James G. Burton - The Pentagon Wars: Reformers Challenge the Old Guard

The

Pentagon

Wars

The latest edition of this work has been brought to publication with the generous assistance of Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest.

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

1993 James G. Burton

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First Naval Institute Press paperback edition published 2014

ISBN 978-1-61251-369-0 (eBook)

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Burton, James G., 1937

The Pentagon wars : reformers challenge the old guard / James G. Burton.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. United StatesArmed ForcesReorganization. 2. United StatesMilitary policy. I. Title.

UA23.B795 1993

355.0097309049dc20

93-3424

CIP

Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Frontispiece: The second-floor hallway of the Pentagon dedicated to the NATO alliance. Under the flags of the NATO nations, John Boyd, Chuck Spinney, and the author frequently met in secret to discuss national security matters. Drawing by James G. Burton, Jr.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my late wife Nancy Lee, one of the most wonderful people who ever walked the face of this earth. As I wrestled with the decision to fight the system, she told me I had to do what I believed was right no matter what the consequences. We can always get along, she would say. She insisted that I write this book because she felt the story was part of our history and needed to be recorded.

Throughout the trying times of that journey on the other side of the Rubicon, she was always there with her smile, the ever-present smile that lit up the darkest of days and touched the hearts of everyone who met her. I thank the Lord for the time we had together and for letting her see the completed first draft of this book.

Contents

The

Pentagon

Wars

T he initial euphoria of victory in the Gulf War has dissipated, but a lingering feeling of pride over a job well done still exists after more than two years. For the first time in almost half a century, the United States won a war, or so it seemed at the time. Although the victory itself was enough reason to celebrate, the manner in which we apparently wonswiftly, decisively, and with unbelievably few casualtieswas cause for an even greater celebration. It signaled that a major change had occurred in the thinking of many U.S. military strategists and tacticians.

The dinosaurs of the 1960s and 1970s are slowly fading from the scene. A new breed of military thinkers, with totally different operational concepts, has arrived. As the dinosaurs become extinct, so will their philosophy of rushing to meet an opponent head on and slugging it out. The toe-to-toe approach to war can lead to victory, but it also leaves lots of dead bodies on both sides. It is an attrition philosophy where firepower is king, and the number of dead bodies is a measure of who is winning. This war-fighting philosophy dominated military thinking during the Vietnam era and immediately thereafter.

In July 1976, the Army published this doctrine in Field Manual 100-5, Operations, which told commanders how to use their armored forces. The instructions reveal the mind-set of those officers who had risen through the ranks during the Vietnam War:

The chief mission of these forces must be to fight with sufficient strength and tenacity to force the enemy to disclose the size and direction of his main attack, and to buy time while defending forces concentrate in front of the main thrust.... In mounted warfare, armored and mechanized elements (tanks and armored personnel carriers) must be set in motion toward the battle positions in the path of the enemy thrust. (Emphasis added)

The philosophy embodied in these instructions was so important to the military thinkers of that time that the entire paragraph was emphasized with a box around it.

The new breed, on the other hand, thinks in terms of feints, deceptions, multiple thrusts, and the use of firepower to tie up the enemy while maneuvering around behind it and capturing its forces. Confusion, chaos, panic, surrender, being inside the opponents decision time, collapse, envelopment, hook around behindthis is the language of the new thinkers.

The Gulf War battle plans of the Army and the Marines were well conceived by this new breed. The execution of those plans, however, was bungled by the senior commanders, which suggests that considerable dinosaur blood remains within the upper ranks of the general officer corpsjust enough to allow the majority of the elite Iraqi Republican Guard to escape a well-planned trap and continue as the linchpin of Saddam Husseins power. (See the for an expansion of this point.)

The conceptual framework for the Gulf War plans and the theoretical underpinning for the new breed of military thinkers who prepared those plans can be found in the Green Book, so called because of the books green cover. This unofficial publication, titled A Discourse on Winning and Losing, contains the unique theories of John Boyd, a retired Air Force colonel. During the past fifteen years, Boyd has become one of the premier military theorists in the United States.

Between 1987 and the start of the Gulf War in January 1991, the Marine Corpss Amphibious Warfare School at Quantico, Virginia, printed and distributed one thousand copies of the Green Book.Fleet Marine Force Manual Number 1, published by the Marine Corps in March 1989, is not as comprehensive as the Green Book, but its theoretical framework is clearly based on Boyds work. The same can be said about the Army.

From the late 1970s through the early 1980s, Boyd unmercifully attacked the Armys 1976 edition of Field Manual 100-5, Operations and the philosophy it espoused. In countless briefings and lectures throughout the Department of Defense, he openly called the Field Manual a piece of garbage. Boyd offered an alternative philosophy and concepts based on maneuver, rather than attrition. After considerable internal debate, the Army revised the