The CSIS’ Edward Luttwak argues that the Joint Chiefs – weary of two regional wars, and disinclined to engage in a third – presented President Obama and his predecessor with an overly inflated force estimate for attacking Iran’s nuclear weapons program:
While the plan was never publicly disclosed, its magnitude was widely known, and I have learned some of the details. Instead of identifying the few critical nodes of a nuclear-weapon program, the target list included every nuclear-related installation in Iran. And to ensure thorough destruction, each target was accorded multiple aiming points, each one then requiring a weapon of commensurate power, with one or more to follow until bomb-damage assessment photos would show the target obliterated.
That plan elevated the attack to a major operation, with several hundred primary strike sorties and many more support sorties for electronic suppression, refueling, air-sea rescue readiness, and overhead air defense. Given all those aiming points and the longest possible target list, casualties on the ground could run to the thousands.
And this was only the lesser part of the suggested air war, with many more targets, sorties and weapons justified by preliminary “Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses” attacks. In the name of not risking the loss of even one aircraft, planners put every combat airplane in the Iranian air force on the target list.
Somewhere around the early 90′s, air power mavens realized that reducing a country’s infrastructure to ruins was not merely overkill in every sense of the word, but that it resulted in unconscionably high reconstruction and humanitarian costs. With the capabilities inherent to precision weapons, we could knock out the switching station for a power grid, rather than the generators themselves, and accomplish much the same effect.
There are probably useful analogues in the Iranian case. A prolonged air campaign that killed thousands of non-combatants would no doubt unite the troubled Iranian people under their mullahs. Stealthy pinpricks, perhaps not so much.
The target list would be quite a bit longer than that, I suspect. If we’re going to bomb that much of Iran, it’d be stupid to assume that they wouldn’t, well, shoot back. At which point …
When all that you have faith in is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. We have some tremendous non-kinetic weapons – problem is, that a JFACC knows what a JDAM will do. This “electronic bullet thing”? Not so much.
A possible, partial analogy….When France and Britain were trying to decide what to do about the German Rhineland incursion in 1936, Andre Beaufre (later a general, then a young captain on the French staff) had a front-row seat for the military deliberations. He said that the only plan that was available would have required the mobilization of the ENTIRE French army, which involved calling up about a million civilian reservists, requisitioning vehicles, etc. Even though the force required to destroy the German invaders was only a fraction of this, the military planners told their political masters that no alternative plan could be assembled in short order, and the politicians were unwilling to disrupt the entire country (and also possibly be viewed as warmongers by neutrals, including the United States.)
Writes Beaufre: “The die was cast. We had let slip our last chance of stifling at birth the rise of Hitler’s Germany…Through idleness, stupidity, political blindness, or simply frivolity, general opinion lived through these grave events, the result of which was to be a great and catastrophic war, in a kind of sonambulism on which it is necessary to dwell at some length, because it shows how fate deals the cards of history and lulls to sleep its chosen victims.”
Why don’t we send all our plans to Iran as they are getting all the info they need from reports like this in the press. War is all about breaking things and destruction. I’m sorry to see any additional casualties but that is part of the deal..there is no such animal as a ” clean war ”
If we are to make war on IRAN, then I defer to General Sherman’s POV on what the outcome should look like :
” When we are done, I don’t want to see two boards nailed together…”
Aw contrair, Sk, there is such a beast as “clean war.” The Brits called it the “phony war” while the Krauts called it “Sitzkrieg.”
\silly
Or whossname the admiral Halsey who said when we were done Japanese would be a language only spoken in hell.
Had Truman not used the atomic bombs, it was highly likely that would have been the result of Operation Downfall.
The Imperial High Command expected 20 million dead as a result of DOWNFALL.
“War is all about breaking things and destruction.”
That’s not true. War is all about achieving a political goal in a non-permissive environment. Sometimes that means killing people and breaking things. At other times it means building things and helping people. Even Sherman’s march used calibrated levels of violence, focusing more destruction on prominent secessionists in order to reduce their post-war power and provide an example to others.
The Marshall Plan wasn’t just about us being good people. Marshall, former Army Chief of Staff, knew that leaving Europe a bombed-out waste was not going to advance our post-war goals.
We need to identify our goals then identify the minimum amount of force necessary to ensure those goals are reached.
ah, you make yourself one that finds that war is diplomacy by other means.
i’m happy with kill people and break stuff. That’s war.
Marshall plan, not war. Torch, Overlord=war. When the reckoning has a body count… that is war.
When one launches fire raids on enemy cities, let’s not get cutesie about what is war.
Marshall Plan=not war. No shooting. No firestorms. No atomic bombing. This we call ‘diplomacy’ and a form of Dane Geld. We bought peace at near any price.
