Lifting the Fog of War

Rating:
Summary: Getting out of date for the best of reasons...
Review: ...the reality is catching up with the ideas projected by Admiral Owens! Battlefield communication, AirLand Battle and Operational Maneuver From the Sea are all part of the revolution (and that is no exageration) of the future that is now upon us and detailed in this book. How all this battlefield communication can be carried out are discussed, but picture it a bit this way - the Borg are here.

The American military have always operated on the idea that the individual private soldier (airman or Marine) is an archtype of the larger unit from the squad to the entire nation. A bit like fractals - each component looks like the larger unit. If the upper command are destroyed, each soldier knows what he is to do to accomplish the mission. How many times do we read of battles where companies are led not by captains but by the surviving corporal who knows the mission and takes over when required?

By lifting the fog of war thru extensive battlefield communication, each soldier, tank, fighting vehicle, attack helicopter, strike aircraft, mobile artillery piece, and commander knows what is happening, where, when, to whom. In the first Gulf War, a mobile gun would get 3rd- to 5th-hand data about a target and fire away hoping that the good guys had not moved onto the target area. Now, the good guys talk right to the gun crew and call in artillery as they need it. The same with aircraft and helicopter strikes.

The downside is that all these data are two-fold; first, the shear volume is overwhleming and available to too many levels of command. Like Nixon telephoning in a football play (yes, he did), the direction of the field can be shifted too high in the chain of command. A division commander in the field will usually be able to make a better decision than a general in Ft. Bragg, but each can now view action in real time via drones buzzing around the battlefield. It is the well controlled rear echelon general who can keep his yap shut when the action gets hot and heavy and offer help rather than opinion disguised as orders. (Oh the stories I have heard!) People can become saturated with the amount data and must learn to filter out the important from the interesting from the useless.

Second, the gear is sometimes trecherous. In Afghanistan, a trooper used his GPS to call in an airstrike. No big deal, easy as pie. Except that the batteries began to run low as he entered the target's coordinates. He popped out the old batteries, popped in new ones and sent the coordinates to the strike aircraft. Very cool - direct communication from the field to the strike! Except that he forgot, or was never told, that changing the batteries reset the GPS to HIS coordinates...Oops! You probably saw that one on CNN or Fox. "Incoming shrapnel!" Troops ducking behind mud walls, dead Americans and Afghans.

Still, the revolution means that the military of Viet Nam was as different from that of Desert Storm, as that of today is from Desert Storm. Glad to see it.

Rating:
Summary: Generals often fight the next war like the last war
Review: Anyone who doesn't think this is a timely and important book should study the military history of 1941 and 1942 with particular attention to the fall of the Philippines and Singapore. Generals often fight the next war like the last war to the pain of the nation and military. Admiral Bill Owens provides a compelling case for change. Lifting The Fog of War is a must read for all members of the military, congress, executive branch, and others interested in a strong U.S. military and peace. Questions that remain unasked thus unanswered are when, where, and why America should deploy military force.

Rating:
Summary: Visionary And Frightful At The Dawn Of A Brave New Weapons!
Review: Excellent synopsis of the current perils we are facing, the future technologies we are developing and the need to reorganize our military to meet such goals.

The book details just how and where we will be able to conduct wars by seeing entire regional battlefields. The writer in a deep surreal way conveys how computer battlefields will depict from afar the real view of the carnage from human mistakes within the fogs of war.

Admiral Owens was recruited by Admiral Rickover who was known to attract, select and depend upon the best and the brightest America had to offer. Admiral Owen's apparently has accomplished the art of writing a good book as easy as he learned the art of warfare.

What I find striking is what America is not prepared for as we read and he speaks. Our ability to rapidly deploy in times of need to stop and start fighting is poor to non-existent.

Also, the threat of biological weapons is so real and can cause such damage, we must create technology that can trace such creations so they dare not use them.

Additionally, the coming age of genetic bombs capable of removing certain families, races and cultures needs to be addressed so all can be protected.

Furthermore, these brave new weapons for our brave new technological world must be understood from a view few want to contemplate upon, "The Sane Will Be Facing Insane Tactics, Deeds And Wars," if this becomes reality then the sane themselves must use insane tactics and then want?

Let this book be a wake up call to all before we cannot even counter attack those that cannot be held accountable. We must be prepared and ready to take on the challenges of rogue states, maniac leaders who exploit their own people and could less about human life and global harmony.

The book is brilliantly written by a superb writer and defender of freedom all of his life. We were lucky to have him serve and protect us. Now we are even more fortunate for him to pass on his wisdom for our future.

Magnificent Book, I Highly Recommend It To All!

