US military starting to assess lessons of Iraq war

WASHINGTON - The US military is already scrutinising its performance in the Iraq war, and plans to translate those lessons into budgetary decisions in coming months, the top US military officer said on Wednesday.

Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the war in Iraq represented "a new American way of war," with the services able to respond more quickly and flexibly to changing battlefield conditions due to greater sharing of intelligence and operational details.

"We now conduct warfare much differently than we did in the past, even in Desert Storm," Myers told the annual Sea-Air-Space exposition of the Navy League in Washington, noting that technological advances meant the US military could accomplish more with fewer aircraft and troops.

US troops swept into the heart of Baghdad last week, ending the 24-year reign of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein just three weeks after the war began.

Rather than pursuing a strategy of annihilating the enemy as in past wars, Myers said, the US military had focused this time on targeting the Iraqi leadership and its supporting systems, such as elite Republican Guard divisions.

This meant US forces could do more to minimise civilian casualties and avoid destroying critical infrastructure, Myers said without giving any casualty figures.

The last Iraqi estimate issued April 3, just two weeks into the war and well before Saddam Hussein's rule crumbled, was 1,254 civilians killed and 5,112 wounded.

All US strike fighters could now fire precision-guided weapons, compared to just 20 per cent of aircraft during the 1991 Gulf War, Myers said.

"What that means, while we deployed only two-thirds of the attack aircraft, today we can hit twice as many targets as we did in Desert Storm. That's a real increase in capability," he said.

Myers said US ground troops now used Abrams M-1 tanks equipped with guns that fired 50 per cent further than what they had available in the 1991 Gulf War.

Greater data sharing

Intelligence and tactical data could also be shared with troops on land, sea and in the air far more quickly, giving all forces more "situational awareness" and paving the way for troops to adjust to a changing battlefield, he said.

For instance, a B-1 bomber hit a meeting of Iraqi leaders just 38 minutes after intelligence about the gathering was first received. "That's really fast," he said.

Adm. Edmund Giambastiani, commander of the US Joint Forces Command, had already launched a review of US military actions in the first phase of the war, Myers said, although he acknowledged that some combat operations were still under way.

In addition, top Pentagon officials were already drawing lessons from the war as they began working in earnest on the fiscal 2005 budget plan -- a far quicker schedule for implementing military lessons than the Pentagon was used to.

Myers gave no specifics about any potential consequences for the 2005 budget, but Pentagon Comproller Dov Zakheim has been compiling a list of possible weapons systems to cut or cancel to help offset the war of the war.

Asked if military leaders discovered any "deficiencies or shortfalls" during the war that affected defence contractors, Myers said, "We had one," but gave no details.

Herald Feature: Iraq war