High Tech and Low: The Future of Warfare?

^{National Archives from U.S. Information Agency}

^{Sky Crane helicopter, capable of lifting enormous loads, was one of the many high‑tech devices the enemy could not match in Vietnam.}

In 2003, U.S. and British forces invaded Iraq with an array of weapons that the troops of World War II would have considered miraculous. There were planes that couldn’t be seen, even with radar; bombs that could see a dot of laser light and steer themselves into it; and bombs that could fly hundreds of miles without a pilot and – more amazing – land right on the building they were aimed at. There were planes that needed no pilots and could send television pictures of what a pilot would have seen, making themselves the eyes of people in a headquarters hundreds, even thousands, of miles away. Those Remotely Piloted Vehicles, or “drones,” could act as well as see. One of them in Yemen identified a terrorist suspect and killed him with a rocket.

Individual grunts in Iraq could see in the dark, using night vision goggles that enormously amplify any ambient light. Thermal imaging equipment let them see would‑be ambushers from inside tanks and other vehicles in the darkest dark. Sensors picking up vibrations in the ground let them locate any enemy attempting to sneak up on an encampment.

There are a host of guided antitank missiles – some guided by wire or fiber optic, others that fly towards reflected laser light. One type has its own laser in its nose that searches an area of 328 square yards for a tank, locates it, and steers toward it. This particular system, the British MERLIN, is not a rocket, but a mortar shell. Most of the wire‑guided missiles merely require the operator to keep the target in his sights: the missile automatically steers itself into the target. Others, though, once fixed on the target, follow it like a bloodhound while the operator takes cover. One rocket, the Swedish BILL system, flies above a tank and dives into the vehicle’s thin top armor at the appropriate time.

The American Javelin does that, too. The javelin is carried and fired by one man, and it’s a “shoot and scoot” type. The operator puts the tank in his sights, fires the rocket and the missile does the rest, following the tank if it tries to take evasive action. Then there’s the French antitank weapon that picks a target and fires itself. It’s really a modern version of the “trap guns” that 18th‑century landowners used to discourage poachers. The weapon is set up to cover a gap in a minefield, a bridge, or some other key point. When a vehicle of the proper bulk enters the space being covered, it fires an antitank rocket.

Antitank weapons do not rely entirely on the shaped charge, which has been made less effective by laminated armor. The ancient solid shot is back, but with improvements. There’s discarding sabot shot: a dart‑shaped piece of very sharp depleted uranium (DU) that is much smaller than the bore of the gun that shoots it. It is encased in a “sabot” of the proper diameter for the gun. The shot, therefore is much lighter than a regular shell of the proper diameter.

Because it is so light, it leaves the gun with a terrific muzzle velocity. As soon as it leaves the muzzle, the sabot drops off so wind resistance does not hinder the flight of the DU shot. In some versions, the sabot, traveling through a rifled barrel, imparts its stabilizing spin to the shot. In others, fired from smoothbore guns that also fire shaped charge shells, the shot is fin‑stabilized. Depleted uranium, the metal American solid shot is made of, is harder than tungsten and so heavy a piece the size of a golf ball weighs 2 pounds. When it strikes something hard, it throws off extremely hot sparks that have an incendiary effect.

The Coalition forces have, as we’ve seen (see Chapter 40) several types of improved armor for tanks and other vehicles. In the Iraq War, the troops themselves have vastly improved body armor – what the news media erroneously call “flak jackets.” Flak jackets were worn by flight crews in World War II. As the name indicates, the jackets – fabric covering metal plates – were designed to protect the wearer from antiaircraft shell fragments. “Flak” is an abbreviation of Fliegerabwehrkanone, German for “antiaircraft gun.” Flak jackets would stop shell fragments but not bullets. In the latter part of the Korean War, infantry got armor jackets. These were made of nylon and were lighter than the aircrew armor. They would stop shell fragments and bullets from a .45 caliber pistol, but they wouldn’t stop bullets from an M 1 carbine or any more powerful rifle – and all other military rifles were more powerful. The new armor will stop bullets from the AK 47 and its modifications – the universal weapon of the Iraqi guerrillas.

