Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: fiddler@Sun.COM (Steve Hix)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Low tech warfare
Message-ID: <12755@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 4 Jan 90 04:24:40 GMT
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From: fiddler@Sun.COM (Steve Hix)

> From: munnari!gara.une.oz.au!pmorriso@uunet.UU.NET (Perry Morrison MATH)
> 
> However, I think that the effectiveness of the U.S. military has been 
> questioned after a decade or more of embarrassing bungling. The Iranian
> hsotage rescue for example used choppers to fly a mission that exceeded their
> mean-time-before-failure. In other words, it was beyond the design limits of
> these particular helicopters (Ch-47s?). 

CH-53E's.  Part of the reason for using them was that the plan called for
assembling the hostages in a soccer stadium in Tehran, and then lifting
them out from there.  C-130's wouldn't have fit.  (This would have been
a good place for something like the V-22 Osprey.)

> I believe that each service wanted a piece of the action and the
> result was a mish-mash of decision making.

The whole affair showed what happens when you try to pull off a complex
operation on the cheap, too quickly, and micromanage from a distance.
It was, from the start, a political operation, misrun by politicians.

> I guess we could contrast this with the Israelis who rarely put a
> foot wrong in covert operations. Didn't they steal an Egyptian radar unit 
> during one of the Arab-Israeli conflicts ('67?). Entebbe and several other
> operations were also class acts.

They aren't afraid to put adequate resources in place for the desired
results, and they aren't afraid to let the on-scene people have the
authority to do the job as they see fit.  (Not being afraid to step on
somebodies toes if need be.)

If you're going to pull off a military operation, you should let the
military plan it and execute it.  The politician's role should end,
utterly, after having made the decision to use the military, and after
giving the military the goal(s) of the mission.  The pol's should also 
be prepared to share the blame if things go wrong, in addition to their 
almost universal propensity to want to take the credit when things go right.

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"...Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise
anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear
and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded..."

		Plato, _Phaedrus_ 275d