Not quite. Both diplomacy and war are tools a nation uses to achieve its aims.
My point was that there are entire classes of problems that do not have fire-bombing cities as a solution. In fact I can’t think of a scenario where fire-bombing anything is actually helpful. World War 2 is unique in the history of war. In fact, no war repeats itself, certainly not in the modern age. Technologies and tactics are always changing.
Peace is like sex. We always pay for it.
If peace is like sex and we always pay for it, that raises a number of thoughts.
Paying for prostitutes is like paying the Danegeld — you aren’t paying for services, you’re paying for them to go away afterwords.
Letting slip your morals, your voice, and your contributions to the family in order to have sex with the other member doesn’t make you an equal in the marriage. It merely makes you the first loser with a known price. Which sort of makes you a whore, only without the wardrobe and night-life.
Everything is for sale and has a price. Some people value things such that the price cannot be met. Others cannot refuse an offer. Peace at any price is merely whoring for the first offer given.
Fire-bombing cities is not always the solution. When it is the solution, self-flagellation will not change that fact.
– Max
Max, I think you’re missing my point. In any relationship there are costs, both in time and money. A romantic relationship is going to cost more than a purely sexual relationship, though it does offer more benefits.
Likewise, achieving peace is going to have costs associated with it, no matter how that peace is achieved. Going to war and winning peace is never going to be cheap. The only question is if a negotiated solution would be more expensive.
Firebombing cities no longer has a place in modern warfare. Even massed bombardments are obsolete. In fact, I’m hard-pressed to think of any benefit firebombing achieved that couldn’t have been gained by conventional bombing. The only one I can think of is it gave supporters a data-point to show that the atomic bombings weren’t exceptionally destructive.
There was nothing calibrated about Sherman’s march to the sea, or his march in SC. He meant to wreck destruction and left that are a wasteland that endured into the next century. He left a legacy of hatred that lasted into the next century, and a reputation so stained his memory is completely tainted by it. Grant, Sheridan, and Sherman are rightly credited with the invention of total war.
As for the rest, you are spot one. Marshall knew we would need the aid of western Europe to withstand the Soviets. Western Europe isn’t grateful for what we did, but we didn’t do it for their gratitude.
“Grant, Sheridan, and Sherman are rightly credited with the invention of total war.”
That right there tells me everything I need to know about your knowledge of history. Take a look at the Romans, Mongols, the Hundred Years’ War, and the Thirty Years’ War.
Bit of selective telling of history, there shipmate. To compare the self-funding largely mercenary armies of the Hundred and Thirty Years Wars with the strategic decision to remove the will to fight that was Sherman’s stated goal, is a bit of a stretch. Every example you cited was pillage or starve. There is no evidence of the necessity for that on the part of the Union Army under Grant.
The purpose of Sherman’s march wasn’t to take the war to the civilians in the South. It was to cut off Lee in the Richmond-Petersburg works. Except for the stop in Savannah and the link-up with Schofield Sherman did have to live off the land. The opportunity to punish those whom Sherman, quite rightly, blamed for starting the war was simply a bonus.
Punish, and personally profit.
Lt. Thomas Myers, one of Sherman’s officers, writing to his wife after the looting of Columbia, SC:
Sorta tough to reconcile with the “with malice toward none, with charity for all” position of the commander-in-chief. Remind me how these gold watches are just foraging for food?
…unconscionably high reconstruction and humanitarian costs.
When we’re striking our enemy, there’s nothing at all “unconscionable” about obliterating his infrastructure.
With the capabilities inherent to precision weapons, we could knock out the switching station for a power grid, rather than the generators themselves, and accomplish much the same effect.
Not the same effect at all. The power grid comes right back up with the replacement of the switching station. Destroy the generators, also. The only legitimate question here is whether the destruction of the enemy’s infrastructure is worth the cost to our side, not whether we might hurt the poor, benighted enemy. It’s a false dichotomy to try to separate out an enemy population from an enemy government.
Eric Hines
A country without electricity is not a serious threat.
No need to send a démarche and a date first, which has been my. Both the historic Law of Naval Warfare NWIP 10-2 section 320 War Crimes Under International Law, and THE COMMANDER’S HANDBOOK ON THE LAW OF NAVAL OPERATIONS NWP 1-14M (Formerly NWP 9) FMFM 1-10 [COMDTPUB P5800.7] section 6.2.5 War Crimes Under International Law seems to give this the OK. It is much more humane that kinetic and explosive flattening of cities.
