Special Forces and the Future of Warfare:
Will SOF Predominate in 2020?
Stephen Biddle
Strategic Studies Institute
U.S. Army War College
24 May 2004
The views expressed in this and other papers associated with the NIC 2020 project
are those of individual participants. They are posted for discussion purposes
only and do not represent the views of the Army, the Army War College, the Department of Defense or the US Government.
Special Forces and the Future of Warfare:
Will SOF Predominate in 2020?
Stephen Biddle
Strategic Studies Institute
U.S. Army War College
24 May 2004
American Special Operations Forces (SOF) have scored some extraordinary achievements in recent warfare. In Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) they were assigned primary responsibility for a vast stretch of Iraq’s western desert, where they denied the Iraqis launch areas for missiles, led the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and became the supported, rather than the supporting, command in joint action with conventional ground forces. In operations along the Green Line in northern Iraq they were again the lead American element, working with Kurdish pesh merga militia to tie down Iraqi conventional divisions in a critical economy of force action, eventually marching into the cities of Kirkuk and Mosul and securing Iraq’s northern oil fields. On Iraq’s decisive southern front they worked closely with conventional forces, providing important targeting and intelligence for air strikes and ground maneuver. In Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan, a handful of commandos transformed a six-year stalemate into a rapid victory by America’s Afghan allies over the Taliban regime. In both Iraq and Afghanistan – and elsewhere in the world – SOF are even now playing a critical role in combating insurgents and hunting down terrorists.
SOF have thus become an increasingly central element of American military power. Their growing utility is in turn attracting an increase in the personnel and resources devoted to special operations.
But how far should this trend be taken, and how prominent should SOF’s role become? Are there natural limits on the roles and missions suitable for special operations, and if so, what are they? Is a modest expansion of special operations at the margins of an essentially conventional military the best approach? Or should the conventional military eventually be transformed around SOF – should special operations come to provide the predominant ground element in a radically restructured American military?
This paper approaches these questions by stipulating that some near term expansion is warranted, and asking instead, what are the limits in how far this can be taken in the longer term? In principle, this question could be approached from the supply side, by considering our ability to produce a greatly expanded SOF without diluting its quality: can sufficient numbers of qualified individuals be found, and if so, can the nation afford the time and training expenditures needed to prepare them properly? Alternatively, one could consider the demand side: how much of the nation’s military needs can be met with special operations, assuming for the moment that we can supply the forces if we otherwise wanted them? The ultimate limiter here is SOF’s ability to take over missions now primarily assigned to conventional forces – and especially, its ability to shoulder the mission that now drives much of the conventional ground forces’ structure: major combat operations (MCO). SOF’s role could certainly expand within the framework of traditionally SOF-specific missions such as unconventional warfare or counter-terrorist direct action, but such tasks are unlikely to become the central drivers of American force structure any time soon; expansion within the framework of such missions is thus likely to be incremental rather than radical. The limiting constraint on SOF’s predominance in the American military is its ability to supplant conventional forces in one or more of their traditional roles.
Below I take the demand-side approach, and focus on the potential for long-term realignment of missions from conventional ground forces toward SOF. In particular, I consider one of the most widely discussed of these possibilities: the argument that a “New Model” or “Afghan Model” of war based on the combination of SOF and standoff precision will enable America to wage major combat operations without mass conventional ground forces of our own. If so, this would imply a dramatic shift in the relative importance of SOF and the conventional military in American force structure, and would certainly constitute revolutionary, rather than merely evolutionary, change.
I argue, however, that such a realignment would be ill-advised. Although such proposals have been regularly advanced (and especially so in the months following the Taliban’s fall), evidence from Afghanistan and Iraq suggests important limitations to the Afghan Model that would make it risky to redesign the military around its requirements. While it can sometimes be highly effective, its preconditions cannot always be met, and thus a more balanced military will remain advisable for the foreseeable future. None of this is to suggest that a moderate near-term expansion in SOF capability is unjustified; a detailed cost-benefit analysis of such incremental programmatics is beyond my scope here. But the scale of advisable change is probably limited to evolutionary expansion – certainly the case for the radical option considered below is too weak to be sustained.
I present this argument in four steps. First I describe the Afghan Model and its implications for American force structure in somewhat greater detail. I then assess its performance in Afghanistan and the implications of this for restructuring. Next I turn to Iraq, and evaluate evidence from OIF for the prospective performance of an Afghan Model elsewhere. I then address the prospects for future technological change in light of this combat experience. I conclude with some summary observations and implications for long term defense planning.
The Afghan Model
Perhaps the most-discussed concept for a SOF-predominant military turns on what some have called the “New Model” or “Afghan Model” of major combat operations. In this Afghan Model, small teams of elite commandos on the ground provide the targeting information needed for precision weapons to reach dispersed, concealed opponents. This SOF-directed standoff precision is so lethal, it is argued, that hostile militaries can be defeated without mass conventional land forces of our own. In this view, SOF is thus the catalyst that enables standoff precision strike to realize its full potential and substitute for large-scale close combat on the ground. Until the commandos arrived in Afghanistan, for example, high-altitude bombing could do little against a country with few large, fixed targets, this school argues. But once Coalition bombing was guided by friendly eyes on the ground, they claim, it became possible for airpower to annihilate the Taliban infantry and armor that had stymied the Northern Alliance for the preceding six years of civil warfare, enabling even an unsophisticated, outnumbered ally to liberate the entire country in a matter of weeks. On the Green Line in Iraq in 2003, it is argued, SOF similarly enabled Kurdish militia previously cowed by the Republican Guard to turn the tables on Saddam’s forces and conquer major cities and key economic assets by advancing in the wake of SOF-directed precision bombing. Elsewhere in Iraq, it is argued, SOF’s ability to target precision strikes contributed greatly to enabling a Coalition ground force thought undersized by many to triumph nonetheless. More broadly, some Afghan Model advocates see SOF-enabled precision strike as a substitute for large-scale conventional ground combat.
