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 he
overwrought response of much of the media to the recent "friendly
fire" deaths of three American soldiers in Afghanistan illustrates
the degree to which we have become victims of our own success. It
goes without saying that the deaths are terrible, and the country's
heart goes out to the soldiers' families. But in the context of
war, what is remarkable is not that Americans have died in a tragic
incident, but that so few have died in this conflict at all.
The correct
term for what happened to these soldiers is "fratricide,"
a term far superior to the oxymoronic "friendly fire."
But no matter what term is used, such deaths have been, and can
be expected to remain, a fairly constant feature of war — at least
so long as war is conducted by human beings. A study conducted by
the Army, in 1993, of medical records from World War II, Korea,
Vietnam, and the Gulf War, concluded that about fifteen percent
of U.S. casualties were the result of fratricide.
Fratricide
first became a major story during the Gulf War — in other words,
a war in which the enemy wasn't able to kill large numbers of U.S.
troops. In that conflict, 35 of 146 U.S. combat deaths — about a
quarter — were the result of fratricide. In Afghanistan, three out
of a total of four Americans have now been killed by friendly fire.
The remarkable
paucity of not only U.S. but also anti-Taliban casualties is a tribute
to the effectiveness of U.S. doctrine and technology. War fighters
today possess a level of "situational awareness" only
imagined a decade ago. A network of "sensors" and "shooters"
makes it possible for U.S. assets to attack targets in "real
time," using a variety of munitions, and to employ techniques
that were unthinkable until recently.
Consider the
evolution of "close air support." CAS traditionally called
for a forward air controller, on the ground or in a spotter plane,
whose task was to identify and mark a target, coordinating the strike
in such a way as to minimize the risk to friendly troops. Even with
improved techniques and training, and especially with the development
of technology to "designate" a target with a laser, CAS
could be dangerous, especially in fast-moving situations.
But consider
that the bomb that killed the three Americans was a 2,000-pound
bomb, dropped at a high altitude by a B-52 bomber. Until recently,
the employment of such a weapon in close proximity to friendly troops
was unthinkable. Many of us who served in Vietnam remember "arc
lights" — strikes by flights of B-52s that literally lit up
the night and shook the earth even thousands of yards away. What
has enabled U.S. forces to call in B-52 strikes so close to friendly
troops is the rapid evolution of "smart" munitions. The
proliferation of precision munitions has also permitted both the
Air Force and the Navy to reduce the number of airframes while at
the same time increasing the effectiveness of air strikes.
In the old
days, a B-52 carried "iron bombs," which followed a ballistic
trajectory from the bomber's release point to the target. The accuracy
of the strike could be affected by a number of factors, including
high- and low-level winds. Now B-52s can carry Joint Direct Attack
Munitions. JDAM is a guidance kit, consisting of inertial navigation
and global positioning systems, that permits attack in all weather
conditions. Once released, the JDAM corrects its flight path by
means of global positioning satellite (GPS), permitting it to strike
within four to 13 meters of the target. Consider that to destroy
a point target by the end of World War II required 108 B-17 bombers
dropping 648 bombs. In Vietnam, the same sort of target required
176 bombs. During the air war in Kosovo, the first engagement in
which JDAM was employed, it achieved a stunning 96 percent accuracy
rate.
So how did
such an accurate weapon end up killing Americans? There are three
general possibilities. The GPS system could have been jammed (not
likely, since the Taliban is not known to possess such a jamming
capability), or inadvertently interfered with by other U.S. signals.
There could have been a material or mechanical failure, such as
a defect in the tail fin. Or there could have been human error —
for instance, a soldier transposing the digits of the target's coordinates,
or mistakenly plugging in the observer's location instead of the
target. Pending the results of an investigation, my vote would be
for the last alternative. This was the cause of the earlier friendly-fire
incident, during the prison uprising at Mazar-e Sharif.
Mistakes in
war are the consequence of what Clausewitz called "friction,"
which he identifies as "the only concept that more or less
corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on
paper." As he observes,
everything
in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties
accumulate, and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable
unless one has lowered the general level of performance, so that
one always falls far short of the intended goal... The military
machine — the army and everything related to it — is basically
very simple and therefore seems easy to manage. But we should
keep in mind that none of its components is of one piece: each
part is composed of individuals... the least important of whom
may chance to delay things or somehow make them go wrong... This
tremendous friction, which cannot, as in mechanics, be reduced
to a few points, is everywhere in contact with chance, and brings
about effects that cannot be measured, just because they are largely
due to chance.
Clearly, unnoticeably
small causes can be amplified in war until they produce unanticipated
macro-effects.
While we can
take steps to reduce friction, we are not likely to be able to eliminate
it altogether. In a masterful study of Clausewitzian friction, Barry
Watts, now director of program analysis and evaluation in the office
of the secretary of defense, wrote an excellent monograph some years
back in which he argued persuasively that "general friction"
is a "built-in or structural feature of combat processes,"
arising from the fact that war is a human enterprise. "The
propensities and constraints built into humankind by biological
evolution provide a wellspring for general friction that seems likely
to persist at some level as long as Homo Sapiens do."
The wellspring
of friction — and how to minimize it — is captured in a wonderful
scene from the movie Glory. In this scene, the soldiers of
the 54th Massachusetts have just been issued their rifles. At this
point in their training, war is still something of a game to them.
One soldier is demonstrating his marksmanship as others, including
the unit's executive officer, look on.
At this point,
the commanding officer, Robert Gould Shaw, played by Matthew Broderick,
approaches. Shaw knows something of war, having survived the carnage
of Antietam. He commends the soldier on his skill, but then orders
him to reload and fire again. As he does, Shaw yells "faster."
He then pulls out his revolver and begins to discharge it close
to the soldier's head, all the while yelling "faster."
The soldier is finally paralyzed by the pressure and confusion.
Shaw turns to the executive officer and says: "Instruct them.
Properly."
Indeed, Clausewitz
writes that friction is countered by such means as training, discipline,
regulations, orders, and what he calls "the iron will of the
commander." But it also seems intrinsic to war, reflecting
the disproportionately large effects of the "least important"
individuals in the system and of minor, unforeseeable incidents.
So — although
technology may improve, and training made more realistic and demanding
— friction is likely to remain a feature of war. Much as we may
desire it, we should not expect perfection in war, so long as it
remains a human enterprise.
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