From: Andrew Clough (aclough@mit.edu)
Date: Fri Mar 21 2003 - 09:27:58 MST
At 10:03 AM 3/21/2003 +0100, you wrote:
>And amazingly enough there dosn't seem to be any efficient counter
>meassures to these hightech weapons. At least not any that the Iraqis have
>been able to get their hands on.
>
>Ie. with laser guided precision bombs, it would seem obvious for the
>Iraqis to put up powerfull lasers pointing anywhere else than on important
>infrastructure, so as to confuse the guided bombs.
>
>And naturally air superiority is paramount, so the country ought to be
>massively packed with SAM's.
>
>This left mo wondering if all this is caused by the fact that the Iraqi's
>has been relatively isolated, and has no modern weapons anymore, or simply
>because there is a difference in weaponry that is rising exponentially?
One of the reasons that Saddam hasn't been able to counter us effectively
might just be the structure of his government. An example: during the
first Gulf War we were able to knock out his air force so easily because he
deliberately made his countries airfields easy to attack, in fear of an Air
Force coup.
His command and control also has to be highly controlled since he knows
that his military units aren't loyal to him, just afraid of him. During
the Iran/Iraq war his armor units weren't able to exploit breakthroughs
since they weren't trusted to operate independently, so they were reduced
to mobile forts. Instead of the war looking like WWII as you would expect,
it devolved into trench fighting like WWI.
There probably are clever ways to thwart many of the technologies that we
have used in this war. Even in the Serbian air campaign our opponent was
able to hide their vehicles and use decoys (which wouldn't have worked if
they had to fear land invasion, admittedly). But the Serbian government,
say what you will about it, wasn't a police state. Iraq is, and if they're
leadership really has been decapitated we can expect their army to just
keep following their last orders or surrendering until we march into Baghdad.
A military that is run purely by command from the top will be as outclassed
by a military that allow initiative as a command economy is by capitalist
(or at least socialist) one.
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Don't assign
to stupidity what might be due to ignorance. And try not to assume you
opponent is the ignorant one-until you can show it isn't you.
-M.N. Plano
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