Digital Soldiers: The Evolution of High-Tech Weaponry and Tomorrow's Brave New Battlefield. - book reviews

Washington Monthly, March, 1997 by David Evans

By James F. Dunnigan St. Martin's Press, $25.95

In taking aim at the evolution of high-technology weaponry, James Dunnigan has produced a book analogous to the uneven performance of a beginning shooter in military marksmanship: He makes a few 10-point hits inside the bull's eye, but a depressing number of shots land out in the boundaries of the target sheet.

Pity. Dunnigan begins sensibly enough, asserting what many weapons experts in America's defense establishment know but rarely say publicly: "High tech does not always equal performance, or even minimal effectiveness" From the Gulf War, we now know that some of the most sophisticated tactical fighter-bombers ever fielded by the U.S. military failed to destroy a single Iraqi Scud missile launcher, while the unheralded success story was that of the A-10 "Warthog" attack jet, which cost a fraction of its faster, sleeker brethren, yet, according to Iraqi prisoners, was among the most feared of the Allied jets.

Dunnigan is also right on his second point that, despite mixed results, there is a "continuing rush to automate" the battlefield with a panoply of even more complex weapons. "Digitize is the buzzword du jour," he claims. In the digital promised land, all sensors and weapons are linked in a vast network enabling American soldiers to concentrate their firepower on a hapless foe.

Dunnigan cautions that "training is the key," and one wishes he had spent more time illustrating how Congress remains brain-locked on buying more weapons rather than ensuring that troops are trained in their use. In a February 1996 study of the Gulf War, Stephen Biddle of the Institute for Defense Analysis rediscovered proof of the old aphorism about fighting skills counting more than technology. Biddle found that the lopsided results suffered by the Iraqis could not be explained entirely by American technological superiority, but by the fact that the skills of our troops enabled them to exploit the Iraqis' tactical blunders. Biddle observed, "A less-skilled (U.S.) military is more dangerous than a less-advanced technology"

Yet the exact opposite priorities are reflected in the 1997 budget, where for every dollar added to operations and maintenance, Congress added roughly $6 to buy weapons. If the same approach is taken to a shrinking defense budget in coming years, the decay in combat skills will erode our troops' ability to exploit their technological advantage.

Dunnigan frets about cuts to the training budget, but there aren't five pages in his 295-page book devoted to the critical issues of training, crew selection, unit cohesion, and the overarching need to assign the smartest soldiers as "trigger pullers" Dunnigan's journalistic priorities mirror the misbegotten budget priorities in Congress.

Nor does Dunnigan devote sufficient attention to the effort needed to keep some of America's high-tech weapons in fighting order. k may be a nightmare for enemy operators to detect and track the Air-Force's B2 stealth bomber, but the airplane's radar-scattering and absorbing coatings are a nightmare for Air Force ground crews to maintain. The airplane's engines, landing gear and radar require only about two hours of maintenance for every flying hour. Those touchy stealth coatings, though, keep ground crews working 30 hours for every hour the B-2 flies. Ironically, the effort required to keep the bombers stealthy keeps more of them grounded than an enemy could ever hope to shoot down. According to Air Force statistics, the first B-2 squadron achieved an average "mission capable" rate of a mere 15 percent in its first year of service.

Among Dunnigan's wildly off-target shots is his claim that the Gulf War featured "the most extensive use of smart bombs" Not so. Although some 17,000 air-to-ground guided weapons and missiles of all types were rained down on the prostrate Iraqis, more than 25,000 laser guided bombs alone were dropped during the Vietnam war.

Dunnigan asserts that the AWACS (Airborne Warning And Control System) radar planes proved their worth. Well, what about the incredibly incompetent AWACS crew that sat and watched their scopes as two F-15 fighters shot down two Army Blackhawk helicopters in April 1994, killing all 26 aboard? Nor does he mention the 100-mile wide "doughnut"--the close-in blind spot where the AWACS radar doesn't see.

He also presents the Navy's one-sided argument for a missile-armed "arsenal ship" to fill the critical shortfall in naval gunfire support. Every description, however, is of a ship with no self-defense and no target-detection capability (unable to protect itself, the arsenal ship could be easily boarded and commandeered by Malaysian pirates). It must rely on other ships to compensate for these grievous deficiencies. The arsenal ship seems more like a dead-end concept than a revolutionary leap in naval warfare. Furthermore, staff experts in Congress have not been impressed with the Navy's briefings. At a cost of $500 million, it does not appear that Congress will fund a prototype.