We all hear about them on the news: Those places where Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines are housed and trained; where they form up to deploy to some remote space on a map that most of us had never heard of a week ago…
But — what is a ‘base’, exactly?
Here at The Freedomist, we covered one aspect of this question some time ago, but this article will take a broad overview of the question at large.
Aside from castles or fortresses, “bases” come in a vast array of forms. Certain histrionics aside, a “military base” can come in almost literally any form. There are massive bases, such as Fort Bliss, in Texas or the Naval Air Weapons Station, China Lake, which are larger than some states, but there are also tiny installations that are also bases, such as Marine Barracks, Washington D.C., which is a mere 6 acres (2.4 ha) in size, and has been in continuous use since 1801. As a result, a base can take almost any shape.
At the same time, size comparisons obscure the question. A different way to think about a “generic” base, however, would be to consider it as a collection of components. Generally speaking, a “base” – while it may have a specific purpose – is where troops can be housed and trained for combat; where they can do at least basic levels of maintenance on weapons and equipment; and where supplies sufficient for a unit to deploy (in theory) can be safely and securely stored.
The training component is the hard part here, because even with the many advances in “virtual” training that have taken place in the last thirty-odd years, troops still need to actually fire live ammunition thought their weapons; short of actual nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, nothing focuses training like the dangers of live-fire. When we are dealing with classes of personal weapons, firing ranges of fifty to five hundred yards or meters in length may well be sufficient. Once we move into longer-ranged weapons – heavy machine guns, mortars, rockets, tank cannons and actual artillery – the ranges quickly become very long range.
But…short of that? Let’s do a thought experiment.
We will start with a large open field. A road, perhaps a highway or freeway, runs along one side of the field. Imagine one to four multi-story motels, clustered together; nearby, is a small, two-story office building. To one side, there is a gas/convenience station, and a large chain-style restaurant. There are one or two warehouses, a full-service garage, a few large parking lots filled (hopefully) with large and heavy vehicles. There are a scattering of other buildings, including one that is very “blockish”-looking building surrounded with barbed wire; there might even be a fire station. There is likely a shooting range, one hundred to five hundred yards/meters in length. If the unit’s home nation is relatively wealthy – and wise – there may be a small housing development across the road from the actual base, with family homes for married troop’s whose families live with them. None of the buildings are very “upscale”; most would be described with uncharitable snobbery as “drab” or even “ramshackle” or “brutalist” if someone wanted to be nasty. That would be the effect of government contracting restrictions.
What was just described above are the very basic facilities for an infantry battalion of 700-1,000 troops. There would be a few more buildings if the unit is more specialized, but the above description represents a generic enough core. Drop, say, another dozen or so of these areas close together, add an actual hospital, a large supermarket nestled next to a department store (if they’re not combined), a branch bank, a few more gas stations and regional-scale airport that can handle C-130-type aircraft, a few very long-distance (say, two to five miles in range) and you have a base suitable for a brigade-to-division scale unit – anything from eight to sixteen thousand troops.
Reserve or militia units can get away with one or two buildings, with a large and fenced-off parking lot, as long as they keep personal weapons and a basic load or two of ammunition at home…However, these units are going to be extremely limited in what operations they can carry out.
In sum, most military bases are not too dissimilar from a small town – except, of course, for the weapons, uniforms and intent. Aside from the occasional museum, most military installations /are/ drab, dreary and uninviting, and not places most people would want to live in for very long. But that dividing line, that willingness to tolerate minimalist living environments because their belief in the greater good, is best described in a paraphrase of the words of neoconservative essayist and film critic Richard Grenier —
Originally, this article was going to be considerably different, until research suddenly swerved in a different direction. That direction is to reinforce a fundamental military truth:
Artillery was, is, remains and will remain, the “King of Battle.”
While retaining the “Dragon Fire II” vehicle-mounted 120mm mortar, the reading on the rationale behind these decisions stands testament to an unacceptable failure by the military establishment in the United States to focus on reality.
Since combat operations commenced in Afghanistan in 2001, the US military in general has drilled down to a focus almost exclusively on “counterinsurgency operations” (COIN). Although pointedly left unsaid in public, this is a reaction to the fact that the US military establishment essentially abandoned COIN operations in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, to focus exclusively on the perceived threat of a Soviet invasion to Western Europe, and the assumed nuclear exchanges that would follow. In the aftermath of the 9/11 Attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan deteriorating into guerilla conflicts, the US military swung the pendulum 180° in the opposite direction from the 1980’s.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Francis Fukuyama foolishly proclaiming the “End of History”, although rarely spoken out loud, military forces were seen as almost redundant anachronisms in many quarters, and should be reduced both in scale and capabilities, rendering them as something like heavily-armed police forces, with the occasional, movie-ready SWAT teams for hostage rescue. Combat operations like the first Persian Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom were seen as aberrations, large operations against technologically inferior despot forces with lots of heavy (if antiquated) weapons and gear, and lots of troops, who – if not very well-trained or motivated – at least had plenty of simple weapons, and who would require somewhat more force than the international equivalent of a beat cop holding up their hand and saying “HALT!” in a loud voice.
Enter Russia.
While we are not going to delve too deeply, here, into the politics of this year’s Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia is currently – by their own counts (which should, of course, always be taken with a large grain of salt) – running an average of c.580 fire missions per day. Assuming that these missions are run according to Russian military doctrine, each of these missions are a “battery shoot” involving a battery of four to six weapons. Roughly 30% of these would be rocket artillery, mostly from BM-21 ‘Grad’ type rocket systems, with the remainder fired by conventional “tube” artillery [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery]. Using the most conservatively realistic figures, this equals approximately 7,000 conventional artillery rounds being fired.
Per day.
This come out to over 200,000 rounds in a 30-day period.
In contrast, the Western democracies have “bet the farm” on weapon accuracy, developing “precision everything” in mortar, rocket and conventional artillery rounds. They chose this route, because the conventional news media is ecstatic over images of dead civilians, which is much more likely when using “dumb” weapons. Needless to say, such casualty-limiting precision comes at a price: the M982 “Excalibur” 155mm precision-guided artillery round costs anywhere from US$68,000 to $175,000 per round (depending on who is counting).
In the West, conventional “dumb” artillery rounds cost between US$300 and $1,000 each. This, of course, begs the question: is “smart” better than “dumb“?
Certainly – if you can afford it. Can the West?
Currently, following the defense budget cuts in FY2022 by the Biden administration, artillery ammunition procurement is being cutby some 36%. In the very best case scenario, this means that the United States currently produces enough ammunition in a calendar year for anywhere between ten days and three weeks of combat firing, based – again – on the mostconservative take on Russian claims of artillery fire missions and estimated rates of ammunition expenditure in Ukraine. And the United States is sending ammunition to Ukraine to go along with the 155mm howitzers and other weapons we are already supplying.
And the US is not alone. In 2021, the British Army conducted a large-scale, “main force” wargame where they completely exhausted national stocks of critical ammunition – at the national level – in eight days. Similarly, only about 2,100 units of the vaunted Javelin missile are produced each year – and the Ukrainians are claiming to fire “hundreds” of Javelins daily, leaving the US defense industry scrambling to bring new production streams online. The FIM-92 Stinger anti-aircraft missile is in a similar situation.
Worse still, Russia is known to have fired over 1,000 “cruise missiles” since invading the Ukraine proper in February of 2022. Even given the highly questionable reports of those firings’ performance, it is clear that the Russian industrial base is still more than capable of supplying the weapons and ammunition to the firing lines (the logistical aspects of this are an entirely different subjects).
It is vital to keep in mind, again, that the technical accuracy and reliability of the Russian arsenal is not the question, here. The fact is that they are able to maintain production and consumption rates of comparatively “dumb” systems – and firing something at the enemy is better than firing nothing, because you’re waiting on resupply.
The conclusion here is clear: the West is functionally trying to counter Russian aggression from a hospital bed, while ignorant children are playing with its life support equipment.
This is not 1939, and the West is no longer the “Arsenal of Democracy.” Ukraine is paying, and will continue to pay, a heavy price for trusting the modern-day Western states…and unless something is done quickly, the people of the West may well pay that price, as well – assuming that we do not pay an even heavier price.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
As First-World States Amp Up Their High Tech, The Opposition Sticks To Basics
An F-35 Lightning II prepares to take off, Luke Air Force Base, AZ – USAF photo by Sr Airman Devante Williams; Public Domain
Over the last hundred years or so, uncountable amounts of money have been spent by various countries, to develop ever more sophisticated weapons and vehicles, many times, almost literally reinventing the wheel. The latest gargantuan expenditures that come to mind are the M1 Abrams tank, the Zumwalt destroyer and the F-35b airplane.
