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Bloody nose attack?
Recently I have read in multiple publications the exact same article—verbatim. I guess some must think that because it is printed in so many publications that it must be true. Well, maybe. The articles say that the US is considering what is called a bloody nose attack against North Korea. What is a bloody nose attack you ask?
A bloody nose attack is said to be an effort to destroy the next missile that Kim Jun Un launches. The idea is to intercept the missile early in the launch phase. The goal is to show the North Koreans that the US is serious about its demands of limits on North Korean missiles and nuclear weapons. Many argue that such an attack is fraught with dangers,
- How will the North Koreans respond? Will they perceive this action for what it is a limited attack? If they do not perceive this or do not wish to perceive it those that are against the attack fear that they will respond massively against South Korea.
- What if the attempt fails? The prestige of the US will be greatly reduced, the pundits argue, and that of the North Koreans enhanced.
- What if the attack succeeds? The North Koreans will have been embarrassed and because of the loss of face will either retaliate or be more willing to negotiate since it had been shown that their missiles could be intercepted.
I should also note that several congressmen have reported that F-35s with heat seeking missiles could destroy any missile in the launch phase. Most of such reports do not link this to the time it takes the North to prepare a missile for launch or the ability of US intelligence to “see” the preparations and thus put the F-35s on station. (I have been amazed that this information was leaked, but maybe it is part of my fourth option below.
The media is reporting that the National Security Advisor supports the attack while the Secretaries of State and Defense oppose it. One almost never reads anything about the positions the LTG McMaster has supported. Such deliberations are usually one thing that remain secret in a leaky administration. This leads me to my fourth option.
The fourth option is a psychological warfare against the North designed to ratchet up the pressure. One could argue that the saber rattling and now the threats of a bloody nose attack are designed to force the North Koreans to seek alternative ways to lower the pressure. If one buys this strategy he could say: “Look it is succeeding.” The North Koreans have in fact held talks with the South Koreans that have reduced the pressure some. Possibly, in response to this, President Trump has stated his willingness to negotiate with the North Koreans.
Only time will tell how this will play out but the saber rattling psychological pressure may have worked. If it worked the next question is why previous administrations did not try such an approach? The answer probably has something to do with hutzpah and the willingness to go as far as necessary. We will see.
General Westmoreland and the Vietnam War Strategy
Returning to John Mason Glen’s opinion piece in the New York Times (“Was America Duped at Khe Sanh?”) We must also set the record straight about General Westmoreland and the strategy in Vietnam War. Again Mr. Glen displays his lack of historical perspective by attributing the strategy of attrition in the Vietnam War to General Westmoreland’s analysis of the battle of the Ira Drang Valley. (The basis of the book and movie We Were Soldiers Once, Young and Brave.)
Glen correctly paints General Westmoreland as the perfect image of a soldier—World War II leader, Airborne Infantry leader, former Superintendent of West Point—with a very stiff soldierly look. Westy, as he was called by cadets at West Point and soldiers in the field in Vietnam was all that Glen describes. One must also remember at this point in history the Airborne Mafia, as it was called ruled the Army. There was admiration for the Airborne coming out of World War II. President Kennedy was enamored with the Special Forces (Green Berets) all of whom were airborne qualified. Glen attributes Westmoreland’s strategy to this background and does not attribute the country’s experience and successes to the strategy in Vietnam.
When Westy was superintendent at West Point I was a cadet there studying military tactics and history. Much of our studies revealed that the US military strategy grew out of Grant’s defeat of Lee. The battles of the Wilderness in late 1864 and 1865 were battles of attrition. The North had the wherewithal in terms of men and equipment to fight a war of attrition against the South. This strategy succeeded. The lesson learned was that attrition warfare was a way to win.
The world wars in Europe and Asia were also wars of attrition where superior resources were able to win the day, over time. When one couples the US military experience of success through attrition warfare with Robert McNamara’s “bean counting” revolution in the Pentagon one can understand how body count became the measure of success for the war in Vietnam. If more bad guys were killed in an engagement than good guys then the good guys “won”. This became the approach in Vietnam.