If so, this might enable a radical restructuring of the U.S. military. If SOF-directed precision fires can provide the bulk of the real combat power needed to prevail in major combat, then much of the heavy conventional ground forces now held for this purpose could be eliminated or converted to other purposes. This would produce a possibly smaller, considerably lighter conventional Army and Marine Corps, combined with expanded precision strike air and missile assets and a significant increase in the SOF strength needed for their direction. The result would be a very different U.S. military: lighter, faster, more strategically mobile, less reliant on theater logistical infrastructure and secure ports, with an even greater ability to project firepower over greater distances than today’s – but also a military much more reliant than today’s on standoff precision for effectiveness.
The Afghan Model in OEF
SOF-directed precision strike was indeed extremely valuable in both OIF and OEF. But do these cases suggest that we can safely rely on standoff precision in the way a SOF-predominant Afghan Model restructuring would require? The answer is no. In neither case does the evidence suggest that SOF-directed precision was sufficient for success. In OEF, at least, it was necessary – but it was not in itself sufficient. And for an Afghan Model based restructuring to make sense, something very close to sufficiency is required.
In Afghanistan, for example, the war entailed extensive close combat between two sizeable – Afghan – land armies. In fact, the war as a whole was much more orthodox, and much less revolutionary, than many now believe. OEF was not waged exclusively at long standoff, and success in the campaign’s close combat actions proved crucial to its outcome. The results of this close combat rested in turn on friendly land forces’ ability to integrate ground maneuver with the effects of precision fires. Where those ground forces enjoyed sufficient skills to exploit the effects of American firepower (or where their opponents were sufficiently inept, or both), that firepower proved decisive. But where unskilled allies were forced to confront enemies with the skills to reduce their exposure to standoff fires, the results were much less successful. And this in turn means that for the Afghan Model to work requires an important precondition: the ground forces involved, whether ours or someone else’s, need a combination of skills and motivation that is at least in the ballpark of the army they are fighting against. If this precondition is met, SOF-directed precision could indeed provide OEF-like results in other places and times. But if the precondition is not met, the OEF experience suggests that SOF-directed precision alone may not be sufficient for success.
In OEF, the war initially involved a very poorly skilled opponent, and the early fighting went mostly the way Afghan Model proponents assume. The new Model apparently took the Taliban by surprise, and their initial dispositions were poorly chosen for this kind of warfare. They typically deployed on exposed ridgelines with little effort at camouflage or concealment. Entrenchments were haphazard, lacking overhead cover for infantry positions or proper emplacements for combat vehicles. As a result, their positions could be identified from often extraordinary distances. And once located, their poor entrenchment and exposed movement made them easy prey for precision weapons.
The result was slaughter. At Bishqab on October 21, 2001, for example, U.S. SOF pinpointed Taliban targets at ranges of over eight kilometers. Skeptical Northern Alliance commanders peered through their binoculars at Taliban positions that had stymied them for years and were astounded to see the defenses suddenly vaporized by direct hits from 2,000 pound bombs. At Cobaki on October 22, Taliban observation posts were easily spotted at 1500-2000 meters and annihilated by precision bombing. At Zard Kammar on October 28, Taliban defenses were wiped out from a mile away. At Ac’capruk on November 4, exposed Taliban combat vehicles and crew-served weapons on hillsides west of the Balkh river were spotted from SOF observation posts on the Koh-i-Almortak ridge line some 4-5 kilometers distant and obliterated by American air strikes. At Polanyi Canyon near Bamiyan on November 7, Taliban positions were plainly visible from more than four kilometers away. Taliban counterattacks, as at Tarin Kowt on November 18, were conducted in the open with no evident attempt at concealment, dispersal, or covering fire to keep US or allied observers’ heads down or to complicate target acquisition.
Within days of the first SOF-directed air strikes, however, American commandos were already reporting that Taliban vehicles in their sectors had been smeared with mud to camouflage them. By November 5, the Taliban were already making aggressive use of overhead cover and concealment. In the fighting north of Kandahar and along Highway 4 in December, al Qaeda defenses were well-camouflaged, dispersed, and making use of natural terrain for expedient cover. This pattern continued through Operation ANACONDA in March, by which time al Qaeda forces were practicing systematic communications security, dispersal, camouflage discipline, use of cover and concealment, and exploitation of dummy fighting positions to draw fire and attention from their real dispositions. The Taliban did not just passively suffer under American attack – they adapted their methods to try to reduce their vulnerability. And as they did, the war changed character.