Iranian soldiers with a BGM-71 TOW missile during the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988
Why this should be so, is of great discomfort to both defense companies and armies, around the world. The reason defense companies are worried is that the civilian Toyota vehicles are “good enough” for most combat vehicle applications. They are simple, rugged, durable, easy to understand and operate, and – most importantly – cheap.
Roll-on/roll-off ferry terminal at Queenscliff, Victoria, 1993.
On the military side, these are also concerns, but the military – by necessity – goes deeper: the very ubiquitous nature of the vehicles (driven by market, not military forces), in addition to their built-in ruggedness, makes it supremely difficult to both identify and attrit an asymmetric enemy’s mobile infrastructure without attacking civilian targets at the same time.
Mongol horseman, 14th Century
It has long been known that light vehicles equate to light cavalry. Unfortunately, historically, conventional militaries have always had a distinctly difficult time dealing with forces that can master the techniques of light cavalry campaigns.
U.S. Marines and guide in search of bandits. Haiti, circa 1919.
Similarly, it has long been recognized that simple, robust weapons systems give unconventional forces near-parity of effectiveness at the “boots on the ground” level of combat. As long ago as 1940, in the US Marine Corps – in its “Small Wars Manual” – recognized that as technology developed, and lightweight, fully automatic weapons spread, the tactics the manual outlined would be rendered obsolete.
AK-74 assault rifle
Modern small arms development has essentially hit a plateau in the years since 1946. Once the move to self-loading rifles was complete, what remained were alterations to ergonomics and attachments. The weapons could be massed produced with a very high degree of mechanical simplicity built in…This, of course, resulted in the development of the near-universal AK-series of assault rifles in the hands of both urban and rural guerrilla forces, as well as the later tribal militias, to say nothing of its continued use by regular armed forces throughout the world.
Adding to the difficulty for conventional armies is the widespread deployment of highly effective, yet almost laughable uncomplicated, heavy support weapons at the squad level, primarily the RPG-7 and the General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG).
An Afghan National Army (ANA) soldier fires an RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher, Helmand province, Afghanistan, May 20, 2013. USMC photo.
The RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher, while becoming less capable against frontline combat vehicle armor, is still more than capable against light vehicles, light or hasty fortifications, and even some aircraft. A robust and simple design, the RPG-7 is a valuable weapon in any force’s arsenal, and is widely available.
PKM Machine Gun
Likewise, the Soviet-designed PKM GPMG is another simple, robust and highly capable weapon system, easily a match for anything produced by the West.
Of course, except for the Toyota pickup trucks, the two things that the above weapons all have in common is that they are both products of Cold War-era Soviet Army design bureaus, and were handed out in vast numbers to many armies and guerrilla groups as the Cold War ground on.
And yet, their effects remain.
Adding to the problem is the impact of remotely piloted drone technology, especially drones modified to drop small munitions on target. Coupled to cheap and reliable internet access and radio technology, as well as the wide dissemination of both automated and manual secure encryption methods, armies trying to chase down irregular, terrorist and/or guerrilla forces today have issues far outside the scope of previous generations.
The challenge for both conventional forces, defense companies, and perhaps especially the political leadership of First World powers, frankly, is to find a way to equip the large security forces necessary to ensure a counterbalance to terrorist groups that operate like multinational corporations, while not cutting off their noses to spite their faces, by bankrupting the countries they are trying to sell their products to.
In general, people tend like good things. This should be self-evident: good food, good sex, good booze (in no particular order), so…anything ‘good’ should be, well, “good” – right? Like – peace, for instance.
Right?
I mean, war is all about violence, blood, horror, terror, crippling and debilitating injuries and very tragic and untimely death, all of which are really bad things…So…Less war must be good.
Right?
Today, we will examine a tiny sliver of that question.
Paris Street in Rainy Weather, 1877, Gustave Caillebotte.
In 1856, in an attempt to “limit the scourge of war”, a collection of European nations’ representatives gathered in Paris, France and signed a convention, the “Paris Declaration“, that eliminated the practice of “privateering“, or “legalized piracy in time of war.”
Letter of marque given to Robert Sutton de Clonard for the privateer Comte d’Artois, 1780.
The mechanism of this decision was simple: the Admiralty court system that adjudicated the “condemnation” and auctioning of “prizes of war” were disestablished, more or less overnight, removing the purpose of issuing “Letters of Marque and Reprisal“…and freeing – it was hoped – merchant shipping from the scourge of “legalized plunder“…
…But what was the real effect of this declaration?
Prior to 1856 – for roughly 400 years, in a formal sense – Western nations had deliberately evolved the system of prize-capture to avoid the cost of keeping excessively large (and very expensive) fleets manned when there was no war going on. Since merchant ships were generally alone in dangerous waters anyway, it only made sense to build cargo ships that carried weapons comparable to warships, and by extension, to utilize those same ships in time of war.
Thus, as an adjunct to the very common practice on land of hiring part-time professional soldiers – i.e., mercenaries – to flesh out an army, armed merchantmen were offered commissions to supplement regular navies, until those navies could get their actual warships fully crewed. After ferrying troops and supplies, many of these armed merchantmen struck out at the merchant ships of the enemy, striking targets of opportunity, capturing enemy vessels, hauling them to friendly (or even neutral), to sell off the cargoes and the ships themselves (sometimes at a staggering profit), as well as ransoming the prisoners.
The Ranger, Private Ship of War, with her Prizes. By Nicholas Pocock, 1780
After 1856, this all changed.
As the United States (which did not sign the Paris Declaration) was to discover to its horror, the dismantling of the prize system removed any incentive to capturing ships intact — where shipping companies (previously, at least) had the chance of buying their captured vessels back, once there was no possibility of easily selling off a captured prize, there was no reason to not strip the surrendered ships of useful supplies and destroy them after capture. The crews were either abandoned on remote islands to uncertain (and very unpleasant) fates, or tossed ashore in the first non-hostile port the ship came to, with nothing but the clothes on their backs…if they were that lucky.
Four years after the Declaration, the various States that formed the Confederacy attempted to leave the Federal Union, sparking the four-year long American Civil War. Among its many disadvantages, the Southern Confederacy did not really have a maritime tradition, as their northern opponents did. As a result, lacking hard currency or deep economic capital internally, their few attempts at issuing Letters of Marque were dismal failures, as limited cash in a bottled market could not chase what should have been lucrative captures.
“The Alabama destroying the Texan Star, or Martaban, in the Malacca Straits – The Kwan-Tung, Chinese War-Steamer, in the distance. From a sketch by Commander Allen Young, Royal Navy.” London Illustrated News, April 2, 1864, p. 320. Public Domain
In a series of brutal cruises, Confederate Navy corsairs slashed and burned their way through the United States’ merchant fleets; the US Pacific whaling fleet (supplying vital supplies of whale oil in a pre-petroleum society) was almost completely destroyed. Indeed, by 1864 most US-flagged merchant ships were laid up in US ports, as crews flatly refused to leave port under US colors, because of the danger of prowling rebel raiders; not even ruinous insurance rates could entice crews to sea. To remain solvent, many American merchant investors had to sell their vessels to foreign companies in a buyers market, just to maintain some form of capitol flow. The US merchant fleet would not fully recover its position in the world’s shipping arena until after World War 2.
Other countries – and their navies – noticed.
A battleship squadron of the German High Seas Fleet; the far right vessel is the battlecruiser SMS Von der Tann, 1917.
The basic requirements of naval warfare had not changed, the future writings of US Navy Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan notwithstanding: an enemy nation’s merchant marine still had to be neutralized. This meant larger navies, with many more fighting ships in commission, at all times, since merchant ships could no longer, by about 1890, be easily converted into viable warships (since they could no longer be used as warships, there was no reason to design them with warship guns and armor). But, because technology was also expanding — both the fight between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (the former USS Merrimack) in 1862, as well as the Austro-Italian Battle of Lissa in 1866 marking the first engagements between “armored” (or, “ironclad”) naval warships and fleets — this began a race to develop ever-bigger guns, better armor, faster and more fuel-efficient engines…and the armies, jealous of the navies’ lavish funding, also took note. But, with few major wars (only one, really) between industrial states taking place between 1875 and 1914, no one really paid attention…except, of course, the builders of naval artillery and warships.