Stopping enemy fire is good. Becoming invisible to the enemy is even better. “Stealth” fighters and bombers are designed to present a minimum profile to enemy radar and are covered with material that greatly reduces radar reflec‑tion. In the Gulf War of 1991, some U.S. planes carried radar jamming equipment, forcing the Iraqi radar operators to turn their radars up to full power.

That made it easy for other planes to release radar homing missiles from a considerable distance. The missiles then rode down the radar beams and destroyed the radars. In the Gulf War, in spite of all the television footage showing missiles flying into buildings, only about 7 percent of the munitions were “smart” weapons. In the Iraq War, about 70 percent were. Ordinary aerial bombs – the archetypical dumb weapons – became smart by adding a global satellite positioning navigation device and connecting it with movable tail fins.

Some planes, notably the British Harriers, are able to take off straight up and land almost straight down by using movable jet nozzles. Helicopters, of course could always do that, and in the Iraq War there were more and bigger helicopters than ever. One division in that war, the 101st Airborne, is built around helicopters. Parachutes in the 101st had gone the way of gliders. Helicopters carried the 101st troopers, artillery, and vehicles. They fought enemy tanks, destroyed enemy artillery, and strafed enemy infantry. The helicopters carried standard machine guns, the variable‑rate chain guns, modern Gatling guns, automatic cannons, and rockets. Helicopter pilots have an aiming device built into their helmets: they can train their weapons on a target just by looking at it.

In the Iraq War, the Iraqis had neither planes nor helicopters, but Coalition forces had antiaircraft guns ranging from the shoulder‑fired Stinger to rockets that could knock down enemy aircraft scores of miles away.

The formal part of the Iraq War was over in three weeks. The American forces, which made up the overwhelming majority of the Coalition troops and did by far most of the fighting, lost only 122 troops. The formal war was followed by the guerrilla war. Because of that, as this book went to press American losses approached 1,400.

That calls for a look at “dumb” weapons – the kind guerrillas use.

In 1962, a young officer serving as an adviser to Vietnamese troops stepped on a punji stick smeared with excrement. The sharpened bamboo spike penetrated the sole of his boot and passed entirely through his foot and the instep of the boot. As a result, Captain Colin L. Powell was laid up quite a while in an army hospital. Some men who had the same experience died of the infection incurred.

The punji stick was a favorite improvised weapon of the guerrillas in Vietnam. Some were placed behind trip wires so a victim would fall on them and receive multiple wounds. Others were planted in pits hidden under a rotating platform covered with leaves. Flexible steel spikes in a wooden frame over a pit were another variation. Called a “venus flytrap,” it was almost impossible for a victim to pull his leg out. Jungle warfare made it possible for guerrillas to use a wide variety of deadfalls and other man traps. Another favorite was a poisoned arrow launched by elastic bands made from inner tubes and triggered by a trip wire. Poisoned arrows shot from crossbows, weapons that in east Asia have been used since prehistoric times, killed 20th century soldiers in Vietnam.

Improvised weapons ranging from punji sticks to roadside bombs are weapons American troops may be facing in increasing numbers. United States superiority in “smart” weapons and other high‑tech devices makes it unlikely that American forces will be seriously challenged by conventional military organiza‑tions. Anyone who thinks that these primitive devices do not constitute a serious challenge should study the Vietnam War.

The simple fact is that while weapons have increased in sophistication and lethality for thousands of years, human beings are still put together the same way. An arrow – arrows will penetrate some forms of body armor that will stop a bullet – can kill an American soldier today just as it could kill a French knight in 1346. A roadside bomb consisting of old artillery shells detonated by a small explosive charge – a weapon that is about as dumb as they come – will kill a person just as dead as the most sophisticated cruise missile.

