MILITARY GEOGRAPHY
    FOR PROFESSIONALS AND THE PUBLIC

6. REGIONAL PECULIARITIES

Den Brer Rabbit talk mighty 'umble."I don't keer w'at you do wid me, Brer Fox," sezee, "so you don't fling me in dat briar-patch. Roas' me, Brer Fox," sezee, "but don't fling me in dat briar patch," sezee.

Joel Chandler Harris,
"The Briar Patch," Uncle Remus:
His Songs and His Sayings

READINESS TO ACCOMPLISH ASSIGNED MISSIONS WHEREVER AND WHENEVER REQUIRED HAS BEEN AN imperative military objective since time immemorial. Preparations, however, must suit situations, because neither man nor beast can be equally well prepared for every eventuality. Brer Rabbit, "bred and bawn in a briar-patch," knew he could out-fox Brer Fox in the brambles, but was bound to lose on bare ground. Military machines tailored to suit any given situation on land, at sea, in the air, or in space similarly function most effectively in disparate environments only after they satisfactorily modify strategies, tactics, techniques, weaponry, equipment, clothing, and supplies.

Wise commanders, well aware that every geographical area of responsibility (AOR) possesses unique spatial relationships, topography, oceanographic characteristics, weather, and climate, honor the Principle of Regional Peculiarity, which posits, "Armed forces perform best when organized, equipped, and trained to accomplish particular missions in particular geographic locales."¹ The following discourse, which incorporates considerations covered in chapters 1 through 5, addresses seven distinctive regions that affect military operations in markedly different ways: frigid flatlands; frigid seas; mountains; deserts; forests; wetlands; and coastal waters.

Frigid Flatlands

Most military activities on polar ice caps thus far have been confined to scientific investigations such as those at Camp Century, near Thule, Greenland, and Little America in Antarctica.² There is no evidence that competition for potentially valuable resources beneath those wastelands will soon culminate in armed combat, but perennially and seasonably frigid flatlands that extend as far south as the northern United States, much of European Russia, and central Siberia have seen vicious wars in the past and likely will again (map 12).³

Map 12. Frigid Flatlands

PERSONAL SURVIVAL

Military manuals and commanders invariably emphasize mission accomplishment, but subordinates exposed to killing cold often put personal survival first. Robert W. Service noted one offbeat technique in his poem about Sam McGee, a poorly acclimated prospector who begged to be cremated just before he succumbed on a frigid night in Alaska:

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the
heart of the furnace roar.
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and
he said, "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in
the cold and storm--
Since I left Plumtree down in Tennessee, it's
the first time I've been warm." ⁴

Real world warriors unfortunately find Sam McGee's solution an unsatisfactory way to prevent disabling frostbite, hypothermia, dehydration, and cold-related diseases such as influenza in regions so frigid that spit crackles before it hits the ground and human flesh freezes in less than a minute after exposure to cruel winds. Practical measures then become crucially important to combat forces and logistical troops alike.⁵

Arbitrary cold weather uniform regulations are inadvisable, because metabolisms differ and cold-wet/cold-dry requirements are dissimilar in some respects, but six or seven layers of clothing that are relatively light, loose, wind resistant, waterproof, and warm are preferable to one or two heavy garments in any case. Typical articles include long underwear, a woolen shirt and trousers, quilted coat and trouser liners, wind-breaker jacket and trousers, a pile cap with earflaps, a fluffy face mask, a parka liner, and parka. Cushion-sole socks, vapor boots (best for use with skis, snow shoes, and by troops in static positions), mukluks, gloves (preferably mittens), and a white camouflage suit round out each individual's wardrobe. Body armor adds bulk and weight, but goggles or other protection against snow blindness do not.

Combat and support troops engaged in strenuous activities must guard against overdressing, which can be just as injurious as overexposure if excessive perspiration leads to exhaustion or evaporation causes bodies to cool too rapidly. Experienced personnel consequently unbutton, unzip, or shed clothing to ensure proper ventilation whenever necessary. Chemical warfare in cold climes poses two special risks: impervious protective shells, which must be baggy enough to slip over all other layers, are virtually impossible to vent; rubber masks cannot be worn over beards, remain pliable enough to ensure an air-tight fit only when warm, and encourage frostbitten faces in any cases.⁶

Shelter. Shelters frequently spell the difference between life and death in frigid regions. Not many troops are as fortunate as U.S. peacekeepers in Bosnia, who soon after arrival were able to rotate between the field and elaborate modules where they warmed themselves during the winter of 1995-96, enjoyed hot meals, laundered dirty uniforms, slept on cots, and relaxed for 3 days at a time until the next batch of 550 arrived at one of six such "cities."⁷ Most military personnel in wintry areas of operation instead occupy small-to-medium-sized tents. Unlike Ringling Brothers, Barnum, and Bailey Circus, which formerly used elephants to help roustabouts erect and strike Big Tops, they must unfurl heavy canvas stiff with cold (usually in the dark), try to drive tent pegs into tundra frozen harder than bricks (perhaps aided by explosives), build snow walls to ward off howling winds, then chop out before they displace. Base camps generally boast wooden floors, while warm sleeping bags atop air mattresses or other insulating materials are obligatory on bare ground. Troops in the open occasionally construct expedient shelters such as igloos and snow caves, which insulate as well as rock wool or fiber glass, but truck cabs and armored vehicles make poor bedrooms, because carbon monoxide is an ever present danger, and cold, hard surfaces rob sleepers of warmth.⁸

Food and Water. Generous, lightweight, well-balanced, nutritious, and preferably warm rations are essential in very cold weather, especially for troops engaged in strenuous activities. The U.S. Army sets 4,500 calories per day as a goal, although Finnish counterparts with greater practical experience recommend 6,000. Sweets make excellent instant-energy snacks between regular meals. Commanders and cooks must constantly bear in mind that food not in well-insulated containers will freeze in transit between kitchens and consumers. Each individual moreover requires 4 to 6 quarts (liters) of drinking water per day to prevent dehydration in cold weather, although adequate sources are difficult to tap when streams turn to ice. Five-gallon (18-liter) cans as well as canteens freeze fast in subzero temperatures, even when first filled with hot water. Problems compound when logisticians factor in water for hygienic purposes, not to mention huge amounts needed to decontaminate units hit by persistent chemical warfare agents.⁹

Leadership. Physical fitness, acclimatization, and training may prepare military men and women for cold weather warfare, but ample food, proper clothing, and adequate shelter cannot sustain them if a sizable percentage, bundled from head to foot against the cold, nearly deaf and blinded by parka hoods, begin to hibernate. Strong junior officers and noncommissioned officers then become truly indispensable, for units can disintegrate and missions fail under such conditions.

MATERIEL MAINTENANCE

Big maintenance problems begin to develop at about -10 ⁰F (-23 ⁰C) and intensify with every degree that thermometers drop thereafter:

• Lubricants stiffen.
• Metals lose tensile strength.
• Rubber loses plasticity.
• Plastics and ceramics become less ductile.
• Battery efficiencies decrease dramatically.
• Fuels vaporize incompletely.
• Glass cracks when suddenly heated.
• Seals are subject to failure.
• Static electricity increases.
• Gauges and dials stick.

Combustion engines are hard to start, partly because battery output at best is far below normal (practically zero at -40 ⁰F and -40 ⁰C). Tires inflated in garages at moderate temperatures slip on rims and rip off valve stems when trucks drive out the door into extreme cold. The value of collapsible fuel bladders is dubious below about -20 ⁰F (-29 ⁰C), cold-soaked connectors, control knobs, and electrical contacts are hard to assemble and repair, and fiberglass water trailers freeze because they cannot tolerate immersion heaters. Flammable fuels are apt to erupt unless motor vehicles and tent stoves are properly grounded. Maintenance man-hours required to cope with such problems balloon in the absence of heated facilities. More of almost everything is needed: more mechanics, more battery chargers, more replacement parts, more fuel. Different oils and greases also are required.¹⁰

Cold weather increases aircraft maintenance difficulties by at least one order of magnitude, greater in the absence of overhaul hangars. De-icing is crucially important, because even a thin coating on air foils can be fatal. Eight F-84 fighters, for example, crashed shortly after take-off in the early 1950s, because ice that blocked jet intakes caused their engines to explode.¹¹

MISSION ACCOMPLISHMENT

Whether frigid flatlands favor offense or defense is subject to conjecture. Forces on the attack benefit from blowing snow, which facilitates surprise but makes land navigation difficult for troops that lack Global Positioning System (GPS) assistance. Defenders in static observation posts benefit from blizzards that cover tracks and camouflage positions, but generally suffer more cold casualties than offensive forces on patrol. Brilliant thermal contrasts caused by hot objects against cold backgrounds--such as moving vehicles and heated tents--may benefit one side, both, or neither. Blankets of snow that reflect moonlight, starlight, and the Aurora Borealis on long winter nights illuminate friend and foe alike. Cold weather limitations on mobility and logistics, which elementally influence mission accomplishment, are amplified below.

