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February 13, 2002 Soldiers For The Truth (SFTT) Weekly Newsletter When we assumed the Soldier, We did not lay aside the Citizen. General George Washington, to the New York Legislature, 1775 In this week’s Issue of DefenseWatch: Lessons From Black Hawk Down ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Editorial and Administrative Staff ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Ed Offley Editor, DefenseWatch Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] J. David Galland Deputy Editor, DefenseWatch Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] David H. Hackworth Senior Military Columnist Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chris Humphrey SFTT Webmaster Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Table of Contents Hack's Target for the Week: Putting Black Hawk Down in Proper Context Article 01 - Economics of Demining: Success and Failure, by Robert G. Williscroft Article 02 - Critical Lessons from the Wartime Olympics, by Matthew Dodd Article 03 - Remember the Alamo! Testament to Our Fighting Spirit by Patrick Hayes Article 04 - Identity Thieves Harvesting DD-214s, by Andrea West Article 05 - Praise For Black Hawk Down From One Who Was There, by Gerry Izzo Article 06 - Guest Column: Advice to a Superpower, by Margaret Thatcher Article 07 - On the Lighter Side: The Army Balloonist Medal of Honor: Article 08 - SHEA, RICHARD T., Jr., 1st Lt. USA EDITOR'S NOTE: Your Support is Important! EDITOR'S NOTE: Feedback Wanted EDITOR'S NOTE: Article Submission Procedures/Subject Editors Sought ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Hack's Target For The Week: Putting Black Hawk Down in Proper Context ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- By David H. Hackworth The five-star movie Black Hawk Down smacks you right between the eyes with the sheer brutality of infantry combat, however magnificently portrayed by film maestro Ridley Scott. But while it showcases the professionalism and bravery of our U.S. Army Special Operations warriors in Mogadishu, it's far too light on the lessons to be learned from that terrible disaster. In December 1992, I went to Somalia. On a much smaller scale, the conditions were like those in Vietnam: snipers, mines and booby traps were killing and wounding our soldiers, and we had a hard time finding the guerrilla enemy - who fought only on their terms. This time, I was looking at the battlefield as a war correspondent, but there was no way to take the young soldier out of the old reporter. My style was to hang out with one of the rifle platoons for five days and then send in my copy. Pretty soon, eating and sleeping with the grunts, I became just a guy who'd been around a war or two. It wasn't long before, "Hey, Hack, does this machine gun have a good field of fire?" and, "What do you think of this patrol formation?" I was tagging along with Maj. Martin Stanton of the 2/87th Infantry, an old pal, when he asked me to give a class on how we used choppers in Vietnam. "Are you sure?" I asked. "Remember, I'm bad news as far as the Army's concerned. What's the Pentagon going to say when they hear you've got me teaching a class?" Stanton was sure. I gave a two-hour lecture on airmobile operations in a guerrilla environment. "This is how we did it in Vietnam," I told them. Most looked at me with blank faces as if I were talking "Star Wars" to the moon. I realized with an electric shock that these fine young 10th Division soldiers were like explorers in an unknown land without a map or compass, and one single cram session on airmobile missions wasn't going to be much help. All of the lessons paid for so dearly from Vietnam had disappeared. After I left Somalia, a Ranger Task Force, some of the best warriors going, deployed to Mogadishu. They conducted six chopper operations, all using identical tactics and techniques, during which they dropped into the objective, conducted a raid and returned to base. On their seventh raid, they were tasked to capture Mohammed Aidid, a clan guerrilla leader. But because their leaders hadn't factored into the equation that Aidid's boys were watching - the way smart terrorists do - they ended up surrounded, trapped and, except for their courage and fighting skill, would have been destroyed to the man. Besides employing a bush-league tactical plan, the general in charge, William Garrison, had no contingency plan to bail out his boys if the op turned bad. No USAF tactical air support. No tanks ready to break through to the besieged Rangers - even though Marine tanks were close, the Army didn't want the Marines to ride to the rescue because of inter-service rivalry. And so our warriors were severely bloodied - 18 died, and more than 100 were wounded, a rout that caused the sole surviving superpower to beat feet out of Somalia, dragging its tail. For personal and professional reasons, I went to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C., to talk to the wounded, then to Fort Benning, Ga., to meet with some of the Rangers who'd been in the fight. They told me officially and again unofficially at night over beers how they'd been sucked in and then out-guerrillaed, outmaneuvered, outsmarted. A detailed assessment of the debacle is in my book, Hazardous Duty. As today's top military leaders go up the chain, like most executives in large organizations, they develop a disease called CRN - Can't Remember Nothing - and forget what it's like to be at the bottom. Somewhere along the line, they stop listening to the grunts who do the fighting and dying, the ones who know what they need to defeat our enemies and survive. We must protect the troops in Afghanistan by applying what we learned the hard way in Somalia, starting with sending some tanks into Kandahar ASAP. http://www.hackworth.com is the address of David Hackworth's home page. Sign in for the free weekly Defending America column at his Web site. Send mail to P.O. Box 11179, Greenwich, CT 06831. © 2001 David H. Hackworth Editor's Note: For a related commentary, see Article 05: Praise For Black Hawk Down From One Who Was There, by Gerry Izzo. Table of Contents ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- ARTICLE 01 - The Economics of Demining Defines Success and Failure ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- By Robert G. Williscroft Over 100 million land mines lay scattered across the world. Every week, 200 more innocent people die or suffer severe injury when they encounter these hidden menaces; many are children. Short of probing every square inch of every acre by hand, how can we rid the land of these war leavings? And what does it cost? There is a broad range of effective demining equipment under development today with a surprisingly wide range of development and operating costs: The Swedish Bofors Mine-Guzzler is a huge, armored, disk earth-tiller with the proverbial cart before the horse. It pushes an array of hardened disks with toothed edges that "till" the soil ahead of it. A "discovered" mine is either exploded or chewed into little pieces. The Mine-Guzzler can be operated from its protected, armor-plated cab, or even remotely when the circumstances warrant. The British Aardvark Mechanical Flail used a different approach. A rotating heavy steel rod extends from the wheeled end of the semi-track vehicle, containing a series of chains with hammers attached. As the rod rotates, the chains flail the ground to a predetermined depth, deactivating, destroying or exploding the mines. The Danish/German Hydrema is similar to the Aardvark, except that it runs on large rubber tires, giving it considerably more roadability at the expense of field mobility. The German Minebreaker 2000 mounts on a tank, typically the Leopard 1, that has been specially reinforced. It uses an armored steel tilling plate system similar to the Mine-Guzzler. The British Minelifta takes a different tack. Using a large scoop, it ingests a portion of the ground in front, and then "digests" the dirt and whatever it contains with high impact flails inside a reinforced steel cowling. As the unit moves through a minefield, it furrows the ground behind it and removes magnetic particles, so that mechanical or even manual verification can be accomplished with safety. All these devices are able to clear approximately a quarter of an acre per day - a thousand square meters or so. Across the civilized world, well-intentioned people who recognize the problem are researching and developing solutions. Even the U.S. Army is developing a mechanical mine clearing device, a modified, reinforced bulldozer, spending over a half million dollars to date. And that defines the real problem. Cost: of the equipment, and of the operation. Typical development cost for a mechanical mine clearing unit is in the half-million dollar range, and the price for individual units ranges from $60,000 to several hundred thousand. Typical operational cost ranges from $3,000 to $15,000 per cleared acre. We're talking big business here. In the late 1990s, for example, multinational Ronco landed a $250 million contract from the U.S. State Department to clear land mines in Kosovo and elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia. The unfortunate truth, however, is that most mines are located in relatively impoverished areas. If a major nation steps to the plate, as the United States did in Kosovo, available large sums can accomplish much. On the other hand, where local authorities contract mine clearing, companies bid on the job, come in and clear acre after acre -- until the funding runs out. Then they pack up their gear and go to the next job. Small, under-funded humanitarian organizations then try to take up the slack. These groups frequently organize themselves around a particular piece of mine clearing equipment, and then use this equipment to the extent of their limited funding. Nevertheless, a lot of the work at this level is accomplished with sniffer dogs and brave men poking the ground with non-magnetic probes. Under these circumstances, clearing rates per man drop dramatically to just a few square meters per day. This discussion begs the question of finding the mines in the first place. At least 800 different mine types populate the world's minefields. These range from home-made coffee can bombs to sophisticated "smart" non-metallic devices that can distinguish between potential targets. No serious military thinker is willing to eliminate land mines from the military arsenal. This leaves us with the huge disposal problem we face. As usual, we throw big money at the problem, and achieve some success. But this approach inevitably results in a costly solution. Ironically, our blindered focus on large-scale solutions has caused us to miss a ready-made answer to the problem. In 1996, Daniel Wolf, former Professor of Political Science at the University of San Diego, founded Ploughshares Technologies, an offshoot to nonprofit Terra Segura International (TSI), which he established in the early 1990s to lobby for low-cost, low-tech mine-clearing strategies. Ploughshares has developed the inexpensive Armadillo. Like some of its more expensive big brothers, the Armadillo relies on weight and disk tilling, but unlike the big guys, this unit does not run off a large, armor-plated behemoth. Instead, it is mechanically operated by cable and an optional small engine. The Armadillo costs around $15,000, a fraction of the price tag for the better-known units in use today. Wolf estimates that it costs less than $700 to clear an acre using the Armadillo-- a far cry from the $3,000 to $15,000 cost of the big guys. Wolf developed the Armadillo with $60,000 given him by hopeful investors, about one tenth the cost of the Army's expensive monster. Through TSI, he is promoting cost effective mine removal. Predictably, he faces a lot of opposition from entrenched interests and their deep pockets. The U.S. Army has a vested interest in mine removal. Instead of developing half million dollar high-tech mine clearing bulldozers, it should put some of its development funds into projects like Daniel Wolf's TSI efforts, where a big bang for your buck is all in a day's work. Robert G. Williscroft is DefenseWatch Navy Editor. He can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. 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