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In 1980, there was an attempt to use the military to rescue the American hostages being held in Tehran, which ended in disaster. Two aircraft collided in the desert in Iran, killing a large number of men. As with any military operation, there was analysis afterwards to find out what had gone right and what had gone wrong. At that time, world military operations were planned in the Pentagon through the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In this case, when the operation was planned, the one thing which stood out on analysis was that in the planning, everyone had to play. The only way that the Joint Chiefs could come up with an agreement on the plan was for there to be members of all four branches of the military involved in the operation, whether it made sense or not. In particular, the pilots of the helicopters were Marines even though they were Navy helicopters with which they were not familiar This may have contributed to the collision. There were other problems, too, which lead back to a command failure. Senator Barry Goldwater led an effort in Congress to pass a bill reorganizing the military command structure. Instead of military operations being planned in Washington via the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a series of regional commands would be set up, placing one man in charge of all forces from all branches in a given zone. When military operations in a given area were needed, the specific regional command would be responsible, and regardless of which branch he was from, every US military asset in the area would work for him. He was then tasked with solving a problem, not with trying to make sure everyone got a chance to play. The first use of the new command structure was Operation Desert Storm, the war to retake Kuwait. Army General Schwarzkopf was the regional commander, but he used his resources as he should, and didn't favor the Army. When it made sense for an operation to be handled by Navy jets, the Navy did it and the Air Force kept its mouth shut, for example. And as we all know, the result was one of the most lopsided military victories in the history of the US. There were many reasons for that, not least of which was that Schwarzkopf himself was a truly superb commander. But the localized unified command structure was another piece of the puzzle. There wasn't the kind of inter-service wrangling involved which loused up the Tehran rescue. My fear is that the reorganization that Rumsfeld is contemplating will take us back to the bad old days of centralized planning-by-committee, which was such a failure. Ultimately, every military operation has to have one single officer in charge, who can make decisions and issue orders and have them followed without argument. (discuss) |
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