Nations, particularly those that are driven by populist leaders and media thriving on hyper-nationalism, delude themselves into thinking that their imported military equipment and ‘brave soldiers’ guarantee that they will necessarily win all their future wars, even if they have not fought any war in over half a century. As a proof of their ability to win wars, they present gushing reviews of their military exercises by the media! In the following, we will examine the merit of such claims.
Combat Experience – the Cornerstone of Victories
It has never happened in history that nations that have remained ‘peaceful’ for a long time, where generations of military officers have retired without ever hearing a shot fired in anger, can suddenly wake up from their ‘hibernation’ anytime and go on to win wars. It defies logic, science, everything.
Given rough parity in leadership, strategy and tactics, training, numbers and technological sophistication of weapon systems of rival nations, the outcome of a war depends mainly on combat experience.
The Chinese PLA (People’s Liberation Army) has numbers as well as great technological sophistication; but, they lack sorely in combat experience, having fought its last war in 1979, when a seasoned Vietnamese military demolished their bungled invasion. The ghost of that defeat still haunts the PLA.
Israel Defence Force may be numerically inferior to their enemies but they make up for it in the technological sophistication of their weapon systems and their combat experience.
On the other hand, we have the American army that is not only huge in numbers and extremely well-equipped; it has got the maximum combat experience in the world. However, since the Second World War, even the Americans have to acquire the experience of fighting another great power.
After the Second World War, the Russians also could not get combat experience but have tried to make up for it in the Mujahideen War, Chechnya, Crimea and now in Ukraine.
Military Exercises – What They Can Accomplish
Military exercises focus on the simulation of military operations in controlled hostile conditions in attempts to reproduce war time decisions and activities for training purposes or to analyse the outcome of possible war time decisions. The emphasis is on the word ‘controlled hostile conditions’.
Military exercises can test and improve soldiers’ technical skills, such as their ability to handle their weapon systems and combat vehicles, and also bigger issues regarding command and control; in other words, the military’s baseline competence. To raw troops, they also provide some exposure to stresses like tiredness, hunger, etc.
A military force can hope to remain operationally ‘ready’ by training and participation in exercises. BUT, none of these can ever substitute for the real losses of men and equipment; blood; grime; the real fear of getting killed or maimed; stress of repair and replenishment; chaos and uncertainties; the rough and tumble; and the general misery and horror that accompanies real wars where no quarters are asked and no quarters are given.
Getting really killed or seeing your buddy blown to bits is VASTLY different from getting killed by MILES (multiple integrated laser engagement system) gear, or observer/controllers just designating soldiers to become casualties based on fiat.
No peacetime analysis of military exercises, howsoever elaborate, can reveal those ugly truths about an army that only a real combat can ruthlessly expose.
For some nations, exercises also serve the purpose of impressing visiting dignitaries, eager-to-please ‘invited’ media, own leaders and even senior officers who have actually never seen real wars. In such cases, live-fire exercises (LFX) are reduced to carefully orchestrated military demonstrations to evoke awe and admiration from the uninitiated and un-informed.
Such nations will have no option but to count on their luck in real wars. Without practical experience of conducting a war, they are very much likely to be flummoxed by unexpected problems and situations.
Also Read: PLA’s Achilles heel: flaws that weaken China’s combat capabilities
It demands intellectual honesty to admit that exercises are essentially ‘scripted’ and therefore offer limited value as a mechanism for training soldiers and officers to respond effectively in real-life crisis scenarios where the enemy could respond in the most unpredictable manner. Unfortunately, this intellectual honesty is rare.
They are also unrealistic, particularly in terms of the severe logistical challenges, high casualty rates, and widespread social dislocation that would ensue from an actual, large-scale war. Fact is armies only fight battles; it is nations that fight wars. People and the media love wars only on TV, that is, as long as it does not affect them directly; they under tremendous psychological stress and become hysterical if even one bomb makes an entry into their lives.
War games, on the other hand, do not typically include the use of functional military equipment; decisions and actions are carried out by artificial players to simulate possible decisions and actions within an artificial scenario which usually represents a model of a real-world scenario. Mathematical modelling is used in the simulation of war games to provide a quantifiable method of deduction. War games cannot be used to achieve predictive results, because the nature of war and the scenarios that war games seek to simulate are not deterministic. Hence, war games can be used basically to consider multiple possible outcomes of any given decision, or number of decisions, made in the simulated scenario.
Even the most advanced ‘free play’ simulation (meaning a two-sided game in which either side can win) lacks the heat; the confusion, and uncertainty for which the great military general and theorist Clausewitz had said, “Friction is the only conception which, in a general way, corresponds to that which distinguishes real war from war on paper.”
Sheer Strain on Logistics in Real Wars
Even if one discounts the blood and gore for a moment, real wars place tremendous strain on logistics. The Second World War being too distant now, an excellent example is the Gulf War (1990-91).
