Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military From: waltm@maxzilla.encore.com (Walt Mattison) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Lessons Learned Keywords: lessons, grenada, panama Message-ID: <12778@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 4 Jan 90 04:27:16 GMT References: <12601@cbnews.ATT.COM> <12694@cbnews.ATT.COM> Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Organization: GRU Spetsnaz Naval Brigade Lines: 73 Approved: military@att.att.com From: Walt Mattison In article <12694@cbnews.ATT.COM> terryr@ogicse.ogc.edu (Terry Rooker) writes: : :In article <12601@cbnews.ATT.COM> mrchards@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Matt Richards ) writes: :> :>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. The armchair commando will always claim that an operation could have been done in a better manner, however in reality the commander of an operation has to act on data that is coming to him from various sources at various rates he does not have the luxury of hind sight intell. Like the old adage " any landing you can walk away from is a good one" any time a military operation is completed with all or most of its goals attained it is a good one. Grenada was a fiasco? I thought all those medical students came away alive... :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 It's never easy to conduct operations in our system of government with every politician willing to sacrafice American soldier's blood for votes or press coverage. I would think that any intell that Panama had of the operation would have come from one of our Faithful public servants 8 ) 8 ).... :(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:-) Noriega could have been captured or killed ( much better solution) if the US didn't care about public opinion, but since we do. we couldn't risk the extra loss of life that a gamble like that would have entailed, we were forced into the type of operation that was executed. : :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. The military was given the job of taking Noriega out of power. The State Dept has the responsiblity of handling the loss of control. This is not to say that the military would not have been used to keep order, but that was not their call. : :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:-) : The only reason that the KGB can be successful is a total control of the media, which allows them to operate without concern for how much force or how many bodies get cold during the operation. Walt Mattison USA ( Ret) Infantry/Airborne/Ranger/SF Qualified