Overland Mobility. Infantrymen, who regularly log about 3 miles an hour on level to rolling terrain, struggle through knee-deep snow and come to a standstill when drifts are sticky or much deeper, whereas heavily laden military skiers, tutored by skilled instructors during long periods of intensive training, glide over such surfaces. Snowshoeing is less glamorous, slower, and requires greater exertion, but most troops can learn all they need to know in an hour or so. Trailbreakers normally leave early to blaze the way and, when necessary, navigate for the main body through trackless territory where few topographic features make prominent landmarks (hi-tech global positioning devices tell troops where they are but not how to set true courses).¹²

Any tendency for armed forces to be roadbound degrades military capabilities at every level, because frigid flatlands combine wretched cross-country trafficability with exceedingly sparse transportation networks. All-wheel drive trucks as a rule bog down when snows on roads measure more than one-third of wheel diameters, stall in line waiting for plows to clear the way through deep drifts, and cannot easily traverse tundra or muskeg even when the land is bare. Track-laying vehicles, which are better able to negotiate rough ground, lose traction when snows are much deeper than their ground clearance. Tank drivers who repeatedly rock back and forth trying to break through put power plants, drive trains, and sprockets under great stress and make it difficult for recovery crews to set them free if they finally go belly up. The utility of tractor-drawn cargo sleds, snowmobiles, air-cushion vehicles, and other special purpose transports skyrockets under such conditions,¹³ but frozen lakes and streams make safe routes if load-bearing capacities are sufficient for vehicles of particular weights and drivers proceed single file at specified intervals. Soviet forces during the winter of 1941-42, for example, delivered substantial supplies to starving Leningrad via the "Road of Life" across Lake Ladoga, despite intense German artillery fire and aerial bombardment.¹⁴

Air Power. Frigid flatlands are sparsely settled except along the southern fringe. That geographic fact magnifies needs to gain and retain air superiority as soon as possible, so that air combat forces can conduct reconnaissance, deep-strike, and close-support missions while air mobility forces deploy, redeploy, supply, evacuate, and otherwise support troops on the ground. Frozen lakes and streams make extemporaneous airfields for lightly laden ski planes after engineers smooth out rough spots and helicopters enjoy large latitude in their choice of landing zones, but fighter, attack, bomber, and airlift squadrons that lack very short or vertical takeoff and landing (VSTOL, VTOL) capabilities require hard-surfaced runways.

Military air operations always are iffy in wintry weather, which often poses worse hazards than armed enemies. Improperly insulated buildings, black-topped runways, taxi strips, and parking areas collapse if they absorb enough sunshine to melt underlying permafrost. Low ceilings, ice fog, and snow storms may prevent takeoffs or landings for several consecutive days, while wind-driven drifts close airports unless cleared repeatedly. Sensible commanders suspend close air support missions when "whiteouts" drastically reduce horizontal visibility and "grayouts" distort depth perception during prolonged periods of morning and evening twilight.¹⁵ Heliborne and parachute assaults are numbing propositions in subzero weather, as members of the U.S. 504^th Parachute Infantry Regiment discovered in February 1954 during Operation Arctic Night near Thule, Greenland, when thermometers read -35 ⁰F (-37 ⁰ C), the airspeed was 130 knots, and the prop blast that hit them as they leaped through wide open doors was far colder than conventional wind-chill charts ever register (table 7, page 73). Only strict discipline and thoughtful preparations prevented jump injuries and cold casulaties¹⁶

Supply. Cold clime logistical loads expand prodigiously in response to requirements for more of almost everything from rations, clothing, tents, water heaters, and stoves to whitewash, snow plows, antifreeze, batteries, repair parts, construction materials, and specialized accouterments such as snow shoes and skis. Armed forces in wintry weather burn fuel at outrageous rates. Motor vehicles churning through snow, for example, consume perhaps 25 percent more than on solid ground. It takes 10 gallons (38 liters) of diesel per day to keep a 10-man squad tent habitable when the thermometer registers -20 ⁰F (-29 ⁰C). Additional petroleum, oil, and lubricant (POL) supplies are needed to keep distributors in business. Small wonder, therefore, that centralized logistic facilities, including field kitchens (the main source of warm meals for ground combat forces), often become tempting targets in frigid flatlands.¹⁷

FRIGID SEAS

Fierce seafarers dressed in wild animal skins were familiar with frigid seas long before Viking raiders invaded Ireland in the 6th century A.D. Naval interests in the North Atlantic, North Pacific, and Arctic Oceans, which intensified sharply during World War II, remained strong throughout the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union (1946-1989) and likely will continue to do so, because all three are strategically located.

SURFACE OPERATIONS

The subfreezing weather that creates frigid seas confines surface combatants, support ships, and merchantmen inside ice-clogged harbors much of the year unless icebreakers clear the way to open water. All crews, ships, and embarked aircraft experience many of the problems that afflict armed forces ashore and endure additional hardships that are uniquely naval.

Icebreakers. No nation has greater need for icebreakers than Russia, where only the Black Sea Fleet enjoys ice-free ports (map 1 on page 12 and map 8 on page 51). The Gulf of Finland often freezes 3-feet (1-meter) thick at Saint Petersburg and Kronstadt, which is home port for the Baltic Fleet. The Northern Fleet, ensconced near the Norwegian frontier where the Gulf Stream slightly warms the Barents Sea, is situated more favorably but still relies on icebreakers, as do ships of Russia's Pacific Fleet as far south as Vladivostok, where assistance is essential from November through March as a minimum. No naval base save Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, washed by the relatively tepid Kurishio Current, has easy access to the ocean.

Russians since the late 19th century consequently have specialized in icebreakers, which not only unclog their ports during brutal winters but drive wedges between floes on high seas, locate leads in polar ice, widen such channels for ships that follow in trail, and otherwise facilitate naval operations. Icebreakers of all countries characteristically are stubby enough to maneuver in close quarters and feature broad beams designed to cut wide swaths, enough horsepower to slice paths where required without repeated ramming, cutaway bows that ride over ice instead of hitting it head on, and reinforced hulls flared to lift the ship under pressure rather than let it be crushed. Huge fuel expenditures in regions where underway replenishment may be impossible led the Soviet Union in 1957 to develop and deploy the Lenin, the world's first nuclear-powered icebreaker expressly designed to bull its way through ice fields more than 6 feet (2 meters) thick and remain self-sufficient for more than a year.¹⁸

Housekeeping Problems and Responses. Surface ships and crews that cannot cope well with freezing temperatures, wild winds, and towering waves can anticipate cruel treatment. Routine preparations in many respects parallel those of armed forces in dank arctic regions ashore: protective clothing to shield wearers against cold weather; rations with high caloric contents; warm quarters; winterized weapons and equipment; specialized supplies; and preventive maintenance precautions.¹⁹ Housekeeping problems peculiar to life aboard naval ships nevertheless are evident.

Cramped compartments put storage space for cold weather gear at a premium, especially on board small surface combatants such as destroyers, frigates, and corvettes. It takes about 1 cubic foot, for example, to stow the layered winter clothing of each individual, twice that much for one-piece exposure suits. Galleys generally must find room for 10 percent more food than they stock in warmer climes. Bulky drums of antifreeze, ice preventives, de-icing chemicals, and heavy bags of sand soak up precious space. So do additional repair parts needed to compensate for abnormally rapid expenditures as a direct result of severe weather. Commanders also must accommodate many awkwardly dimensioned implements, lash down impedimenta that does not fit in lockers, and assure easy access to stocks in greatest demand. What to take and what to leave behind involves painful tradeoffs.²⁰

Frozen salt water spray, unknown inland, can cover decks, bulkheads, superstructures, air intakes, hatches, masts, rigging, exposed machinery, antennas, and weapon systems with thick layers of ice that increase displacement, decrease freeboard, degrade combat capabilities and, if not countered in time, endanger ship stability. Rock salt, calcium chloride, ethylene glycol, ethanol, urea, and other materials that depress the freezing point of sea water cause ice to melt at temperatures well below 28.5 ⁰F (2 ⁰C), but caution is advisable, because all mingle good and bad attributes. Urea emits ammonia gas and is not as efficient as salts pound per pound, but is less corrosive. Ethylene glycol, which works better than most substitutes at temperatures as low as 5 ⁰F (-15 ⁰C), is expensive and creates slippery surfaces. The Law of Diminishing Returns consequently determines which applications would be most cost effective and simultaneously least detrimental.²¹

Hazards Underway. Surface ships underway in arctic and antarctic waters even during summer months face hazards that no other regions duplicate. Tremendous waves on July 18, 1942, not only dumped water down the air intakes of rolling destroyers between Kodiak, Alaska, and Kiska in the Aleutian Islands but induced seasickness to such an extent that "vomit clung to every surface." Shipmates on the heavy cruiser Indianapolis, who almost immediately rescued a man overboard, discovered that hypothermia already had killed him. Sister ships curtsied past each other in dense fog until two blinded destroyers finally collided, then a third rammed a fourth, whereupon the task force returned to port without firing a shot.²²

Perpetual ice packs cover the Arctic Ocean between 90⁰ and 80⁰ or so north latitude, but the irregularly shaped Marginal Ice Zone (MIZ) that forms farther south each winter sometimes extends fingers as far as Newfoundland and the Sea of Japan. Surface ships that venture into the mushy forward edge of the MIZ without icebreaker assistance may damage screws and rudders, while those that proceed too far risk major hull damage or could be immobilized until rescuers arrive. Floes that vary from a few feet to several miles in width habitually break off from the MIZ and float south, accompanied in the North Atlantic by icebergs that primarily originate in Greenland, Baffin Island, and Svalbard.²³

Allied convoys that carried U.S. Lend-Lease supplies from Iceland to arctic ports in the Soviet Union dodged those floating obstacles as well as enemy armed forces during World War II (maps 13 and 14). Crews on the so-called "Murmansk Run" were tethered by life lines to hawsers that stretched from bow to stern on each pitching ship. Tanks, locomotives, trucks, and crated aircraft had to be winched back into place repeatedly after wrenching motions broke their bonds. Convoy PQ-13, which left Reykjavik in March 1942, first met 100-mile-per-hour winds that scattered 19 of its cargo ships and 9 escorts over 150 miles of the Barents Sea, then came under relentless German bomber and submarine attacks. Many crewmen perished in the frigid waters or suffered from severe frostbite before 11 of 35 transports finally completed that traumatic voyage in July (three ships survived because whitewash and bedding sheets helped them blend with ice floes). ²⁴

SUBMARINE OPERATIONS

The search for a Northeast Passage that skirted Siberia from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean started in the 16th century with four fearless navigators: Hugh Willoughby, Richard Chancellor, Stephen Burrough, and Willem Barents. Four more failed to find a Northwest Passage along what currently is Canada's arctic frontier (Giovanni da Verrazano, Sir Martin Frobisher, John Davis, and Henry Hudson). Baron Nils Nordenskiöld finally made the trip from west to east in 1878-1879 and Roald Amundson took a 3-year trek from east to west between 1904 and 1906,²⁵ but we now know that no militarily reliable arctic route for surface ships exists in either direction, even in summer with the aid of icebreakers.