Photograph of U-111, a German Submarine.
Come the end 1914, with the land war in Western Europe lurching into a blood-soaked, trench-bound stalemate, enforced by machine guns and more field artillery than anyone had ever seen before, Imperial Germany turned to widely deploying previously experimental or unseen weapons – specifically, the submarine and poison gas.
While there had been a slow and steady development of submarines in the previous decades, few officers of the day took them seriously as anything but scouts for battle fleets. But, once the German High Seas Fleet’s inability to blockade Britain became clear, the Kaiser unleashed his U-Boat fleet.
British 55th (West Lancashire) Division troops blinded by gas, 10 April 1918.
The slaughter was tremendous, as merchant ship crews began dying in huge numbers, and mind-boggling amounts of ship tonnage was sent to the bottom. Britain was almost starved of war-making material, and actually began to experience food shortages. In the next round, in 1940, Britain very nearly did lose its war — and American and British merchant seamen died by the thousands…On land, the role of the machine gun and poison gas is better known. The never-ending quest to one-up to other guy was in full force.
“The battle between the Aisne and Marne: German ammunition column, teams and horses with gas masks when passing a gasified forest.”
On land, with the stalemate and slaughter of trench warfare enforced by machine guns, the German High Command was induced to take what for them was a radical (and, by their own admission, distasteful) action: allowing scientists, led by Fritz Haber, the chemist who perfected the extraction of ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen, to develop what had been annoyingly dangerous byproducts of industrial chemical processes into deadly weapons that killed indiscriminately…and ultimately, led directly to the Zyklon-B of Hitler’s gas chambers.
Ultimately, the quest for “more is not only better, it is vital” led directly to the atomic bomb. Although its destructive force was not truly understood at first, even after its effects were understood in their full horror, their development continued apace, leading to the culmination of destruction: the “Tsar Bomba” of the Soviet Union.
However, nothing happens in a vacuum — while states, and the armies and navies that served them, raced frantically to find faster, broader and more efficient ways to kill each other, those nations’ populations paid attention…and learned the unintended lesson:
Life is cheap, fragile, and easily thrown away — and if governments don’t care about the lives of their individual citizens, why should the citizens care about the lives of an “enemy” people?
Kill ’em all – let God sort ’em out.
Right?
Right?
Terrorists, 2020
…..Welcome to the so-called Islamic Caliphate of the 21st Century – and why not? They are merely responding to the stimuli they have been presented and raised with. They don’t have naval fleets, or fleets of airplanes — but they do have knives and cameras, and fear and horror are ancient and basic weapons. Doubly so, when they pay their troops in loot and slaves…just like the “good ol’ days.” And, in an era where humans can be easily enticed to volunteer to function as “squishy cruise missiles“, the addition of real horror to simple terrorism follows a direct course from that origin point.
So…the next time someone cries “Peace! PEACE!“, it may be instructive to wonder whythere was no peace in the first place.
It is also instructive to remember that sometimes, “peace” is another word for “surrender“.
NOTE TO THE READER: The following is a necessarily brief overview of a top-tier national military force. The opinions expressed are those of the author, and are based solely on “open-source” research. This is the first of a series on national military forces that may not be well-known to the general reader.
Additionally, a version of this article was previously published online, on May 29, 2017, by this author, at the former “Military Gazette” web page (now defunct). This version has been edited and updated, and is published here with the agreement and consent of the editorial staff, as well as this author.
Introduction
The modern Indian armed forces date from 1947, but trying to write even a general overview of the military history of India is far beyond the scope of an article such as this. Indeed, this article can give only the barest overview; thus, any holes that appear are unintentional, and were left out for the sake of brevity.
Postcard captioned “Gentlemen of India marching to chasten German Hooligans” in English and French, 1914
India did not lack for professionalism in armed forces when it gained its independence from Great Britain in 1947. Indeed, Indian forces had been fighting under British direction for well over 200 years, since at least 1774AD. Interestingly, this makes the modern Indian Army slightly older than its United States counterpart. Indian troops from across the subcontinent have repeatedly proven themselves the equal – if not the superior – to both British and European armed forces. India’s success as an independent state is directly attributable to the professionalism of both its Civil Service, and its Armed Forces, part of the latter being the subject of this article.
At the time of the Partition of India, the various British Imperial Indian forces were divided between between India and Pakistan; other than the inevitable disruption caused to organizational structures, both new countries inherited highly professional forces, as well as school structures and defense industries. As a result, Indian forces performed very well in their firsttests, and ensured India’s continued existence as a nation.
Indian soldiers of the 9th Battalion, Sikh Infantry test-firing a handgun aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer (LHD 4) – US Navy photo
Although there would be missteps later on, India’s national integrity has never been seriously threatened over the course of the last seventy years, in stark contrast to many other former European colonies, who seem continually on the brink of complete and utter collapse.
With a total of over 5.137million troops – counting Active, Reserve and Paramilitary – India possesses the fourth-largest armed force in the world, ahead of even the People’s Republic of China, and the second-largest Active Duty force, overall, ahead of the United States. Below, we will briefly glance at India’s army, and will then assess its strategic capabilities.
Comprising some eighty percent of India’s national forces, the Army is a modern force, striving to upgrade its capabilities to keep pace with the more “public” militaries, such as those of the United States, Britain, France and Germany. However, those states are not India’s adversaries – those slots are taken up primarily by Pakistan and the PRC.
India, by and large, neither starts wars – directly or indirectly – nor seeks conflicts. In the past, however, India has faced attacks from both Pakistan and the PRC; in the former case, several times.
Indian army infantry vehicles move onto the firing range at Camp Bundela, India Oct. 26, 2009 – US Army photo
Like most states, the core of India’s armed forces is its infantry. Indian infantry have long been regarded as among the toughest and most capable in the world. India, like the United States, uses a modified “regimental system” within its army, with regiments such as the Madras, the Gurkha’s, and the Sikh Light Infantry (among many, many more) having long and distinguished histories, but those regiments primarily provide well-trained battalions to the Army’s divisional structures (some forty divisions, in fourteen corps), as part of the seven major commands that the Army is structured into, rather than deploy as complete units on the battlefield. These divisions, except for certain specialized units – such as mountain, parachute and several special forces units – are mingled with tanks and artillery to form cohesive battlefield units.
The Army’s F-INSAS program is a development project aimed at reequipping the individual soldier with an advanced suite of combat systems. This program, modeled on the US Army’s zombie-like “Future Force Warrior” program (that has been killed and resurrected so many times, it is now hard to keep track of the various iterations), is perhaps over-ambitious.
Lance Naik (Lance Cpl.) Fateh Singh, of the 4th Rajput Battalion of the Indian Army confirms the zero of his INSAS assault rifle, Donnelly Training Area, Fort Greely, Alaska, 2007 — US Army photo
However, the Indian Army demonstrated in 2016 that it has the intestinal and institutional fortitude to make choices that would embarrass other forces, in its acknowledgement that its 5.56x45mmINSAS rifle (no relation to the aforementioned program) simply wasn’t working. The Indian Army’s 2016 requirement is one of the clearest signs, yet, that the end of the “intermediate cartridge” ballistic dead-end is near, as the Army requirement acknowledged the need for a “full-power” (in this case, the venerable 7.62x51mm) cartridge for frontline service.
As a result, the Indian Army inked deals to both purchase and manufacture the AK-203 rifle in 7.62x39mm (a total of 670,000 – 70,000 directly from Russia, with the remainder to be manufactured under license) in Uttar Pradesh, while also purchasing slightly modified SIG Sauer 716 G2 Patrol rifles in 7.62mmNATO for more specialized units. Simultaneously, a deal for over 16,000 Israeli-madeNG-7 ‘Negev’ Light Machine Guns – also in 7.62x51mm NATO – was let in 2019, with the first batch of 6,000 arriving in India in early 2021.
While arguments can certainly be made over some of the choices made in the Army’s reequipping strategy, real armies always strive to stay out on the edge of technological development, while also keeping hold of tools and doctrines that have been proven to work, before adopting newer – but untested – concepts. Truly professional forces are able to acknowledge when they have taken a wrong turn, and move forward to fix the issue…That’s a lesson the US military would benefit from remembering.