Among the more important changes was increasing difficulty in finding targets for precision attack. At Bai Beche on November 2-5, for example, a mostly-al Qaeda defensive force occupied an old, formerly-Soviet system of deliberate entrenchments. With proper cover and concealment, the defenders were able to prevent American commandos from locating the entirety of their individual fighting positions, many of which could not be singled out for precision attack. American SOF thus called for area bombing across the entirety of the position. After more than two days of heavy bombing, enough surviving, actively resisting al Qaeda defenders remained in the position to drive back the initial attempt by American-allied Northern Alliance cavalry to take the position. The attached American SOF observed this reverse and began calling renewed airstrikes in anticipation of a second assault. In the process, however, a SOF warning order to the cavalry to prepare for another push was mistaken by the cavalry as a command to launch the assault, with the result that the cavalry began its attack much sooner than intended. The surprised Americans watched the Afghan cavalry break cover and begin their advance just as a series of laser-guided bombs had been released from American aircraft in response to the SOF calls for air support. The SOF commander reported that he was convinced they had just caused a friendly fire incident: the bomb release and the cavalry advance were way too close together for official doctrinal limits, and the air strike would never have been ordered if the SOF had known that the cavalry was then jumping off for the second assault. As it happened, the bombs landed just seconds before the cavalry arrived. In fact, the cavalry galloped through the enormous cloud of smoke and dust that was still hanging in the air after the explosions, emerging behind the enemy defenses before their garrison knew what was happening. The defenders, seeing Northern Alliance cavalry to their rear, abandoned their positions in an attempt to avoid encirclement.
The result was an important victory — in fact, the victory that turned the tide in the north and led directly to the fall of Mazar-e-Sharif on November 10. But the battle involved serious close combat (cavalry overrunning prepared, actively resisting defenses), and the outcome was a very close call. The assault profited from an extremely tight integration of movement with suppressive fire — far tighter, in fact, than either the cavalry or their supporting SOF would ever have dared arrange deliberately. Luck thus played an important role in the outcome. The Northern Alliance might well have carried the position eventually even without the good fortune of an extraordinary integration of fire and movement; this was clearly a crucial battle, and they would presumably have redoubled their efforts if the second attempt had failed. But as fought, the outcome involved an important element of serendipity.
Nor was Bai Beche unique in demanding hard fighting at close quarters. In the December fighting along Highway 4 south of Kandahar, concealed al Qaeda defenses among a series of culverts and in burned-out vehicle hulks along the roadside remained wholly undetected until their fire drove back an allied advance at point blank range. An al Qaeda counterattack in the same sector using a system of wadis for cover approached undetected to within 100-200 meters of allied and American SOF positions along the highway before opening fire on friendly forces. At the village of Sayed Slim Kalay north of Kandahar between December 2-4, concealed al Qaeda defenders likewise remained undetected until they fired upon unsuspecting U.S. and allied attackers. An al Qaeda counterattack using local terrain for cover maneuvered into small arms range of friendly defenders before being driven back. At Konduz in late November, al Qaeda counterattackers penetrated allied positions deeply enough to compel supporting American SOF teams to withdraw at least three times to avoid being overrun. At Tora Bora, massive American bombing proved insufficient to compensate for allied Afghan unwillingness to close with dug-in al Qaeda defenders in the cave complexes of the White Mountains; this ground force hesitancy probably allowed Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants to escape into neighboring Pakistan.
At Operation ANACONDA in March 2002, an intensive pre-battle reconnaissance effort focused every available surveillance and target acquisition system on a tiny, ten-by-ten kilometer battlefield. Yet fewer than 50 percent of all the al Qaeda positions ultimately identified on this battlefield were discovered prior to ground contact. The result was extensive close combat. In the opening action of the battle, for example, American-allied Afghans under General Mohammed Zia and supported by American SOF were assigned to drive al Qaeda defenders from the “Tri-cities” area (the villages of Shirkankeyl, Babakuhl and Marzak); they were instead pinned down under hostile fire from prepared defenses in the surrounding mountainsides that had survived preliminary air strikes. Zia’s troops eventually withdrew after they proved unable to advance. Only after the al Qaeda defenders pulled back under joint, multinational attack by allied airpower, western infantry, and multinational SOF, were Zia’s troops able to enter the Tri-cities and adjoining ridgelines. In fact, most of Operation ANACONDA took the form of a series of close assaults to destroy surviving, actively resisting defenses whose locations were mostly unknown prior to their firing upon friendly forces, often at very close quarters.
Among these examples, the fighting along Highway 4 in December is particularly instructive. The American-allied Afghans here were divided among two factions. The first, commanded by Haji Gul Alai, were very capable troops by Afghan standards. They used terrain for cover and concealment, maintained good intervals between elements in the advance, moved by alternate bounds, exploited suppressive fire to cover moving elements’ exposure, and were able to exploit the effects of American air strikes by coordinating their movement with the bombing (which many Afghan factions could not). The second faction, by contrast, was much less skilled: the attached SOF commander characterized them as “an armed mob — just villagers given weapons.” Their tactics consisted of exposed, bunched-up movement in the open, with no attempt to use terrain to reduce their exposure, and little ability to employ supporting or suppressive fires. At the Arghestan Bridge on December 5, this second faction launched an assault on a dug-in al Qaeda position south of the Kandahar airport. Driven back repeatedly, they proved unable to take the position, in spite of U. S. air support. Only after these troops were withdrawn and Haji Gul Alai’s forces took over the assault the following day could the al Qaeda positions be taken.