Naval operations beneath ice-filled seas nevertheless have been feasible since the U.S. nuclear-powered attack submarine Nautilus (SSN-571), equipped with special sonar and navigational gear, crossed under the polar ice pack en route from Seattle, Washington, to the Atlantic Ocean in August 1958.²⁶ The Skate (SSN-578), with a hardened sail and other novel features, surfaced though heavy ice the following year (map 15).

Soviet ballistic missile submarines occupied bastions beneath the Barents Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk late in the Cold War, but naval strategists and tacticians believe that cat-and-mouse competition could spread to other peripheral seas in Marginal Ice Zones south of the Arctic Ocean. Oceanographers, who are amassing detailed intelligence concerning bathymetry, topographic characteristics, water densities, bio-acoustics, sound transition, and ambient noise, conclude that the floating canopy of sea ice, which measures from 1 to more than 100 feet (30 meters) thick, is rock hard on top, has the consistency of cheap concrete below, is a dynamic mass under constant thermal stress, and moves sluggishly in predictable

directions under the influence of currents and prevailing winds. Underneath, it constitutes an upside down world of bad lands, buttes, blocks, ridges, spires, hills, dales, planes, open cracks, lakes, and massive imprisoned icebergs, all superimposed above a similar landscape that shapes the floor.²⁷ Submarines able to operate most effectively in that complex environment could safely ignore high speed and deep submergence abilities but need an array of sophisticated navigation and target acquisition/tracking sensors that scan 360 degrees front and rear, left and right, above and below. Reliable ways to surface through solid ice also seem obligatory, because crews otherwise would perish if air supplies failed for any

Map 13. Iceberg Routes to the North Atlantic

Map 14. The "Murmansk Run"

reason. Combat could be likened to jungle warfare in at least one respect: heavily armed defenders could silently wait until adversaries creeping through the clutter come within reach, then trigger ambushes. The quest for offensive countermeasures consequently emphasizes stealthiness and abilities to differentiate friends from foes quickly at close quarters. Some authorities also believe that stubby, ellipsoidal submarines should replace long, cigar-shaped models that cannot maneuver well in tight spaces.²⁸

MOUNTAINOUS REGIONS

Imposing mountains that girdle the Pacific Basin and cut across Eurasia, together with high hills on every continent save Australia, constitute almost half of Earth's surface above sea level (map 16). All ranges, chains, and cordilleras large and small feature compartmented topography, steep gradients, and few high speed avenues, but latitudes, elevations, shapes, soils, hydrology, vegetation, and climate nevertheless produce distinctive variations.²⁹ Snow-covered European Alps are quite unlike the relatively low but rugged Sierra Maestras that harbored Fidel Castro and his revolutionary band before they overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.³⁰ Sere spires in the Sahara and neighboring Sinai only faintly resemble forested slopes in rain-drenched Vietnam. The military implications of mountainous regions moreover are controversial, because tactical advantages sometimes become strategic liabilities, and vice versa.

Map 15. The Arctic Ocean and Peripheral Seas

COMMON DENOMINATORS

Environmental adversity overcome only by special skills characterizes all mountains, regardless of their configuration or locale. Armed forces that are superlatively prepared for operations on flatlands often do poorly until they adjust.

Environmental Adversity. British Field Marshal the Viscount Slim once ruefully observed that senior military planners who plot distances and calculate movement times on small-scale maps cannot appreciate what impediments mountains impose. "To do that," he opined, "you must scramble up the precipitous slopes and slide down the other side, endlessly, as if you were walking along the teeth of a saw."³¹

Movement indeed is difficult in mountainous terrain where obstacles abound, defiles limit maneuver room, and armed forces perched above are well positioned to dominate opponents below. Motorized conveyances as a rule are confined to roads that, with few exceptions, are rudimentary, narrow, and poorly constructed, with steep shoulders, switchback curves, numerous bridges (many of them flimsy), tunnels, trestles, and culverts, all of which restrict traffic flow and invite enemy interdiction. One disabled tank or truck, even a jackknifed trailer, could immobilize an entire column under such conditions. Steep slopes stymie wheeled vehicles and discourage tanks which may stall, slide, throw a track on loose gravel, or topple sideways if driven on too sharp a slant. Cross-country trafficability consequently is confined to foot troops and pack animals in the worst areas. Air mobility is a welcome supplement when weather permits, but is unreliable because thick fog or strong winds accompanied by severe turbulence often intervene unexpectedly and disrupt flight operations for prolonged periods.³²

Map 16. Major Mountainous Regions

Mountain weather, typified by meteorological anomalies such as temperature inversions, capricious winds, and sudden squalls, adversely affects foot sloggers as well as aircraft. Intense solar radiation causes valley thermometers to rise swiftly after sunup wherever the atmosphere is pollution free and drop after dark as soon as heavy, chilled air drains downslope. Daytime temperatures may vary as much as 40 or 50 ⁰F (20 or 25 ⁰C) between sun and shade at high altitudes. Leeward locations are sheltered from winds, which elsewhere sweep across exposed mountainsides and accelerate through constricted passes that act as amplifiers. Appropriate uniforms thus depend in large part on particular places and times of day--troops clad for early morning climbs in cold climates frequently become too warm well before noon.³³

Usable space for airstrips, heavy weapons, and logistic installations usually is scarce, cramped, and vulnerable. The airport that serves Sarajevo in former Yugoslavia remained open for U.N. humanitarian relief flights in the early 1990s only at the pleasure of Bosnian Serbs, who held commanding high ground until all belligerents accepted the Dayton Accords in November 1995 and NATO deployed powerful peacekeeping forces.³⁴ Helicopters can deposit and provision light artillery batteries in advantageous locations that otherwise would be inaccessible, but self-propelled and heavy, towed howitzers seldom stray far from main roads along valley floors, which makes it hard for them to hit reverse slopes whenever angles of fire are excessively high. Forward observers moreover find that artillery directed against ridgelines and narrow valleys is difficult to adjust, because slight increases or decreases in tube elevation result in wasted rounds that overshoot or land short, perhaps among friendly troops.³⁵

Special Skills. Requirements for rock climbers who can lug 100-pound rucksacks up 90-degree angles are limited, because military operations infrequently take place on mountainous terrain that demands esoteric techniques. Urgent needs, however, sometimes arise, which was the case in December 1943, when 600 U.S. and Canadian riflemen of the 1^st Special Service Force (the "Devil's Brigade") scaled a 1,000-foot (305-meter) cliff that was almost perpendicular, then surprised and defeated German defenders atop Monte la Difensa near Cassino, Italy. A battalion of the U.S. 10^th Mountain Division equipped with pitons and ropes topped that feat 4 months later when they worked their way up the 3,000-foot, very nearly vertical, ice-glazed face of Riva Ridge in the northern Apennines with similar results.³⁶ The value of large, technologically superior ground forces is less than on level land, where they can maneuver fluidly and bring tremendous firepower to bear. Most combat missions instead emphasize decentralized small unit actions by subordinate elements of standard infantry battalions. Success depends primarily on skilled junior leaders and self-reliant foot soldiers who are superbly conditioned and well schooled in the fundamentals of mountain warfare (untutored gunners shooting down hill, for example, tend to aim high, while firing up hill has the opposite effect until training corrects those faults). Land navigation, scouting, patrolling, cover, concealment, survival, escape and evasion are topics that deserve close attention. So does local security, given the fact that mountains have been the natural habitat of guerrillas since human beings began to keep records. Dispersed command posts, airstrips, and logistic facilities necessarily located at wide spots along well-traveled roads make lucrative targets.³⁷

Standard infantry divisions tailored for mountain warfare generally replace a good deal of heavy equipment with lighter loads that are easily transportable. They also add engineers to construct, improve, and maintain roads, trails, airfields, helicopter landing zones, and logistical tramways, install obstacles, and prepare field fortifications. Space satellites or multichannel relay stations airlifted to perches from which they have long-range views as a rule must retransmit FM radio messages that otherwise could not reach intended recipients because topographical features block line-of-sight paths. Strenuous activities moreover increase requirements for food and water; heavy reliance on helicopters expends aviation fuel at abnormally rapid rates; and rough usage calls for unusually large reserves of clothing and repair parts, of which tires, tie rods, transmissions, brake shoes, armored vehicle tracks, fuel pumps, and winch parts are typical.³⁸

Bridges, tunnels, other transportation bottlenecks, and enemy traffic on narrow mountain roads are ideal interdiction targets for tactical aircraft armed with precision-guided munitions, providing weather permits. Close-air-support (CAS) sorties in tight terrain conversely are difficult to control, and crews may run fatal risks if hostile forces seed the most favorable approaches with a profusion of air defense weapons that are cleverly concealed and perhaps protected by bedrock. Low-level flights by high-performance fixed-wing aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles almost always must follow constricted corridors that expose them to enemy weapons on both flanks.³⁹

ENVIRONMENTAL DIVERSITY

Massive mountains in many respects are very different than high hills, despite the common characteristics and interchangeable skills just discussed. Geographical phenomena associated with ever thinner air and colder temperatures at high altitudes are militarily more important than topographical distinctions.

Rarefied Atmosphere. The Rockies, Andes, and the awesome Karakorum-Himalayan wall that separates China from the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent typify massive mountain chains. Nearly 150 peaks top 10,000 feet (3,000 meters): 45 in Asia, 33 in the United States, 25 in Latin America, 16 in Europe, and 12 in Africa. Antarctica, Greenland, and Oceana contain the remainder. Mount Everest, Godwin Austin (K2), and 14 other giants that exceed 25,000 feet (7,600 meters) all dwarf imposing Mont Blanc, the loftiest spot in the Alps at a mere 15,781 feet (4,810 meters). Those figures are significant, because rarefied atmosphere poses potentially life threatening problems for land forces transferred on short notice from near sea level to elevations much above 10,000 feet. Difficulties increase almost logarithmically between 10,000 and 20,000 feet, as 16th-century Spanish conquistadors discovered during their search for El Dorado on the Peruvian altiplano and as Indian troops reconfirmed in 1962, when they rushed from low-lying garrisons to block Chinese intruders knocking at their Himalayan door.⁴⁰

Oxygen deprivation, clinically called hypoxia, causes almost all persons in such situations to suffer for several days from headaches, shortness of breath, pounding heartbeats, dizziness, nausea, fatigue, loss of appetite, and depression. Severe cases may lead to pulmonary congestion or cerebral edema, both of which culminate in early death if medics fail to evacuate stricken soldiers immediately to lower elevations (2,000 feet/600 meters or less) where they can rest, recuperate, and receive supplemental oxygen. Labored breathing in thin, dry air not only hastens dehydration but dangerously reduces the water content of human blood (from 15 to 50 percent in extreme cases) unless troops regularly replenish exhaled fluids. The rapid buildup of red cells at high altitudes encourages frostbite and hypothermia, because thickened blood becomes sluggish, especially in hands and feet.

