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Retooling the Military Mind for a New Threat
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| Fort Lewis soldiers train in combat tecnique (Photo:
Joe Barrentine) |
If the debate about National Missile Defense is about how best to defend
America against the next threat, Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina
are training to fight the next war. The focus here isn't so much on
retooling with new technology and hardware, it's about reshaping the
mindset for this new era of low intensity, messy engagements, from Somalia
to Kosovo to Afghanistan.
In a training exercise, a squad moves through a mock city neighborhood.
In the darkness you can make out the silhouettes of the stucco storefronts
and a bell tower against a moonless sky. What you can't see are the
snipers.
Major Dan Sullivan peers out from behind a stone building, watching
the progress of his 13 Marines. He wears a helmet, mask, and body armor
to protect from the sting of the plastic bullets. "It's a fine
balance here. You've gotta maintain speed and the aggressiveness balance
of action," he says, "but on the other hand you don't want
to be in a hurry to die."
These soldiers from the 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade are part of
a new antiterrorism force activated after September 11th in response
to "asymmetrical warfare." In the new world, adversaries won't
challenge America where it's strong, on a traditional battlefield. Instead
they'll target embassies, as they did in Africa in 1998, or civilian
centers, as they did on September 11th. They'll take the fight into
cities, where buildings, alleys, and even the sewers can neutralize
the advantages of a super-power.
Major Dan Sullivan is in charge of this training effort dubbed "Project
Metropolis." "Urban training, across the board is something
that hasn't been pursued with the vigor it probably should have been,"
he says.
The Marine antiterrorism brigade is also training to respond to chemical
and biological attacks, and to challenges like this. Here, Marines guard
a U.S. compound against a series of simulated threats that escalate
through the night, from a noisy protest, to a violent riot, to a full
scale terrorist attack. First Lieutenant Phillip Walters says these
threats produce lots of boredom and anxiety - and explosive bursts of
confusion. When one of the protestors breaks through the line of Marines
and drops a backpack in their midst, Lt. Walters tells them what went
wrong- a hypothetical bomb in the bag would have killed them all.
Brigadier General Douglas O'Dell, who commands the antiterrorism brigade,
describes the challenge facing his Marines saying that they're facing
an asymmetric enemy that doesn't fight by the rules of land warfare.
"As I've told them, unless we are relentless, they will not relent,"
he says. He says that it is important to be "ready for war that
is not going to be a general's war or even a captain's war but a corporal's
war, because these Marines are going to be leading other Marines in
stairwells and back alleys and on rooftops around the world."
O'Dell's reference to the new fight being "a corporal's war and
not a general's war" makes an important point about military organization
and reform. Increasingly American soldiers will fight in smaller and
more dispersed organizations like the Special Forces in Afghanistan.
Stephen Rosen of Harvard says that requires more independence and more
initiative among the lower ranks, and among the senior ranks, a willingness
to embrace change. "If you're talking about small numbers of very
elite troops you're talking about an army that doesn't have as much
hierarchy," he says.
Rosen says the biggest obstacle in reforming the military is its addiction
to hierarchy. "If you look at Special Forces it's one of the most
egalitarian, un-hierarchical parts of the American military. So the
big change for the military is not technological, it's cultural,"
says Rosen.
Next: West Point: A New Type of Military Education