Of course, the alliance ultimately prevailed. And SOF-directed precision airpower was a necessary precondition for this – it was what turned a stalemated civil war into a dramatic battlefield victory for America and its allies. But while precision bombing was necessary, it was not sufficient. It could annihilate poorly prepared fighting positions, and it could inflict heavy losses on even well-disposed defenses. But it could not destroy the entirety of properly prepared positions by itself. And unless such positions are all but annihilated, even a handful of surviving, actively-resisting defenders with modern automatic weapons can make great slaughter of unsophisticated indigenous allies whose idea of tactics is to walk forward bunched up in the open. To overcome skilled, resolute defenders who have adopted the standard countermeasures to high-firepower airstrikes still requires close combat by friendly ground forces whose own skills are sufficient to enable them to use local cover and their own suppressive fire to advance against hostile survivors with modern weapons.
By and large, America’s main Afghan allies in this war either enjoyed such fundamental skills or profited from accidentally tight coordination of their movement and American fires (as at Bai Beche) or both. The Northern, and later the Southern, Alliances were not uniformly the motley assortment of militiamen they are sometimes said to have been. Enough of them were capable of modern military tactics to allow them to exploit the tremendous potential that precision air power can bring to armies capable of integrating their movement with its firepower.
But not all of America’s allies in this war were up to this job. Though the typical combat units on each side were about equally matched (as the stalled pre-intervention battle lines imply), both sides in Afghanistan were actually diverse mixtures of better- and worse-trained, more- and less-motivated troops — and this diversity offers a couple of valuable opportunities to observe instances of unequally-skilled forces in combat. In such unequal fights as the first day at Arghestan Bridge and the assault on the Tri-cities in ANACONDA, the results suggest that where the indigenous allies are overmatched tactically, American air power and SOF support alone may not be enough to turn the tide. In Afghanistan, the Northern and Southern Alliances, eventually combined with the American and Canadian infantry that fought at ANACONDA, together provided significant ground forces that ultimately shouldered an essential load of old-fashioned close combat against surviving, actively resisting opponents. Even with 21st century firepower, without this essential close combat capability the outcome in Afghanistan could easily have been very different.
The Afghan Model in OIF
What about Iraq? Did SOF-directed precision strike enable an out-matched or unskilled Kurdish ally to defeat greatly superior Iraqi forces on the Green Line in 2003? Kurdish skills, though mixed, were certainly no match for the Republican Guard on their own. A decade of actual combat experience gives ample evidence of this: the Guard repeatedly crushed pesh merga resistance whenever Kurdish uprisings without American military protection gave Saddam cause and opportunity. If SOF support had enabled the pesh merga to turn the tables on the Guard in 2003, this would therefore be evidence of precision strike prevailing without support from capable conventional ground forces, and would thus strengthen the case for an Afghan Model restructuring of the American military.
Yet this is not what actually happened on the Green Line. In fact there was no contact between Kurdish militia and the Republican Guard in OIF. The Iraqi defenses on the Green Line were disposed with regular conscript infantry in the forward positions opposite the Kurds. A handful of Republican Guard divisions were withheld in reserve behind these forward defenses, with the dual mission of encouraging the regulars in front of them to fight, and of constituting a mobile reaction force for response to local breakthroughs or for repositioning elsewhere in the theater as information developed on the location of the American main effort. At least one of these reserve Guard divisions was in fact sent south to Baghdad after the war began, but none of them was committed to combat on the northern front, and there is no evidence of any fighting between any Guard elements and either Kurdish militia or their attached American SOF in OIF.
There was significant combat against Iraqi conscript infantry in the north. These Iraqi conscripts, however, were poorly motivated and very poorly skilled. The results bore a strong resemblance to the early stages of the Afghan campaign, in which inept indigenous Taliban defenders were swept away by SOF-directed precision air power alone. The Iraqi 8th Infantry Division’s positions before Kirkuk, for example, consisted of an interconnected system of 20-foot high dirt bunkers that were plainly visible to the naked eye from any direction, and easily detected by observers with binoculars at distances of as much as 15 kilometers away. The Iraqis made no apparent attempt at concealment or camouflage, made no attempt to use natural cover to thwart target acquisition, frequently silhouetted bunkers on the geographic crests of ridge lines, and provided no overhead protection for open slit trenches between bunkers. American SOF had little difficulty targeting such positions, which offered little meaningful protection against precision air strikes. The garrisons of these positions, moreover, rarely attempted to hold their ground under attack. Though few deserted outright (Ba’athist paramilitaries and Republican Guards to their rear saw to that), many remained in position only untuntil engaged by Coalition air power, at which point they would withdraw without risking close combat. Friendly forces thus adopted a pattern of advancing into visual range of Iraqi defenses, targeting them for precision air strikes, then walking forward to occupy the abandoned positions after the Iraqi conscript garrison fell back. Iraqi casualties were consequently light, but Coalition casualties were all but nonexistent and Iraqi territory could be taken at will as long as the advance was pushed no faster than the rate at which air power was available to destroy static, easily detected Iraqi defenses.
