Lessons can be drawn from Afghan war: Conflict validates need to 'transform' Army, improve aircraft reach and munitions. (Commentary).

It might appear presumptuous to draw any lessons for the U.S. military from the war in Afghanistan. Yet, this war reflects ongoing changes in military strategy, doctrine, force structure and equipment, with important ramifications for both the ongoing war on terrorism and the broader transformation of the U.S. military.

Traditionally, U.S. defense planning has been threat-driven. This means that the force structure and military strategy were focused on countering the most capable and likely threats to the nation.

Threat-based planning permits the creation of alliances, the establishment of forward bases and the pre-conflict deployment of equipment. None of these advantages can be assumed to exist for conflicts in the future. This puts a premium on rapid reach by U.S. forces.

The implication of the basing problem for the United States is the importance of investing in aircraft that enhance reach. The average range of U.S. in-theater air bases to Afghanistan is more than 1,000 miles. B-2 bombers have carried out 30 hour-long bombing missions from bases 10,000 miles distant. Even the humanitarian airdrops have been performed by C-17s flying out of Ramstein, Germany nearly 3,000 miles distant.

As the range between available air bases and battlefields increases, so will the need for aerial refueling. The unparalleled global reach of the U.S. military is underpinned by a fleet of some 700 aging KC-10 and KC-135 tankers. More than 100 tankers are required to support fewer than that number of daily combat sorties over Afghanistan. U.S. global deployments have stretched the tanker fleet almost to the breaking point. Acquiring new fighters and bombers, but failing to replace the tanker fleet, would defeat the effort to improve the reach of U.S. air power.

An important aspect of reach is provided by the U.S. Navy's command of the sea. Those who thought the era of the large aircraft carrier was over have been proven wrong. U.S. aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf have routinely been conducting some 50 combat sorties per day over Afghanistan. U.S. surface ships and British and U.S. submarines launched some two dozen cruise missile strikes on the opening night of the war. The value of amphibious warfare capabilities also was shown with the deployment of Marine Corps expeditionary forces to Camp Rhino.

A counterintuitive lesson of Afghanistan is the importance of ground power in future conflicts. The experience in Kosovo in the spring of 1999 seemed to some to suggest that wars could be won from the air. While the air component can certainly lead the way in many future conflicts, what Afghanistan demonstrates is that effective ground power will be even more important in the future.

In Afghanistan, ground forces--principally the Northern Alliance--posed an offensive threat. Ground forces occupied critical terrain, blocked escape routes, and enabled the surrender of hostile forces. U.S. Special Forces on the ground provided critical intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and targeting support to the air campaign. This latter role is particularly important in situations where the adversary attempts to use the civilian population as cover.

But this conflict revealed a critical weakness in U.S. ground power. To be effective in complex environments such as Afghanistan, ground forces must be strategically deployable, tactically mobile and readily sustainable as well as survivable and lethal. U.S. heavy forces are both survivable and lethal, but lack ready deployability and are difficult to sustain at great distance from major bases. U.S. light forces, such as Marine Expeditionary Units and Army light infantry, are relatively easy to deploy, but lack the level of force protection and the lethal punch of heavy forces. For that reason, U.S. forces on the ground were restricted largely to the defense of fixed locations such as the airfields at Kandahar and Bagram. It is a telling fact that with some 4,000 troops on the ground in Afghanistan the critical role in prosecuting the war is still being performed by a few hundred Special Forces.

A lesson of Afghanistan is the need to proceed as rapidly as possible with the transformation of the U.S. Army. The Army is planning to field seven medium-weight Brigade Combat Teams. These units will be equipped with advanced communications and intelligence logistics systems that will allow for ready deployment and for operations from unimproved locations possibly deep in hostile territory. Afghanistan shows that this is precisely the kind of ground capability the United States will require for future conflicts.

Afghanistan, meanwhile, would appear to validate the emerging Air Force and Navy approaches to air warfare. This approach is based on the premise that the military must gain and maintain dominance of the air from the outset of a conflict. To achieve this, the Air Force proposes to create Global Strike Task Forces (GSTS) designed to wreck hostile air defenses and "kick down the door" for the entry of other air assets.

Potential U.S. adversaries are also learning lessons from the war. They have concluded that once the United States owns the skies, their fate is sealed. The future GSTS will need to be equipped with advanced, stealthy aircraft, notably the F-22 and the B-2, that can defeat advanced air defenses. It will also require the Navy's version of the JSF and advanced sea-launched cruise missiles.

Afghanistan is the first war demonstrably won by superior information, as distinct from superior force. The information war was waged with an unprecedented array of sensors, real-time communications links and data-fusion capabilities. To the now familiar array of ISR systems, including satellites, TR-1/U-2s, JSTARS, P-3s, EA-6Bs and tactical aircraft equipped with targeting pods, the Air Force and Navy added the unmanned Predator and Global Hawk aircraft. Improved communications and surveillance systems also allowed Special Forces on the ground to provide real-time targeting information to aircraft overhead, resulting in the first ever employment of B-52s in a close air support role.

The real revolution in ISR was in the links. Real-time streaming video from Predator drones was "streamed" to aircraft orbiting in Afghanistan's skies, as well as to command centers as far away as Saudi Arabia and Florida. The nerve center of the air war, the Combined Air Operations Center at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, regularly availed itself of real-time television pictures of compounds and convoys provided by Predator cameras. New data systems aboard B-1 and B-52 bombers enabled them to receive targeting information en-route to Afghanistan, in a number of cases in real-time from Special Forces on the ground. In the future, expanded linkages will permit sensors and data processors to "talk" amongst themselves, sharing information and developing a real-time composite view of the battle space.

The Defense Department's decision to equip the majority of its fighter and bomber force with the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) has proved itself to be one of the wisest of the past decade. Other precision weapons, including systems such as the AGM-130 Popeye and the AGM-86 hard-target penetrating cruise missile, proved their worth against al Qaeda caves and bunkers. Equipped with new warheads such as the thermo-baric explosive, these penetrating weapons can deny adversaries the shelter of earth and rock.

Dr. Daniel Goure is a senior fellow at the Lexington Institute, a public policy think-tank in Arlington, Va.