Archives: Gazette Magazines

By 1stLt Jordan A Blashek & Cpl John S Galloup

At some point in their careers, every Marine comes across Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1 (MCDP 1), Warfighting, the U.S. Marine Corps’ doctrinal philosophy for how we think about war. Indeed, by the time a Marine has reached the rank of sergeant, he has probably been required to read Warfighting so many times that he is forced to suppress the inevitable groan as the next instructor or platoon commander places it on the required reading list. Yet it is important that every Marine, regardless of rank, reads and understands MCDP 1 and the doctrine of maneuver warfare because it serves as the foundation for how we do business. Among other things, it provides a practical guide for leading Marines, a common language for tactical employment, and a particular way to think about combat, all of which makes the Marine Corps unique among Military Services.

Yet the brilliance of maneuver warfare and its relevance to the individual warfighter is lost if we cannot find a way to make the publication enjoyable (or even simply accessible) for younger Marines. The answer to this problem might lie in a popular science fiction book written in 1985 by a man who had never served day of his life in the military. Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game (A Tor Book, NY, 1977, 1985, 1991) vividly and accurately illustrates tactical principles and leadership traits that are described in MCDP 1. Easily readable and very engaging, Ender’s Game brings the theory of maneuver warfare to life, especially for young Marines who can relate better to Ender Wiggin, the young military genius and protagonist of the book, than to a German theorist like Carl von Clausewitz. In fact, Mai John F. Schmitt, the author of MCDP 1, considered Ender’s Game such a good study of leadership and tactics that he taught the book during lectures at the Marine Corps University in Quantico. With this in mind, we will use MCDP 1 to analyze the tactical and leadership lessons found in Ender’s Game to show the value in reading the two works side by side.

Set in a near future, Ender’s Game begins with a united human race on Earth engaged in a decades-long war against an insect-like race called the Buggers. After repelling the Second Bugger Invasion 70 years ago, the military has been searching for a brilliant commander to lead the human’s spacefleet against the Buggers, who nearly wiped out the human race in their last invasion. For years the military has been selecting child geniuses and training them at the Battle School through elaborate and technologically advanced wargames in order to turn them into military commanders. At the beginning of the book, Ender Wiggin is selected to attend the Battle School at the age of 6 and is immediately separated out by the instructors as potentially the most brilliant military mind ever seen, which quickly earns Ender the enmity of the other students. Tormented by the other students and challenged ruthlessly by the teachers, Ender is forced to rely on himself and a small core of loyal friends to survive and become a commander.

For the next few years Ender develops into a soldier at the Battle School by participating as part of mock armies in the battle room, a zero-gravity chamber designed to replicate different elements of combat. Through his creativity, intellect, and initiative, Endcr develops novel techniques and tactical ideas that propel him to become the best soldier and leader in the school. Given command of Dragon Army, Endcr develops his own soldiers by training them to be military thinkers rather than automatons simply executing rote formations and maneuvers. Based on decentralized command, Ender’s combat leadership style relies on mission intent and initiative-based tactics, which allows him to easily defeat other armies. Eventually, the teachers at the school begin to stack the deck against Ender in every way they can, pushing him to his breaking point. Yet, against increasingly skewed odds, Ender always manages to win using his style of maneuver warfare.

After graduating from the Battle School, Ender goes to Command School to learn to be a starfleet commander, where he becomes the student of the legendary commander Mazer Rackham. Having defeated the Buggers in the previous invasion, Mazer Rackham prepares Ender to face the alien race using a simulator that replicates starfleet combat. Ender eventually takes command of a fleet of squadrons led by his former friends and subordinates from the Battle School. While Ender believes he is simply learning on a simulator, he is actually fighting the real Buggers by controlling the human starfleet using a new technology called the Ansible, a communications device that allows him to instantly control the starships across the galaxy. In what Ender believes to be his final exam at Command School, he destroys the Bugger home world and the entire Bugger fleet, eliminating the threat to the human race.

Perhaps the greatest value in reading Ender’s Game side by side with MCDP 1 is the insight it provides into the theory of maneuver warfare. According to MCDP 1, there are two distinct styles of warfare – attrition and maneuver. In attrition, we attempt to defeat the enemy through the complete destruction of his forces. Simply put, we pit our strength against the enemy’s strength in an attempt to destroy him through superior firepower. In contrast, maneuver warfare seeks to destroy the enemy “system” by attacking enemy vulnerabilities in order to destroy the enemy’s will to resist. We seek to pit our strengths against enemy weaknesses in order to maximize advantage and exploit success. While both styles exist on a continuum and rarely ever in pure form, the styles reflect an approach to war – a way of thinking about combat and how to thrive in it.

In Ender’s Game, we find vivid examples of both styles put into practice by various armies in the battle room. In Bonzo Madrid’s Salamander Army, attrition warfare finds perfect expression in the rehearsed battle plans and mass formations that Bonzo uses to destroy his opponents. Through rigorous drilling and instant obedience to orders, the soldiers of Salamander learned to execute these complex formations and patterns in order to bring massive firepower to bear on the enemy. Even as a young soldier, Ender quickly realizes the weakness of this style, as he notes:

The well-rehearsed formations were a mistake. It allowed the soldiers to obey shouted orders instantly, but it also meant they were predictable. The individual soldiers were given little initiative. Once a pattern was set, they were to follow it through. There was no room for adjustment to what the enemy did against the formation.

Similarly, Ender is able to analyze the strengths of maneuver warfare in Pol Slattery’s Leopard Army. In its battle against Salamander, Slattery’s army uses quick and chaotic attacks in order to demoralize its enemy, who quickly forfeit the initiative and huddle together in the center of the battle room. Though both sides lost roughly the same number of soldiers in the battle, the Salamander Army “felt defeated,” ultimately allowing Leopard to achieve victory. However, while Pol Slattery has interesting ideas on maneuver tactics, Ender notices that they are still immature. His army’s movements were too uncontrolled and chaotic, resulting in unnecessary casualties and nearly losing him the battle.

Eventually, Ender receives command of his own army and implements tactical ideas and leadership principles that could have been lifted straight from the pages of Warfighting. Relying on decentralized control and initiative-based tactics, Ender develops Dragon Army into a nearly unbeatable unit, despite having the youngest and most inexperienced soldiers in the school. In the battle room, Ender leads his army by providing intent and mission-type orders, then relying on subordinate leaders to make quick decisions as necessary in order to accomplish his desired end state. By giving subordinates the freedom to exercise initiative, Ender’s army is able to take advantage of the chaotic and unpredictable nature of war. Specifically, his soldiers are able to rapidly identify opportunities and exploit advantages as the battle unfolds, in turn creating a tempo and fluidity that overwhelm the enemy’s system. Based on these qualities, maneuver warfare finds near perfect expression in Dragon Army.

Ender’s Game also provides young Marines with a clear example of two of the more difficult concepts in MCDP 1 – centers of gravity (COGs)/critical vulnerabilities (CVs) and orienting on the enemy. To defeat an enemy system, maneuver warfare relies on the related concepts of COGs and CVs. A COG is an important source of strength that allows the enemy to impose his will on us. It may be an intangible factor, such as morale, or a specific capability, such as an armor column or fortified machinegun position. A CV is a weakness in the enemy system that, if exploited, will do the most significant damage to the enemy’s ability to resist our will. Ender’s Game does a very good job of showing how these concepts can be used to fight an enemy. In his final battle against the Buggers, Ender defeats the enemy only after he successfully identifies the Bugger’s CV – their unprotected planet where their queens live. By avoiding the enemy’s COG – the massive Bugger space fleet – Ender annihilates the Bugger race by attacking the queens on the unprotected planet, eliminating their command and control system.

