COMBAT PREP

by David Nuttle

In my 3-years of combat experience and another decade of CT (counterterrorism) action operations, I encountered some gaps in the combat preparations of our military and related special forces. To wit:

a) Operational planning generally lacks a "what's missing" component. As an example, a rescue mission requiring special forces to be flown over a desert failed to consider that if a

desert sand-storm hit during their flight, air intakes on the choppers would need sand screens to keep sand contamination from killing engines on the choppers. This mission had to abort when their choppers were forced down in a desert sandstorm.

b) Sensitivity training is typically not provided prior to deployment. As an example, survival on early jungle warfare operations depends on training a soldier's eyes to detect tripwires, "booby-traps, the green color of a deadly Krait snake (a green color different from jungle greens), a plant leaf that is upside down showing activity, poisonous plant IDs, and similar hazards often causing death.

c) As I noted in another blog, far too many soldiers lack basic common sense and are not drilled or rehearsed in "what if" scenarios. My example of such failure was when an Army Captain, in Vietnam, boarded a light observation aircraft with his radio operator and ordered the FAC pilot to fly low and circle over the top of the reported jungle location of a PAVN (N. Viet Army) unit. The Captain, Terry C., had been advised that PAVN units were known to have anti-aircraft (AA) weapons. His lack of common sense resulted in his being killed, along with his radio operator, and Fac pilot, as they were blown out-of-the-sky by PAVN AA weapons. N. B. To prevent such foolishness, high-risk tactical operations should all have a pre-approval process by two senior military officers.

d) In the early stages of the Vietnam War, POTUS LBJ ordered the U. S. Army to rush our initial military forces to Vietnam with no jungle warfare training. This order cost too many American lives due to our troops low survivability when they lacked jungle warfare skills. In addition, LBJ did not take the time to find and appoint qualified commanders. He appointed Gen, Wm. Westmoreland and Gen, Wm. Rosson, who were conventional "bang-and-boom" officers w/ no unconventional or jungle warfare experience. Some of the U. S. Army Officers assigned Vietnam did not even have basic infantry training. In fighting a war, haste and lack of good prep (preparation) always makes horrific waste and/or assigns the unqualified to direct the effort.

e) The Afghan War, against Taliban terrorists had many flaws for lack of effective analysis and planning. No economic or diplomatic pressure was applied to Pakistan to deter support for the Taliban. It was obvious to all Afghan males had little to suffer if the Taliban took control. The Afghan males we enlisted to form its Army enlisted in the best local job that

was available. Kurds of Iraq formed, trained, and armed all female military units easily acting to defeat ISIS forces who believed they could not go to Islamic Paradise if killed by a woman.

The Kurds should have been contracted to replicate this work with Afghan women who knew they had everything to suffer under a Taliban government. Organized, trained and armed Afghan women would probably have defeated Taliban forces. To compound our errors, the U. S. expended blood and treasure for 20-years in a failed attempt to make a tribal nation, typically ruled by regional warlords, into a functioning democracy. We then created a great and horrific tragedy on our exit from Afghanistan. There were little or no effective war plans or preparations for Afghanistan.

POTUS JFK understood that the U. S. was, and had been, defective in war planning and/or preparations. He thus created his COIN (Counterinsurgency) group of special advisors to make suggestions on how best to deal with the communist threat to South Vietnam. Based on suggestions from COIN he rejected DODs proposal to send U. S. troops to Vietnam due to the many failings of S. Vietnam's government under President Diem. Instead, JFK fully accepted COIN's idea of recruiting, training, and arming the S. Viet population with help from U. S. Special Forces. This was done and said population (Viets & Montagnards) were defeating the communist forces. After JFK's assassination, POTUS LBJ rejected COIN guidance and directed the end of population-based efforts and directed the U. S. Army to use as many of our conventional military units as needed to achieve the quick and total victory LBJ wanted for his own political reasons. Our industrial-military supported the idea of more conventional "bang-and-boom" military operations to help increase profits. This is a national hazard that POTUS Eisenhour warned us about.

Part of War prep is making detailed plans on what must be done if the war is won, or what must be done if the war was lost. In Afghanistan we lost the war to the Taliban and totally inadequate plans were made to deal with such loss. In a tragic evacuation, we left many of the American civilians and loyal Afghan partners behind and abandoned $83 billion in our best military equipment to the Taliban terrorists. Many Afghans were killed along w/ 13 U. S. soldiers being killed. Most of the Afghans we evacuated were not vetted and we had no real idea who they were. POTUS Biden was only interested in getting our military forces out of Afghanistan and made no plan for any other evacuation requirement.

POTUS JFK had a solution to U. S. failures in war planning and preparation. He did so with his creation of a COIN Group, named above, with members of our Military Joint Chief, heads of each federal agency, and invited experts who suggested, reviewed, & debated each and every option being considered related to Vietnam and the Vietnam War. I attended meetings of this COIN Group, as an invited expert of Vietnam, and I know how well it worked and how

many problems were avoided by deliberations of the group. The same concept and group may be the vital solution needed to prevent future errors in war planning and preparations. The problem will be a need to require each POTUS to use such a process. We have a few

such office holders, like POTUS LBJ, who refused advise from others no matter how valid & credible that advise happened to be.

Wars are a last resort after all attempted political solutions to a conflict have failed. But wars should never be used to help meet any politician's personal objectives or to increase profits for the industrial-military complex.