Even moderate "mountain sickness" inhibits sudden bursts of energy, such as lobbing hand grenades and heaving heavy gear onto truck beds. Such symptoms usually fade within a few days, but night vision disorders persist for weeks and it normally takes months before troops can fully perform duties that demand prolonged exertion or concerted attention to detail. Staged ascents that permit 2 to 4 weeks training at intermediate levels en route to higher elevations can alleviate if not eliminate most disabilities, but fast-breaking contingencies seldom allow such luxuries. The side that acclimatizes first thus enjoys great advantage.⁴¹

Rarefied atmosphere also impairs the performance of air-breathing engines, which, like human beings, gasp for oxygen. Trucks overheat and lose 10 to 25 percent of rated horsepower at elevations above 7,000 feet (1,800 meters). Poorer than usual acceleration and grade-climbing capacities are among the most noticeable consequences. Fixed-wing aircraft need longer runways to take off and land with given loads, while helicopters struggle to get off the ground with gross weights they could easily lift at sea level. Smart crew chiefs, loadmasters, and others who calculate density altitudes therefore allow healthy margins for error at destinations as well as points of departure and, if necessary, plan two trips instead of one to prevent avoidable accidents. Pilots flying through thin air moreover must constantly be alert for vicious air currents and winds that variously blow down slopes after dark, reverse course after daybreak, curl over crests, bounce off valley walls, drop aircraft a thousand feet or more (300+ meters) in unpredictable down drafts, and whiplash them without warning.⁴² Nap-of-the-earth missions designed to avoid enemy air defense guns and missiles are extremely dangerous in mountainous terrain, especially at night under blackout conditions, but high-level flights can be equally hazardous. U.S. crews who repeatedly flew heavily laden transports 500 treacherous miles over the Himalayan "Hump" from India to China with supplies for Chiang Kai-shek, then back again through stormy skies, accomplished logistical miracles during World War II (map 17).⁴³

Map 17. The Himalayan Hump

Avalanches. Massive avalanches pose additional dangers wherever deep snows cover steep mountains at high elevations (at least 40,000 Austrian and Italian alpine troops were buried alive in Tyrolian territory during World War I, one-fourth of them on 2 terrible days in 1916). The worst avalanches occur on convex slopes, where successive layers of snow come under increasing tension until they fracture at the sharpest point on the curve (figure 19).⁴⁴ Slides start spontaneously when snow banks collapse under their own weight, when rising temperatures weaken bonds, and when falling temperatures increase brittleness. Shearing actions by skis, even snow dropping out of trees, can start the process. Long-range vibrations from thunder, sonic booms, explosions, moving vehicles, even the sound of human voices can loosen tons of snow that accelerate almost instantaneously from 0 to 60 miles an hour or more (100 kph) and pulverize everything in their path as they roar down gullies devoid of vegetation. Accurate forecasts are not yet possible, so wise commanders avoid suspicious spots to the extent possible consistent with their missions, preferably with assistance from residents whose first-hand knowledge of local avalanches dates back many years.

Figure 19. Conditions Conducive to Avalanches

THE RELATIVE VALUE OF VERY HIGH GROUND

Alexander the Great crossed and re-crossed Central Asia's Hindu Kush circa 329 B.C. through wind-swept, snow-covered mountain passes at altitudes between 10,000 and 11,000 feet (3,050 and 3,350 meters). Hannibal led armed forces over Europe's high Alps from west to east five centuries later, followed by Julius Caesar going in the opposite direction on his way to Gaul, but those famous warriors, like predecessors and successors ever since, won their most decisive victories at moderate elevations.⁴⁴ There is no evidence that innovative tactics or technologies will substantially increase the relative value of very high ground any time soon.

DEFENSIVE CREDITS

Mountainous terrain opens opportunities for numerically inferior but disciplined troops to establish defensive positions-in-depth with interlocking fields of fire, take advantage of abundant natural obstacles that are difficult to breach, blast field fortifications into bedrock, destroy bridges on high-speed enemy approaches, litter other routes with land mines, locate tanks and artillery in defilade, implement deception plans, and stockpile supplies conveniently. Offensive formations, less familiar with local terrain features, often attack across ground devoid of cover and so steep that foxhole digging is impossible. Multiple columns that proceed along parallel corridors seldom are mutually supporting, since they can neither see nor communicate effectively with each other and, if defenders have chosen positions wisely, must assault up hill.

Celtic, Roman, Burgundian, barbarian, Austrian, Swedish, French, and Prussian warriors all failed to defeat defenders in the Vosges Mountains, which seldom exceed 4,000 feet (1,220 meters). The U.S. Seventh Army, assisted by strong air power, slugged it out on that ancient battleground with German Army Group G from mid-October 1944 until mid-January 1945 before it became the first armed force in history to break through the Vosges against determined opposition.⁴⁶ Dogged Axis defenders who manned the Winter Line that ran across Italy from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Adriatic blocked Allied routes to Rome for 7 months, between November 1943 and May 1944. Monte Cassino, the most publicized cork in that bottle, is barely 1,700 feet high (520 meters), but tough German paratroopers ensconced on top resisted long after February 15th, when U.S. bombers pulverized the abbey on its summit with 600 tons of bombs.⁴⁷ Stalemated front lines see-sawed back and forth along Korea's mountainous spine for 2½ years to gain dubious tactical advantage from early 1951 until July 27, 1953, when both sides signed a cease-fire agreement.⁴⁸

DEFENSIVE DEBITS

Carl von Clausewitz, in his great tome On War, justifiably called defensive combat in mountainous terrain "a true refuge for the weak--for those no longer able to seek an absolute decision."⁴⁹ Belligerents who deliberately elect that form of conflict may buy time with which to reinforce and refurbish, then resume the offensive, but can "win" in place only if rivals quit first because costs have become too high. The best they can do otherwise is defer eventual defeat.

ARID REGIONS

The Cradle of Western Civilization, which always has been largely arid aside from the Fertile Crescent that links the Nile and Tigris-Euphrates Valleys via the Levant, saw the earliest recorded warfare. Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian armies came first, followed by Persians, Macedonians, Parthians, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Turks, French, British, Americans, and Israelis, among others. Joshua, Ramases, Sargon, Ashurbanipal, Darius, Alexander, Khalid, Tamerlane, Allenby, and Lawrence of Arabia were a few among many who won military fame as desert warriors in that cockpit.⁵⁰ Deserts around the world remain hotbeds of armed combat (map 18).

Map 18. Arid Regions

All deserts are sun seared, wind scoured, and dry (average annual rainfall as a rule is less than 10 inches/25 centimeters), but great diversity nevertheless is evident. Some arid lands are immense, others are small by comparison; linear dimensions, elevations, relative humidity, and distance from sea water vary considerably; topographical features run the full range from monotonous plains to spectacular peaks. Three and a half million square miles of Sahara Desert stretch from east to west across all or part of 10 North African countries, while the lanky Atacama, which runs from north to south in Chile, measures more than half as long but covers only 4 percent as much area. Death Valley, California, the lowest point in North America at -86 feet (-30 meters) is blistering hot in summer, whereas Mongolia's Gobi Desert on an interior plateau far above sea level is bitterly cold when winter winds blow in from Siberia. Most desert air is uncommonly dry, but high humidity turns Persian Gulf and Red Sea coasts into sweat boxes. Stony ground, contrary to popular misconceptions, is more common than humongous sand dunes, such as those in Saudi Arabia's Rub al Khali and southern Chad.⁵¹

CLIMATIC ECCENTRICITIES

Climatic eccentricities such as irregular rainfall, intemperate heat, and gale force winds even so characterize deserts the world over. Military personnel consequently require special equipment, training, and acclimatization

Irregular Rainfall. Unpredictable cloudbursts habitually replace prolonged, gentle, widespread rains that bless most well-watered regions. Downpours dump double or triple the average annual amount of precipitation in an hour or two, sink into sand or run off hard surfaces, provide brief respites from drought, then leave the land as barren as before. Dakla Oasis, located due west of Luxor, Egypt, is not atypical: it once went more than a decade without a drop of rain, although its yearly quota is about five inches (13 centimeters). Raging torrents without warning fill desiccated stream beds to overflowing, then sweep away bridges, buildings, military bivouacs, and other impedimenta that rashly block their paths. Roiling waters in southeast Tunisia turned Wadi Zigzaou into an impromptu moat that Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's armored columns failed to breach on March 20, 1943. Four Valentine tanks crossed after British sappers paved the bottom with bundles of brush, but the next tank in line sank up to its turret in muck.⁵²

Intemperate Heat. Oven-like summers generally prevail, even in parts of the Gobi Desert and China's Taklimakan where mean winter temperatures remain below freezing for several months each year. Thermometers that commonly hover around 120 ⁰F (48 ⁰C) in mid-afternoon are "mild" compared with sand temperatures, which may exceed 165 ⁰F (73 ⁰C). The crew compartments of heavily armored vehicles that lack air conditioning can become unbearable, while thin-skinned truck cabs heat up faster and reach even higher temperatures--185 ⁰F (84 ⁰C) is not exceptional. Those figures are significant, because 120 ⁰F is the threshold of human pain and readings as low as 140 ⁰F (60 ⁰C) may cause first-degree burns.

