ARMY TESTS HIGH-TECH WARFARE : DESERT EXERCISES UTILIZE ADVANCED COMPUTER GEAR.

Byline: Michael E. Ruane Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

From the crest of Fuhrlong Ridge, the generals watched impassively as dust drifted up from a column of enemy tanks hurrying through the pass toward the vulnerable flank of the friendly force.

The good guys had all the Army's latest gadgetry - equipped for the 21st century with laptops in every tank, truck and Humvee. And they were getting whipped by an old-fashioned enemy.

But as the old-style ``Reds'' dashed across the Mojave Desert past the computer-equipped ``Blues'' at Fort Irwin, Calif., one day this month, the generals puffed cigars and called victory irrelevant. What mattered, they said, was ``the experiment.''

This weekend, the Army concludes three weeks of crucial exercises at its National Training Center at Fort Irwin, pitting the future against the present, technology against experience, information against hardware, and delicate machinery against some of the harshest terrain on Earth.

The contest features the state-of-the-art, computer-laden ``Exforce,'' or experimental force, against a veteran ``Opforce,'' or opposition force, in a daily struggle for supremacy.

It is a test of the latest developments in the science of warfare, and its outcome may herald a future in which vast conflicts unfold on tiny computer screens and are decided by a tap on a keyboard or the click of a mouse.

The Army calls it the Advanced Warfighting Experiment, and the test has drawn to this desert laboratory east of Los Angeles military brass from the United States, Great Britain, France, Israel, Italy, South Korea and many others urgently interested in the evolving technology of battle.

`Fog' of war

America's generals emerged from the triumph of the 1991 Persian Gulf War as masters of the military world. They had the most lethal land force. Their soldiers were superb. Their equipment was the best.

What had bedeviled U.S. forces in the Gulf, the generals knew, was not so much the enemy as the ``fog'' of war, the chaos and confusion of combat that have tormented armies for centuries.

Losses of troops to ``friendly fire,'' a prime indicator of confusion, loomed as a major consequence of the desert battles.

After the war, the generals watched the ongoing revolution in computer technology and wondered whether these machines might be harnessed to help lift war's damnable fog. And, they wondered, might that lead to a more efficient and deadly fighting force?

About a year ago the Army began testing that possibility - installing aboard the tanks and other vehicles of the 4th Infantry Division's First Brigade at Fort Hood, Texas, equipment it believed might do the trick.

The chief components were a satellite navigation receiver to pinpoint location, communications gear to swap data with others, and a laptop computer called an Applique to display on its screen the position of every friend and, potentially, every foe on the battlefield.

Last month the brigade, armed with those and scores of other new devices, was loaded onto trains and shipped to the desert for a test.

War games

The ``battle'' near Fuhrlong Ridge took place March 20 at Fort Irwin, where the Army regularly runs units through sprawling combat games to keep them fit.

It was one of several staged fights during the exercise, each tailored to present the Blue Force with different problems.

This day's object was for the Blue Force to defend a sector fronted by three mountain passes, and for the Red Force to get through.

The Red Force, commanded by Col. Guy Swan, was the Army's 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, which regularly plays the bad guy here.

The Reds were armed with American Sheridan tanks and M-113 armored vehicles, altered slightly to simulate Russian-designed equipment.

The Blue Force commander, Col. Thomas Goedkoop, had stacked much of his defense near the middle pass. He figured, officials said later, that from there he could rapidly move forces north or south if needed.

Shortly after 8 a.m., a detachment of Red Force vehicles came streaking across the desert, straight for a spot called Hidden Valley in the middle pass.

They were stopped cold. ``The Opforce just had its butt handed to it,'' exulted Sgt. George Thomison, 31, of Kaw City, Okla., who from a nearby hill watched the battle unfold on the computer screen in his Humvee.

But the initial Red Force attack was only a probe, and an attempt to ``fix'' the Blue Force in the middle pass, while the main assault started for the Blue's left flank.

In the end, the modern Blues learned some ancient lessons of war. Their commander was unable to save the day.

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Photo

Photo: Army Pvt. Benjamin Brooks works on computer gear inside an M113 armored personnel carrier during war games at Fort Irwin.

Knight-Ridder Tribune Photo Service