Similarly, as a young soldier in the battle room, Ender learns the principle that all combat is determined and decided in relation to the enemy. According to MCDP 1, “orienting on the enemy” is fundamental to maneuver warfare by focusing our attention outward rather than on our own internal procedures. By understanding the unique characteristics that make an enemy system function, we can penetrate that system in order to disrupt its operation and destroy its component parts. When Ender first enters the battle room, he quickly figures out that there is no standard orientation in the chamber because of the zero-gravity effects. So he orients himself on the enemy and determines that “the enemy’s gate is down.” By doing so, Endcr gains an advantage over everyone else for two reasons: (1) he is able to orient himself to his environment more quickly by focusing on the gate, and (2) the downward orientation places his feet toward the enemy, which creates a smaller target profile.

MCPD 1 further explains that we must try to “get inside” the enemy’s thought processes and see the enemy as he sees himself. Ultimately Ender is chosen as a military commander for his unique empathy, which allows him to understand his enemies better than anyone else. In his last battle with the Buggers, he uses this understanding of his enemy to attack the Bugger planet, a course of action he knew the Buggers had never considered possible. Yet, overwhelmed initially by the enemy’s COG, it is not until one of his subordinates reminds Ender that the enemy’s gate is down that he reorients himself on the enemy and finds their CV.

The approach we have taken in this article is that Ender’s Game serves as a valuable tool for making MCDP 1 and the theory of maneuver warfare more accessible to junior Marines. But the reality is that the leadership principles and tactical lessons contained in the novel have something valuable for Marines of all grades. We strongly recommend that leaders use Ender’s Game to teach their Marines about MCDP 1 and maneuver warfare. Often, to fully grasp a concept, we need to see it in practice, and Ender’s Game provides us with a dramatic example of maneuver warfare in action.

By Capts Aaron Brusch & Joshua Hotvet

It is fitting that Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1-3 (MCDP 1-3), Tactics y leads its final chapter, “Making It Happen,” with the quote at right from one of the preeminent originators of “counterinsurgency.”1 Today’s strategists and futurists firmly believe that the contemporary and future operating environment will continue to be characterized by the fluid and unscripted realities of perpetual small-scale insurgencies. If we have been reminded of anything in the past decade it is that count er insurgencies and “wars amongst the people” have always been disproportionately affected by the actions and decisions of small unit leaders. Their tactical decisions in those fleeting moments of the “irrational tenth” directly determine our strategic success or failure. As such, we need to train our young leaders – lieutenants and NCOs – in a way that develops and fosters their abilities to make correct decisions. By emphasizing training that forces them to adapt to a thinking enemy, rewards them for being agile enough to preempt that enemy, and prepares them for the nonlinear complexities of war, we will be providing them and ourselves with the tools for success.

If one were to list all of the qualities essential for a future combat leader, that list would have to include traits such as flexibility, adaptability, ingenuity, boldness, and innovation. Fortunately these all happen to be traits that the average lieutenant, sergeant, and corporal have in large supply. They are not overly tied to habits, they are often unafraid to attempt new solutions, and their lack of experience makes them extremely open to testing ideas that haven’t been tried before. However, that strength is also their weakness. That same lack of experience can often result in poor judgment and an inability to recognize telling patterns or take preventive action. Most concerning, it can result in an inability or an unwillingness to think critically about their environment. They are more likely than their seniors to miss important indicators, and they think less critically, not because they are unable or uninitiated, but rather because they are unaccustomed to thinking critically.

In the Marine Corps (and the military in general) we consistently demand decisiveness from our leaders. Given the necessary aggressive inclinations of the solid leader, we often take the old adage “any decision is better than no decision” too much to heart and incorrectly expand its scope to include “action.” While it is true that indecisiveness is the worst quality a leader could possess, there is a difference between indecision and inaction. What happens when we force the uneducated or unaccustomed to become decisive without giving them a context? In a world where junior leaders’ decisions have nonlinear effects for good or for ill, the aforementioned adage is becoming outdated at best and dangerous at worst. Perhaps it is time to recognize that there is no quality more essential to effective combat leadership than the ability to solve novel military problems, to have the flexibility to try different solutions, and to have the critical thinking skills necessary to change tacks when the initial plan hasn’t been successful. These points beg the question: how can we best sharpen adaptive thought, which will allow them to make rational decisions intuitively, or better yet, how do we help their decisionmaking move “left of the bang” by becoming more predictive and more agile?

The themes presented above are not original. Proponents of maneuver warfare have always discussed the impor tance of developing solid decisionmaking at lower levels, and none have done so better than LtCoI Michael D. WyIy and his colleague William Lind. In the watershed article, “Teaching Maneuver Warfare/’ WyIy states that our top priority must be to instill and develop military judgment in our junior leaders.2 Lind, in his Maneuver Warfare Handbook, contributes that:

Free play exercises are critical to developing initiative, imagination, and new tactics. They present junior leaders with unpredictable, rapidly changing situations just like combat. This automatically brings initiative and imagination to the fore.3

Building initiative, imagination, and sound military judgment is instrumental to successful maneuver warfare, and Lind ‘s thesis naturally leads to his conclusion that most exercises should be force-on-force free play

WyIy, Lind, and TE. Lawrence cut to the essential question of how we make decisions. Philosophers, at least as early as Plato, have described the “war between the rational mind and the irrational mind.” Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Blink, popularized the notion of the intuitive mind reflexively finding the answers before the rational mind was even aware there was a question.4 More recently, Daniel Kahneman gave the “dual process” decisionmaking process a more scientific and less anecdotal underpinning in his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. The work is full of ideas, experiments, and cognitive biases, showing just how easily our thinking can be skewed into irrationality, but understanding the general premise says volumes for how we can train ourselves to become better decisionmakers. Quickly simplified, the author divides our decisionmaking process into System 1 and System 2. System 1 is our intuitive mind. It is quick to react to danger, it is the reason we feel unease when an environment becomes unexplainably hostile, it sees patterns, and it is automatic. System 2, on the other hand, is our conscious and rational decisionmaking process. It is slower and more deliberative. One of the work’s most basic conclusions is that System 2 often believes itself to be the main player when in fact it is a supporting actor, stepping in only when we deem it necessary; for example, at times when what we are experiencing does not fit neatly into our previous experiences or seems to defy logic. The author makes the further implication that following System 1 leads to greater miscalculations unless we are aware of these proclivities and enlist the help of our more rational mind.5 The times when we are required to enlist the aid of System 2 can largely be seen as a function of how familiar we are with a topic, conceding the point to Gladwell that in cases where we are experts, we are much more likely to be able to rely on the instinctual and reflexive to deliver a more desirable outcome.

This is all an extremely simplified part of the book’s broad thesis, but the classification should sound very familiar to many of us as it is similar to describing recognition primed decisionmaking. Further, much like recognition primed decisionmaking, System 1, our intuition, is at its best when we have strengthened it with enough “repetitions” so as to easily divine the patterns and intuitively see things that an untrained eye cannot see. All of this is to say that we need to develop this facility in our lieutenants and NCOs. They need the practice and the repetitions to strengthen their abilities to think critically against a thinking enemy.

So the question becomes: how do we best develop and implement exercises that develop these positive attributes? MCDP 1-3 reminds us that “while combat provides the most instructive lessons on decision making, tactical leaders cannot wait for war to begin their education.”6 The necessity of providing realistic training that comes as close as possible to replicating the chaos, friction, and unpredictability of combat has long been an accepted fact, and as a Marine Corps we need to relentlessly advance that goal. As Lind intimated, competition is a great motivator on its own merit, but it has the added benefit of truly forcing a Marine to outthink an enemy who he knows is attempting to outthink him. Pitting Marine against Marine in a free play environment, where the Marine is not guided by an instructor or forced into courses of action to accomplish prescribed training and readiness standards, leaves that student the freedom to attempt to find his own solution to the problem. If our end state goal is to build a group of leaders capable of agile, adaptive, and critical thought in the contemporary and future operating environment, there is nothing more experiential than going against another human being and either winning or losing on your own merit or demerits. These experiences can form a more solid foundation for future decisionmaking.