Will SOF Predominate in 2020?
Stephen Biddle
Strategic Studies Institute
U.S. Army War College
24 May 2004
The views expressed in this and other papers associated with the NIC 2020 project
are those of individual participants. They are posted for discussion purposes
only and do not represent the views of the Army, the Army War College, the Department of Defense or the US Government.
Special Forces and the Future of Warfare:
Will SOF Predominate in 2020?
Stephen Biddle
Strategic Studies Institute
U.S. Army War College
24 May 2004
American Special Operations Forces (SOF) have scored some extraordinary achievements in recent warfare. In Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) they were assigned primary responsibility for a vast stretch of Iraq’s western desert, where they denied the Iraqis launch areas for missiles, led the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and became the supported, rather than the supporting, command in joint action with conventional ground forces. In operations along the Green Line in northern Iraq they were again the lead American element, working with Kurdish pesh merga militia to tie down Iraqi conventional divisions in a critical economy of force action, eventually marching into the cities of Kirkuk and Mosul and securing Iraq’s northern oil fields. On Iraq’s decisive southern front they worked closely with conventional forces, providing important targeting and intelligence for air strikes and ground maneuver. In Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan, a handful of commandos transformed a six-year stalemate into a rapid victory by America’s Afghan allies over the Taliban regime. In both Iraq and Afghanistan – and elsewhere in the world – SOF are even now playing a critical role in combating insurgents and hunting down terrorists.
SOF have thus become an increasingly central element of American military power. Their growing utility is in turn attracting an increase in the personnel and resources devoted to special operations.
But how far should this trend be taken, and how prominent should SOF’s role become? Are there natural limits on the roles and missions suitable for special operations, and if so, what are they? Is a modest expansion of special operations at the margins of an essentially conventional military the best approach? Or should the conventional military eventually be transformed around SOF – should special operations come to provide the predominant ground element in a radically restructured American military?
This paper approaches these questions by stipulating that some near term expansion is warranted, and asking instead, what are the limits in how far this can be taken in the longer term? In principle, this question could be approached from the supply side, by considering our ability to produce a greatly expanded SOF without diluting its quality: can sufficient numbers of qualified individuals be found, and if so, can the nation afford the time and training expenditures needed to prepare them properly? Alternatively, one could consider the demand side: how much of the nation’s military needs can be met with special operations, assuming for the moment that we can supply the forces if we otherwise wanted them? The ultimate limiter here is SOF’s ability to take over missions now primarily assigned to conventional forces – and especially, its ability to shoulder the mission that now drives much of the conventional ground forces’ structure: major combat operations (MCO). SOF’s role could certainly expand within the framework of traditionally SOF-specific missions such as unconventional warfare or counter-terrorist direct action, but such tasks are unlikely to become the central drivers of American force structure any time soon; expansion within the framework of such missions is thus likely to be incremental rather than radical. The limiting constraint on SOF’s predominance in the American military is its ability to supplant conventional forces in one or more of their traditional roles.
Below I take the demand-side approach, and focus on the potential for long-term realignment of missions from conventional ground forces toward SOF. In particular, I consider one of the most widely discussed of these possibilities: the argument that a “New Model” or “Afghan Model” of war based on the combination of SOF and standoff precision will enable America to wage major combat operations without mass conventional ground forces of our own. If so, this would imply a dramatic shift in the relative importance of SOF and the conventional military in American force structure, and would certainly constitute revolutionary, rather than merely evolutionary, change.
I argue, however, that such a realignment would be ill-advised. Although such proposals have been regularly advanced (and especially so in the months following the Taliban’s fall), evidence from Afghanistan and Iraq suggests important limitations to the Afghan Model that would make it risky to redesign the military around its requirements. While it can sometimes be highly effective, its preconditions cannot always be met, and thus a more balanced military will remain advisable for the foreseeable future. None of this is to suggest that a moderate near-term expansion in SOF capability is unjustified; a detailed cost-benefit analysis of such incremental programmatics is beyond my scope here. But the scale of advisable change is probably limited to evolutionary expansion – certainly the case for the radical option considered below is too weak to be sustained.
I present this argument in four steps. First I describe the Afghan Model and its implications for American force structure in somewhat greater detail. I then assess its performance in Afghanistan and the implications of this for restructuring. Next I turn to Iraq, and evaluate evidence from OIF for the prospective performance of an Afghan Model elsewhere. I then address the prospects for future technological change in light of this combat experience. I conclude with some summary observations and implications for long term defense planning.
The Afghan Model
Perhaps the most-discussed concept for a SOF-predominant military turns on what some have called the “New Model” or “Afghan Model” of major combat operations. In this Afghan Model, small teams of elite commandos on the ground provide the targeting information needed for precision weapons to reach dispersed, concealed opponents. This SOF-directed standoff precision is so lethal, it is argued, that hostile militaries can be defeated without mass conventional land forces of our own. In this view, SOF is thus the catalyst that enables standoff precision strike to realize its full potential and substitute for large-scale close combat on the ground. Until the commandos arrived in Afghanistan, for example, high-altitude bombing could do little against a country with few large, fixed targets, this school argues. But once Coalition bombing was guided by friendly eyes on the ground, they claim, it became possible for airpower to annihilate the Taliban infantry and armor that had stymied the Northern Alliance for the preceding six years of civil warfare, enabling even an unsophisticated, outnumbered ally to liberate the entire country in a matter of weeks. On the Green Line in Iraq in 2003, it is argued, SOF similarly enabled Kurdish militia previously cowed by the Republican Guard to turn the tables on Saddam’s forces and conquer major cities and key economic assets by advancing in the wake of SOF-directed precision bombing. Elsewhere in Iraq, it is argued, SOF’s ability to target precision strikes contributed greatly to enabling a Coalition ground force thought undersized by many to triumph nonetheless. More broadly, some Afghan Model advocates see SOF-enabled precision strike as a substitute for large-scale conventional ground combat.
