Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

The Israeli experience during 1973, despite considerable differences with theVietnam experience 118 , only reinforced the impression among US military that conventionalwar fighting capabilities needed to be addressed and that operational level doctrine neededserious attention 119 . With Egypt armed with the latest Soviet equipment, in particular SAMsystems, The United States and its NATO allies got an arresting preview of what an all-outshowdown with the newly expanded Soviet conventional force posture might entail. Itdemonstrated the extent of the Soviet military buildup from 1965-1972. Not only did theSoviets achieve acknowledged parity with the US in both number and quality in the crucialrealm of intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, it also upgraded itsforward-deployed conventional forces 120 . The 1979 Soviet invasion in Afghanistan provideda midcourse reminder of the US armed service’s need to reshape and recast themselves.This was neither a simple process nor one that led to immediate changes in militaryeffectiveness. Instead, numerous changes had to occur before planners could be confidentthat the services had the kind of forces, body of thought and doctrine, and weapons toconfront various levels of warfare ranging from support to client states in Third Worldconflict to actual large-scale commitment of American forces in, for example, a NATO-Warsaw Pact war. This was a bottom-up driven process rather than a Carter presidencydefense policy guided effort. While the Reagan-era defense build-up after 1980 greatlyaccelerated, expanded, and encouraged this get-well process, progress (in particular duringthe latter halve of the 1970s) was mostly the result of programs, initiatives and experimentsundertaken by the services, spurred on by ‘mid-level’ managers and combat veterans whowanted to redress the procedural, organizational, doctrinal, and equipment shortcomings ofthe Vietnam era 121 , a process in which Boyd was closely involved. While Brodie’s remark thatthe military profession provides some of the most barren soil for the nurture ofindependence of thinking may be correct in principle 122 , in this period after - and because of- the Vietnam War an environment thus emerged in which new ideas on doctrine andstrategy would find fertile soil and indeed, Boyd’s ideas evolved in symbiotic fashion withefforts of different services to develop new and appropriate doctrinal frameworks 123 .Adaptive MarinesReform within the US military occurred along various axes and was an arduous process.Hardware improvements were one axis of transformation. The US Navy registeredsignificant gains in terms of hardware, including the addition of Aegis class highly advancedair defense ships and cruise missiles, its basic orientation was not altered and consistedmainly of hunting down Soviet submarines and protecting the sea lanes connecting the USand Europe, and neutralizing any Soviet air or naval force that might contest Americancontrol of the high seas worldwide. The US Army modernized its equipment inventory by118 See Hallion for a sobering note on the perception that the Middle East conflicts could be related tolessons learned of the Vietnam War.119 Lambeth, p.69; Naveh, p.254.120 Lambeth, pp.54-55.121 Ibid, pp. 55-56.122 Brodie (1973), p.458.123 To underline the willingness to embrace the new, Paul Johnston remarks that in the 1980s the USArmy welcomed maneuver warfare with open arms, indicating the institutional response to innovativeideas was quite different from the attitude of the British Army in the Interwar years as it tried todevelop armored warfare doctrine. See Paul Johnston, ‘Doctrine is not Enough: the Effect ofDoctrine on the Behavior of Armies’, Parameters, Autumn 2000, pp.30-39.69