Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: terryr@ogicse.ogc.edu (Terry Rooker)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Lessons Learned
Keywords: lessons, grenada, panama
Message-ID: <12694@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 2 Jan 90 02:47:50 GMT
References: <12601@cbnews.ATT.COM>
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Organization: Oregon Graduate Institute (formerly OGC), Beaverton, OR
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From: terryr@ogicse.ogc.edu (Terry Rooker)
In article <12601@cbnews.ATT.COM> mrchards@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Matt Richards ) writes:
>
[stuff deleted about Luttwak and Panama]
>
>Mr. Luttwak makes a strong case 
>for reforming the structure of the US military, as he feels that
>unified commands force too much compromise.  At this point,
>it appears that at least a passable
>job was done in planning and preparations for this mission.

There is already information leaking that Panama may have been as much
as a fiasco as Grenada, we just made different mistakes.  The biggest
failing once again was the lack of good intelligence.  All the
satellites and recon pictures in the world can only tell you so much.
It appears that the Panamanians had better intelligence than the US
forces.  For example apparently 20 Navy SEALs landed at a supposedly
lightly or not defended airfield.  There were at least 3 APCs waiting
at the airfield.  Needless to say the SEAL platoon was shot up badly
(their heaviest weapon was a machine gun).  Apparently Noriega stayed
just ahead of the American troops trying to capture him because he got
word of the troops movements.  Under those conditions the only way we
could have killed or captured him was if he had a heart attack from
all the running:-)

Another indication of the lack of planning and/or foresight.  The US
went in and conducted a good military operation.  Appaerntly none of
the planning even considered any measures to control the political and
social chaos that would be caused by an abrupt removal of the de facto
government.  

There have been other incidents, but the point is that the US made
much better *military* perparations and didn't consider all the
factors of the operation.  In addition it seems that it is yet another
failure of the US intelligence community.  (Maybe with peristroika we
can get the KGB to give us some pointers on running HUMINT operations:-)


-- 
Terry Rooker
terryr@cse.ogi.edu