If so, this might enable a radical restructuring of the U.S. military. If SOF-directed precision fires can provide the bulk of the real combat power needed to prevail in major combat, then much of the heavy conventional ground forces now held for this purpose could be eliminated or converted to other purposes. This would produce a possibly smaller, considerably lighter conventional Army and Marine Corps, combined with expanded precision strike air and missile assets and a significant increase in the SOF strength needed for their direction. The result would be a very different U.S. military: lighter, faster, more strategically mobile, less reliant on theater logistical infrastructure and secure ports, with an even greater ability to project firepower over greater distances than today’s – but also a military much more reliant than today’s on standoff precision for effectiveness.
The Afghan Model in OEF
SOF-directed precision strike was indeed extremely valuable in both OIF and OEF. But do these cases suggest that we can safely rely on standoff precision in the way a SOF-predominant Afghan Model restructuring would require? The answer is no. In neither case does the evidence suggest that SOF-directed precision was sufficient for success. In OEF, at least, it was necessary – but it was not in itself sufficient. And for an Afghan Model based restructuring to make sense, something very close to sufficiency is required.
In Afghanistan, for example, the war entailed extensive close combat between two sizeable – Afghan – land armies. In fact, the war as a whole was much more orthodox, and much less revolutionary, than many now believe. OEF was not waged exclusively at long standoff, and success in the campaign’s close combat actions proved crucial to its outcome. The results of this close combat rested in turn on friendly land forces’ ability to integrate ground maneuver with the effects of precision fires. Where those ground forces enjoyed sufficient skills to exploit the effects of American firepower (or where their opponents were sufficiently inept, or both), that firepower proved decisive. But where unskilled allies were forced to confront enemies with the skills to reduce their exposure to standoff fires, the results were much less successful. And this in turn means that for the Afghan Model to work requires an important precondition: the ground forces involved, whether ours or someone else’s, need a combination of skills and motivation that is at least in the ballpark of the army they are fighting against. If this precondition is met, SOF-directed precision could indeed provide OEF-like results in other places and times. But if the precondition is not met, the OEF experience suggests that SOF-directed precision alone may not be sufficient for success.
In OEF, the war initially involved a very poorly skilled opponent, and the early fighting went mostly the way Afghan Model proponents assume. The new Model apparently took the Taliban by surprise, and their initial dispositions were poorly chosen for this kind of warfare. They typically deployed on exposed ridgelines with little effort at camouflage or concealment. Entrenchments were haphazard, lacking overhead cover for infantry positions or proper emplacements for combat vehicles. As a result, their positions could be identified from often extraordinary distances. And once located, their poor entrenchment and exposed movement made them easy prey for precision weapons.
The result was slaughter. At Bishqab on October 21, 2001, for example, U.S. SOF pinpointed Taliban targets at ranges of over eight kilometers. Skeptical Northern Alliance commanders peered through their binoculars at Taliban positions that had stymied them for years and were astounded to see the defenses suddenly vaporized by direct hits from 2,000 pound bombs. At Cobaki on October 22, Taliban observation posts were easily spotted at 1500-2000 meters and annihilated by precision bombing. At Zard Kammar on October 28, Taliban defenses were wiped out from a mile away. At Ac’capruk on November 4, exposed Taliban combat vehicles and crew-served weapons on hillsides west of the Balkh river were spotted from SOF observation posts on the Koh-i-Almortak ridge line some 4-5 kilometers distant and obliterated by American air strikes. At Polanyi Canyon near Bamiyan on November 7, Taliban positions were plainly visible from more than four kilometers away. Taliban counterattacks, as at Tarin Kowt on November 18, were conducted in the open with no evident attempt at concealment, dispersal, or covering fire to keep US or allied observers’ heads down or to complicate target acquisition.
Within days of the first SOF-directed air strikes, however, American commandos were already reporting that Taliban vehicles in their sectors had been smeared with mud to camouflage them. By November 5, the Taliban were already making aggressive use of overhead cover and concealment. In the fighting north of Kandahar and along Highway 4 in December, al Qaeda defenses were well-camouflaged, dispersed, and making use of natural terrain for expedient cover. This pattern continued through Operation ANACONDA in March, by which time al Qaeda forces were practicing systematic communications security, dispersal, camouflage discipline, use of cover and concealment, and exploitation of dummy fighting positions to draw fire and attention from their real dispositions. The Taliban did not just passively suffer under American attack – they adapted their methods to try to reduce their vulnerability. And as they did, the war changed character.
