligence professionals have made clear from the beginning that this war would be somewhat difficult and would, like any war, have its surprises.

The fact, however, that Iraqi regular Army units have not simply melted away as some dreamed might occur could pose problems, since once the leading elements become engaged in a full-fledged frontal confrontation with the Republican Guard divisions around Baghdad (a process likely to begin as this is written), the continuing presence of unsubdued hostile Army units on the flanks of the main force’s supply lines could pose a problem. It does seem clear that, as The Estimate anticipated (See Dossier in The Estimate for October 4, 2002), Iraq has decided not to contest the north and has made its main defensive effort to protect the central Sunni heartland, as a sort of redoubt into which the coalition forces can be drawn and engaged in protracted conflict.

A reasonable assessment of the first days of the war would be that it has gone mostly according to plan, insofar as reasonable military leaders recognize that no plan survives contact with the enemy, but that Iraq’s defenses have not collapsed and its own apparent defensive plan has not yet been defeated: the problem of Baghdad remains, and it is the subject of the bulk of the present issue of The Estimate.

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