Army Air
One of the challenges for the Army is its somewhat limited organic aircraft and helicopter assets. As it took the common page from other modern forces, India from the beginning separated its air forces from its ground forces. And, also like many modern armies, the result has been very spotty application of close air support (CAS) to the ground forces. Like all air forces, the Indian Air Force tries, but it is hampered in its efforts by both budgetary constraints and the associated need to focus on that service’s core missions. India is not alone in this issue; the US military discovered the problems inherent in this type of division with its own “Key West Agreement” in 1948, a confused decision that would cause delays and confusions that would impact combat operations well into the 1970’s.
Mi-35 Hind helicopter, Kandahar, Afghanistan, 2009 – US Air Force photo
Arjun Mk II MBT, live demonstration, 2016 – photo by Indian Navy
On the brighter side, the Arjun Mk IIMBT has finally matured. After a rough start to its development cycle, and serious problems in its earlier version, as well as major cost overruns and an epically long (37 years, to be exact) development cycle, the Arjun has matured into a frontline weapon that is in the top tier of combat vehicles. The only real hurdle to its full-scale deployment, as with virtually every army, is money. On the other hand, its deployment, while slow, has finally allowed India to retire its 1940’s-era T-55’s. At the same time, the Defense Ministry settled on a modernizaton and upgrade program for its Soviet-era T-72’s and T-90’s, the better to avoid too unevenly improving systems.
Pinaka MBRL’s on parade, 2011
India’s burgeoning economy, however, has allowed plans to significantly modernize its artillery park to move forward with speed. Systems like the Dhanush howitzer, developed to replace the Haubits FH77/B units acquired from Sweden in the 1980’s; the excellent M1954 (M-46) 155mm model, as upgraded by Soltam, of one of the best artillery pieces ever built, with a maximum unassisted range of 27km/16.77mi, and an assisted range of 38km/23.61mi; rounding off the new purchases is the indiginously developed, truck-mounted Pinaka multiple rocket launcher (similar to the US ‘HIMARS‘), designed to replace the BM-21’s and ‘Smerch’ 9K58’s acquired from the Soviet Union. Something DRDO may want to look at is the EVO-105, which the Freedomist recently reviewed.
A serious problem, however, is in India’s IFV park. The ‘Abhay’ (Sanskrit: अभय, “Fearless”) IFV is still in “development hell” (although the incorporation of the 40mm Bofors L/70 gun is an inspired choice for a main weapon of this type). While DRDO has informed Russia that they intend to pursue an Indian IFV, rather than purchase the BMP-3, the Indian Army is stuck, in the meanwhile, with the abysmal BMP-2. The BMP series, generally speaking, has a well-deserved reputation as the worst of the IFV field: its limited range, cramped compartments, horrible ride and poor armor are legendary…well, perhaps “notorious” is a better term. Armor – as has been decisively proven – cannot operate without infantry support, and infantry need something more than a “battle taxi”, as good as the M113 might be. The original models of the US Marine Corps’LAV-series is another off-the shelf option that would be far superior to the BMP-series.
Combat Support
Ashok Leyland Stallion 4×4’s of the Indian Army, Himalaya region, 2010
India’s motorized military support is firmly anchored on three vehicles: the Ashok Leyland Stallion Mk III & IV, the Maruti Gypsy, and the Tatra 815, although the Tatra 815 is slowly being replaced by newer vehicles. These are all solid, highly capable vehicles, supplemented by smaller numbers of more specialized frames, easily the equal of other nation’s vehicle parks in capacity and reliablity.
As well, mine protected vehicles such as the venerable and battle-tested South AfricanCasspir and the domestically-produced Aditya are entering the vehicle pools in increasing numbers, in ackowledgement of the growing threat of IEDs.
Strategic Forces
India, as is well-known, maintains a nuclear arsenal and an ongoing development plan. This arsenal is currently estimated at between 150 and 300 devices. Currently, the known weapons available to be deployed are the short-range Prithvi-I and the intermediate-range Agni-III, with longer-range land-based weapons and MIRVs under development. The K-15 SagarikaSLBM, now operational, is now deployed aboard the INS Arihant…and awaiting sister ships.
Country’s first under-water- launched Missile B05 (Sagarika) was successfully flight tested from Bay of Bengal off the coast of Visakhapatnam.
This developmental pace is surprising only to people who lack a grounding on India’s regional security situation. A nuclear deterrent is definitely something taken seriously by the People’s Republic of China. But the main focus is India’s long-time enemy, Pakistan. While the nuclear program was originally more of a prestige program than an operational imperative, increasing instability in the Muslim world, coupled to both Pakistan and Iran’snuclear programs, as well as both 9/11 and the 2008 Mumbai attack have transformed the nuclear program into a real and pressing project: India has serious reasons to maintain a nuclear arsenal…which is a very serious range issues that need to be solved, lest they get out of hand.
Tactically, however, the main question is the true state of the Indian military’s nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) program for allowing individual troops to operate in such environments.
Conclusion
The Indian Army is a highly capable, well-disciplined and professional force, with a very long, and honored history. It has repeatedly demonstrated that it is capable of both making hard decisions, as well as admitting its errors, at least to a greater extent than many other top-tier forces. If the Indian Army has any weaknesses, they lay in procurement, which is something the force does not have full control over, although a critical need for a real airmobile component is its worst issue; there are very cogent reasons why virtually all modern militaries have abandoned parachute infantry as primary “first in” forces, in favor of heliborne formations.
The Army well understands that it needs to modernize its forces – too long tied into less-than-capable (to be polite), Soviet-era systems – a task made significantly easier by the increasingly close relationship to Western militaries, militaries that recognize the danger of an unstable, nuclear-armed Pakistan, as well as an increasingly bellicose China.
Armies exist to buy time through intimidation, for political leaders to avoid conflict. But those forces, for their intimidation strategies to work, must be capable of actually following through on their promise of ability.
Ultimately, the Indian Army succeeds in this quite admirably.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24th of 2022, the Ukrainian military has struggled to hold on against enormous pressure. While there have been successes against the surprisingly anemic Russian juggernaut, the fact is that the conflict has seen the return of massed artillery fires, at a scale and intensity not seen since at least the 1990-1991 Gulf War.
Derelict Tank in badly shelled mud area, Europe, 1917.
Artillery, in its many forms, has been a major component of armies since at least the 15th Century. Artillery can cause heavy damage to both attacking forces in an open field, but can also hammer fortifications into a moonscape, if allowed to.
French Caesar self-propelled howitzer fires into the Middle Euphrates River Valley.
Like many armies, Ukraine had allowed its artillery establishment to atrophy – despite armies depending on massed artillery for centuries – and it now finds itself desperately scrambling to replace damaged and lost artillery pieces, and scrape together more ammunition. This has seen the first mass deployments for systems such as the French ‘CAESAR‘ 155mm self-propelled howitzer, the M777155mm towed howitzer and the M142 HIMARS Multiple-Launch Rocket System, among others, all supplied by NATO states trying to shore up Ukraine’s defenses.
But none of these weapons – nor their ammunition – are arriving in the quantities Ukraine needs. There may be at least a partial solution to Ukraine’s problem, however:
The EVO-105, now designated the K105HT.
Improved K105HT during firing drill. Undated photo.
The EVO-105/K105HT uses an assembly of long-proven systems to make a lightweight, self-propelled artillery piece. While originally produced as a cost-saving idea to get the maximum utilization out of old artillery, the basic design could easily be adapted to artillery similar to the M101-series, such as the L118, or the M119. Although having a significantly shorter range than larger-caliber weapons (a maximum of 17.5km (10.9 mi), or 19.5km (12.1 mi) with RAP (Rocket-Assisted Projectiles)), the K105HT is much faster to “shoot-n-scoot“, firing one or two rounds, then rapidly moving to a new firing location, and can do this faster than most other similar systems.
Hindsight is always 20/20, but other states and other forces can take the artillery issue as a lesson from Ukraine’s failure to maintain a well-rounded defense establishment.
Artillery matters. Victory also matters – and artillery wins more wars than gory pictures do.