Among the more important changes was increasing difficulty in finding targets for precision attack. At Bai Beche on November 2-5, for example, a mostly-al Qaeda defensive force occupied an old, formerly-Soviet system of deliberate entrenchments. With proper cover and concealment, the defenders were able to prevent American commandos from locating the entirety of their individual fighting positions, many of which could not be singled out for precision attack. American SOF thus called for area bombing across the entirety of the position. After more than two days of heavy bombing, enough surviving, actively resisting al Qaeda defenders remained in the position to drive back the initial attempt by American-allied Northern Alliance cavalry to take the position. The attached American SOF observed this reverse and began calling renewed airstrikes in anticipation of a second assault. In the process, however, a SOF warning order to the cavalry to prepare for another push was mistaken by the cavalry as a command to launch the assault, with the result that the cavalry began its attack much sooner than intended. The surprised Americans watched the Afghan cavalry break cover and begin their advance just as a series of laser-guided bombs had been released from American aircraft in response to the SOF calls for air support. The SOF commander reported that he was convinced they had just caused a friendly fire incident: the bomb release and the cavalry advance were way too close together for official doctrinal limits, and the air strike would never have been ordered if the SOF had known that the cavalry was then jumping off for the second assault. As it happened, the bombs landed just seconds before the cavalry arrived. In fact, the cavalry galloped through the enormous cloud of smoke and dust that was still hanging in the air after the explosions, emerging behind the enemy defenses before their garrison knew what was happening. The defenders, seeing Northern Alliance cavalry to their rear, abandoned their positions in an attempt to avoid encirclement.
The result was an important victory — in fact, the victory that turned the tide in the north and led directly to the fall of Mazar-e-Sharif on November 10. But the battle involved serious close combat (cavalry overrunning prepared, actively resisting defenses), and the outcome was a very close call. The assault profited from an extremely tight integration of movement with suppressive fire — far tighter, in fact, than either the cavalry or their supporting SOF would ever have dared arrange deliberately. Luck thus played an important role in the outcome. The Northern Alliance might well have carried the position eventually even without the good fortune of an extraordinary integration of fire and movement; this was clearly a crucial battle, and they would presumably have redoubled their efforts if the second attempt had failed. But as fought, the outcome involved an important element of serendipity.
Nor was Bai Beche unique in demanding hard fighting at close quarters. In the December fighting along Highway 4 south of Kandahar, concealed al Qaeda defenses among a series of culverts and in burned-out vehicle hulks along the roadside remained wholly undetected until their fire drove back an allied advance at point blank range. An al Qaeda counterattack in the same sector using a system of wadis for cover approached undetected to within 100-200 meters of allied and American SOF positions along the highway before opening fire on friendly forces. At the village of Sayed Slim Kalay north of Kandahar between December 2-4, concealed al Qaeda defenders likewise remained undetected until they fired upon unsuspecting U.S. and allied attackers. An al Qaeda counterattack using local terrain for cover maneuvered into small arms range of friendly defenders before being driven back. At Konduz in late November, al Qaeda counterattackers penetrated allied positions deeply enough to compel supporting American SOF teams to withdraw at least three times to avoid being overrun. At Tora Bora, massive American bombing proved insufficient to compensate for allied Afghan unwillingness to close with dug-in al Qaeda defenders in the cave complexes of the White Mountains; this ground force hesitancy probably allowed Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants to escape into neighboring Pakistan.
At Operation ANACONDA in March 2002, an intensive pre-battle reconnaissance effort focused every available surveillance and target acquisition system on a tiny, ten-by-ten kilometer battlefield. Yet fewer than 50 percent of all the al Qaeda positions ultimately identified on this battlefield were discovered prior to ground contact. The result was extensive close combat. In the opening action of the battle, for example, American-allied Afghans under General Mohammed Zia and supported by American SOF were assigned to drive al Qaeda defenders from the “Tri-cities” area (the villages of Shirkankeyl, Babakuhl and Marzak); they were instead pinned down under hostile fire from prepared defenses in the surrounding mountainsides that had survived preliminary air strikes. Zia’s troops eventually withdrew after they proved unable to advance. Only after the al Qaeda defenders pulled back under joint, multinational attack by allied airpower, western infantry, and multinational SOF, were Zia’s troops able to enter the Tri-cities and adjoining ridgelines. In fact, most of Operation ANACONDA took the form of a series of close assaults to destroy surviving, actively resisting defenses whose locations were mostly unknown prior to their firing upon friendly forces, often at very close quarters.
Among these examples, the fighting along Highway 4 in December is particularly instructive. The American-allied Afghans here were divided among two factions. The first, commanded by Haji Gul Alai, were very capable troops by Afghan standards. They used terrain for cover and concealment, maintained good intervals between elements in the advance, moved by alternate bounds, exploited suppressive fire to cover moving elements’ exposure, and were able to exploit the effects of American air strikes by coordinating their movement with the bombing (which many Afghan factions could not). The second faction, by contrast, was much less skilled: the attached SOF commander characterized them as “an armed mob — just villagers given weapons.” Their tactics consisted of exposed, bunched-up movement in the open, with no attempt to use terrain to reduce their exposure, and little ability to employ supporting or suppressive fires. At the Arghestan Bridge on December 5, this second faction launched an assault on a dug-in al Qaeda position south of the Kandahar airport. Driven back repeatedly, they proved unable to take the position, in spite of U. S. air support. Only after these troops were withdrawn and Haji Gul Alai’s forces took over the assault the following day could the al Qaeda positions be taken.