Rating:
Summary: Problem stated and restated - Solution flawed
Review: I bought this book after hearing Admiral Elliot present his thesis at a professional seminar in June of 2001. He was impressive, compelling and concise. Unfortunately his book was a dissapointment. His position is that unless America's military undergoes a "Revolution in Military Affairs" it will become ineffective and implode by 2010.

Supported by Ed Offley the military reporter of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer the book is repetitive in the extreme and shy on anecdotal support that, it would seem, would be more abundantly available based upon Admiral Elliots extensive experience.

More importantly, the problem covered, the need to integrate information systems, communications, intelligence in a manner that will link all branches and functions of the military is critical.The problem and opportunities are explained but the proposed soluton for the problems is extreme, politicaly unworkable and totally unlikely unless the country first manages to survive the debacle that the admiral predicts!

Indeed, the recent performance of the military in Afghanistan both supports the Admirals thesis while demonstraing that all is not lost. Smart sensors of all types using integrated speial forces coupled with very smart munitions showed great promise while perfection was also lacking.

"Lifting the Fog of War" should be read as part of a building block study of appreciating where our military is however, it is a hard read and does not present a workable solution for the problems discussed.

Rating:
Summary: An important book about national security
Review: I worked with Bill Owens when I was Speaker of the House. He is a very intelligent patriotic career Naval officer who showed as much courage in the Pentagon as he did on the sea. He saw the need for a new information-age approach to national defense and he fought for it despite enormous bureaucratic opposition. When someone proposes a 50% (yes 50%) reduction in procurement bureaucracy in the Pentagon (page 234) then you can understand how many institutions and careers he is threatening.

This book is a clear indictment both of the Clinton-Gore Administration's approach to defense (under-funding and overusing the military thus stretching it to exhaustion and near the breaking point in Owens' analysis) and also a tough critique of the isolated service mentality and the unnecessary duplication and waste which still dominates the defense system despite a decade of talking about "jointness". If you care about America's continued ability to lead in the world this is a book you will want to read. It is also a book you should call your Congressman and Senators and ask them to read. In fact it is a book both Gore and Bush should comment on in the campaign.

Rating:
Summary: Force on Force warfare is not the future
Review: Technology will not help us to determine the outcome of future conflicts. The wars that are plaguing us today in Afghanistan and Iraq will be the primary threat in the future. The world has watched us over the last decade and has seen that America can not be defeated in open, high intensity conflict. Our enemies in the future will not stand toe to toe with our divisions and corps and fight a fair fight. If they did, they would certainly lose and further, they know this. Our technological dominence is unquestionable.
How our enemies will fight us (and beat us if we listen to Admiral Owens) is through insurgency and terrorism. All the technology in the world will not tell you which people in the crowd of civlians is an insurgent and which is just a civilian. Precision munitions are useless against an enemy who never masses his forces, who operates in small cells and who work independantly towards a common goal.
These tactics will defeat most of our new technological advances much like they have continously defeated all technological advances. Technology will often give you a short term advantage that will quickly be negated by the insurgents changing tactics. Vietnam was not an aberation in american military history but a harbinger of future conflict. Iraq is not another Vietnam but they had one thing in common, insurgencies and terrorism.
Until the US military comes to acknowledge this and develop tactics and strategies to fight this kind of war, we will be doomed to continue to template our army against a soviet style massed mechanized force that no one else in the world is dumb enough to put up against us.

Rating:
Summary: Force on Force warfare is not the future
Review: Technology will not help us to determine the outcome of future conflicts. The wars that are plaguing us today in Afghanistan and Iraq will be the primary threat in the future. The world has watched us over the last decade and has seen that America can not be defeated in open, high intensity conflict. Our enemies in the future will not stand toe to toe with our divisions and corps and fight a fair fight. If they did, they would certainly lose and further, they know this. Our technological dominence is unquestionable.
How our enemies will fight us (and beat us if we listen to Admiral Owens) is through insurgency and terrorism. All the technology in the world will not tell you which people in the crowd of civlians is an insurgent and which is just a civilian. Precision munitions are useless against an enemy who never masses his forces, who operates in small cells and who work independantly towards a common goal.
These tactics will defeat most of our new technological advances much like they have continously defeated all technological advances. Technology will often give you a short term advantage that will quickly be negated by the insurgents changing tactics. Vietnam was not an aberation in american military history but a harbinger of future conflict. Iraq is not another Vietnam but they had one thing in common, insurgencies and terrorism.
Until the US military comes to acknowledge this and develop tactics and strategies to fight this kind of war, we will be doomed to continue to template our army against a soviet style massed mechanized force that no one else in the world is dumb enough to put up against us.