Wall relief at Medinet Habu depicting Ramses III defeating the Sea Peoples in the Battle of the (Nile) Delta, c.1200-1150BC
Warfare at sea has been recorded for at least three thousand years, but fighting on the ocean almost certainly occurred long before Ramses fought his desperate battle. As on land, there are a dizzying array of reasons why a nation may fight on the water. However, the challenges of fighting at sea are vastly more complex and expensive than fighting on land, or even in the air. Only the concept of space-based warfare is more expensive.
The crew of the merchant vessel MV Faina stand on the deck after a U.S. Navy request to check on their health and welfare, 9 November 2008. Some of their Somali pirate captors stand above them. US Navy photo.
Like land warfare, naval warfare has tenets and goals. Those are, however, vastly different from those of land warfare. Central to that concept, is the definition of a “warship“. While people usually have some idea of what a “warship” is, that definition is usually shaped by modern entertainment media. A warship, at its core, has two defining characteristics: it is simultaneously, any water vessel that is armed – whether that ship is a bass boat or a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier – and conveys the perception of being under the control of a crew that adheres to both military discipline and a “legal” higher authority. This last, is what separates “pirate ships” from “naval vessels”.
Broadly speaking, there are three basic kinds of naval forces. Sometimes, there may be aircraft of various type associated to each force; there may be marines/’naval infantry’ (ground troops attached to the naval force) and there may be some form of “special operations forces” as well. The three basic types of forces we will briefly examine here are categorized as “blue water“, “green water“, and “brown water“.
First, however, we need to address the two basic schools of thought, regarding naval warfare.
Mahan’s central theory argued that control of the sea was vital to a nation’s greatness, and that a navy’s main focus should be on controlling the seas by destroying an enemy nation’s main fleet at the earliest stage of war possible, instead of worrying about a more nuanced approach.
German Imperial High Seas Fleet at sea as at the Battle of Jutland on 31st May 1916.
The naval aspect of World War 1 was inconclusive as to whether Mahan’s theory was correct or not, as there were few fleet actions, and those few were inconclusive draws. However, Mahan formed the basis of both Imperial Japan’s, and the United States’ naval doctrine in World War 2. For the Japanese, Mahan formed the core of their doctrine against Imperial Russia in the Russo-Japanese War, resulting in the decisive fleet action at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905.
Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō on the bridge of the Battleship Mikasa during the Battle of Tsushima, 27–28 May 1905.
Murderer’s Row: U.S. Third Fleet aircraft carriers at anchor in Ulithi Atoll, 8 December 1944. US Navy photo.
However, Mahan’s theories were not foolproof. In fact, they masked serious problems.
Sir Julian Corbett came to naval strategy as a civilian, in mid-life. Already a well-regarded historian, Corbett made friends in the Royal Navy with his more limited and nuanced approach to naval strategy, which offered a more realistic application of naval power projection that suited Britain’s needs as an Imperial power, even in its waning days. While agreeing with Mahan about the importance of sea power to a nation, Corbett took a completely opposite view of how to maintain this, arguing that control of the sea did not necessarily have to depend on smashing the main enemy fleet. He went further, arguing that “control of the seas” could be maintained if the fleet could ensure the security of the nation’s maritime commerce while inhibiting, if not outright halting, that of the enemy. German Grand Admiral and Secretary of State of the German Imperial Naval OfficeAlfred von Tirpitz, dismissed any sort of “commerce raiding” naval strategy (Corbett’s main view, in its most basic form) during World War 1, opting to do his best to use Mahan’s theories against Britain.
By 1945, it was clear that Corbett was the more correct of the two theorists.
Very briefly, a nation’s “fleet” is the total number of warships it has in current service, along with such vessels it might have “in reserve“, which can be quickly brought into service. For some time, during the late-19th Century, there was an idea that a nation’s “fleet” consisted of all of its major ships, operating en masse, in accordance with Mahanian principles.
The United Kingdom largely attempted to adopt this strategy, keeping the bulk of its main battle fleet massed in British home waters, while dispersing a mush smaller portion of its fleet to stations around the world. The United States, however, faced the harsh reality that due to its geography, it would be forced to split its fleet in any major conflict involving a war in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. This was proven true in 1941, as the USN was forced to fight in both oceans, simultaneously.
Physical map of the World, from CIA The World Factbook in 2021.
What everyone generally thinks of when hearing the word “navy”, blue water forces focus on three basic missions: projecting national power well beyond the shores of the home nation, defeating enemy fleets, and “maintaining the SLOC.”
Two US cargo ships docked at Bombay Harbor, 1948
The ‘SLOC‘, or ‘Sea Lines Of Communication‘, are the maritime conduits through which food,
World War II U-boats of Nazi Germany’s Kriegsmarine following their surrender at Lisahally, near Londonderry, Northern Ireland, UK in May 1945. Public Domain
fuel, raw materials and finished goods flow. Very few countries are truly self-sufficient, and a nation under attack has a desperate and immediate need to keep the sea open to merchant vessels funneling supplies to them. It was for this reason that winning the Battle of the Atlantic was so vital to the Allied war effort, because losing it would have forced Britain to surrender; world history would have been fundamentally different had that occurred.
The Battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805), by Clarkson Frederick Stanfield, 1936
Russian Black sea Fleet conducting an amphibious landing exercise, near Crimea, Ukraine, 2012
While there have been very few naval battles, as such, in the modern era (and haven’t been since the end of the Napoleonic Period), projecting power is still necessary, as was recently demonstrated by the international anti-piracy patrol off the Horn of Africa, and most famously, by the frequent deployments of the US Navy throughout the world — parking a carrier battle group – containing more fighting power on its own, than the total combat power of most national armed forces…before adding the potential of several thousand US Marines to the mix – off the coast of a restive country is a serious statement, sufficient to give all but the most delusional leader and their supporters serious pause.
While the USN is the only navy currently capable of doing this on any large scale, other countries such as Britain, France and India can deploy smaller but still very powerful forces to trouble spots, actual and potential. The Chinese “People’s Liberation Army Navy“, while large, is not well-practiced in “expeditionary operations“, as yet, and – despite certain breathless reporting – has yet to demonstrate more than a rudimentary capability.
Amphibious assault vehicles from the forward-deployed amphibious dock landing ship USS Tortuga (LSD 46) land on the beach during Exercise Cobra Gold 2012.
However, while some seventy percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, the remaining thirty percent is land. This may seem like a throwaway statement, but according to the United Nations, an estimated 60% of the Earth’s population live within 100km (62 miles) of an ocean coastline…it is for this very reason, that the United States maintains the largest “naval infantry” force in the world. While marine units are certainly capable (or should be) of seizing a section of hostile shore or a port area, their primary function is to hold that space just long enough for reinforcments to be landed, or some other limited mission completed. This is because – in a similar manner to airborne forces – most naval landing forces (short of a massive assault landing, such as D-Day or Okinawa) are very light in combat power, relying far more on confusion, fear and intimidation…which only works for a short time.
Green Water operations – taking their name from the shift in color from the deep blue of the open ocean to the “sea green” of coastal regions – primarily involve either getting troops ashore (“over the beach“), or finding and suppressing coastal anti-ship defenses, whether troops are going to be landed or not. It is here, that most naval mines are laid, to restrict access to vital coastal regions. This is also where most “coast guards” operate, whether under wartime missions, or during peacetime, conducting customs and safety inspections, police functions, and the occasional search and rescue operation.
In general, green water fleets are small in total hull numbers, as well as overall tonnage, but their functions are, comparatively, much more complex than those of blue water fleets. However, because the ships are orders of magnitude less expensive – at least, for the strictly defensive functions – this is what most navies in the world are composed of.
Humankind’s first water forces were riverine – they operated on those rivers deep enough to take hulls carrying significant numbers of occupants. In a word, those ships were able to carry enough people to both operate the boat, and fight from it.
Special Warfare Combatant Crewmen (SWCC) demonstrate the new Special Operations Craft-Riverine (SOC-R) while training at the Stennis Space Center. U.S. Navy photo
Riverine warfare involves the control of waterways away from the ocean shore. Any waterway – natural or man-made – that can be used as a highway to transport people and goods, is a vital conduit for a nation. Good examples are major rivers, such as the Mississippi, the Rhine, the Amazon, the Nile and the Mekong; the list can continue, running into several pages.
Members of U.S. Navy Seal Team One move down the Bassac River in a Seal Team Assault Boat (STAB) during operations along the river south of Saigon, November 1967.