Before the War, the US military’s workhorse cargo planes, the C-141 Starlifter, C-5 Galaxy and C-130 Hercules flew more than 20,000 sorties and delivered over half a million ton (542,000 tons) of cargo and over half a million soldiers there (534,000). The military established both army and air force repair workshops right next to the war zone.
In the actual war, spearheaded by the USAF which deployed as many as 863 aircrafts, the coalition aircrafts flew over 111,000 sorties, dropping a whopping 88,500 tons of bombs. Of this tonnage of bombs, the old, venerable strategic bomber B-52 Stratofortress, capable of carrying up to 32 tons of bombs at a time, flew 1,624 sorties and dropped 25,700 tons of bombs. The ever-reliable F-16 Fighting Falcons, capable of carrying up to 7.6 tons of bombs, flew an unprecedented 13,500 sorties and dropped 15,500 tons of bombs. On the first day itself, the F-117 Nighthawk stealth attack aircrafts flew as many as 60 sorties and dropped 57% of all the Laser Guided Bombs for precision strikes on high-value targets.
Backed by such tremendous firepower of the USAF, the US army made a massive thrust into Iraq with as many as 2 famous airborne divisions (82nd and 101st); 1 armoured division; 1 mechanized infantry division and 1 mechanized infantry brigade; 1 cavalry division and 1 armoured cavalry regiment; 1 corps artillery and 1 air defence artillery brigade; and 1 combat aviation brigade.
Within 100 hours, the US armed forces destroyed over 3,000 Iraqi tanks, 1,400 armoured personnel carriers, and 2,200 artillery pieces along with countless other vehicles. This was achieved at a cost of just 96 soldiers killed in action, 2 died of wounds, and 105 non-hostile deaths.
One cannot practice such vast scale of employment and deployment of military resources in any exercise. One learns to do it by actually doing it in war. Unfortunately, the best training for war happens to be war itself.
War Is Not Just About Shooting
Most people harbour an impression that war is nothing but ‘shooting’ and their soldiers will steamroller all opposition because they are very brave, and that the enemy soldiers are cowards. They do not realize that war is much more than just frantic shooting accompanied by war cries. The severest test of a nation is whether, in times of war, it can integrate a viable grand strategy with available resources, manpower, and the nature and vulnerability of both the enemy and its own vital resources, including lines of communication.
One should first be clear about the objectives of war. One cannot claim that his only objective is to efface the enemy from the face of the earth. One should have a corresponding national war-fighting strategy that takes into account every possible contingency, both non-nuclear and nuclear. Then, one’s defence industrial base and other resources must be capable of supporting that strategy. More than these, it requires a national ‘will to fight’ in the people, the horrors of war notwithstanding. Raw valour of troops is no substitute for sound strategy and the national will.
The Americans have understood it clearly. There is a growing school of thought in the US military establishment which believes that the USA should practice fighting Russians and spend less time on essentially counterinsurgency operations, such as against the ISIS and Taliban. It has also been pointed out that as strategic and great adversaries like China and Russia are introducing new technologies and dimensions such as artificial intelligence, nanotechnologies, hyper-sonics, and machine learning to the business of war, the American way of war must quickly evolve and adapt. Future wars demand that significant changes must be brought in the way the US military is sized, shaped, postured, employed, and developed.
Get Real or Get Killed
Nations like China that do not delude themselves, are deeply concerned about their lack of combat experience and are apprehensive of becoming a ‘Paper Tiger’. In 2018, the Chinese military’s official newspaper, the PLA Daily, criticized what it described as “peace disease”. Chinese Lt. Gen. He Lei had said that his biggest regret before retiring was that he never fought a war!
Have anybody ever seen such honest admissions anywhere else? It is only dumb nations that refuse to admit that without the test of combat, their war-fighting prowess remains unproven. No charismatic national leader can compensate for the armed forces’ lack of combat experience. Banter and bluster in Officers’ Messes or private drawing rooms over a glass of Single Malt is one thing; coming up to the bluster in real wars quite another.
Living ‘peacefully’ with one’s neighbours without fighting a war for decades may be touted as a triumph of foreign policy/diplomacy; however, if such a nation is ever obliged to fight a war or forced into a war, it would most probably land it a right royal soup.
Let us get one thing clear with a simple example. How to win a street fight against a ruffian or ‘gunda’? Combat sports are perfectly useless in a real-life street fight, because there are no rules and no points to be scored for victory. You have to kill or inflict maximum injury in the shortest time to survive or get killed. Professional boxers are better than amateur boxers because they fight for 12 rounds and not three. Muay Thai (kickboxing) fighters are better than boxers because they kick also besides punching. MMA (mixed martial arts) fighters are even better because they use lighter gloves and besides kicks, grapple, choke and strangle also, that is, injure you more, bringing you closer to real street fights. Still, they do not gouge out your eyes. You cannot hope to survive a street fight if you have been ‘exercising’ with every bit of protective gear! Get real, or get killed.