Given this view that attrition / body count would cause the enemy to stop fighting one can clearly understand the desire of a set piece firepower intensive battle to crush the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). Khe Sanh offered this opportunity. The hope was that the NVA would go for the bait that was the Khe Sanh Combat Base and provide a large number of targets to be attacked by superior fire power and destroyed. For this strategy to succeed the bait could not be compromised by the NVA learning of the plan. The close-holding of the intelligence that the NVA was going to attack Khe Sanh lead to my advisory team in Khe Sanh village being “expendable”. We were part of the bait and could not leak to our Vietnamese counterparts what was coming for fear that they in turn would leak it to the NVA. The solution was to just not tell us what was about to occur.
Many of the readers of Expendable Warriors have commented on how critical we deal with General Westmoreland. One former Chief of Staff of the Army refused to endorse the book because of this perspective. I must admit that the after taste of being “expendable” may have colored my perspective. However, I have learned the bigger lesson—strategic leaders must make strategic decisions based upon the bigger picture. In this regard the small advisory team and mixed force of Vietnamese, Bru Montagnards and Marines may have truly been expendable. Though we will probably never admit it.
The soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines did not lose the war in Vietnam the politicians and strategists did. In April/May of 1968 the strategy had succeeded. The NVA and Viet Cong had been defeated by all body count measures, but the political will to win was gone. The political will had not been considered by the strategists of the day. It was not until Colonel Harry Summers published his book On Strategy; a Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War that Clausewitz’s dictums on political will were brought again into consideration by strategic thinkers. Colonel Summers was part of the Vietnam negotiating team and his discussion with a North Vietnamese counterpart is often quoted. He told his counterpart: “we won every battle.” To which the North Vietnamese officer replied “But you lost the war.”
If one reads my writings on conflict termination he will see Colonel Summers’ views used as a basis for defining what it means to win. Body count is also dismissed as the failed measure of success that it is. A subject of another blog in our continuing discussion leading up to the 50th anniversary of the siege of the Khe Sanh Combat Base.
Was America Duped at Khe Sanh
As we approach the fifty-third anniversary the siege of the Khe Sanh Combat Base (KSCB) we can anticipate a plethora of articles about the battle that decided the Vietnam War. To give my readers a true perspective I will repost previous articles. The first of these was in the New York Times on January 1st , 2018(“Was America Duped at Khe Sanh?”) The article by John Mason Glen is spectacular in its attention grabbing title but weak on strategic analysis. Having lived through the battle and written about it in Expendable Warriors: the battle of Khe Sanh and the Vietnam War, I feel uniquely qualified to rebut Glen’s argument.
The main theme of the article is that the attack on Khe Sanh was a diversion to draw American forces away from the populated areas in anticipation of the Tet Offensive which started 9 days after the beginning of the siege of the KSCB. This argument is inaccurate for many different reasons:
- The attack on Khe Sanh had been anticipated for 3 months. Elements of 2 Army Divisions had been moved north in vicinity of Hue and Quang Tri. It was these forces that blunted part of the attacks on those two province headquarters.
Map of the Khe Sanh area. Hue is just off the map to the southeast (lower right corner of the map)
- Khe Sanh was reinforced by 4 battalions of Marines with most of the reinforcements arriving after the North Vietnamese Army launched its missile and artillery barrage on 21 January 1968. (More on the multiple implications of this attack in subsequent articles.) 4 battalions of Marines in the bigger scheme of things was not consequential to stopping the Tet attacks.
- The diversion of air assets to support the defense of Khe Sanh was not as significant as Glen would have one believe. Mush of the air support used was B-52 carpet bombing not pin point close air support. Such bombing approaches were inappropriate for populated areas.
