Military

DATE=2/5/02

TYPE=INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

TITLE=Robin Dorff, U.S. Army War College,

NUMBER=3-31

BYLINE=Tom Crosby

DATELINE=Washington

INTERNET=

CONTENT=

/// Editors: This interview is available in Dalet under SOD/English News Now Interviews in the folder for today or yesterday ///

HOST: President Bush sent his proposed budget for fiscal year 2003 to Capitol Hill Monday morning...and legislators were aware even before it arrived that it contained a substantial increase in military spending.

The war in Afghanistan is calling into particular focus the role of U-S military's special forces and recent newspaper articles suggest the success of those forces could translate into more money to equip them with some high-technology equipment. However, Robin Dorff, the chairman of the Department of National Security and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College, says ultimately whether they get those high-tech tools depends on political decision makers:

MR. DORFF: Well, there is certainly no guarantees, but in the world of politics, which obviously drives important resourcing questions for the armed services, there is nothing like visibility, and especially success in visibility, going together to show the people who make those decisions that in fact these are mission-essential forces and they need the best things to be able to do the job.

MR. CROSBY: But back to the Persian Gulf War -- we saw a lot of high-tech weapons come into play -- did we have the same phenomenon then? Did defense spending for the military increase substantially because of what we were seeing on TV, particularly in the way of such things as laser-guided bombs and the like?

MR. DORFF: Well, it increased somewhat certainly, and a lot of it did go into the research and development and, eventually, bringing on line of greater technology. I'm not sure that we saw the kinds of increases that are being discussed now, in terms of the resources that the people on the ground really need, particularly in the Special Forces. You are probably as aware of this as anyone -- very often the successes of Special Forces go largely unnoticed, because when they are successful nobody knows. And I think that this is probably a little bit different in that we really realized that, in the end, there was a critical role played by these people being on the ground, both in terms of advance operations and information sharing and targeting, as well as the very special skills that they bring to bear.

MR. CROSBY: Now, if you were in Special Forces and you had a high-tech shopping list, what would be on that list?

MR. DORFF: There are some things that are a little far-out, but a lot of them obviously have to do with your ability to operate in all kinds of environments -- night, day, good weather, bad weather, all of that. Clearly, there is much discussion of the enhanced GPS capabilities, which would allow you not only to send signals as to where you are but, really, to locate anybody at any time who is part of your overall operation. And then, increasingly, there is a lot of talk about the miniaturization, combined with increased lethality. So you will see, I'm sure, a lot of attention being paid to that.

MR. CROSBY: And GPS, for the uninitiated, is global positioning systems.

MR. DORFF: Correct. And that's the whole set of linkups now to the satellite system, so that not only can you know where you are at any given time but anybody else that is part of your operation can know where you are, all at the same time, while maintaining complete secrecy and not letting the adversary know anything about that.

MR. CROSBY: Apart from getting a fix on where you might be on the ground and where your adversary might be, there are also new concerns, though, about protection against bio-chemical type warfare and germ warfare, that kind of thing. I would imagine that there are some tools there that the Special Forces would like to have to detect these things.

MR. DORFF: Certainly in the detection area, yes. You may be aware of the MOP (pron: mop) suit debate. These are those completely chemical-secure suits. They are a little bit difficult, though, for Special Forces, because speed and stealth and maneuverability are so critical. And that's not something they have quite yet cracked the code on in terms of how to combine that complete safety in that environment with the ability to continue to do those kinds of operations. So things that would help in the early detection would certainly be in there. I am not sure how high on the immediate list of priorities that would be, but they would certainly be on that list.

MR. CROSBY: Am I hearing in what you just said, though, that there is a danger, in your mind, that our ground forces could be somewhat encumbered by their technology?

MR. DORFF: Security and the things that technology bring almost always come with tradeoffs. The more gizmos and enhancements that you need to make sure that you are even more secure generally do come at the expense of some of those other things that I mentioned -- the stealth, the maneuverability and so on. So you always have to weigh the competing objectives there and figure out just where do you want to bear the risk and where not.

It may be more important, for example, for your forces to be able to move very quickly and get out of a position of danger than simply to be able to stay there more securely and thereby open themselves up to other potential vulnerabilities.

HOST: Robin Dorff, the chairman of the Department of National Security and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He was talking with News Now's Tom Crosby.

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