Of course, the alliance ultimately prevailed. And SOF-directed precision airpower was a necessary precondition for this – it was what turned a stalemated civil war into a dramatic battlefield victory for America and its allies. But while precision bombing was necessary, it was not sufficient. It could annihilate poorly prepared fighting positions, and it could inflict heavy losses on even well-disposed defenses. But it could not destroy the entirety of properly prepared positions by itself. And unless such positions are all but annihilated, even a handful of surviving, actively-resisting defenders with modern automatic weapons can make great slaughter of unsophisticated indigenous allies whose idea of tactics is to walk forward bunched up in the open. To overcome skilled, resolute defenders who have adopted the standard countermeasures to high-firepower airstrikes still requires close combat by friendly ground forces whose own skills are sufficient to enable them to use local cover and their own suppressive fire to advance against hostile survivors with modern weapons.
By and large, America’s main Afghan allies in this war either enjoyed such fundamental skills or profited from accidentally tight coordination of their movement and American fires (as at Bai Beche) or both. The Northern, and later the Southern, Alliances were not uniformly the motley assortment of militiamen they are sometimes said to have been. Enough of them were capable of modern military tactics to allow them to exploit the tremendous potential that precision air power can bring to armies capable of integrating their movement with its firepower.
But not all of America’s allies in this war were up to this job. Though the typical combat units on each side were about equally matched (as the stalled pre-intervention battle lines imply), both sides in Afghanistan were actually diverse mixtures of better- and worse-trained, more- and less-motivated troops — and this diversity offers a couple of valuable opportunities to observe instances of unequally-skilled forces in combat. In such unequal fights as the first day at Arghestan Bridge and the assault on the Tri-cities in ANACONDA, the results suggest that where the indigenous allies are overmatched tactically, American air power and SOF support alone may not be enough to turn the tide. In Afghanistan, the Northern and Southern Alliances, eventually combined with the American and Canadian infantry that fought at ANACONDA, together provided significant ground forces that ultimately shouldered an essential load of old-fashioned close combat against surviving, actively resisting opponents. Even with 21st century firepower, without this essential close combat capability the outcome in Afghanistan could easily have been very different.
The Afghan Model in OIF
What about Iraq? Did SOF-directed precision strike enable an out-matched or unskilled Kurdish ally to defeat greatly superior Iraqi forces on the Green Line in 2003? Kurdish skills, though mixed, were certainly no match for the Republican Guard on their own. A decade of actual combat experience gives ample evidence of this: the Guard repeatedly crushed pesh merga resistance whenever Kurdish uprisings without American military protection gave Saddam cause and opportunity. If SOF support had enabled the pesh merga to turn the tables on the Guard in 2003, this would therefore be evidence of precision strike prevailing without support from capable conventional ground forces, and would thus strengthen the case for an Afghan Model restructuring of the American military.
Yet this is not what actually happened on the Green Line. In fact there was no contact between Kurdish militia and the Republican Guard in OIF. The Iraqi defenses on the Green Line were disposed with regular conscript infantry in the forward positions opposite the Kurds. A handful of Republican Guard divisions were withheld in reserve behind these forward defenses, with the dual mission of encouraging the regulars in front of them to fight, and of constituting a mobile reaction force for response to local breakthroughs or for repositioning elsewhere in the theater as information developed on the location of the American main effort. At least one of these reserve Guard divisions was in fact sent south to Baghdad after the war began, but none of them was committed to combat on the northern front, and there is no evidence of any fighting between any Guard elements and either Kurdish militia or their attached American SOF in OIF.
There was significant combat against Iraqi conscript infantry in the north. These Iraqi conscripts, however, were poorly motivated and very poorly skilled. The results bore a strong resemblance to the early stages of the Afghan campaign, in which inept indigenous Taliban defenders were swept away by SOF-directed precision air power alone. The Iraqi 8th Infantry Division’s positions before Kirkuk, for example, consisted of an interconnected system of 20-foot high dirt bunkers that were plainly visible to the naked eye from any direction, and easily detected by observers with binoculars at distances of as much as 15 kilometers away. The Iraqis made no apparent attempt at concealment or camouflage, made no attempt to use natural cover to thwart target acquisition, frequently silhouetted bunkers on the geographic crests of ridge lines, and provided no overhead protection for open slit trenches between bunkers. American SOF had little difficulty targeting such positions, which offered little meaningful protection against precision air strikes. The garrisons of these positions, moreover, rarely attempted to hold their ground under attack. Though few deserted outright (Ba’athist paramilitaries and Republican Guards to their rear saw to that), many remained in position only untuntil engaged by Coalition air power, at which point they would withdraw without risking close combat. Friendly forces thus adopted a pattern of advancing into visual range of Iraqi defenses, targeting them for precision air strikes, then walking forward to occupy the abandoned positions after the Iraqi conscript garrison fell back. Iraqi casualties were consequently light, but Coalition casualties were all but nonexistent and Iraqi territory could be taken at will as long as the advance was pushed no faster than the rate at which air power was available to destroy static, easily detected Iraqi defenses.
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