The Marine Corps’ training philosophy espouses the idea of free play exercises but limits the scope of that free play in two significant ways. First, current training models adopt free play only insofar as mission- typ e orders. After the order is given, the training unit has very limited bounds within which to work, resulting in very specific performancebased skills being trained. Second, the current approach limits free play to only one side in the given scenario; the aggressor force is invariably controlled by a central exercise coordinator who knows where he wants the scenario to go and knows everything that the training unit is planning and doing. This approach is effective for lane training-type exercises, such as Enhanced MOJAVE VlPER, where each lane is designed to evaluate the unit’s ability to perform the “right” answer, be it responding to a sniper, reacting to an improvised explosive device strike, a complex ambush, etc. While the training unit is allowed to make its own decisions (as long as it fits into the prescribed training and readiness task), it never faces an independent, free thinking enemy.

That is not to be taken as an attempt to replace the preeminence of training tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP). Developing the understanding and ability to effectively respond to a given stimulus – basic skills and battle drills – is irreplaceable. No other training is as effective in evaluating and rehearsing specific training outcomes. However, the proposed training shouldn’t seek to replace lane training, but rather should foster a very different set of skills that complements proficiency in the basics. These two training paradigms should not be at odds. The development of critical and adaptive thought skills is as important in a low-intensity counterinsurgency environment as it is in a high-intensity battalion attack on a fortified position. The decisionmaking skills gained from true free play exercises are just as important as performance-based training and readiness manual standards. As MCDP 1-3 tells us, in these free play exercises, “leaders form and execute their decisions against an opposing force as individual Marines employ their skills against an active enemy.”7

After a training unit has demonstrated an understanding of why and how to perform certain actions, we must then push them into applying that knowledge in new ways, forcing them to take the baseline TTP and use it as it was intended to be used. Further still, a unit can train its collective skills and simultaneously train its leaders at all levels to fight a truly independent enemy. Unlike strict lane training exercises where units pass or fail by acting (or not acting) within certain bounds, an exercise in which two or more independent units are fighting without direction from a master scenario coordinator can present a realistic experience for all training units. Situations may develop of their own momentum as opposed to being planned and controlled by the exercise coordinator, opportunities can be generated and either exploited or wasted, and the training units can feel real consequences of their actions or inactions based on their enemy’s actions.

True free play is certainly not a novel approach. The 1st Tank Battalion conducted such an exercise three decades ago, pitting its companies against each other to great success. The 2d MarDiv, under then-MajGen Alfred M. Gray, conducted similar exercises in the early 1980s when maneuver warfare doctrine was first gaining traction in the Marine Corps.8 Further, the benefit of freeplay isn’t limited to the Marine Corps as evidenced by Joint Forces Command’s Millenium Challenge exercise. Combat leaders at all levels need to be able to think on their feet and make sound tactical decisions. Accordingly, free play exercises should be a part of all combat leadership schools. In addition, the Operating Forces should incorporate free play exercises of this type into their deployment workups.

As earlier articles have mentioned, The Basic School (TBS) has implemented such a training exercise in the updated program of instruction. “The War” is the culminating training event for the student lieutenants. It was designed to provide students the opportunity to demonstrate the core competencies they learned during the 6-month program of instruction. Its stated end state is to:

. . . send students to the operating forces who have been exposed to an unscripted tactical environment that better prepares them to be critical and adaptive thinkers in chaotic, complex, and uncertain environments.

The War consists of 7 days of true free play in which each student company is split in two, and each is given broad, opposing tasks and put into an area of operations that spans most of the available training areas on Marine Corps Base Quantico, with each side assisted by a TBS staff member acting as company commander. Once the missions are briefed, the students conduct all of the tactical planning and orders process and drive all of the action. The intent is that all students are fully immersed into The War experience and are solely responsible for the success or failure of their mission. When companies decisively succeed or reach culmination, they are given new, equally broad tasks to accomplish. The area of operation is large enough so that each platoon has the opportunity, depending on the plan developed by the students, to conduct every type of offensive, defensive, or patrolling operation, in the tree line and in urban environments. The students plan and execute their entire logistics plan, guided by the company commander and his student staff, and move logistics around the battlespace via a mobile section attached to each company

Instead of a master scenario event list, the exercise utilizes phases and branch plans to account for the fact that there is no timeline and the students’ actions are not dictated. Whether the students get through two tasks or six tasks is not important; the intent is that the students themselves drive all of the action and make all decisions impacting their mission. The situation is kept as realistic as possible so that the students have the ability to fully exploit any advantage they generate or one that arises on its own. Cherry picker casualties remain wounded in action or killed in action until that scenario plays out completely, and full casualty drill (triage and casualty evacuation) is demanded of the students throughout the exercise. The exercise makes extensive use of the instrumented-tactical engagement simulation system (I-TESS), which is worn by all students. The system not only tracks each student in realtime and sends the data to screens monitored by the exercise coordinators, but it also assigns casualties, assisting the observer controllers (OCs) and the exercise coordinators in rapidly understanding the battlefield environment and making necessary judgments of effects.

Finally, given the immersive nature of The War, there are no administrative breaks, and there are no debriefs until the exercise is complete. To tie the exercise together and facilitate the development of critical and adaptive thought, the exercise coordinators build and conduct a comprehensive after- action review of each war. The after- action review is built from the realtime battle log of The War made possible by the I-TESS gear and by the products built by the OCs. The OCs are specifically tasked to use whatever media they have available to chronologically record student decisionmaking and the ensuing consequences. Those products are distilled into several distinct case studies (in chronological order) and discussed in depth. For each case, the conversation starts with the most important questions. What was your understanding of the situation? What was your mission? How did you plan to generate and exploit advantage over your enemy in order to accomplish that mission? The facts of the case are reinforced by I-TESS slides that show the actual positions of each unit and by media delivered by the OCs. Each case study concludes with a discussion of why each unit succeeded or failed, and what could have been done differently. This debrief is critically important as it highlights judgments and decisions outside of a vacuum; i.e., the students are able to receive valid feedback from their adversary and truly see the battlespace through the eyes of their enemy. These conversations among the students, and the affiliated learning points in judgment and decisionmaking, represent the end state of the after- act ion review.

Detractors of this method could argue that allowing training units such an amount of freedom to essentially determine the course of their own training evolution would result in unrealistic or nonsalient training. That concern would best be addressed on three levels.

First, the exercise has to be run by competent coordinators who develop the exercise in such a way as to ensure that it remains free play for the students but not necessarily free play for the staff. However, the staff must be willing to accept that students, when given the opportunity to outthink an enemy, may also outthink a scenario. Second, it falls upon the training institution, be it school or unit, to determine when such an exercise would meet its training objectives. The ability to rapidly react to the enemy using sound battle drills and immediate action drills is irreplaceable, and entering into a free play exercise with the expectation that it will provide those skills is misguided. Finally, it follows that in the free play exercise the goal is not necessarily to mimic any particular enemy or style of maneuver. Rather the overriding goal is to provide the trainee with an opportunity to test his skills against an opposing will. This in turn facilitates the overarching goal of improving judgment and decisionmaking through experience. Training to that standard is not necessarily about imparting specific knowledge or skills, although those skills will be used and practiced during the course of training. Training to that standard is about teaching judgment and how to think.

It is essential that we tailor our training regimens to focus on decisionmaking in complex, chaotic, and ambiguous environments. Developing military judgment is just as important as developing performance-based skills from the training and readiness manual. However, unlike the collective skill sets, there are not any training and readiness standards that state: “Using mostly instinct, apply creative, agile, and adaptive thought – manifested as sound judgment – to solve a novel military problem.” The driving force behind competition and free play exercises is to facilitate an experience for the Marines that fully immerses them into a tactical problem, and then allows them to develop the situation and make decisions on their own against an independently thinking, adapting enemy. The true test of a free play exercise’s worth cannot be measured in green spreadsheet cells or by a number of checked boxes. The true test comes when those students are able to function more rapidly and outthink their enemy in the “irrational tenth.”

