The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
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Dirty Little Secrets
Little Guys Go It Alone
by James Dunnigan
July 23, 2003
Some things never change. During the 1991 Gulf War, commanders
complained that little useful intelligence reached them from all the large
intelligence agencies. Same thing happened in 2003. This time, the ground battle
moved so fast that even a few hours delay in getting division or brigade
commanders data from satellites or recon aircraft made the information useless.
Division and brigade commanders had to depend on their own intelligence
collection resources. Not too long ago, this wouldn’t have amounted to much. A
few helicopters and aircraft, and what ever scouts they had on the ground. But
this time around there were some UAVs that were used by division and brigade
personnel. These were very useful. In addition, the JSTARS aircraft sent its
information to terminals at division headquarters (although the Marines had to
borrow one from the Army, along with troops to run it.) The JSTARS would not
always look where the divisions wanted it to look, but whatever the JSTARS could
see, the divisions could see in real time. Like the real time video of the UAVs,
this was very useful, for otherwise, the troops were finding the enemy the old
fashioned way, by bumping into him. The division, brigade, and even battalion,
commanders now feel that they need their own intelligence collecting systems
because it’s apparent that the organizations and bureaucracies controlling the
more expensive intelligence collection resources will never be able to respond
quickly enough to be useful to the troops. Since UAVs are cheap and reliable,
there’s no reason why even combat battalion’s can’t be given their own. Unless
the major intelligence agencies can prove that they can deliver, the combat
units will continue to seek their own methods for finding out what's out
there.
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