^{Reprint of an item in the U.S. Army’s Improvised Munitions Handbook, which tells how to make a wide variety of weapons.}

It is true that few places have the abundance of unguarded caches of artillery shells, bombs, and rockets as Iraq. Every country in the world, however, uses explosives in construction and mining. Any guerrilla organization can steal this material without exerting itself. Gasoline and diesel oil are even easier to obtain. These can be used for a variety of weapons, ranging from the lowly Molotov cocktail to anfo (ammonium nitrate and fuel oil) bombs like the one Timothy McVeigh exploded in Oklahoma City. Ammonium nitrate, the other component, besides fuel oil, of McVeigh’s bomb, is a commonly used fertilizer.

It can easily be obtained in it pure form or leached from brand‑name fertilizers.

Ordinary flour can be used to make a bomb that purposely reproduces the kind of explosion that accidentally occurs in grain elevators. The list of household products that can be used to make explosives is amazing. It includes granulated sugar, Vaseline, auto battery acid, swimming pool cleaner, and common matches.

Matchheads alone can make a dangerous explosive. All of these explosives can be used in mines and booby traps; many can also be used as propellants in improvised guns.

Information on making explosives, as well as making improvised guns and rockets has been widely disseminated. There are at least 40 books in print on the subject, one of which is published by the United States Army. This training manual also includes directions for making a slew of homemade weapons.

Guerrillas using such primitive weapons will, of course, try to obtain better ones. The classic way to obtain better weapons is to get them from the enemy. In Vietnam, early in the war, many of the Viet Cong carried M 1 and M 2 carbines that they had apparently obtained from South Vietnamese troops, either by sale or capture. Iraqi guerrillas apparently have not obtained many, if any, American weapons, but the Russian‑built weapons they have – especially the Kalashnikov rifles and RPG 7s – make pretty good guerrilla weapons. The biggest handicap the Iraqis have is their generally dreadful marksmanship.

Superior weapons mean that just about any regular force can defeat just about any guerrilla force in a formal battle. That’s why guerrillas don’t fight formal battles. Guerrillas ambush troops on the move, plant mines and other IEDs (improvised explosive devices) on supply routes, and attack isolated bases.

They kill supporters of an occupying power. (Most guerrilla enemies are occupying powers.) Guerrillas gave Napoleon’s armies a terrible time in Russia and Spain. And over time, they’ve gradually become more effective. In South Africa, the British had to flood the Orange Free State and the South African Republic (sometimes called the Tranvaal) with more troops than the entire enemy population. And even then, they didn’t win until they had incarcerated virtually the whole civilian population in concentration camps. A few years later in Africa, the guerrillas of Abd el Krim, with weapons considerably inferior to those of the Afrikaners, drove the Spanish army out of Morocco and came close to doing that to the French. French air power proved to be too effective against guerrillas in an open desert.

In modern times, those within the memory of most living people, guerrillas have gone from success to success. Consider Africa. Almost every nation on that continent, from Algeria to Zambia, is independent because of a successful guerrilla war. In Malaya, the British put down a guerrilla movement, but that was because the movement was limited to members of a despised minority, the Chinese. Most of the population opposed the guerrillas. Mao Zedong, the most successful guerrilla in modern times, compared guerrillas to fish and the population to the sea. The population shelters the guerrillas and keeps them supplied and informed. Until that human “sea” dries up, the guerrillas are a potent force. They have become more potent in recent years because of three things: (1) instant, world‑wide communications; (2) the growth of nationalism; and (3) the development of weapons adapted to guerrilla warfare.

Today guerrillas use television and computers to transmit their propaganda and influence global public opinion. The Irish, in their war of independence made international public opinion their most potent weapon, and modern communications have given propaganda even more potential. In the early years of the last century, colonial powers had a relatively easy time because nationalism was largely confined to Europe and the Americas. In other places loyalty was primarily to the tribe or clan. Today, nationalism is visible everywhere, and in many Muslim lands it’s allied with religious zeal. And early in the century, the

“Boers” of South Africa didn’t have trench mortars or rockets to fire at British bases, and Abd el Krim’s Berbers had no anti‑aircraft missiles. That’s no longer true of most guerrillas.

All of this means that to fight guerrillas, the major powers are going to have to concentrate on drying up the “sea” in which the guerrilla “fish” swim – convincing the populations of enemy countries that it’s in their interest to join us.