By Kevin L Davies

“For all its undisputed Korean provenance, the name Inchon possesses a wonderfully resonant American quality. It summons a vision of military genius undulled by time, undiminished by more recent memories of Asian defeat.”

– Max Hastings¹

“We shall land at Inchon and I shall crush them.”

– GEN Douglas Mac Arthur, 23 August 1950²

 

The landing at Inchon, Korea – Operation CHROMITE – is one of the most important examples of amphibious warfare in history, as it is an example of maneuver warfare par excellence and rescued amphibious warfare from possible oblivion. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the importance of CHROMITE to the study of amphibious warfare.

On 15 September 1950, the men of the United States X Corps landed at Inchon, the port of Seoul, Korea.³ According to the Korean Institute of Military History, the objective of the assault, named Operation CHROMITE, was as follows:

• To gain and secure a beachhead at Inchon.
• To rapidly advance to the inland area to regain and secure Kimp’o Airfield.
• To cross the Han River and recapture Seoul, the capital city of Korea.
• To take up positions in the vicinity of Seoul until the time when they could link up with troops of Eighth Army who were supposed to move up north from the Nantong front.⁴

Not only did the X Corps complete the mission with a minimal number of casualties, but in doing so it also routed the North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) and eliminated the desperate pressure the NKPA was applying on the beleaguered United Nations Command (UNC) forces in Pusan.⁵ This brilliant example of maneuver warfare demonstrates the need for professional amphibious forces to be maintained, as well as the importance of leadership when undertaking extremely risky operations. CHROMITE also demonstrated the need for commanders to understand the political implications of military operations, especially in a “limited war.”

Operation CHROMITE went ahead due to the leadership of one man, GEN Douglas Shoto MacArthur.⁶ Despite the initial unanimous opposition of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and several other ranking officers with extensive amphibious warfare experience, MacArthur persevered with his vision. Following a masterful display of argument and rhetoric at the 23 August 1950 meeting with representatives for the Joint Chiefs, he was able to gain their reluctant support for the operation.⁷ According to COL Donald W. Boose:

MacArthur’s confidence in the operation, in spite of the problems inherent in the landing site, was no doubt the product of his experiences in the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA) in World War II where he had seen such problems repeatedly overcome.⁸

At Inchon, MacArthur was taking a massive risk, and he knew it.⁹ This did not deter him from launching CHROMITE but rather served to motivate him as it meant that, for him, victory meant glory while defeat meant ignominy. The lesson here is that even when confronted with steadfast opposition, an extremely difficult undertaking can be given approval provided there are people with sufficient leadership skills to see such operations through to the end. MacArthur’s behavior after CHROMITE, however, is a different story and beyond the scope of this article.

The Inchon landings occurred at a time when amphibious warfare was deemed obsolete. In testimony to Congress during autumn 1949, approximately 1 year before Inchon, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General of the Army Ornar Bradley (whose previous commands included being the Commanding General, 1st U.S. Army, during the D-Day invasion) stated, “I predict that large-scale amphibious operations will never occur again.”¹⁰ Furthermore, the United States Marine Corps, like the rest of the U.S. military, had suffered enormous cutbacks following the demobilization at the end of World War II and was now operating at less than 16 percent of its World War II size.¹¹ Inchon proved, without a shadow of a doubt, the importance of amphibious warfare and the need to maintain amphibious capabilities so as to be able to take advantage of all that amphibious warfare offers, especially to a maritime power like the United States. According to Jim Dorschner:

Operation CHROMITE did not introduce any fundamentally new aspects to the art of war. Rather, the operation served to reinforce traditional lessons, such as the importance of maintaining trained and ready forces to deter aggression or confront a contingency, the priceless value of sure footed staff work, and tangible benefits of innovation, flexibility and individual resourcefulness.¹²

Of serious interest to students of the Inchon landing was the fact that Inchon was picked at all. According to Col Robert D. Heinl, Jr.:

The reasons MacArthur kept Inchon in mind are evident. Inchon is the seaport of Seoul, Korea’s ancient capital and first city. The excellent railroads left by the Japanese fan north and south from Seoul, as do the less excellent highways. The national telephone and telegraphs net radiate from Seoul. Kimpo, Korea’s largest and best airport, lies in between Inchon and Seoul. Inchon, in effect, is to Seoul what Piraeus was to Athens. ¹³

While the strategic advantages of attacking South Korea’s “Piraeus” were numerous, the tactical problems presented were many. According to Heinl:

The amphibious bible of those days was USF-6 [U.S. Sixth Fleet], predecessor of USF-22A. USF-6 set out seven criteria for a landing area:

• Ability of naval forces to support the assault and follow up operations
• Shelter from unfavourable sea weather
• Compatibility of beaches and their approaches to size, draft, manoeuverability, and beaching
• Offshore hydrography
• Extent of minable waters
• Conditions which may affect enemy ability to defeat mine-clearance efforts
• Facilities for unloading, and how these may be improved.¹⁴

On all these criteria, Inchon rated poorly. According to Heinl:

Inchon produced 32 foot tides twice a day . . . the tidal currents rarely dropped below three knots and, in the main channel, could reach up to 7-8 knots, which was almost the speed of a LCVP (Landing Craft, vehicle and personnel).¹⁵

Furthermore Inchon’s approach provided no room for maneuver and was easily minable.¹⁶ Inchon also had no beaches, only small stretches of “moles, breakwaters and seawalls.”¹⁷ In addition the heights and islands surrounding it were well suited for batteries that could easily pick off minesweepers as they cleared a path for the larger vessels.¹⁸ Given this, it is little surprise that GEN Edward Almond, Commanding General, U.S. X Corps, said Inchon was “the worst possible place where we could bring in an amphibious assault.”¹⁹

The fact that “the worst possible place” was chosen is interesting, because in a sense, it was the best possible place to launch such a high-risk venture. “There is an ancient Chinese apothegm that ‘the wise general is one who is able to turn disadvantage to his own advantage,'” and MacArthur used this apothegm to its fullest possible extent.²⁰ Inchon was poorly defended precisely because the North Koreans did not expect a major landing there. Because of this, MacArthur sent his forces where they were least expected and thus was able to enter Inchon almost unopposed. Operation CHROMITE demonstrated that, while there may be certain planning guidelines that the amphibious commander ignores at his peril, there are no fixed rules. An experienced commander who is supported by an efficient staff may be able to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. However, this will only be possible if the appropriate knowledge, skills, and equipment are also present.²¹

“Inchon remains a monument to ‘can do,’ to improvisation and risk-taking on a magnificent scale.”²² This statement has a great deal of truth to it. One of the most amazing aspects about Operation CHROMITE was the speed in which the operation developed from an idea to reality. In about 6 weeks MacArthur was able to create a force of almost 70,000 Marines, regular and Reserve; Army; and Republic of Korea (ROK) units, as well as a 261 strong fleet of American and United Nations vessels.²³ In addition, he gathered vital intelligence about Inchon and the forces there and, more importantly, got permission from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President. It was fortunate for MacArthur that, although the CHROMITE force was hastily assembled, it contained such a strong reservoir of experience that the operation was feasible without extended rehearsal.²⁴ This emphasizes the need for any country wanting to engage in amphibious warfare to have and, more importantly, to maintain a professional amphibious force, because risky operations, especially amphibious ones like CHROMITE, cannot be undertaken by a force of amateurs.