Most British and German troops in the North African desert during World War II wore short-sleeved shirts and short pants or stripped to the waist, although clothing that provides better coverage not only prevents sunburn and sand blasting by violent winds but serves as a coolant when sweat-soaked. Savvy aircraft and vehicle mechanics also wear gloves. Aircraft payloads plummet in excessive heat, which reduces lift capacities, while sensitive computers, sensors, communications equipment, and other electronics malfunction. Batteries hold their charge less efficiently (one U.S. armored division requires 3,660 batteries to keep 327 Abrams tanks and 283 Bradley fighting vehicles rolling, not to mention many additional tracked vehicles and trucks that swell the total severalfold). Bombs and missile warheads as well as artillery and tank ammunition are best stored in open pits protected by double sun screens, perishable food spoils quickly, and unrefrigerated water left unattended in the sun becomes unpalatable before it vaporizes. Hot nights and high humidity on the order of 90 to 100 percent make duty eternally hard to endure along some sea coasts, even for well-acclimated troops, but temperatures inland may drop 70 ⁰F (21 ⁰C) or more after dark. Armed forces skilled at night fighting thus enjoy a sharp edge.⁵³

Gale Force Winds. Destructive gales that blow for days at a time also are desert trademarks. Windblown sand, powerful enough to amputate unprotected telephone poles over time, impartially abrades everything in its path for a few feet above ground level while towering clouds of silt as fine as talcum powder blacken the sky, inflame eyes, and make troops wish for respirators. Sand and dust storms together reduce visibility to near zero, infiltrate tents, jam weapons, clog machines, pit optical devices, contaminate food and drink,

and generate enough electricity to drive magnetic compasses crazy (explosives apparently detonated at an ammunition dump near Tobruk, Libya, in 1942). Grit additionally blankets stockpiles, shortens the life span of equipment despite preventive measures, increases logistic loads commensurately, and otherwise makes life miserable for man and beast. Military operations slow, sometimes stop, during the worst wind storms.⁵⁴

Acclimatization Problems. Most military personnel in fit condition take about 2 weeks to acclimate, but may never reach peak performance in oppressive heat. Commanders consequently schedule strenuous activities during the coolest parts of each day and allow longer than usual rest periods, consistent with mission accomplishment. Personal hygiene and sanitation problems moreover can become unmanageable unless troops practice prophylactic medicine, which is easier said than done. (Members of Field Marshal Rommel's Afrika Korps sometimes scrubbed sweaty uniforms with sand to keep them from rotting.) Prickly heat, which upsets sweating mechanisms, encourages heat prostration, while dirt and insect bites turn minor scratches into running sores unless treated promptly. Flies feed on garbage, human feces, and dead bodies that burst under the hot sun, batten in food and open wounds, then spread diseases such as dysentery, diarrhea, and other intestinal disorders. Latrines are crucially important, but shifting sands fill slit trenches almost as fast as they can be dug in some regions, whereas rocky ground elsewhere makes excavations impossible without explosives.⁵⁵

WATER REQUIREMENTS

Water for drinking, cooking, bathing, laundry, use in military hospitals, and assorted other purposes is a priceless commodity in arid regions, more precious than any other natural resource, including petroleum. Sources, repositories, purification facilities, desalinization plants, tank trucks, water pipelines, and associated assets accordingly constitute prime military targets.

Supplies. Large, reliable sources are limited to a few bodies of fresh water and perennial rivers, such as the Colorado, Tigris, Euphrates, Indus, and Nile, which survive high evaporation rates only because far distant watersheds feed them copiously and consistently. Smaller streams run dry several months each year. Once famous oases such as Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan, which Marco Polo visited along Central Asia's Silk Route on his way to Cathay in the year 1272, are barely able to supply current civilian populations. Neither they nor ribbon-like counterparts that stretch for miles across the otherwise waterless Sahara could long support large-scale military operations. (Lieutenant General Gus Pagonis, the chief logistician during U.S. and allied operations against Iraq in 1990-1991, was appalled to find that XVIII Airborne Corps alone would need billions of gallons over the first few months.⁵⁶) Easily accessible reservoirs that lie beneath dry stream beds and some alluvial fans cannot supply such quantities.

Drilling for water in open wastelands is at least as chancy as sinking wildcat oil wells, because precise locations are problematic, the most promising sumps often lie 500 to 800 feet (150-250 meters) below the surface, some are brackish, and extraction in many cases would require high capacity pumps. Prudent users purify water regardless of its source to remove disease-bearing bacteria and minerals that might calcify inside military machines.

Major armed forces in arid regions as a direct result often must import or desalinate most water supplies.⁵⁷

Demands. Water rationing, once a popular but ill-conceived part of the acclimatization process, has been discredited because performance suffers and dehydration poses ever present dangers. Sweat evaporates so rapidly in dry desert heat that humans commonly lose about 1 pint of water per hour even at rest, yet never notice adverse effects or feel thirsty until the deficit reaches four times that amount (2 quarts, or 2 liters), by which time heat prostration may be imminent. Heavy exertion requires much greater intake, but Rommel's Afrika Korps in the summer of 1942 carried only 15 quarts per day for trucks and tanks as well as personnel. His parched troops made every drop count, yet still ran dry during one offensive and survived only because they captured British water supplies.⁵⁸ U.S. military personnel in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, who were much better endowed logistically, consumed approximately 11 gallons per day (42 liters), plus 10 to 12 gallons more per vehicle. Refrigerated vans kept a good deal of it palatable despite intense desert heat.⁵⁹

FIREPOWER AND MANEUVER

Alan Moorehead, an Australian journalist during World War II, once compared combat on flat desert floors to warfare at sea, because both environments lack distinctive landmarks. Massive land forces, like opposing flotillas, can maneuver at will for favorable positions, remain over the horizon until they make contact, and concentrate on enemy forces rather than key terrain, except for occasional struggles to control transportation bottlenecks such as Kasserine Pass in Tunisia.⁶⁰

Conventional Operations. Mounted operations that marked desert warfare before the advent of saddles and stirrups have done so ever since.⁶¹ Motorized British forces, for example, took just 3 days to destroy three Italian divisions and capture 39,000 foot soldiers outside Sidi Barrani, Egypt in December 1940.⁶² Iraqi troops who dug in after they invaded Kuwait 50 years later took a worse walloping, first from coalition aircraft that severed all links with their homeland and pulverized static positions, then from airmobile, armored, and mechanized divisions that used vertical and horizontal envelopments to great advantage during the 100-hour ground phase of a 6-week war.⁶³ The victors in both cases suffered few casualties compared with the vanquished.

Land transportation of all types must detour around steep slopes and deep gullies as well as huge dunes, such as those that sprawl across southern Iran, the Sahara Desert's Great Western Erg, and Saudi Arabia's Empty Quarter. Soft sand, sharp rocks, and thorns as thick as thumbs inhibit cross-country movement by trucks, especially those that tow trailers (the 1^st Brigade of the Saudi Arabian National Guard unhappily suffered 161 flat tires when it moved from Riyadh to blocking positions in August 1990). Tracked vehicles, however, can more easily traverse the gravelly plains, stony pavements, and stretches of shallow sand that characterize most deserts.

Level to rolling desert landscapes, virtually devoid of vegetation, afford fine fields of fire for flat trajectory weapons, which usually are employable at maximum ranges. Skilled weather officers in possession of technologically advanced techniques can help air crews and ground-based gunners employ infrared sensors and lasers despite heat, haze, and dust by predicting which side of particular targets will be hottest at particular times each day. They also can calculate "thermal crossover" times that tell when the contrast between targets and surrounding territory will be greatest and least, given the thermal properties of various materials. Metals, for example, heat and cool quickly, whereas asphalt heats slowly and stays hot a long time. Aerial observers, who claim clear views as far as naked eyes and sensors can see, find it easy to identify many stationary targets and can track low-flying helicopters as well as vehicular columns, both of which reflect light from wind screens and raise telltale clouds of dust. Great visibility also facilitates the use of air-to-ground missiles from positions beyond the reach of enemy air defense weapons. The side able to establish air superiority early consequently gains a decided edge.⁶⁵

The monotonously beige color of most desert soil nevertheless makes it difficult to distinguish different elevations, except during early morning and evening hours when terrain features cast long shadows. Ground-level observation in fact often is better on clear nights than at mid-day, when glare is intense, bright sunlight blinds all who face in its direction, and shimmering mirages not only distort depth perception but make images seem to float. Radar altimeters help pilots and navigators when the sun is high and on bright moonlit nights.⁶⁶

Special Operations. Special operations forces can function independently or complement conventional formations in arid regions despite the presence of enemy air power and the paucity of vegetation. British Colonel David Stirling's nascent Special Air Service (SAS), assisted at times by the Long Range Desert Group, which excelled at reconnaissance, ran rampant in the northern Sahara between November 1941 and January 1943, often 100 miles or so behind hostile lines, where they destroyed aircraft on the ground, blew up motor pools, detonated ammunition stocks, set fire to petrol dumps, hijacked vehicles, mined roads, and derailed trains.⁶⁷ Nineteenth century guerrillas in Afghanistan gave British troops headaches, and their descendants so plagued technologically superior Soviet invaders in the 20th century that the Kremlin finally quit to preclude unacceptable losses in money, military manpower, and materiel after 10 frustrating years, from 1980 to 1989.⁶⁸

Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Operations. Peacetime tests in lieu of practical experience suggest that nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons employed against troops widely dispersed in the desert would be less potent than usual in some respects and more dangerous in other regards. Overall usefulness would depend mainly on climatic patterns, local weather conditions, and topographic configurations.