- Glen mentions the internal opinion divisions within the North Vietnamese leadership. One faction was focused on the Tet offensive and the other on Khe Sanh. He correctly points out that one faction focused on the general uprising goal while General Giap was seeking to break the American public support for the war by the attack on Khe Sanh. He wanted to repeat his success at Dien Bien Phu where the French public support for the Indochinese war was destroyed. To people like Glen it was one or the other. Why couldn’t they have been reinforcing? Glen does not examine this point.
- The agony of Khe Sanh played out for 77 days on the screens and in the newspapers of main street America. This is where the war was lost! Certainly Tet contributed to the loss but it was Khe Sanh that was the deciding factor.
- It should be noted that in the Burns PBS documentary which has been critiqued on these pages the siege of the KSCB is barely mentioned—another of its fatal flaws as has been recounted on these pages.
- In fact both Khe Sanh and Tet were significant failures militarily for the North Vietnamese. They lost both battles. The war was there to be won, but the political will to do so had been lost. Giap had been right. (There is a unique event highlighted in my book that makes this point explicitly.)
But the bottom line is that the battle of Khe Sanh was won and the war lost at the same time.
In my next response to the Glen’s article I will respond to his critique of General Westmoreland. Stay tuned!
Is a new cold war on the horizon?
I have recently been reading the Dagger Brigade posts (2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, which the author once commanded) as it moves around Eastern Europe training with allies as part of Operation Atlantic Resolve—a program to demonstrate NATO resolve to deter the Russians for dramatic attacks and conquest of its previous kingdom (satellite countries).
Atlantic Resolve and other NATO activities in Eastern Europe and the pledged increase in force capabilities seem to assume a conventional force attack by the Russians. This approach is called into question by current Russian activities.
Russia is aggressively building up its nuclear forces and is expected to deploy a total force of 8,000 warheads by 2026 along while modernizing its deep underground bunkers, according to reports citing Pentagon officials.
The Russian force build up implies several aspects of its view of future warfare. The 8,000 warheads will include both large strategic warheads and thousands of new low-yield and very low-yield warheads. These will circumvent arms treaty limits. Russia’s new doctrine is one of using nuclear arms early in any conflict.
This new doctrine as it evolves seems to combine the use of low and very low yield nuclear weapons in conjunction with attacks by tactical ground forces. Simultaneous it seeks to maintain strategic deterrence by having a modernized mobile strategic arsenal. The mobility of the strategic forces enhances their survivability. Part of this deterrence effort includes fortification of underground facilities for command and control during such a nuclear conflict.
The United States and NATO are watching this alarming expansion as to determine if Russia is preparing to break out of current nuclear forces constraints under arms treaties, including the 2010 New START and 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaties. Russia has already violated the INF accord by testing an illegal ground-launched cruise missile.
This Russian nuclear arms buildup is among the activities being studied by the ongoing Pentagon major review of US nuclear forces called the Nuclear Posture Review. The conclusions of the review are expected to be disclosed early next year—possibly coinciding with state of the union address by the president: He is on the record as saying: “I want modernization and rehabilitation… It’s got to be in tip top shape,”
The current posture review reverses the views of the Obama administration which called for reducing the role of nuclear weapons and the size of the arsenal. The cut back in nuclear forces by Obama was based on assessments—now considered false by many officials—that nuclear threats posed by Russia and other states had been lowered significantly, and that Moscow and Washington were no longer considered enemies.
The Obama administration based its strategic nuclear deterrence and warfare policies on the incorrect and outdated assumption that the prospects of US.-Russia military confrontation had been reduced sharply. However many have noted that since 2010 Russia, China, and North Korea have been engaged in steadily building up their forces with new nuclear arms and delivery systems, while Iran remains an outlier that many experts believe will eventually decide to build a nuclear arsenal. The Obama administration did not react to this changing strategic situation.
