U.S. Preparations for War Sharpen Focus on Training.

• Author: Kennedy, Harold
• Position: War on Terrorism

As the United States prepares for a war against international terrorism, it is more important than ever that the armed forces devote more resources to improved training, according to a number of retired military commanders who spoke to National Defense.

"A lot depends upon our soldiers doing the right thing at the right time," said William W. Hartzog, former commanding general of the Army Training and Doctrine Command.

Training is "one of those things that usually takes a hit in the defense budget," Hartzog said. "We can't afford that any more."

The services need more training with the new equipment being introduced to the services, he said. "A lot of information technology is being inserted into the force these days that hasn't been digested yet. Soldiers have a lot of new machines and not much practice time with them. That has to change."

There's been a major increase in the use of simulation and modeling technology, Hartzog said, but "not nearly enough attention has been paid to modeling terrorist tactics. Those tactics are hard to model, but we have to increase our ability to do that."

Military operations of the past decade--such as Panama, Haiti, Somalia and the drug war in Latin America--may offer some idea of what strategies and tactics might be employed, Hartzog said. The goals in each of those conflicts might be different than the present one, he explained, but "the means are similar." In Afghanistan, as in those cases, he suggested, special operations may be the driving force, with conventional units in supporting roles.

The idea, he said, would be to have a light forward force, operating from nearby launching platforms, with most of the air support based in the continental United States.

But patience will be required, Hartzog warned. He noted that hunting down Panama's strongman Manuel Noriega a decade ago took rime. Hartzog was operations officer during that campaign.

As with Noriega, he cautioned: "We may have to have 50 lightning strikes before we find the right person at the right place. That can take quite a while."

Hartzog pronounced himself "pretty satisfied with the level of training for our special operations forces," but he added that improvements are needed in training for conventional troops, especially in urban combat. "Afghanistan isn't all desert, you know," he said.

Besides, while Afghanistan might be primarily a special-operations target, conventional forces might very well be required if it is necessary to invade Iraq again, said Hartzog, who commanded the Army's 1st Division at the end of Desert Storm. "We may have to do that again," he said.

Whatever the war strategy, he said, it is certain to involve other agencies in addition to the Defense Department. "The military can't conduct this kind of operation," he explained. "It's got to involve the Justice Department, Transportation, Treasury, Health.

"How do you get all that...