The radius of heavy damage from nuclear detonations on level to rolling terrain likely would be shorter than in cool climes, because heat reduces static overpressures that give shock waves their punch. Troops in gullies or foxholes and weapon systems protected by revetments consequently would be somewhat safer than on frigid flatlands. Less powerful blast effects rocketing through light desert air, however, could disable distant thin-skinned targets such as aircraft parked in the open, while thermal radiation and dazzle concurrently burned and blinded exposed personnel. The direction and duration of radioactive fallout from gigantic dust clouds would depend on the erratic behavior of desert winds and turbulent currents.⁶⁹

High concentrations of toxic chemical warfare munitions designed to inflict mass casualties would be required whenever desert heat is intense, because sizzling temperatures, strong winds, and unstable air masses dissipate vapors and evaporate liquids rapidly. Perspiring personnel who shed protective clothing prematurely nevertheless would be extremely vulnerable to lethal and incapacitating agents that attain maximum effectiveness on sweaty skin. Even bogus threats and false alarms can undercut enemy capabilities if they make troops don impermeable gear repeatedly, perhaps for lengthy periods. Masks impair breathing and muffle oral communications, protective gloves degrade tactile dexterity, poreless suits act as portable saunas, time to accomplish routine tasks expands, and fatigue sets in fast. Bright sunlight, dry air, and heat would limit biological warfare aerosols to very small areas, provided they survived storage, but commanders and key subordinates at every level should take positive steps to prevent enemies from polluting water supplies, because deprivation could be disastrous.⁷⁰

LOGISTICAL STRAINS

Arid regions that facilitate maneuver warfare on a grand scale may be a tactician's dream, but vast deserts that are hot, dusty, hard scrabble, and devoid of militarily useful resources give logisticians nightmares. Most supplies must be imported, consumption rates soar, maintenance requirements multiply, and extended mobile operations strain distribution systems. Troubles burgeon as distances from support bases increase. Painful consequences ensue whenever combat forces stall because rates of advance and other maneuvers outstrip logistical capabilities.

Fleets of fuel tankers must make repeated round trips between supply points and customers, because long-distance, cross-country motoring over sand, loose gravel, and other surfaces that afford poor traction greatly decreases the gas mileage obtainable from wheeled and tracked vehicles. High mileage accrued in hot weather on rough terrain mainly in low gears moreover is hard on engines, radiators, springs, shock absorbers, transmissions, batteries, tank tracks, tires, and drivers. Constant vibrations crack and break metal. Gaskets and fan belts wear out quickly. Grit grinds assorted parts subject to friction, such as ignitions, brake shoes, bushings, bearings, water pumps, and carburetors, as well as microphones, switches, and circuit breakers. Air, fuel, and oil filters demand daily servicing and frequent replacement. Similar supply and maintenance problems afflict all other types of military materiel, as U.S. Lieutenant General Gus Pagonis graphically described after Operation Desert Storm in his unofficial report entitled Moving Mountains.⁷¹

TROPICAL RAIN FORESTS

Tropical rain forests, which never are neutral, favor well-prepared forces and penalize military leaders who fail to understand that:

• Small unit actions predominate.
• Overland movement invariably is slow and laborious.
• Troops mounted on horseback and motor vehicles are less mobile than foot soldiers.
• Natural drop zones, landing zones, and potential airstrips are small and scarce.
• Visibility and fields of fire for flat trajectory weapons are severely limited.
• Land navigation requires specialized techniques.
• Tanks, artillery, other heavy weapons, and close air support aircraft are inhibited.
• Command, control, communications, and logistics are especially difficult.
• Special operations forces and defenders enjoy distinctive advantages.
• Quantitative and technological superiority count less than adaptability.

A 1941 pamphlet, Read This Alone--and The War Can Be Won, indoctrinated Japanese divisions drawn from frigid Manchuria for duty in steamy Malaya and Singapore, where they quickly defeated untutored British defenders and their Indian allies. Analogous U.S. documents at that time conversely slighted jungle warfare or received scant attention from America's senior military officials. The U.S. Marine Corps Small Wars Manual (1940), predicated on long service in Haiti (1915-1934), the Dominican Republic (1916-1924), and Nicaragua (1926-1933), was only marginally related to combat in tropical rain forests, and in any event, most Marines on the eve of World War II found amphibious operations a far more entertaining topic. The U.S. Army largely ignored Field Manual 31-20: Jungle Warfare, which reached a very restricted audience after distribution in December 1941. Commanders as well as rank and file in both services accordingly received on-the-job training under trying conditions.⁷²

JUNGLE WARFARE SETTINGS

Copious, year-round precipitation, torrid temperatures, and high humidity combine to create rain forests, which are dense, dripping, dank, and dark (map 19). Rain gauges often record as much as 7 inches a day (17.8 centimeters) in Bougainville in the Solomon Islands, but this may seem moderate compared with nearby New Britain, where monsoonal deluges sometimes dump more than double that amount. Lieutenant General "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, the senior American commander in Burma during World War II, noted in 1944, "The 'dry season' in this country is a joke . . . We have had rain in December, 12 days in January, 18 in February, 10 in March, 10 in April, and now it's really going to rain." He was right; the summer monsoon started on May 1^st. Wall-to-wall foliage, always in full leaf, blocks any breeze, while rain forest floors turn into noxious mush.⁷³

Virgin rain forests, such as most of those in the Amazon Basin and equatorial Africa, consist mainly of mature trees (the largest tower 200 feet/60 meters or more), the spreading branches of which interlock to form three or four overarching canopies high above huge boles. Undergrowth is sparse, because little or no sunlight reaches the forest floor, although a latticework of giant lianas, some at least a foot thick, festoons from great heights to the bottom. Secondary jungles that sprout wherever nature or humans have cleared the land feature luxuriant undergrowth in the form of saplings, thickets, thorny vines, and ferns. Some species of bamboo that must be akin to Jack's beanstalk grow 3 feet (1 meter) a day and ultimately tower more than 100 feet. Dense stands of razor-sharp kunai grass taller than most men frequently cover open spaces not occupied by rice paddies, small farms, or park-like plantations where well-spaced rubber and coconut trees are planted in neatly kept rows.⁷⁴

The world's largest rain forest lies on level to rolling terrain astride the Equator in South America from the foothills of the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean. Most African jungles also rise above lowlands, but jungle shrouded mountains cover Central America, some Caribbean islands, India's west coast, most of southeast Asia, and archipelagos that stretch from Sumatra to Tahiti. Great environmental diversity is evident. Guadalcanal, for example, mingles plains, foothills, and mountains with varied vegetation that includes grassy patches, coconut groves, and forbidding jungles, whereas the tiny island of Tulagi, just 17 miles away across Sealark Channel, is a homogeneously wooded hill mass. New Guinea, which after Greenland is the second largest island on this globe, grows tropical rain forests on awesome slopes. Oppressive heat and humidity prevail there during daylight hours, but penetrating cold sets in after dark at high altitudes.⁷⁵

CLOSE COMBAT

Infantry squads, platoons, and companies grope slowly through jungles at reduced distances between elements with little or no direct assistance from adjacent units, because visual contact and natural fields of fire for flat-trajectory weapons seldom exceed a few yards (meters). Vehicles are road-bound with rare exceptions. Tense searches that culminate in fleeting fire-fights at point-blank range characterize up close and personal combat. Thomas Hobbes, in his 1651 treatise, Leviathan, inadvertently described the "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" life of many jungle warriors who experience "continual fear and danger of violent death." Armed conflict under such circumstances emphasizes needs for simple, centralized plans, standing operating procedures (SOPs) that anticipate unexpected contingencies, decentralized execution, and, above all, astute junior leaders.

Map 19. Tropical Rain Forests

Emphasis on Sixth Sense. Wrap-around rain forests intensify latent tendencies toward claustrophobia and paranoia, since belligerents can neither see nor hear well under best case conditions. Visibility is so limited, even by aerial observers and surveillance satellites, that cleverly concealed enemy fortifications are hard to spot. Thermal imagers work reasonably well despite thick foliage, but light amplification devices, infrared sensors, and radar are less effective. Wet vegetation also muffles sound, as Merrill's Marauders discovered when they hacked their way through rock-hard bamboo thickets in Burma--they made a racket like spike-driving gandy dancers building a railroad, but men in the rear heard nothing. Dangers from "fratricide" are ever present, especially during pitch black nights filled with weird noises that prompt trigger-happy neophytes to shoot at every moving shadow until they become accustomed. The sound of jingling dog tags, rifle safeties snapping open, and bolts slamming shut nevertheless sends audible warnings at short-range. Frightened birds and wild animals that suddenly screech or fall silent may also indicate enemy activity. Senses of smell and touch can occasionally supplement or supplant sight and sound: shaving lotion, scented soap, insect repellent, cigarette smoke, and other non-indigenous aromas literally are dead giveaways; point men on patrol use fingers and twigs to feel cautiously for trip wires. Foot sloggers gifted with intuitive powers of perception called Sixth Sense enhance survival prospects for comrades as well as themselves.⁷⁶

Land Navigation. Knotty land navigation problems persist, even when assisted by Global Positioning Systems (GPS). Military maps are much better than in 1942, when U.S. Marines at Guadalcanal found that Mount Austen, one of their immediate objectives, was situated several miles rather than a few hundred yards behind the beach, but important shortcomings persist, partly because cameras aloft infrequently see the forest floor. Jungles moreover rapidly reclaim little used roads, rail lines, and other landmarks that appear prominently on outdated maps. Newcomers thus do well to emulate Merrill's Marauders who, whenever possible, employed Kachin guides to lead them through Burmese jungles, because they knew every wrinkle in their home territories. Australian-recruited "coastwatchers" performed admirably as scouts, porters, and spies throughout the Solomon Islands with such success that U.S. Admiral William F. (Bull) Halsey claimed that they "saved Guadalcanal and Guadalcanal saved the Pacific." The United States and Australia both decorated one such hero, Jacob Vouza by name, who later was knighted.⁷⁷

Overland Movement. Overland travel in jungles averages about ½ mile an hour where the going is good and ½ mile a day where it is not, unless troops follow well-trodden trails that invite adversaries to install mines, booby traps, road blocks, and ambushes. Command, control, and communication (C³) problems are particularly difficult in thick secondary growth, which weakens HF/VHF radio transmissions, makes wire circuits hard to install (not to mention maintain), invalidates most visual signals, and makes surface messenger service both risky and slow. Air mobility is unreliable, because local weather is uncooperative, adversaries often cover the best helicopter landing zones (LZs), which are scarce and small, and LZ construction from scratch in double, triple, or quadruple canopy rain forests is a costly, time-consuming process without assistance from explosives.