Ships operating in rivers and delta’s are almost always significantly different in design from their sea-going cousins, but are no less deadly. It is here, where many countries first “dip their toes“, so to speak, in nautical operations. Speeds in rivers and estuaries are generally slower, as is the draft the ships must deal with.
A U.S. riverboat (Zippo monitor) deploying napalm during the Vietnam War
The vessels used in riverine operations can range from shallow-draft, high-speed boats – including small high-speed craft, with a machine gun mount bolted on – to large-scale, heavily-armed, river monitors. These ships are capable of both direct fire as well as indirect fire support missions, forcing enemies ashore to consider their distance to waterways, as well as roads.
Naval Special Forces
Russian commando frogman of the Caspian Flotilla during exercises
Above, we briefly touched on marines/naval infantry. Here, even more briefly, we will touch on naval special operations forces.
The idea of non-marine special operations forces, while not new, has never before reached a level comparable to that of today. This is largely driven by technology, but parochialism also plays a role.
US Navy Seals securing the beach. (Promotional image)
SEAL team member moves through deep mud in South Vietnam, May 1970. US Navy photo.
Like all special operations forces, however, these forces are difficult to employ to their full potential. Their training – of necessity, long and arduous…and expensive – means that they are extremely susceptible to poorly-thought out missions. The numbers of politicians capable of understanding how and when special forces in generally – and naval special forces in particular – should be deployed, is thin indeed.
Conclusion
Naval forces are generally the most expensive sector of a nation’s armed forces. Purpose-built warships represent a very significant investment for any nation, even (perhaps especially) the United States. It is also easy to forget, amid a slew of video games where real people do not die, that even the smallest modern destroyer carries a crew of well over one hundred people…and potentially a crew of thousands.
Anyone talking about naval policy needs to keep that foremost in their minds.
Planning to fight a war is universally seen as aggressive. After all, “planning” to fight a war means that the planner intends to do serious violence to the people their war plan defines as “the enemy”, right? And violence is bad — therefore, war planning must be a bad thing…right?
Well – no.
Countries fight wars. If the reader learns nothing else from History class, it should be that. Now, wars are fought for many reasons; sometimes, those wars are fought for all the wrong reasons, for mistakes and errors of judgement, sometimes for loot or religion, and sometimes, just for the “doing” of conquest.
German troops crossing the Soviet border during Operation Barbarossa, 1941
But, what about “just” wars? Suppose that Country X has “stuff”. Country X is willing to share…but their neighbor, Country Y, doesn’t want to simply share – they want all the stuff. Country X has two options: they can blare a prerecorded message saying “We Surrender!” over loudspeakers scattered throughout the country, as Country Y’s forces march in (this was actually proposed by Leftist politicians in the Scandinavian country of Denmark in the 1980’s; the Danes – being Danes – declined), or Country X can resist.
Insert four and a half thousand years of recorded battle, army creation, training and support history here.
Ramses II at the Battle of Kadesh (relief at Abu Simbel)
Over the millennia, those who study war have been able to agree that certain aspects of warfare are universal. While this is not the venue to discuss all of those common aspects, one of the central tenets is that having a plan – almost any plan – when sharp, pointy objects start flying, is infinitely better than having no plan at all…as the US Army has rediscovered, as it frantically tried to reorient from twenty years of counterinsurgency operations back towards a more “traditional” scope of warfare, especially as the Russo-Ukrainian War grinds onward.
Now, it’s important to define what we’re talking about, here: we are talking about national-level plans. We are nottalking about what the British Army calls “Small Tactics“, the methods of maneuvering small groups of troops in direct combat with an enemy. Neither is it the maneuvering of larger units, such as regiments and brigades, or even divisions and corps‘.
What we are talking about here, is the planning at the national level. Let’s look at the best-documented modern example: the development of the so-called “Rainbow Plans” of the United States of America, in the first half of the 20th Century.
For countless generations after the collapse of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, common thinking on the mechanisms of warfare was usually limited to a very narrow spectrum of people, in any given place and time. It was only improvements in communications and the wider movements of people between states and cultures that opened the door to that interchange, beginning in earnest in the 15th Century: the walls of Constantinople – capital of the Eastern Roman Empire (often called the ‘Byzantine Empire‘) – had stood, impregnable, for over a thousand years before falling to Ottoman cannon fire…and those cannons were largely designed by a Christian Hungarian military engineer.
Foreign Officers and Correspondents after the Battle of Shaho, Manchuria, 1904.
By the 19th Century, it was entirely possible to find many foreign officers serving their respective states as observers in wars their state was not involved in: Prussian officers observed Federal forces during the American Civil War, while their counterparts from England observed the Confederate forces. These officers neither advised, nor took part in the fighting; they merely observed operations. The information and experiences they brought home, frequently helped shape their own armies’ future policies.
Still, however, war planning was generally a very nebulous exercise; it was usually done “on the fly“. Information was usually scarce, and commanders in the field largely had to guess at the situation they were walking into…And, if this sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, it frequently was. This was taken as a “cost of doing business” by commanders, because no one saw an alternative.
Detail from Charge of the 24th and 25th Colored Infantry, July 2nd 1898.
Then-US Secretary of State John Hay might have called it a “splendid little war“, but in point of fact, the performance of the forces of the United States was abysmally bad. It is in no way a stretch to say that the United States won the war more because Spanish forces were even more incompetent than those of the USA were. Once the stirring sounds of marching bands and the cheers of the crowds faded in the war’s aftermath, the US Army and Navy faced the cold, hard fact that their respective on-scene commanders both pursued separate and uncoordinated theater strategies, and neither had either the information or support – intelligence or logistical – to properly execute the separate and mutually exclusive campaigns they had been assigned to pursue. Where the United States had been able to project military power beyond its shores fifty years before, and to effectively coordinate continent-spanning joint operations forty years prior, something had gone badly wrong.
The result, in 1903, was the formation of a Joint Army and Navy Board.
HMS Argus, 1918. US Navy photo
The Board’s mission was to plan for potential wars that the United States may need to wage. Since the 1870’s, the United States – like many European powers before it – had become increasingly tied to foreign trade; instability in a foreign land had the potential to cause significant damage to the US economy, if not start an actual shooting war. US military power at that time was nowhere near what it is today – the prospect of a hostile navy conducting a devastating shelling of US coastal cities was a very real concern.
Red guard unit of the Vulkan factory in Petrograd, October 1917
Much has been made, over time, about the Joint Board and its supposedly isolated and insular nature, operating outside the reality of geopolitics. In fact, the Joint Board began by only acting on information fed to it from the civilian State Department. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917, pre-planning major-war operations assumed new urgency. Like Iran some sixty years later, an ally quite literally changed from a friend to a potential enemy overnight.
As well, the context of the times must be understood. The United States had treated the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as very large “moats” for most of the preceding 125 years…Yet, in the space of barely 17 years – from 1891 to 1904 – the United States has seen not only technological advances that saw massive vessels crossing the Atlantic in barely a week, but had also seen a near-war with Chile that would have required sending naval reinforcements all the way around South America with no guarantee of bases and possible hostile state’s navies in the way, as the strategic shortcut of the Panama Canal had not yet been built; the aforementioned Spanish-American War; the Second Boer War, where great Britain had deployed nearly half a million troops from around its world-spanning empire to a theater that defined the term “remote”, and introduced the term “concentration camp” to the modern English language lexicon; the Boxer Rebellion and the joint-international Peking Relief Expedition; the Philippine Insurrection; and the Russo-Japanese War, best thought of as the beta-test for World War 1, as it was only missing the poison gas and airplanes. The United States was now facing a serious threat of possible invasion from non-Western Hemisphere industrial powers, who were capable of matching US military power.
The Joint Board thus began examining as many potential conflicts as it could realistically foresee, as evidenced by the list of plans they produced at some level, between 1904 and 1945:
Some of these plans are well known, such as ORANGE (the war plan to defeat the Empire of Japan), and RED (the war plan to fight Great Britain, the subject of a somewhat breathless documentary by Britain’s Channel 5, in 2011). But the rest of the plans reflected the reality of the United States’ strategic situation in the first four decades of the 20th Century.
One aspect of these plans were the so-called “Rainbow Plans“, begun in the 1930’s, that postulated potential wars against alliances of multiple states on the list.
So — what goes into a war plan at this level?
