Dr. Johnson-Winegar of the US DOD discussed NBC readiness on 60 Minutes a few days ago. From the transcript, it appears NBC readiness was a total bollocks last summer. From the “subtext” I can imagine Rumsfeld having fits when all of this first came to light. There were Congressional hearings as late as October, faulty suits being hunted down through a Byzantine (ie military) inventory system, training filters shipped with some suits to Kuwait. SNAFU from word go.
It appears they have been getting it sorted, albeit at great cost of time and money. Hundreds of thousands of new suits have been produced in the last few months. Soldiers have received some training. Mostly in Kuwait I’d bet. They are tracking down the problem gear the Army way. Throw manpower at it. When a soldier is doing nothing else on a battlefield they “clean their gun”. I think “inspect your NBC gear” will be the 21st Century’s addition to that old adage.
There are bound to be problems. We have not actually fought on an NBC battlefield since WWI. Whatever we see, it will not be static trench warfare with tightly bunched troops so there are no real tactical lessons to be learned from WWI. Doctrine is based on training exercises, some with live Chemical/Bio agents. Good, but not the same as a real enemy with the same weapons trying to kill you before you kill him. Lethal chemical and bio agents are actually not very useful as weapons on a modern battlefield. It’s one of the reasons why they have seen so little use. Iraq is the only nation I can think of which has done so since 1918. It was “useful” for them because they faced waves of under-trained, under-equipped conscripts in the war with Iran. Saddam also found it useful for “fumigating” civilian areas from which he wished to clear “undesirable” races.
On the battlefield they are “area denial” weapons. They slow troops down and make them uneasy but kill very few. Those few die horribly, particularly from Mustard gas. That is psychological warfare with immediate impact on the battlefield and longer term impact “back home”. At best they can help “shape the battlefield” but little else.
Nuclear weapons, if he has them, are different. They are actual weapons of war, terrible and fearful because of the size of the explosion. A few meters separation from your buddy isn’t gong to help much if you are too close or haven’t dived into a ditch at first flash. If you are still alive on the battlefield after the shock wave passes, chances are you will remain that way. NBC suits are also protection against contact with radioactive fallout. Don’t believe all the crap you’ve read. In the ’50’s when the nuclear battlefield was a real threat and a total unknown, US Army units trained with the real thing. They took cover at the burst and advanced through the target area immediately afterwards. Some volunteers were uncomfortably close to ground zero. I won’t quote distances because I’d have to dig deep into my files and I’ve already spent far longer on this article than intended.
Most doubt Saddam has nukes. At least one of the inspectors who worked for Scott Ritter believes he does. If he does he can not hope to use aerial delivery; within hours of the initiation of hostilities there will be nothing flying over Iraq that doesn’t say USAF or RAF and damned little on the ground with wings still attached. His highest probability of success lies in a pre-planted bomb, but how would he know where to put it? I can think of last stand/blaze of glory scenarios, but those are not useful military tactics.
Suicide truck bombs, hidden UAV’s, pre-positioned weapons, missile delivered war heads… all are possible. And all have serious shortcomings. The probability of success of any given attack is low. If Saddam has nukes, he only has only a few so he would want to make them count. The only way a given enemy vehicle can be guaranteed to get anywhere near the American troops is as battlefield wreckage or with a white flag over it. They could attempt a white flag ploy to get one close, but I should hope our troops have detection gear. I would consider it rather certain the Abrams and some other vehicles do as they were intended for use in the nuclear battlefield of the Fulda Gap.
The bottom line? Weapons of Mass Destruction will be of little consequence on the battlefield in Iraq if the war unfolds as I expect it will. They are more likely a threat to civilian populations in Iraq and America and as last ditch “take them with us” weapons.
My worry is that Hussein will (with his well known love and concern for his troops) deliberatly infect large numbers of his ground troops with bacterial agents – counting on their surrender to infect our rear area troops.
Orion
A couple of clarifications. A third of the energy from a nuclear weapons blast is released in the first fraction of a second as “prompt radiation” – X-rays, Gamma rays, neutrons, alpha particles, beta, even non-ionizing EMP EMF.
If you are above ground at the first flash, and you are too close, you are toast from that radiation. In fact, a “neutron bomb” is nothing other than a nuke modified to increase the neutron yield compared to the blast. It is designed to kill with this prompt radiation. Prompt radiation was was responsible for 100% of the radiation deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (see this for more information).
Another third of the energy is released as radiated heat. Again, of you are too close, you are toast. This time… rapidly cooked toast.
Furthermore, NBC suits do not offer complete protection from fallout. Fallout releases all sorts of radiation. The NBC suits protect you from alpha and beta radiation, and from inhaling or ingesting radioactive material. They offer no protection against gamma or neutron radiation.
The good news (see the reference I supplied above) is that if you don’t get hundreds of REMs of radiation, it probably isn’t going to do anything other than make you sick for a while.
Basically true. I don’t see anything that contradicts what I said.
I reiterate though: US Army regular soldiers have operated at close proximity to nuclear tests and have immediately thereafter moved through the target zone and decontaminated.
Most of the hard radiation is released in the initial blast. Fallout should not be that big a deal for an army moving quickly through the contamination zone and following reasonable decontamination procedures.
I’ll go a bit further. The hard radiation pulse probably won’t kill you unless you are very close and not in any shelter; the alphas are stopped by just about anything; the heat pulse is deadly if your skin is exposed. Soldiers are rather well protected.
Hiroshima is simply not a good analogy to an open battlefield. Civilians in light clothing in a city of wood and paper, with no civil defense and no training are simply not comparable. If you want a better model, go look for the desert shots of the early 50’s.
One or two nukes can kill a lot of soldiers but not as many as you might have thought and certainly not enough to stop them.
*If* they have been trained for it.
Here is a bit of sample data. After some airbursts troops marched straight through ground zero immediately afterwards; I believe there were some tests with soldiers considerably closer than what I the following info but I have not been able to confirm it thus far.
Actually I believe Italy used chemical weapons delivered from airplanes against Ethiopia. I’m not sure what effect it had on outcome of that war.
On a related subject, another Iraqi defector was on 60 Minutes II last night. He claimed that Saddam has no nukes and his chemical weapons program has been neutralized to the extent that they could not be delivered in any practical way. HOwever, he did believe that Saddam has significant biological weapons stockpiles, which he intends to deliver by troops on suicide missions, similar to the way in which Orion fears.
One use for a pre-planted nuke would be at the oil fields or other strategic locations, as a scorched-earth/up-yours gesture. One wonders if the delay is to allow SpecOps the time needed to find and disable/make plans to disable the triggers and commo links.