The infamous Kokoda Track, still the only passable land route over the Owen Stanley Mountains between Port Moresby and Buna in Papua, New Guinea, saw extensive jungle warfare under aggrieved conditions during World War II (map 20). Australian, Japanese, then U.S. troops, drenched daily by rainfall that measured as much as an inch (2.5 centimeters) in 5 minutes, engaged in savage struggles over vertical terrain where maneuver room was virtually zero. The Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA) atop razor-backed Shaggy Ridge sometimes consisted of one Australian rifleman sniping at one Japanese counterpart while everyone else waited in line. Haggard heroes who clawed their way single file from one precarious perch to another through a tunnel of trees say the jagged Finisterre Range farther east was worse.⁷⁸

Guerrillas and Undergrounds. Dian Fossey, author of the celebrated book, Gorillas in the Mist, might have written a sequel entitled Guerrillas in the Mist if poachers hadn't cut her life short, because jungle fringes offer ideal bases of operations for irregular forces, provided undergrounds in nearby communities help recruit, indoctrinate, and train personnel, raise funds, furnish information, provide supplies, and otherwise support rebel causes. Guerrillas who sally forth from and return to rain forests have repeatedly given pursuers fits with raids, ambushes, and acts of sabotage in tropical parts of Latin America, Asia, and Africa.⁷⁹

HEAVY FIREPOWER

Heavy, accurately aimed firepower delivered by aircraft, artillery, and tanks is almost an oxymoron wherever tropical rain forests rise from flatlands. Fire support in jungle covered mountains is even less effective.

Map 20. The Kokoda Trail and Shaggy Ridge

Carpet bombing directed against sprawling targets concealed in rain forests inflicts psychological as well as physical casualties when bombardiers hit the right spot, but military benefits often are poor compared with ecological devastation and wasteful expenditures of ordnance. Aerial interdiction strikes against enemy supply lines that lead through jungles also demand huge efforts in return for modest results (see chapter 19, which discusses attempts to stop traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail). Fixed-wing aircraft and helicopter gunships equipped with sophisticated target acquisition devices such as laser designators frequently fly close support missions for friendly troops in contact with enemy forces under dense foliage, but the danger of "fratricide" is great.

Artillery units often are vulnerable to hit-and-run raids as well as counterbattery attacks, because suitable firing positions along scarce roads and trails rule out "shoot and scoot" tactics. Time-delay fuses that let munitions penetrate canopies before they detonate are preferable to proximity, mechanical, and electronic fuses that trigger harmless explosions among lofty branches. The range and direction of artillery fire moreover are difficult to adjust--aerial spotters can tell where rounds strike treetops, but seldom see targets on the ground, while land-based forward observers, who depend on sound instead of sight to calculate corrections, are disadvantaged given the short distance that noises are audible in jungles. U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) maintained only one armored cavalry regiment and no armored or mechanized divisions on its trooplist, essentially because opportunities to employ tanks in jungles and swamps generally are confined to clearings, plantations, and improved trails.⁸⁰

Astute commanders, however, occasionally can make good use of artillery and tanks despite restrictions just delineated. Lieutenant General Slim, the senior British commander in Burma during World War II, concluded that "tanks can be used in almost any country except swamp." He used them to engage enemy strong points with infantrymen "riding shotgun," as did U.S. Army and Marine counterparts who conducted island-hopping campaigns in the South Pacific.⁸¹ Vietnamese divisions under General Vo Nguyen Giap manhandled artillery, other heavy weapons, and perhaps 8,000 tons of supplies many miles over mountains and through presumably impenetrable jungles, established firing positions on high ground that dominated Dien Bien Phu, then dealt defenders a decisive defeat that drove France from Indochina.⁸²

STAYING POWER

Staying power, a key requirement during protracted conflicts, is elusive in rain forests where ammunition, uniforms, maps, rations, medical supplies, and all other military materiel not safeguarded or immediately consumed are subject to rotting and rust. Maintenance problems coupled with the paucity of supply routes makes replenishment a laborious process. Debilitating diseases, medical evacuation (medevac) difficulties, and rapid rates of decay make life miserable for all concerned, including casualties, litter bearers, burial details, and graves registration personnel.

Maintenance and Replenishment. Jungle logisticians work under demanding conditions, because roads, trails, inland waterways, drop zones, landing zones, and fixed-wing airstrips suitable for large-scale supply and evacuation purposes not only are scarce but are hard to secure and maintain. Check points, roving patrols, convoy escorts, mine clearance crews, and engineering gangs soak up personnel like sponges. Pack mules and porters often are the best (sometimes the only) reliable means of transportation. Allied forces on the Kokoda Track in New Guinea in fact employed more than 10,000 barefoot Papuans, who lugged backbreaking loads over the Owen Stanley Mountains. Costs and times required to construct new land lines increase dramatically with distance--it took 28,000 combat service support troops, 35,000 indigenous laborers, $150 million in World War II dollars, and 2 years to build the 1,100-mile (1,770-kilometer) road that led across Burma from Ledo in Assam to Kunming in China. That primitive avenue, which traversed jungles, gorges, rapids, and 21 closely spaced hairpin turns along one short stretch, was hardly an arterial highway but qualified as an engineering masterpiece nonetheless (see chapter 11 for details).⁸³

Medical Miseries. Jungles are filled with animate and inanimate objects that bite, sting, and stick, a host of microorganisms that are harmful to humans, fungus infections that troops affectionately call "jungle rot," and steamy atmosphere that encourages profuse perspiration, body rashes, and heat exhaustion. Many tropical maladies traceable to insects include dengue fever, scrub typhus, and allergic reactions to bee stings. More casualties could be traced to malaria than to hostile fire during World War II campaigns in the South Pacific. Blood-sucking leeches, whose saliva contains an anticoagulant, leave sores that turn into ulcers unless properly treated. Typhoid fever, cholera, hepatitis, diarrhea, and amoebic dysentery thrive in contaminated food and water. Immunizations and scrupulous field sanitation practices can dramatically reduce most resultant nonbattle casualties which, like nonwalking wounded, must be evacuated to aid stations or hospitals. Patients and medical personnel both prefer air medevac whenever feasible, because stretcher bearers struggle through jungles, even for a few hundred yards.⁸⁴

Cadavers don't last long in the heat and high humidity of tropical rain forests, whether they lie in the open or occupy shallow graves. The pervasive stench of putrefying flesh, as one veteran put it, "sticks to your . . . eyebrows, your gum line and the balls of you feet" before flies, ants, maggots, beetles, birds, and animals pick all bones clean. Personnel whose primary job is to retrieve remains face a revolting task. Positive identification of corpses that lack dog tags frequently awaits confirmation from dental records, skeletal scars, or DNA samples. ⁸⁵

WETLANDS

Wetlands, which strongly compete for the title "Least Trafficable Terrain," are saturated with and partially, completely, perennially or intermittently inundated by salty, brackish, or fresh water. Some are collocated with dense forests, others lie on open lands at high and low elevations in almost every clime including deserts, where they occasionally parallel streams and permeate river deltas. The generic term "swamp" subsumes wet woodlands; marshes feature tall grass, rushes, reeds, and cattails; bogs comprise spongy, poorly-drained soils variously covered with sedges, heath, mosses, lichens, and other stunted plants.

SEASONAL SWAMPS

The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-40 is the only large-scale armed conflict ever fought on the tundra or in the taiga (Russian for "swamp forests"), which overlie most of the frigid flatlands in Canada, European Russia, and Siberia (map 12, page 94). Wetland warfare in those sparsely settled, geographically forbidding regions could never last long in any case, because summers are short and moisture-soaked soil is frozen solid most of each year.

Seasonal swamps are militarily more significant in poorly drained regions a bit farther south, where summers are longer and warm weather is wetter. Brigadier General Francis Marion made a name for himself as the "Swamp Fox" when his guerrilla bands ran British redcoats ragged in the Carolinas during the American Revolution, then disappeared into sodden sanctuaries.⁸⁶ The Pripet Swamp, currently located in parts of Belarus, Ukraine, and European Russia, has channelized mass migrations and military operations for centuries. That formidable morass, which intersperses dense woods with countless ponds, moors, treacherous meadows, and shifting streams, extends 300 miles (480 kilometers) west to east and 140 miles (225 kilometers) north to south astride the Pripet Rivier, not counting two discontinuous offshoots that lead to Lakes Peipus and Lagoda near the Gulf of Finland (map 21). The entire complex expands twice a year, once in springtime when melting snows raise water levels and rivers overflow, again in the fall for about 4 weeks from the onset of autumn rains until the first hard frost. Permanent inhabitants are scarce, except along the fringe and in a few local centers such as Pinsk.

Cross-country movement is slow for foot soldiers and impossible for motor vehicles in most places. Roads in the region are widely spaced, mainly unimproved, largely of local importance, and, like all rivers save the Pripet, run north-south at right angles to topographical corridors between Russia and Poland. Many lanes are so narrow that military vehicle columns can neither detour nor turn around. German engineer troops during World War II used readily available logs to build mile after mile of "corduroy" roads in the absence of gravel and stone--trucks, tanks, and kidneys suffered incessant concussions as convoys bumped along at 5 miles per hour, but there was no better way to breach swampy obstacles.⁸⁷

The Pripet Swamp, which created a great gap between German Army Group Center and Army Group North soon after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, made it impossible for large military formations to conduct mutually supporting operations. Attempts to bypass such extensive wetlands proved perilous, because outflanked Soviet stay-behind forces and partisans pounced on logistical troops as soon as German spearheads disappeared.⁸⁸ Commanders and staffs committed to combat in other high-latitude swamps should anticipate similar problems.

PERENNIAL SWAMPS

Perennial swamps, all in the tropics or subtropical lands, share many characteristics with seasonal wetlands but never freeze, are refilled constantly, and tend to be deep. Three distinctive categories with significantly different military implications are discernible: Category One emphasizes grassy wilderness; Category Two mingles rice paddies and plantations with primeval swamps; Category Three features tidewater forests.