The primary purpose of a nation’s strategic war plan against a potential enemy, is to present a realistic assessment of that potential opponent’s capabilities. Assessing the strategic intent of an enemy is not usually a concern for the war planner, because – as in the case of both Russia and Iran – those intentions can change with surprising speed. A war plan focuses on the actions of the “friendly country” once war has been declared, or (as was the case after the Japanese attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii) once combat operations have commenced.
A war plan is a theoretical blueprint. It seeks to present “best options”, based on the best available assessments of the potential enemy in question:
What resources does the enemy possess? What are the points of entry into their country?
What targets and systems need to be attacked, in what order?
What forces and facilities of the enemy need to be attacked immediately, and which can be bypassed, and dealt with later?
What are the enemy’s capabilities to strike your country and its forces?
These are not questions that can be addressed on the fly. The information takes time to assemble, and planners are only human – the cycle of information intake, assessment and employment cannot be accelerated at short notice. A war plan, then, uses the most accurate information available to make general plans. Those general plans are far easier to alter based on current information flowing in, than starting from scratch. Broad operational orders can be disseminated to commands beforehand, to get the right forces moving, in the right order, in the shortest possible time.
But…Why is this important?
German women doing their washing at a water hydrant in a Berlin street.
No one profits from long wars. The faster the decision cycle, the faster that decisive, war-winning dominance can be gained by one side or the other, the faster the war ends, and the fewer people die…And therein lays the secret that anti-military people hate to acknowledge: the best militaries always seek to win as quickly as possible, with the fewest number of deaths to the “friendly” side — and, more likely than not, fewer deaths on the “enemy” side. That requires states to quite literally spend money on guns, instead of butter: to plan, prepare, stockpile equipment, train troops, maintain ready forces and update all of those things as necessary, against the day when they may be needed.
The core of the war plan, then, is a clear understanding of what the planning force is to accomplish, in the shortest possible time, with the most effective expenditure of people and resources.
Failure to plan effectively, inevitably leads to complete failures of strategy, and long, bloody wars, that can last interminably, wrecking the economy of the country and killing entire generations of youth.
Would, that leaders of the first part of the 21st Century had listened to the leaders of the first part of the 20th.
Begun in July of 2005, the program that produced the IAR (Infantry Automatic Rifle) met or exceeded all of the United States Marine Corps’ design requirements for a “lightweight automatic rifle“, with a Heckler & Koch variant of the HK416 being selected as the winner in 2009, receiving the type classification of “M27“, underlining a desired return to a magazine-fed automatic rifle.
The only problem is that the concept was badly flawed from the beginning.
An American soldier displaying a M1918 Browning automatic rifle at the Ordnance Department at Chaumont, 9 November 1918.
The IAR attempts to hearken back to the heady, halcyon days of the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). Weighing in at 19lbs/8.61kg, the .30-06 BAR – fielded in 1918 – earned a reputation for reliability on the battlefields of World War 2 and Korea, lasting in combat around the world well into the 1960’s. But, with its heavy weight and small ammunition capacity (feeding only from a 20-round magazine), it was recognized that something else was needed.
M14E2 Rifle, US Government photo
In 1963, the M14E2/A1 was selected to replace the BAR, in complement to the newly-adopted (in 1957) M14 rifle. However, serious problems still existed, as the new weapon still relied on a twenty-round magazine, and was much harder to control in fully automatic fire, due to its lighter weight.
A camouflaged infantryman armed with an M60 machine gun. US Dept. of Defense
As a stopgap, the M60 machine gun was introduced to progressively lower unit levels, both during and after the Vietnam War. A belt-fed weapon firing from an open bolt, the M60 was a dedicated machine gun, rather than a simple automatic rifle. In addition, while it weighed more than twice what an M14 weighed, it still weighed a bit less than the BAR; at the same time, it could be very temperamental in the field, but was capable of delivering a large volume of accurate automatic fire, assisted by a quick-change barrel, both being crucial features which the BAR and the M14 lacked.
A US Marine fires his M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon during Exercise Forest Light 2007. USMC photo.
This “stopgap” solution persisted into the early 1980’s, when first the US Army, shortly followed by the US Marine Corps, adopted the ‘Minimi‘ light machine gun, designed by the Belgian firm Fabrique Nationale (which had built legendary weapon designer John Browning’s last handgun design, the HP-35 ‘Hi Power’) as the “M249 SAW” (Squad Automatic Weapon).
Firing the same 5.56x45mm cartridge as the M16-series rifles, the belt-fed, quick-change barrel, open-bolt SAW was not the lightest of ‘light’ machine guns, weighing in at 22lbs/10.5kg when loaded with a 200-round assault pack, and it had its share of teething troubles in its early days, but the worst of these issues were solved fairly quickly. A notable feature of the SAW was its ability to use 30-round M16 magazines (loaded from the lower-left side of the receiver) in the event of the gunner firing all of his belted ammunition in combat (although this was a problematic feature).
Ultimately, the troops accepted the weight as a necessary trade-off for the ability to sustain an effective rate of fire of 100 rounds per minute (rpm) for extended periods, or 200 rpm for short periods. Still, the desire was for the lightest weight possible. While a laudable goal, all weapons involve trade-offs in design; no weapon can be “all things to all men”. In 1999, with an aging population of M249’s, the Marine Corps began to develop the requirements and criteria for the SAW’s replacement.
It is at this point, that something went drastically wrong.
American Hotchkiss Gun in action. Western Front, World War 1. US War Dept.
In effect, the HK416/M27 IAR is an attempt to deploy a “5.56mm BAR” at the fire team level. Where the M249 gunner would carry three 200-round assault packs into combat, the IAR gunner has to carry at least twenty-two 30-round M16 magazines to provide the same the same level of fire onto a target — however, this obscures the facts that a) only 30 rounds at a time can be fired; b) that the effective sustained rate of fire is 30-06 rpm, vs. 100-200 for the SAW; and, c) that the barrel of the M27 is fixed to the weapon and is impossible to change outside of an armorer’s shop. Even using H&K’s proprietary gas piston system instead of the direct gas impingement operating system of the conventional M16-series, the heat of extended firing will quickly be a critical issue in use, directly impacting squad fire and maneuver.
The IAR’s one saving grace – after its lighter weight of eight pounds – is its supposed accuracy. This concept completely misses the point of a fully automatic squad weapon: “accuracy” in automatic weapons is measured by how tight the cone-of-fire and the beaten-zone areas are. Automatic weapons are inherently inaccurate; they are “area of effect” weapons, intended to fire large amounts of ammunition into relatively small areas much faster than conventional rifles. Even the Marine Corps’ own Combat Developments and Integration office understood the loss of suppression fire that this represents.
An M16A1, belonging to Indonesia’s Brigade Mobil.
More prosaically, the IAR is essentially a “product-improved” M16A1 rifle, shoehorned into a role it cannot perform.
Although reports from Afghanistan indicate positive reception from Marines in the field, the reports of its positive reception read like forced advertising brochures. As well, despite the Marine Corps announcing in December of 2017 that it planned to equip all infantry Marines at the squad level with the M27, by as early as 2018, the Marine Corps had already tacitly recognized the deficiencies of a 30-round magazine weapon in the suppression role. On top of this, lays the problem of the M27’s inability to use the widely-sold “PMAG 30 GEN M2“, made by Magpul. This is a serious concern, given the need to reduce the overall logistical footprint (especially in high-intensity operations), not being able to use a widely distributed and low-cost magazine is a real handicap.
IMI Negev machinegun, in use by the Israel Defense Forces
If the M27 IAR is as accurate and as much of a quantum shift as it is portrayed to be, then the real question is begged: ‘Why is the US Army not making any attempt, whatsoever, to adopt this weapon?’ This is not an idle question. The US Army has always received the lion’s share of the military budget for land warfare systems, going back to the founding of the United States. While there are certainly valid complaints to be leveled at the M249 (and this author is right there with the criticisms, having carried and used one frequently), the argument was never to ditch the belt-fed weapon, to field a better belt-fed weapon.
While observations have been made that accuracy must be the paramount concern in a counter-insurgency environment, the fact is that the world is changing rapidly, and the possibility of full-on, “main-force” combat with a major power – such as the People’s Republic of China and especially given the results of the ongoing Russian invasion of the Ukraine – is becoming much more likely than it was even ten years ago. One of the foundational precepts of the post-Vietnam era was that the United States could not afford to be caught at the outset of a war with a military geared to fight the wrong war.
