Lt. General Tangney says Training changes needed
The United States needs to change its focus from the ‘‘easy battlefield’’ of Europe that has been the model since World War II, a special operations leader said Tuesday.
Tangney |
Future fighters must use information technology to operate with precision weapons on uncertain battlefields under stress for prolonged periods, said Lt. Gen. William P. Tangney, deputy commander in chief of U.S. Special Operations Command at Tampa, Fla. He is the principal adviser and assistant to Air Force Gen. Charles R. Holland, the commander in chief.
The future holds ‘‘much more conflicts, much less traditional war,’’ he said.
Tangney spoke to an audience of several hundred at the annual Special Forces Conference at the Cumberland County Coliseum Complex.
During the Vietnam War, he served with SOG, the Studies and Observation Group that conducted secret operations in countries where the United States denied it had forces. He has commanded everything in Special Forces from an ‘‘A’’ team to U.S. Army Special Operations Command and the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School.
Wars of the future
Special operations forces are providing the model for the way to fight the wars of the future, he said.
A C-130 Hercules cargo airplane landing on a paved runway at Pope Air Force Base is a far cry from an MC-130 Combat Talon special operations airplane landing on a desert airstrip in the dark with pilots using night-vision goggles, he said.
‘‘It’s apples and oranges,’’ he said.
The traditional battlefield has an enemy to the front and logistics and communications in the rear and is ‘‘well within our zone of comfort,’’ Tangney said.
He said the 1989 Panama invasion was a model for the future war with U.S. forces conducting rapid, simultaneous strikes on enemy targets in all directions on a ‘‘360-degree battlefield.’’
But the Panama invasion plan was ‘‘still viewed until the fall of the Berlin Wall as being peripheral,’’ Tangney said.
Coming conflicts will be ‘‘much more like Panama and much less like the battlefield of Europe,’’ he said.
The keys to the future will be mastery of information technology, the ability to deploy rapidly and a means to control forces from the different branches of the armed services.
The traditional battlefield emphasizes supply bases, massive combat power and large, heavy forces that need roads, bridges, ports, airfields and railroads.
The future model includes communications and surveillance from outer space as well as highly mobile fighting forces that receive their supplies from far away, he said.
The armed services have missed opportunities in their training centers, he said.
‘‘We are still teaching a European battlefield to a large extent,’’ he said.
Although the United States will face a ‘‘nontraditional enemy’’ on a ‘‘nontraditional battlefield,’’ there will remain the need to retain forces that can fight a traditional conventional war in a place such as Korea, he said.
By Henry Cuningham Military editor
Reprinted from The Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer Copyright 2002