One of the most important lessons Inchon has brought to the world of military science is the devastating effect maneuver warfare can have on an opponent. Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, Warfighting, defines maneuver warfare as follows:

[Maneuver] warfare is a warfighting philosophy that seeks to shatter the enemy’s cohesion through a variety of rapid, focused, and unexpected actions which create a turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which the enemy cannot cope.²⁵

The effect the landing had up the NKPA was almost immediate and created exactly the “rapidly deteriorating situation” maneuver warfare theorists hope for. With each of the 10 divisions sent across the 38th Parallel reduced to a few thousand exhausted fighters, each and all of them desperately trying to break the U.S. and ROK forces at Pusan, North Korea simply could not “cope” with an attack on its vulnerable flank – exactly as MacArthur expected.²⁶ The Inchon landings are an example of maneuver warfare par excellence and “have certainly acquired mythological status as a classic example of the indirect approach and of manoeuvre warfare.”²⁷ If, as MacArthur later described, North Korea “struck like a cobra,” then MacArthur, using the principles of maneuver warfare he displayed so often during the Pacific campaign in World War II, was like a farmer standing in front of it with a rake, just waiting for the right moment to strike back, and hard.²⁸

On 27 September 1950, 12 days after the landing at Inchon, United Nations and ROK forces liberated Seoul. Caught between the hammer of Inchon and the anvil of Pusan, the NKPA offensive collapsed.

Trapped, the North Korean forces west of Osan were smashed. Those to the east collapsed as they retreated north. Many soldiers took refuge in the Taebaeks and became guerrillas. By the time they were back across the 38th Parallel, the North Koreans had lost over 150,000 men. … The UNC captured 125,000 prisoners. UNC losses in the offensive, including Inchon, were 18,000.²⁹

The devastating effect the Inchon landing had on the NKPA clearly demonstrates the strategic value of amphibious operations in wartime. As for the United States, as so eloquently described by Max Hastings, “In a world in which nursery justice decided military affairs, Operation CHROMITE would have won the war.”³⁰

While at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels Operation CHROMITE was a masterpiece of success, its effects at the grand strategic, or international, level produced extremely serious and negative consequences. Put quite simply: . . . while MacArthur’s manoeuvre warfare was outstandingly effective in annihilating the North Koreans, it did not create a stable basis for peace. Rather the decisiveness of the victory greatly threatened the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China.³¹

With the NKPA a bleeding shell of its former self and crawling back over the 38th Parallel, MacArthur sent his forces after them with the aim of uniting Korea under the Western-backed government of Syngman Rhee. Unfortunately, the success of Inchon served to blind the UNC to the political consequences of sending soldiers to the Chinese border. For Mao Zedong’s newly established People’s Republic of China, the arrival of UNC forces at the YaIu River, combined with several bombastic comments by MacArthur and the linkage of the conflict to the Taiwan/Formosa issue, posed a severe threat to it.³² On 24 November 1950, Mao Zedong made good on his repeatedly ignored threats to attack, and soon UNC forces were reeling back across the 38th Parallel as the war entered its bloody third stage. What is interesting here is the way in which no operation, no matter how brilliantly conceived and executed, can be undertaken without a full understanding of the geopolitical context that may surround it, especially in a limited war.

One of the lasting lessons Inchon taught was the importance of joint operations in amphibious warfare. Despite the cutbacks suffered by the United States Navy (USN) and Marine Corps following World War II:

… the National Defence Act of 1947 permitted the USN to retain its carrier-borne aircraft and the USMC its organic aviation, armour, artillery and specialist shipping and both the USN and USMC could thus continue training, despite the reduced numbers.³³

Additionally, “by having their own integral supporting arms and logistics services, the USMC [was] able to work easily with the USN on well practised drills.”³⁴ This integration paid dividends at Inchon.

While the Inchon landings achieved the intended objectives, and did so with a minimum of causalities, there are three criticisms that can be made about the operation. The first of these, and by far the most serious, was the appalling lack of security displayed by the Americans in the lead up to the landing. As Hastings scathingly writes, “The intention of landing at Inchon was one of the worst-kept secrets of war, the subject of open discussion among thousands of men in Japan and Korea.”³⁵ How this “secret” did not make into the hands of the North Koreans is a mystery, and the poor security shown was completely inexcusable. The Americans should have known better.

Second, there was a frightful lack of intelligence about the conditions of Inchon prior to Operation CHROMITE. Beyond the initial, and understandable, limited intelligence known about the NKPA order of battle at Inchon:

. . . the Japanese maps and hydrographic charts [vital to understanding Inchon’s enormous tides and treacherous coast] were inaccurate, outdated or conflicting …. In addition, aerial photography meant to augment the maps was difficult to interpret due to the different altitudes at which they were taken and could not accurately determine the height of the seawalls.³⁶

MacArthur had had 5 years while he was Supreme Allied Commander, Japan, and Commander-in-Chief, Allied Forces, Far East Command, to gather information regarding the conditions and tides, and he was forced to do it all in 6 weeks. While the desperately needed intelligence was commendably gathered in time, such readily accessible intelligence about Inchon should have been developed well before September 1950.

The final criticism about CHROMITE is that the U.S. forces were far too slow in advancing on Seoul following the landing despite limited opposition, complete mastery of the air and sea and, in the case of the 1st MarDiv, being equipped with “tank, amphibious tractor, motor transport battalions and a fully motorised artillery regiment.” It took 12 days for the Marines and Army to reach the outskirts of Seoul, a distance of only 20 miles and across a well-developed road and rail system.³⁷ The problem lay in the mindset of the 1st MarDiv. Filled with veterans, at all levels, whose knowledge of amphibious warfare was based on the slow, methodical battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, it had trouble breaking out of “its Pacific island fortress assault mentality.”³⁸ The slow pace of the advance gave the NKPA in Seoul time to prepare, something that maneuver warfare seeks to prevent.

Conclusion

Operation CHROMITE was a masterful display of military prowess. With a swift blow to the flank, the forces under MacArthur were able to devastate the NKPA and change the course of the Korean War. Inchon demonstrated the important role amphibious warfare still had following the end of World War II. It also showed the importance of having a dedicated amphibious force, as there is no chance such a risky operation could have been undertaken as successfully by anybody other than a professional force. In addition Inchon showed the importance of joint operations and the effect maneuver warfare can have.

MacArthur’s leadership up to and during the landing was nothing short of spectacular. Operation CHROMITE only happened because of his vision and drive. The willingness of MacArthur to even attempt a landing at Inchon, especially given the fact that Inchon was precisely the wrong sort of place to launch an amphibious assault, demonstrates how important leadership is when undertaking such risky operations. While he misunderstood (or ignored) the context surrounding CHROMITE, he deserves full credit for seeing Operation CHROMITE through from conception to its brilliant execution.

The lack of security surrounding the landing was disgraceful, and the failure to gather intelligence in the prewar period was unacceptable. The Marine forces were too slow in their advance on Seoul, but it must be recognised that they were fighting in the memory of the Pacific campaign of World War II. To the veterans of the Pacific, slow and methodical was the only option available to them and that was how they fought at Inchon. Despite this, Inchon was, and forever will be, one of the most important examples of amphibious warfare in history as few other operations have achieved so much, so quickly, and for so little cost.

Notes

1. Hastings, Max, The Korean War, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1987, p. 99.

2. Langley, Michael, Inchon: MacArthur’s Last Triumph, Batsford, London, 1979, p. 53.

3. Different sources have different spellings of Inchon, though the previously mentioned one seems to be the most common and will be thus used in this article.

4. Korean Institute of Military History, The Korean War, Vol. 1, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 2000, p. 597.

5. Total casualties for the X Corps were 521 dead, 63 missing, 2,438 wounded. Gordon L. Rottman, Inch’on 1950: The Last Great Amphibious Assault^ Osprey, Great Britain, 2006, p. 89. Pusan is now called Busan, but the previous name will be used in this article.