Rating:
Summary: Expensive, Ineffective, Unrealistic, But Interesting
Review: This is a well-intentioned book and the best available manifesto for the "system of systems" that can integrate intelligence, precision strike, and communications technologies by exploiting the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). On balance it provides several important contributions, but its core assumption that technology can be a substitute for people is flawed, as is its completely insupportable assumption that our allies might be willing to follow us down this very expensive and dubious interoperability trail. Perhaps even more troubling, the school of thought represented by this book suffers from the severe delusion that everything that needs to be seen can be seen by national technical means, and processed in time to be relevant to the commander. Nothing could be further from the truth-fully 90% of what is needed to succeed in today's environment is not in digital form, not in English, and not collectible by technical means. The most important point made in the whole book, and here I give the author high marks, is its compelling description of why military reform cannot be achieved from within: because there is no decision process by which a "joint" leadership can determine force structure and weapons acquisition without fear of service politics. His approach to reform, shifting from a focus on system stovepipes to joint mission areas, is valuable and could be helpful in defense transformation if it were cleansed of its unhealthy obsession with expensive technology and forced to face the fact that three-quarters of our challenges in this new century are Operations Other Than War (OOTW) that call into question virtually every dollar being spent under existing RMA auspices. The book is also helpful in pointing out the redundancy between the four services, the 12:1 support ratio in personnel, and the need to embed information handling capabilities in all future mobility and weapons systems. Perhaps most disappointingly, this book by a distinguished Admiral and apparent out-of-the-box thinker fails to outline a force structure, including a 450-ship Navy, capable of dealing effectively with all four levels of war in every clime and place.

Rating:
Summary: Very Interesting Given the Current War in Afghanistan
Review: This was a very interesting book because of both the insights of the author and the details he provides the reader. As the book jacket tells you, the author is the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff so he has the experience necessary to make the book credible just on the face of it. What was a pleasant surprise is that the authors have written a very readable and enjoyable book, which can be difficult detailing this subject matter. The main premise of the book is that the US military and the Generals in charge often plan and fight the next war like the last war. This plan many times meets with initial problems and pain. Given this and the reduction in funding the US military could be in trouble if they do not keep moving forward with technology as the base of spending.

The author goes on to document that there has been a major shift in whom we will fight and how the fight will take place (due to the fall of the USSR). Because of these changes the American military needs to reorganize and regroup almost from the ground up to meet the new threats and types of warfare that they will face in the future. The author details that the largest revolution in warfare for American is the advantage we have with the high tech weapons we can use. With this advanced technology, the US can go a long way in "Lifting" the fog of war on the battlefield. What is interesting is the author is describing unmanned aircraft that have been so much in the news recently with the current war in Afghanistan. The author details that the US currently has a head start, but we need to continually push forward on the technology side in order to continue to increase / maintain our advantage.

The author details the main problems that have come about with the separate military areas for the US and the problems that come up when they are to work together. The book details the different weapons systems that could work together very effectively if only the communication and training for truly "joint" operations was in place. He gives the reader a very convincing argument that the most dangerous issue for the military is this lack of integrated systems and communications that would allow all branches to work together seamlessly.

The one advantage of reading this book now is the information we are seeing reported about the current war on terrorism in Afghanistan. It is interesting that some of the reporting supports the authors views and other reporting who make you think the book was a bit over extended in the negative. The author's overly gloomy view of the military if major change is not taken may be a bit much, but he does back a lot of his comments up with thoughtful discussions on the points. Overall the book is an interesting, well-written book that is full of facts. If you are interested in the direction the US military will be taking in the next 10 - 20 years this book may be a large part of the road map.

Rating:
Summary: A Revolutionary, Transforming Book
Review: What a shame that the most I can give this outstanding, thought-provoking book is only five stars. It deserves at least twice that many for honestly and publicly discussing the challenges and opportunities that today's U.S. military faces as it struggles to accept and adapt to the revolutionary and transforming environment in which it finds itself.

Today's U.S. military faces a post-Soviet Union superpower-rival environment with an asymmetric global terrorism threat, in a rapidly exploding advanced technological computer-networked world, and an administration that respects it and understands today's forces cannot continue to function on yesterday's paradigms and be successful against tomorrow's foes. The authors clearly described these dynamic circumstances, boldly challenged today's defense status quo, and bravely offered compelling alternatives intended to further the revolution in military affairs (a Clinton-era term) or the transformation of the armed forces (today's current term).

I read this book after being stationed in the Pentagon for the last two-plus years. I believe it has influenced many of the highest-level transformational studies and initiatives that I have heard about and in which I have participated. I do not necessarily believe everything the authors describe and recommend, but I do believe their insights and vision of what our future forces might be and what they might be able to do are certainly deserving of serious discussion and consideration.

If I were the Secretary of Defense for a day, I would make reading this book a requirement for all my staff and a pre-requisite for any assignment or appointment to the Pentagon.