Unfortunately, this is a very expensive proposition in dollars, it is far more expensive in dead troops, lost battles, and wounded and/or disabled veterans. The problems with the M27 IAR, however, go much deeper, as it is not a question of cost: the replacement cost to the US Army of a single M249 is currently (FY2011) $4,512, while the cost of a single M27 is (FY2012) $2,896 — the savings simply are simply not significant enough to warrant the loss of mass-target suppression fire at the squad level.
The real problem is a perfect storm of a flawed design concept, and a civilian leadership bereft of functional knowledge of warfare at the ‘muddy boot’ level.
Heckler & Koch cannot be blamed for this – they produced precisely the design that was requested, and did it well. There is no doubt that the M27 IAR, like the HK416 that it derives from, is a fine weapon.
But it is not a a replacement for a belt-fed machine gun.
Foreign legions have existed for centuries, but in their generally-accepted form, have only really existed since roughly the end of the 1700’s. Unlike condottieri of RenaissanceItaly, “foreign legions” are not, strictly speaking, “mercenaries“, in that they are not usually specialists hired for one-time contract work, who remain separate from a nation’s actual armed fores, but are organized, uniformed and disciplined units of non-citizen foreigners, organized into separate units by the recruiting nation.
French Foreign Legionnaire firing machine gun
Most famously used by France, one of the harsh truths of foreign legions is that a nation usually finds them necessary only when their own populations are unwilling or unable to serve their nation effectively in the military. There is growing evidence that the United States of America may have reached a point where a foreign legion is a necessity.
Baron Steuben drilling American troops at Valley Forge in 1778.
The United States has always had foreign volunteers in the ranks of its military forces: whether as mercenaries or starry-eyed volunteers in the American War of Independence, through the German immigrants who fought for the Union in the American Civil War, to individuals from nations suffering under the rule of hostile foreign powers (this author served with several such volunteers in the 1980’s), non-citizen foreigners are no oddity in US military service. However, times are changing, and it may become necessary to rethink how the US military operates.
Draft-age Americans being counseled by Mark Satin (far left) at the Anti-Draft Programme office on Spadina Avenue in Toronto, August 1967.
Since the end of the Draft in 1973, the United States has had an “all-volunteer force” (or, “AVF”). Better-educated, on average, than the mass of draftees that it replaced, the AVF is also smaller in total numbers, even as the relative budget for the military in general has grown exponentially. The reasons for this are many, but boil down primarily to a desire for more remotely-operated weapons to keep US troops out of harms way as far as possible — as the military learned the hard way in Vietnam, dead American troops coming back in flag-draped coffins tend to cause a media frenzy, that paints even successful military actions in a poor light. One result of this, has been an increasingly smaller number of American citizens willing to volunteer to serve, because competition from the private sector is intense.
Quietly, in the background, a slowly worsening situation is developing, a situation that severely threatens US national security.
As recent articles have pointed out, American youth – now, as many as 70% – are unfit for military service. The situation is bad enough, that the military is seriously considering bringing in civilian specialists for direct commissioning (now termed “lateral entry”), because they cannot find enough suitable recruits. The reasons are many, but boil down to five core problems, either singly or in combination.
US Army Sgt. Ryan Moldovan throws a practice hand grenade at Fort Jackson, S.C., Sept. 7, 2016.
First, there is a noticeable epidemic of obesity in the United States. The US is not alone in this, as the problem does exist is several other developed countries, but the cold facts are that too many young people who would otherwise be excellent prospects for recruiters are simply too physically unfit to pass even the most basic physical fitness course. Recruiters try very hard to get these prospects into shape, but the results often end in failure. This situation has grown to the point where the US Army has actually dropped its requirement to – of all things – demonstrate proficiency in throwing hand grenades to 25 meters, one of the most basic duties of the infantry.
USMC Sgt. Jennifer Wilbur, Sgt. Jennifer Wilbur, poses for a photo at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, May 1, 2020.
Second, reductions in military budgets, mated to extreme costs for high-dollar, high-tech weapons programs have forced reductions in overall troops numbers, to a point not seen since the early 1940’s. This has led to arbitrary, petty, toxic and damaging practices that directly impact both troop morale and reenlistment figures; critically, this is also hemorrhaging combat-seasoned talent from the various services.
Third, is the widening percentage of US youths who cannot pass even highly “flexible” criminal background checks. Debates about various civil/criminal policies aside, a critical factor in not finding suitable recruits is the fact that many youths get into real trouble before they can be enlisted.
Fourth, is a problem that has existed since the end of the Draft: civilian sector competition. Bluntly, without a Draft providing a steady stream of troops, the various armed services have to compete with civilian companies for talent…and with the aforementioned budget reductions, the military services find it extremely difficult to compete with civilian companies, given the requirements of military service: most introductory-level civilian jobs do not involve you getting shot at. Additionally, since 2002, the military has had to compete in earnest with the rise of “private military contractor” (PMC) companies — where this was rarely a factor affecting both enlistment and reenlistment in previous decades, the surge in use of PMC’s – including in high-threat combat areas – has sparked investment in those companies that aggressively recruit talent from the military, talent (usually either special operations troops, or aircraft technicians) that has been expensively trained, and that the military desperately wants to keep, but cannot, for parsimony.
Last, is a crushing sense of ennui – bordering on existential nihilism – in a disturbingly high percentage of US youth. This serious emotional crisis breeds a distrust, if not outright disgust, with anything concerning governments, militaries and higher ideals in general. And again, there are numerous reasons for this, none of which can be resolved by military establishments.
You can only work with what you are given.
Yet, “spear carrying” troops are still needed. As military professionals are all too painfully aware, no matter how high-tech your military machine, you still need some kid with a rifle and a bayonet to stand on a patch of dirt, and dare anyone to come and kick them off. The recent casualty rates, coupled to the abject failure of Russia’s “BTG” (Battalion Tactical Group) in the Russo-Ukrainian War have highlighted the fact that mass mobilization and mass armies are definitely not relics of a bygone era – when you need them, and do not possess the structure to generate the numbers, you are in serious trouble.
Despite all its political, societal and economic woes, the United States still has immigrants flocking to its colors every year, so many, that artificial limits to legal immigration remain in force. These immigrants leave their homes, precisely because they still believe in what used to be called the “American Dream“…and many are more than willing to fight for that dream. Those artificial limits, however, only encourage emigres with “desirable” skills, and a desire to “fix bayonets and charge” is not usually on that list.
So — shouldthe United States begin an active program to recruit a “Foreign Legion”? Not as individual recruits, as is done today, but as separately organized units, officered by Americans, but whose ‘other ranks’ are universally non-citizen, in the same manner as the French Foreign Legion?
On the plus side, such units are not staffed with too many “American Boys and Girls“, and consequently will not produce as visceral a negative reaction in either the press or the electorate when they soak casualties on the battlefield.
On the down side, forming a Foreign Legion is essentially an admission of defeat. To paraphrase the words of author Robert A. Heinlein, if a citizenry will not volunteer to fight for its country, does that country deserve to continue to exist?
More darkly, on the third hand, if the country does deserve to continue, is it time to rethink exactly what “citizenship” means for the United States in the 21st Century?
The United States of America is an ongoing “noble experiment“, an experiment that many still believe in, that many believe is still worth fighting and dying for. There is a decisive break-point in this argument, however, and that break-point of decision is rapidly approaching.
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Unfortunately, this is a very expensive proposition in dollars, it is far more expensive in dead troops, lost battles, and wounded and/or disabled veterans. The problems with the M27 IAR, however, go much deeper, as it is not a question of cost: the replacement cost to the US Army of a single M249 is currently 
remotely-operated weapons to keep US troops out of harms way as far as possible — as the military learned the 
Third, is the widening percentage of US youths who cannot pass even 
Fourth, is a problem that has existed since the end of the Draft: civilian sector competition. Bluntly, without a Draft providing a steady stream of troops, the various armed services have to compete with civilian companies for talent…and with the aforementioned budget reductions, the military services find it extremely difficult to 
Last, is a 
Yet, “spear carrying” troops are still needed. As military professionals are all too painfully aware, no matter how high-tech your military machine, 
So — should the United States begin an active program to recruit a “Foreign Legion”? Not as individual recruits, as is done today, but as separately organized units, officered by Americans, but whose ‘other ranks’ are universally non-citizen, in the same manner as the 