6. Rottman, p. 42-43, according to Rottman, the notion of landing at Inchon was not conceived by MacArthur but rather by Donald McB Curtís, a Pentagon staff member who had prepared a contingency plan, SL- 17, days before the North Korean invasion. Nevertheless, it was MacArthur whose leadership and determination saw the plan go into action.

7 Boose, Jr., COL Donald W., USA(Ret), Over the Beach: US Army Amphibious Operations in the Korean War, Combat Studies Institute Press, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 2008, pp. 159-161.

8. Ibid., p. 161.

9. At the 23 August 1950 meeting, MacArthur said of the risk, “I realize that Inchon is a 5000-1 gamble, but I am used to such gambles,” Col Robert D. Heinl, “The Inchon Landing: A case study in amphibious planning,” Naval War College Review, Spring 1998, pp. 117-134.

10. Ibid., p. 118.

11. Hickey, COL Michael, USA(Ret), “The Inchon Landings, Korea – Operation CHROMITE, 15 September 1950,” in Tristan Lovering, Amphibious Assault: Manoeuvre from the Sea, Seafarer Books, Suffolk, England, 2007, pp. 411-420.

12. Dorschner, Jim, “Douglas MacArthur’s Last Triumph,” Military History, September 2005, Joint Chiefs of Staff-Group, accessed at http://www.jsc-group.com/military/warl950/500915inchon.html, 6 October 2010.

13. Heinl, “Inchon, 1950,” in LtCoI Merrill L. Bartlett, USMC(Ret), Assault from the Sea: Essays on the History of Amphibious Warfare, ed., Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1983, pp. 337-353.

14. Ibid., p. 340.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid., p. 341.

20. Ibid., pp. 340-341.

21. Speller, Ian, and Christopher Tuck, Strategy and Tactics: Amphibious Warfare, Spellmount Publishers, Staplehurst, United Kingdom, 2001, p. 37.

22. Hastings, p. 99.

23. Rottman, pp. 31, 39, according to Rottman:

32 LSTs (landing ship, tank) were crewed by Japanese and were on loan to the Shipping Control Administration, Japan to replace the huge numbers of inter-coastal ships lost during the war which were vital to ensure the country’s recovery and development. The use of these Japanese-manned ships was of questionable legality.

24. Hickey, p. 420.

25. United States Marine Corps, Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, Warfighting, United States Government, Washington, DC, 1997, p. 73, accessed at http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/service_pubs/mcdpl.pdf, 6 October 2010.

26. Rottman, p. 12.

27. Hickey, p. 419.

28. Heinl, “The Inchon Landing,” p. 119.

29. Ibid., p. 27-28.

30. Hastings, p. 99.

31. Malkasian, Carter, Essential Histories, The Korean War, 1950-1953, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, Great Britain, p. 28.

32. Hastings, p. 128-146.

33. Hickey, p. 414.

34. Ibid., p. 419.

35. Hastings, p. 103.

36. Ibid., p. 51.

37. Stolfi, Rüssel H., “A Critique of Pure Success: Inchon Revisited, Revised and Contrasted,” The Journal of Military History, Lexington, VA, April 2004, pp. 505-525.

38. Ibid., p. 515.

By F J “Bing” West & MajGen Ray L Smith, USMC(Ret)

MajGen Richard C. Schulze Memorial Essay

Geopolitics

At the broad level of geopolitics, the significance of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF) was an increase in what may be called “the deterrent quotient”; that is, nations antithetic to the United States will tread more cautiously. Defeat encourages aggression, and victory discourages aggressors. The speed and ease of the televised American victory in Iraq impressed the global audience. Conversely, after Saigon fell in 1975, the United States experienced a bout of national dyspepsia, and for a period of about 7 years we were challenged by the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and even by Iran and Nicaragua. On the other hand, after Baghdad fell in April, Iran, North Korea, and Syria—to name but a few—reacted by avoiding actions that would antagonize the United States. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld growled at Syria, which hastily expelled some of the Iraqi supporters of Saddam who had fled to Damascus. The military leaders of nations hostile to the United States will counsel against their governments openly supporting terrorists because they know this President has the will and possesses an array of weapons with which to strike. OIF abetted rather than diverted from the war on terrorists.

Conversely, by demonstrating convincingly our martial superiority, the campaign against Saddam’s army probably strengthened the determination of countries like Iran to follow the lead of North Korea and acquire nuclear weapons as their deterrent against any potential American attack intent on regime elimination. Indeed, a principal reason for the war was to remove Saddam before he gained a nuclear capability. So, on balance, the war in Iraq altered national security priorities away from large-scale conventional war and toward combating terrorists—especially preventing the use of weapons that produce mass casualties—and dealing with the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran.

Overall Conventional Power

America emerged from the war as the world’s military colossus, able and willing to employ overwhelming force unilaterally. The panoply of arms illustrated that the United States can strike any country with a combination of lethal blows. To the extent that Operation DESERT STORM (ODS) in 1991 was remembered for its air campaign, OIF will be remembered for its ground campaign. America can win a war by leading with air or by leading with land forces. With unassailable air superiority, American fixed-wing aircraft pounded both Baghdad command centers and military vehicles outside Baghdad. Having learned from ODS, a large percentage of Iraqi crews abandoned their armor and their vehicles at the outset of the war. This flight was followed by a second wave of desertions as the American armored convoys approached. American artillery provided fire support while their counterbattery radars nullified Iraqi indirect fires. As in ODS, the Abrams tank was unstoppable. The combination of direct firepower, maneuver, indirect supporting arms, and rapid resupply exceeded expectations.

The Iraqi Army did not fight with cohesion or determination, either because they wouldn’t, or as we have postulated here, they couldn’t. Either way, the highly publicized and lengthy buildup to the war psychologically unhinged the Iraqi armed forces. They had decided they were beaten before the war began. In all wars there comes a tipping point when the weight of the moral to the physical weapons systems becomes exponential. Often when Napoleon appeared on the battlefield his mere presence caused the opposing army to believe defeat was inevitable, prompting Napoleon to declare that the moral was to the physical in battle as 3 to 1. In Iraq it was 20 to 1. It certainly is in our interest to maintain that air of invincibility both for deterrent and for warfighting purposes.

OIF was more a demonstration of America’s martial capabilities than a two-sided battle against a tenacious foe. We do not know how the body politic will respond when American casualties are significant—which will inevitably happen in some future war. Nonetheless, when casualties occur unexpectedly, a commander must keep his focus on the mission and not halt to take counsel of his fears. In peacetime an accident always results in an investigation and often relief of commands all the way up the immediate chain of command. In wartime risks must be run, and some decisions will be wrong. Marines at all leadership levels must beware of hesitancy due to casualties.

When casualties and setbacks occurred during 23 to 25 March, the press turned from highly positive to highly negative in the space of a few days. There were reports about U.S. forces bogged down in the desert and a flawed Pentagon strategy. While these stories were coming in, Baghdad fell. The dizzying speed with which the press can report from the battlefield and the alacrity with which individual battles are headlined as overall trends suggest that when our forces do suffer heavy casualties, the fortitude and patience of our elected leaders will be tested.

Marine Role at the Operational Level

The major observation is that maneuver warfare worked. The Iraqi order of battle in the I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF) zone included numerous irregular forces (fedayeen, Ba’ath Party special police, and militias), six regular army divisions, and two Republican Guard divisions. Two divisions were deployed forward near the Kuwaiti border defending the oilfields and the Euphrates crossings. The others were disposed in depth along the Basra to Baghdad highway that parallels the Tigris River and is the historic invasion route for armies attacking from the Gulf.