The Pentagon’s new posture review is based in part on a reversal of the outdated Obama-era assessment. Most likely it will include:
- Recognition of an increased global nuclear threat
- Recommendations on increasing the US nuclear force modernization—warheads and delivery vehicles
- A recommendation to revise US and NATO warfighting doctrine, tactics and techniques.
To many this may result in a modernized version of the Reagan era capability gap and a cry for almost drastic efforts to close the gap. This will be a major fight for resources that President Trump could lose based upon liberal intransigence and an unwillingness to accept the threat. Will the US and NATO react in time and with appropriate responses?
Is NATO’s Atlantic Resolve soon to be an inappropriate activity when the Russian nuclear threat is considered? OR can it or should it be modified to include the artillery battalion in the deployed brigade combat teams (BCTs) have nuclear warheads available? Should the deployed artillery battalions train for the conduct of nuclear operations? Should the ground forces train for operations in a nuclear environment? Should additional nuclear capable systems be deployed with the BCTs? These are all questions that NATO and the US need to consider as the efforts to deter Russian aggression continue.
Is the cold war returning?
Correcting the record
Letter to the editor
Reference Military History article “Hallowed Ground Khe Sanh Vietnam” (http://www.historynet.com/september-2017-table-contents.htm)
As a veteran of the battle of Khe Sanh I need to correct the record and the impression created by Mark D. Van Els in his article about the Battle of Khe Sanh.
The first thing is his understanding of the geography. Khe Sanh was 30 plus kilometers south of the border with North Vietnam and the DMZ. It sat astride route 9 that ran from Laos all the way to the coast. It therefore blocked one of the critical avenues of approach into Quang Tri and Thieu Tinh (Hue) provinces. The map below highlights the strategic position.
Given the location of the combat base it was used for surveillance and other operations into Laos and North Vietnam as the author points out.
As both a youngster growing up in Kansas and later as a cadet I studied intently the battle of Dien Bien Phu and the fate of the French. It was popular to try and compare Khe Sanh and the ill-fated French garrison. I must admit that many of us tried to draw lessons from Dien Bien Phu to try and predict the next activity of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). The comparisons were of limited utility given the much different nature of the battlefield.
Mark Van Els failed to understand a critical point when it came to the timing of the battle. General Westmoreland and the American chain of command down to and including Colonel David Lounds (the Marine commander of the Khe Sanh Combat Base (KSCB)) knew more than 3 months before the battle that the NVA were coming. As pointed out General Westmoreland wanted a set piece fire power intensive battle and those of us at Khe Sanh were the bait. The reinforcement of KSCB started right before the first shelling and then immediately after it. This is all well documented in my book Expendable Warriors: the Battle of Khe Sanh and the Vietnam War.
The article leads the reader to believe that Khe Sanh was wholly a Marine battle. As an Army District Advisor working with CPT Tinh-a-Nhi the District Chief we brought Army advisors, Bru montagnard and Vietnamese soldiers to the battle. The initial battle around Khe Sanh village resulted in rendering an NVA regiment combat ineffective. These brave soldiers were joined in the fight by Army Special Forces at Lang Vei and Special Forces soldiers at the Combat base itself. These Vietnamese, Bru and Army soldiers contributed significantly to the overall battle.
As to the comment about the attack on Khe Sanh being a feint to draw forces to Khe Sanh, there is the school of thought that says it was a feint. However, I contend that General Giap was attacking the American center of gravity—public opinion. The battles of Tet and Hue were over in several weeks with the NVA and Viet Cong having been defeated everywhere, but Khe Sanh continued as noted for 77 days. The cover of Time Magazine highlighted the “Agony of Khe Sanh”. The agony played in the media on Main Street for over 77 days. General Giap had won.
I believe that we won the battle of Khe Sanh on the battlefield and lost the war on the streets of the United States. This is the critical lesson from Khe Sanh—the link between the battlefields and public opinion.
Thank you for correcting the record.
Multi-domain Warfare
The Army some months back introduced the concept of multi-domain warfare.
What is multi-domain warfare?