Good border controls can alleviate any surge of dangerous “tourists”. A serious government would say, “hit us with warriors out of uniform in the US (a crime under the Law of Land Warfare), and you will feel even more pain. A far-sighted government would ramp up deportation or isolation of illegal immigrants that could pose a problem well before strike ops.
Yep, good (meaning effective) border controls, a serious government (meaning one which takes care not to violate the Constitution, and seeks the common good), a far sighted government (further than the next election), there’s the ticket.
That’ll be the day.
The revised Cuban Missile Crisis book from a source who was there recalls that what JFK wanted was a swift strike at the strategic weapons/missiles and all the USAF/USN could provide was a strike following a systematic take down SEAD of Cuban air defenses involving thousands of sorties and many tons of bombs. Back in the day the military refused to wrap its mind around suppressing the important target and not all the rest.
All I got is a small caution that the source, Luttwak, isn’t one I’d be very certain about. He was all over every network he could whore himself out to in ’91 telling everyone how Iraq was going to be the bloodiest campaign the US had seen since Korea. Since then, as near as I can tell, he’s been periodically crying out “hey, look at me, I’m important!” As the saying goes, “just sayin’”
Comjam,
I remember Luttwak’s comments from ’91 as well as several articles that pretty much claim that no weapon we’ve bought since the end of Vietnam will actually work. Patriot and ALCM/SLCM came in for particular scorn, IIRC.
Mike
This is what happens when you let the Air Force do your targeting. They are so saturated in the World War II concept of mass bombing that they can’t think of anything different. Turn it over to a Navy planning cell and see what results you get.
I haven’t yet read that article, but I recall Luttwak’s ravings in the runup to Gulf War I when he was on one of the major TV networks predicting death and destruction for the Army’s Apache attack helo fleet. He claimed they were being sent into a sitation in which they could not survive. I’ve not paid much attention to what he says since.
Pay no attention to Luttwak. I sure don’t.
Seems to me that air-defense, nuke-processing facilities, precise power-grid hits, and then
(just for S & G on the way out of Dodge)the gasoline refineries.
Then go home, hoist a pint, and turn-on the “News”.
But, I’ve been out of the game for a LONG time…
99% of Iran’s refining is done by 5 sites. One SSN would be able to knock Iran’s economy back to the 19th century. At the very least it will force them to spend money on importing value-added refined products. The more money they spend keeping the lights on the less they have to spend on building nukes.
One SSBN would really reset their clock. Jes sayin’
And a howitzer can be used to control the deer population.
that could be entertaining, especially in direct fire mode…
When, not if, the SHTF, I am sure that the Iranian infrastructure will be sufficiently broken to halt their nuclear weapons programs for a while, but probably not end them. The total elimination will require a regime change, and for that we need to be sensitive to minimizing collateral damage that will turn internal hatred for Ahmanutjob and the theocrats into external hatred of the west.
I hope that military planners are working closely with Israel, even if Obama continues to hate our allies and love our enemies. We must be ready to take out the imminent threat of nuclear armed Iran, and the inevitable eruptions that it will trigger. We can wait and let mushroom clouds over Isreal kick off hostilities, but it is better to do a preemptive strike. Openly if necessary, clandestinely if possible, but there is no way the Iranian nuclear threat will be deterred.
We are not dealing with a rational, western thinking nation or leadership. Mutually Assured Destruction worked with the Soviets, but will not with the Iranians. Their deeply held religious beliefs about the “12th Immam” and the need for horrendous strife to call him forth cannot be ignored (even if they cannot be understood in our minds).
It’s going to get ugly out there. Israel’s very existence is at stake, and our stakes are pretty high as well, given the inevitable asymetric warfare strategies that will be employed.
Hardened targets will probably take multiple hits to take down. We’re not going to be able to do this with one flight of attack aircraft a-la Osirak, so taking down defenses along the way makes sense. Sounds like the presented a plan that removes the nuke program, protects our strike forces, and eliminates Iranian capacity to retaliate in the neighborhood (something they will no doubt want to do). Don’t see problems with any of that.
If we’re going to go in, we need to do it right.
I hope that when the time comes to apply force to Iran, we remember not to “send a message”, or hold back our forces.
The Vietnam debacle remains in my mind when the idiot politicians made certain that we hit the enemy, but not too hard.
Somehow methinks that if the US gets involved in stopping the Iranian nuclear program, it’ll be another faint hearted, message
sending, “what about the chiiiilllldreeeen” campaign.
War is hell and should be prosecuted with maximum violence, in order for it to end in victory in the shortest possible time.
Roger
My biggest fear is by doing nothing-using the useless UN for
“sanctions” things will degrade until bigger more expansive
and -expensive warmaking is necessary..
Just like:August, 1939…
I do think the Russians are up to something, btw…