Before the war, LtGen James T. Conway, the I MEF commander, and MajGen James N. Mattis, commanding the 1st Marine Division (1st MarDiv), had plotted an aggressive strategy that provided a roadmap throughout the campaign. Col Joseph Dunford’s 5th Marines Regimental Combat Team (5th RCT) attacked 9 hours ahead of the war plan’s schedule in order to secure the oilfields before they could be torched. The 7th Marines seized their portion of the oilfields the next day. The destruction of the 51st Iraqi Division in the oilfields suggested the coalition’s main attack was directed east toward Basra and then up the Tigris. Instead, the 1st MarDiv then swung 70 kilometers to the west to pick up the highways leading to Baghdad. This sideslip allowed the 1st MarDiv to bypass five Iraqi regular Army divisions and one Republican Guard division that were held in place by the 3d Marine Aircraft Wing (3d MAW), Task Force Tarawa, and the British (UK) division (part of the MEF).

Confusion and hesitation at An Nasiriyah cost the 1st Marine Regiment a day, but the 5th and 7th Marines moved their convoys north on schedule, thanks to the logistics light, or LogLite, supply system of the division. For a brief time (23 to 24 March) at the city of An Nasiriyah, it looked like the Iraqi tactic of mobile teams firing rocket propelled grenades from cities would significantly slow down the convoys. However, a few days later at the city of Diwaniyah, where the fedayeen posed a threat to the western flanks of the convoys, Marine infantry advanced and cleared the trench lines. There were no further attacks from that city, illustrating that the threat of the fedayeen to logistics lines had been overblown. While Task Force Tarawa and the UK forces secured the southern portion of Iraq, the 1st MarDiv marched on Baghdad.

The 5th RCT had reached Route 27 and was turning northeast to the Tigris on 27 March when an unfortunate and widely denied “pause” ordered by the Coalition Land Forces Component Commander halted the division for several days. When the attack resumed, the 5th RCT feinted as if intending to charge straight north up Highway 1. Instead, the 5th RCT suddenly cut northeast and crossed the Tigris at a seam in the artillery fans between the two Special Republican Guard divisions on the east bank. MajGen Mattis drove to the front, surveyed the fighting, and ordered a “run and gun” sprint for 120 kilometers in 2 days with 36 tanks in the lead as the hammer, and 3d Battalion, 5th Marines (3/5) flushing the fedayeen from the culverts along the highway. The major resistance occurred during 3 to 4 April along Route 6 near Baghdad. The tanks and hardbacked HMMWVs of 5th RCT led the way in a running fight, while again it was dismounted infantry who delivered the coup de grâce. The vast majority of the enemy’s main forces were behind them and irrelevant. Nothing stood between them and Baghdad but the Diyala River.

Once at the Baghdad bridge over the Diyala River, Col Steven Hummer’s 7th Marines took the lead, and 3/4, 1/7, and 3/7 charged across the Diyala River, followed by Col John Toolan’s 1st Marines. The overall war plan called for raids into Baghdad, but the division “forgot” to include withdrawal plans after each raid, and on 9 April the Marines and Iraqis tore down Saddam’s statue near the Palestine Hotel symbolizing the end of sustained military resistance.

The Iraqi regular forces did not put up much of a fight, just as they didn’t in Kuwait in 1991. However, one should not dismiss them as fighters. They didn’t put up much of a fight because our combined arms power, coupled with a brilliant maneuver-oriented plan, made a cohesive defense impossible. The bypassed divisions were placed on the horns of a dilemma. If they left their prepared positions to counter the maneuver of the division, the pilots of 3d MAW (and the Navy and Air Force) would pounce on them. Any Iraqi armor surviving the air onslaught would be in the open terrain and at the mercy of the superior range and optics of the M1A1s and light armored vehicles (LAVs).

The Iraqi regular forces, if attacked in their fixed defenses, tried to fight. For instance, the 51st Division, supposed to be unreliable, fought as well as any other division the MEF faced. In operational terms, the attack on the 51st Division was frontal and with only a few hours “shaping” in order to achieve tactical surprise and seize the oilfields intact. As a result the effects of maneuver, deception, and combined arms that the rest of the Iraqis suffered did not apply to the 51st Division. Had we pounded our way from Basra to Baghdad, as the Iraqis expected and we might have done in the past, we suspect the reputation of the Iraqis as fighters might be better today than it is.

The culture of the Marine Corps, given the losses in the trenches of World War I and in storming the beaches in World War II, had led in Vietnam to an unreflecting acceptance of high casualty rates. After Vietnam the Marine Corps embraced the theory of maneuver warfare, and OIF was the first major war fought according to that doctrine. Employing three RCTs as its fighting core, the 1st MarDiv advanced on two routes, 7 and 1, and then converged onto Highway 6 on the east bank of the Tigris for the final sprint to Baghdad. To pin down and bypass major Iraqi forces, the division first feinted toward Basra and later feinted toward driving straight up Route 1 into Baghdad. The division split the seams between major Iraqi forces, conclusively engaging by direct fire only three of the eight Iraqi divisions in its area of operations. In contrast, the 3d MAW attacked those divisions incessantly, delivering 6 million pounds of high explosives and shredding their equipment.

The march up to Baghdad and on to Tikrit, the longest expedition in the history of the Marine Corps, was a remarkable achievement in maneuver, endurance, and supply. The LogLite austerity combined with the determination of the crews in the convoys, C-130s, assault amphibious vehicles (AAVs) LAVs, and tanks to eke out the last gallon of fuel and to keep moving the three armored columns (the three RCTs), each stretching 100 kilometers in length.

If the helicopter was the signature piece of equipment in Vietnam, the tank was the premier fighting machine in OIF, and the night vision goggles (NVGs) that permitted 24-hour driving were the “new best thing.” Without the NVGs the pace of the campaign would have been unsustainable. While the convoys rolled 24 hours a day, each night the battalions would coil, and the battalion commander and the sergeant major were the leaders, dealing directly with the company commanders and the first sergeants. ODS in 1991 was described as a “generals’ war” because the campaign was orchestrated from the top. In contrast, OIF was a colonels’ war because the rolling convoys—best pictured as discrete sets of battlewagons—attacked under the direct leadership of the regimental and battalion commanders.

Operational Implications for Marines

Missions becoming more joint leads to larger staffs far in the rear with larger information technology (IT) budgets. In OIF the movement toward Baghdad outpaced the planning cycle of the staffs in the rear. ITs yielded self-licking ice cream cones, with senior staffs using chat rooms on the computer networks to fan each other’s predilections or fears. The lesson should be that senior staffs, such as the Coalition Land Forces Component Command, should focus on coordination before the battle and thereafter issue mission-type orders, relying on the commanders on the battlefield to fight the battle. The problem is that as the size of the staffs off the battlefield increases and as communications enable them to believe they understand what is going on, then those staffs will, with good intentions, issue authoritative orders not reflective of battle conditions. Gobbledygook and over-the-top rhetoric about the marvels of “network-centric warfare” overlooked a central fact: networks transmit the same messages simultaneously only to everyone on the network, and those at the front doing the fighting weren’t on the highly touted “net.”

From battalion on down in the Marine Corps, communication is primarily by radio and by voice, and the distances were too long for reliable radio relay to the rear while on the move. On the other hand, the major feeds at higher joint headquarters in the rear are primarily digital and rely upon computers, supplemented by satellite photos, teleconferencing, television, and video streamed from unmanned aerial vehicles. However, on fast-moving battlefields like OIF, these digital technologies lag far behind the battles, where voice communications are employed and no one is taking the time to type in reports.

A singular irony of OIF was that the embedded press became a major source of information to the higher staffs. The reporters, with better technologies than the battalions, are trained to speak and type succinctly and to convey with clarity the information within the limits of what they understood; that is, they did not speculate; they reported what they were seeing. Early in the war, for instance, I MEF received from 3d Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion (3d LAR) the radio code word “slingshot,” meaning the unit was being overrun. As the staff was scrambling to divert attack aircraft, a reporter from Fox News popped up on television, and his narration showed that the LAR was overrunning the enemy, not the other way around. And, when the 7th Marines entered Baghdad, a main feed showing what they were doing and showing the friendly crowds was CNN (Cable News Network). I MEF adapted its plan on the spot as the live pictures were seen in the command center.