The concept envisions the military — every service and every capability across the entire spectrum of capabilities—naval submarines and destroyers unpiloted air vehicles, cyber, artillery and maneuver forces, and of course strategic and tactical air forces— working together to overwhelm the enemy at a defined location and time within the battled space to gain a opportunity to deliver critical attacks against the enemy’s center of gravity. Would come from all domains: land, sea, air, space, cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum. These activities would be synchronized, as mentioned in time and space, to create a window of opportunity for decisive actions.
Where are we going?
Each of the military services seemed to have endorsed the concept in general terms and are now trying to figure out how to make it a reality. How can the Army link its air defense systems with those of the Navy?
The Air Force has suggested a global command and control system based upon its Combined Air Operations Centers (CAOCs). The Air Force sees the CAOCs as the logical center of multi-domain synchronization. The Air Force Chief of Staff has argued that the CAOC is “the one operational level headquarters that actually brings all the components together in a way you can integrate fires and effect.”
This suggestion would seem to have the Air Force CAOC assuming the responsibility of a Joint Force Commander whose job it is to synchronize all of the service component forces that he has been assigned.
This proposal could become the basis of some intense inter-service scuffles in the future.
War in the 21st Century: How has warfare changed?
Why War?
Nation’s have traditionally tried to make other nations change their political objectives through many means:
- Political
- Economic
- Social-Psychological
- Military
- Netwar / Cyber
What will change now that we are in the 21st Century?
- Weapons will be more sophisticated, and maybe less plentiful for the haves
- Weapons will proliferate but be less sophisticated for the have nots
- The nation states may not be the only warriors
- Changing objectives of those not empowered to do so may be more difficult–Leaders may not have decisive authority
- Rational will be irrational
- Socio-Psychological means will be more important
- Will blur in information warfare
- Asymmetries will increase
Asymmetries
- No one can challenge the US in late 20th Century forms of warfare
- Enemies will therefore seek asymmetric approaches
- Low tech mass vice high tech limited quantity
- Psychological
- New rules
- Reduce vulnerability to sophisticated weapons
- Netwar / Cyber
Asymmetry
- Warfare will be characterized by asymmetries
- Tactical–complex terrain, use of non-combatants, different rules of behavior
- Operational–Deep strikes, target detection vice deception
- Strategic
- Military–homeland attacks–target detection vice deception
- Political–Preparation of the body politic
- Multi-domain—gain local /temporary advantage by exploiting cyber, fires, maneuver, etc. for limited time or location
Modes of Warfare
- Hands-on
- Standoff
- Netwar / Cyber
Some mix of each will be the norm rather than the exception—multi-domain
Hands on War
- Opponent states or independent organizations
- Antagonists may be:
- Passionate
- Less technologically sophisticated
- Less vulnerable to technology
- Fought on complex physical and psychological terrain
Hands on War
- Characterized by large numbers of refugees and non-combatants
- Complex terrain–urban sprawl
- Antagonists have different cultural values
- What will they be willing lose–what is center of gravity?
- Different decision process
- Unattractive to Americans–therefore to be expected
Standoff War
- State against state
- Obvious objectives
- A set of rules
- Rational actors
- Decisive authority present
- Superior technology may be key
- More robotic forces employed from afar
- Deception and defense take on added importance
- May go directly to strategic targets
- Different calculus to determine the center of gravity
- Space and information tools more important
Netwar / Cyber Warfare
- Cyberspace is the battlefield–is the opponent vulnerable–are we?
- Much more subtle psychological and infrastructure focus
- When is competition war?
- Where does national security begin and law enforcement end?
- Characterized by extreme ambiguity and opponent identification problems
- Time compressed
The Challenge
- Designing a military to operate in such ambiguity will be difficult
- Developing the warrior spirit for netwar/cyber
Developing doctrine and resultant agility and flexibility to conduct multi-domain operations
- What are the new “rules of war”?
Bruce B.G. Clarke 