The press, however, is not an acceptable military communications system, and the distances—sometimes even in one convoy—were too great for the PRC-119 radios. Significant use was made of commercial satellite cell phones and the Army’s blue force tracker—a vehicle-mounted monitor displaying via satellite communications the locations of friendly units across the battlefield. Of the Marine budget for IT, 40 percent goes to garrison and such gargantuan and controversial projects as the Navy Marine Corps Intranet. Another 40 percent goes to support Marine air-ground task force activities above the battalion. Only 20 percent goes to the battalion and below, and most of that is for the SINCGARS. The current trends point to a digital-based communications and information system from Washington to the combatant commander to corps, division and, perhaps, the regiment, and a voice/radio system at the fighting level. A major lesson from OIF is that the Marine Corps must put together a review panel, mainly of noncommunicators, whose members do not have loyalties to the current IT program. Marine IT at the dismounted and mounted fighting level from battalion on down needs a radical new look.

So, too, does the V-22—not in terms of the program but rather of reaffirming that the aircraft will be employed in concert with maneuver warfare. Rotary-wing transport aircraft played a marginal role in OIF due to the nature of the battlefield. In the Vietnam War the jungle and the close terrain demanded the extensive employment of helicopters. In OIF, as in ODS, the open terrain lent itself to vehicular movement. The V-22 can assure advance lodgements far in front of the main force, an impossibility with the wornout CH-46. The V-22 will open up a new dimension in maneuver warfare—if it is not treated as an asset too valuable to be employed radically. Marine frugality mitigates against objective risk-reward calculus. For the V-22 to live up to its advertising, those who control the Osprey must be willing to risk its loss.

Similarly, the long-distance overland movement of the AAV must be ensured. The AAVs during OIF performed very well indeed, and great credit goes to the crews who night after night performed maintenance and repairs even when they were physically exhausted.

In preparing for the next expedition, the Marines must ask what the terrain will be as well as the nature of the enemy. The wisdom of a balanced force, just like a balanced stock portfolio, is manifest. The advocacy 20 years ago of generals to establish a mounted infantry force training center at Twentynine Palms in the mid-1980s deserves applause. Over the next decade, a review of the usual suspects for conflict—North Korea or Iran—suggests building upon the RCT. Key to maneuver warfare is speed, agility, and ruthlessness to shatter the enemy’s cohesion, even while leaving most of his forces physically intact. The infantry’s instinct to close with and destroy the enemy at the point of attack must remain at the forefront of training.

The tactic needing most refinement is the proper alignment of the firepower of the tank and AAV with the maneuver and closure of the infantry. The firepower provided by a section of AAVs with the up gunned weapons station has brought a great leap forward for mechanized operations. More effort is needed to “meld” the infantry/AAV team in tactics, techniques, and procedures. Also, organizing “bite-sized” packages that can be refueled and resupplied on the move needs development. The spongy ground between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers severely restricted off-road maneuver, and so the three RCTs were strung out along two highways. If a battalion dropped its supply train to attack with only one or two companies, it risked the vehicles left behind becoming ensnarled in gigantic traffic jams.

To “repackage” battalions so that they can be resupplied and fight in smaller, self-contained packages is a daunting challenge. But it is also an opportunity. Every Marine is a rifleman and wants to be part of the action when deployed on an expedition. In OIF, supply was more than 50 percent of the challenge, and everyone in a convoy was equal—and equally needed. This is the model for the future battlefields, and it means that the logisticians should have a center seat in the design of operational plans and force packages.

Overall, OIF indicated that the Marines have the proper balance for the next 10 years and that the doctrine of maneuver warfare is the proper framework for preparing for the next war.

Joint Implications

At the joint level, four issues require addressal.

First, disturbing to all Marines in OIF was the incautious driving of Iraqi civilians who persisted in driving during combat conditions. Due to the constant but statistically improbable threat of a suicide car bomber, this phenomenon resulted in tragic casualties. The research and development community should work hard to develop a non- lethal means of signaling to, and perhaps startling, civilian drivers so they will not persist in driving into life-threatening situations.

Second, combat initiatives below company and battalion level were few in this war due to the open terrain. The battalion and company commander could see his subordinates, and independent patrolling was scant, so the small unit leaders were usually operating under the command of the company commanders and above. At the same time, during OIF the Special Operations Command (SOCom) performed credibly in separate task forces and worked well with everybody, albeit at a measured pace. On the other hand, force reconnaissance (recon) appears to have been superceded by SOCom for the more risky and independent missions for which they trained for so many years. For instance, although recon was ready and standing by, joint command relations were such that it was special operations units—including Army Rangers and Navy SEALS—that rescued PVT Jessica Lynch from a hospital inside the center of the Marine operating area. On balance, the trends indicate that while Marine doctrine encourages initiative at the lower levels, it appears that SOCom will become the actual repository of small unit operations. SOCom is the first congressionally legislated military organization to take jointness to its logical conclusion and remove the Services from the operating forces. In OIF there were 14,000 SOCom troops deployed. Such a large number suggests that units like force recon will migrate to SOCom for missions such as training against terrorists in the Philippines or sending teams into the mountains of Afghanistan.

Although the history of the Marine Corps has been a history of small unit independent leaders—the Smedley Butlers and Presley N. O’Bannons—in the future such small unit actions may be done by SOCom. The possibility is that the niche of the future Marine Corps will be in expeditions at the battalion, regiment, and division level. This is not an altogether salutary trend. As SOCom becomes the tip of the spear, many young men attracted to the Marine Corps will contemplate an alternative Service as the stepping stone into SOCom, with institutional loyalty and career path determined by that organization and not by the parent Service.

Third, after the war there is a period of considerable turbulence in adjusting to a peacekeeping force. It is in our interest to have a written, joint doctrine for actions after a war. In 3 months the Army suffered 50 killed in action and the Marines 1. This is ticklish to delineate as there are clearly demographic differences between the operating areas of the Army and the Marines.

However, 80 percent of the casualties have occurred in vehicles. The Army forces—driven by their force structure-conduct most of their patrols mounted. The Marines are almost exclusively patrolling dismounted. The dismounted Marine patrols assault into the ambush force. It seems apparent that a mostly mounted force is at a distinct disadvantage in an urban guerrilla environment. But it is difficult to hammer out a joint doctrine for peacekeeping when the on-the-ground experiences have differed dramatically based upon different demographics, different operational philosophies, and different force structures. That said, it is hard to argue with success, and the decentralized, constant patrolling and presence approach of I MEF in the Shi’ite south deserves being chronicled and studied for application elsewhere.

Lastly, from OIF it is manifest that there is not a joint concept for seizing a city. Baghdad was not taken in a seriously contested fight. Before that city fell the concept of the Army was to encircle and to raid, attacking in and out with columns of tanks. This was a tactic of attrition based on superior firepower. The Marine concept was to seize and hold, employing armor protected by dismounted infantry. The stark contrast in the two approaches was in part driven by the difference in force structure—the Army being mainly armor and vehicular mounted and the Marines with proportionately many more dismounted infantry. The UK chose yet a third approach at Basra where they surrounded and wore down the defenders by psychological pressure as well as by firepower. There was no reconciliation among these three strategies before or after OIF. This is a serious subject that requires joint addressal.

Conclusion

OIF was a remarkable military victory. What stood out were the speed and the logistics movement. Potential adversaries of America took note, and deterrence was enhanced. The Marines demonstrated innovation in planning and tenacity in execution, completing a campaign that will be studied for years to come. Maneuver warfare moved from being a theoretical doctrine to a real battlefield where it proved itself.