Category One: Grassy Wilderness. The Everglades have seen more warfare than any other wetlands in Category One. That immense marsh, between Lake Okeechobee and the tip of Florida, is 40 miles wide (65 kilometers) and more than 100 miles long (160 kilometers). Head-high saw grass and other aquatic plants emerge from an alligator-infested solution of water and muck that seems almost bottomless in some places. Moss-draped

Map 21. The Pripet Swamp and Its Offshoots

gumbo limbo, strangler fig, bald cypress, mahogany, and eight species of palm trees in assorted combinations adorn dry ground, which is at a premium.

General Andrew Jackson defeated, but did not demoralize, Seminole Indians under Billy Bowlegs in 1817-18. Superb guerrilla warriors simply melted into marshlands that then covered more than 3 million acres. Chief Osceola, who resisted subsequent U.S. efforts to resettle his tribe west of the Mississippi River, played tag in the Everglades with U.S. Army troops for 8 exasperating years (1835-42) during the Second Seminole War. Inconclusive operations not only cost the United States more lives and money than any other counter-Indian campaign but left several hundred recalcitrant tribesmen in control of ancestral lands. The U.S. Government paid them to move after the Third Seminole War (1855-58) failed to root them out, but a few resisted until 1934, 117 years after General Jackson entered the Everglades.⁸⁹

"Scorched earth" programs took precedence over search and destroy missions in the early 1990s, when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein sought to exterminate, control, or chase Muslim Shiite "Marsh Arabs" from their homeland at the head of the Persian Gulf, along with army deserters and additional dissidents. Actions to drain the swamps and divert the Tigris- Euphrates Rivers drastically reduced water levels, increased pollution-related diseases, and disrupted age-old life styles. Iraqi troops then set widespread grass fires. Those compassionless steps coupled with aerial bombardments and artillery barrages quickly depleted the despised populations.⁹⁰

Map 22. The Mekong Delta and Rung Sat Special Zone

Category Two: Paddies, Plantations, and Primeval Swamps. No region represents Category Two more ably than the Mekong Delta, where regular and irregular armed forces battled from 1945 until 1975 to control its overflowing rice bowl and huge population. That strategically crucial property, bounded by the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, spreads 16,000 square miles or so (40,000 square kilometers) southwest of Saigon, which later became Ho Chi Minh City (map 22).

About one-third of those flatlands are unreclaimed jungles or marshes, such as the Plain of Reeds, a sprawling prairie west of Ho Chi Minh City that is waterlogged during the wet season but dry enough to burn when rain-bearing winter monsoons stop blowing. Many vulnerable bridges and ferry sites mark Route 4, the only hard surface road to Ca Mau via Can Tho and other agricultural centers. The best of the rest are mainly paths of convenience rather than militarily useful lines of communication. Cross-country movement is laborious for foot troops and, in many places, impossible for vehicles even during the dry season. Wall-to-wall settlements and farmlands on scanty high land leave little room for airfields and permanent helicopter pads.⁹¹ The scarcity of suitable materials moreover makes construction an expensive and time-consuming process. It took U.S. Army Engineers 6 months and approximately $20 million to dredge and deposit 5,295 cubic yards (4,045 cubic meters) of sand per acre over a 600-acre artificial island, erect buildings on site, and provide essential amenities in 1967 for a brigade-sized Mobile Afloat Force near My Tho. ⁹²

Swamp-style riverine warfare, a specialized form of amphibious operations, became a fine art in that watery environment dominated by more than 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) of navigable rivers and streams. "Brown water" sailors emulated Commodore Daniel T. Patterson, who established a U.S. precedent during the War of 1812 when his gunboats in Mississippi River bayous briefly delayed British redcoats on their way to New Orleans. The U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps employed more advanced techniques and a "mosquito fleet" of schooners, flat-bottom boats, bateaux, and canoes in the Everglades a few years later; 20th-century successors in Nicaraguan and Philippine wetlands produced additional refinements.⁹³

U.S. riverine forces in the Mekong delta, who had superior technologies at their disposal, devised innovative concepts, doctrines, tactics, organizations, weapons, equipment, and modes of transportation. Their flotillas contained a motley assortment of "pocket battleships," amphibious landing craft, armored troop carriers, mine sweepers, air-cushion vehicles, patrol boats, and rubber rafts, all well-adapted for warfare in shallow waters where tight turns, islands, sand bars, swamp grass, fish traps, low bridges, mines, and enemy-installed obstacles restricted maneuvers. Support forces afloat provided command, control, and integrating communications, air-conditioned barrack ships replete with sick bays, surgery wards, and water purification plants, plus supply, maintenance, repair, and salvage facilities. Web-footed infantrymen fervently wished for man-portable bridges, individual water wings, and similar amenities that were nonexistent or in short supply, but they benefited from flexible tactics that creative thinkers concocted explicitly for close combat where stream banks were slick as well as steep and adversaries concealed in dense vegetation could see and hear assault troops well before they arrived.⁹⁴

Category Three: Tidewater Forests. Veterans of combat in tidal forests near Buna on Papua New Guinea's Coral Sea coast recall towering trees that made it impossible to see the sun during daylight hours or the stars at night. Creeks constituted tunnels through mangrove swamps where gnarled buttress roots rose from black, sucking mud, and Japanese machine gun nests concealed in those natural abatis seemingly blocked every route. ⁹⁵

Vietnam veterans believe the Rung Sat Special Zone, a tidewater forest in the northeast corner of the Mekong Delta (map 22), made Buna and other wetlands look like picnic grounds. High tides there, which run as fast as 8 knots, raise and lower water levels as much as 16 feet (5 meters), drastically change channel directions and depths, and inundate most "dry" land twice daily. Mangrove and banyan trees protrude from brackish, polluted waters that, give or take a couple of percentage points, cover eight-tenths of the Zone. Nipa palms, brambles, brush, and serrated grass adorn hundreds of small islands, few of which were cultivated or inhabited. Boat crews along with U.S. and South Vietnamese troops ashore were constantly subject to ambush, because chemical defoliants, liberally applied, failed to dislodge insurgents or significantly disrupt their activities. Leeches couldn't tolerate such salty water, but that was about the only good news--insects swarmed; tight-tolerance weapons, ammunition powder trains, and primer cords often malfunctioned; mortar base plates sank in soggy soil unless they rested on sandbags; foxholes and bunkers turned into outdoor bath tubs. American soldiers and SEALs sloshing around in that dank region led such debilitating lives that medics recommended, and policymakers approved, repeated returns to dry ground after no more than 48 to 72 hours, lest foot infections, jungle rot, strain, and fatigue dangerously reduce proficiency. Rung Sat missions continued nonetheless, because the main commercial shipping channel and military supply line between Saigon and the sea ran through that region, along with other major waterways of local importance. Severe consequences would have ensued if U.S. Armed Forces and their allies had allowed Viet Cong insurgents to stop traffic.⁹⁶

COASTLANDS AND SMALL SEAS

Naval conflicts began in coastal waters and small seas when organized warfare was in its infancy. Combatant ships subsequently ranged far and wide but, for technological and tactical reasons, conflicts occurred fairly close to shore until World War I. Carrier battle groups, attack submarines, and antisubmarine warfare forces during World War II conducted "blue water" campaigns on a grand scale never seen before or since. The United States Navy thereafter reigned supreme on the high seas until Soviet adversaries under the guidance of Fleet Admiral Sergei G. Gorshkov began to challenge U.S. preeminence in the mid-1960s. The Cold War, however, wound down a quarter of a century later without a shot fired in anger at sea and most observers at this writing generally agree that naval conflicts far from land seem a remote possibility for the foreseeable future. Naval strategists in countries large and small accordingly concentrate once again on littorals and small seas, where problems not only are different from those they must solve in mid-ocean but are infinitely more complex than those that predecessors faced a few years ago.

LITTORALS AND SMALL SEAS DELINEATED

Webster's Dictionary defines littorals as "the shore zone between high and low water marks," whereas the United States Navy and Marine Corps, perhaps playing interservice politics, see a much broader region that reaches from the "open ocean" (undefined) to the shore, thence overland 650 nautical miles (1,200 kilometers).⁹⁷ This document, in search of a realistic compromise, addresses littorals that extend seaward from the shoreline no more than 100 nautical miles (185 kilometers) and an equal distance inland, which affords enough depth in each direction to stage, conduct, and support coastal operations, including amphibious assaults.

The Adriatic, Aegean, Black, and Red Seas, Bo Hai and Korea Bay (northwest and northeast arms of the Yellow Sea), and the Persian Gulf typify small seas, the centers of which lie less than or little more than 100 miles from land. The Baltic, Bismarck, Caribbean, Coral, North, Mediterranean, and South China Seas, the Gulf of Mexico, the Seas of Japan and Okhotsk, and comparable oceanic offshoots are too large to qualify.

TYPICAL COASTAL TOPOGRAPHY

Littorals and small seas invariably include seashores, offshore approaches, and exits inland. The geographic features in each environment are strikingly different and infinitely more numerous than those associated with "blue water" (figure 20).⁹⁸

Figure 20. Typical Coastal Topography

Offshore Approaches.

• Hydrodynamic conditions: tidal range great or slight; cross-currents and surf weak or strong; distance between low and high water marks measured in 10s or 100s of yards (meters)
• Water temperatures and salinity: stable or unstable
• Inshore sea bottoms: level or incised, gentle or steep, soft or solid
• Channels: few or many, deep or shallow, wide or narrow, well or poorly marked
• Assorted obstacles: sand bars, spits, hooks, mud flats, shoals, reefs, tombolos (natural causeways), lagoons, seasonal ice, sea weeds, ship wrecks, and trash
• Ambient noise: loud or muted; localized or universal; sounds caused by ships, recreational boats, fish, and fowl.

Seashores.

• Beaches: wide or narrow, short or long, sand, shingle, or mud
• Trafficability: good or poor
• Human habitation: dense, sparse, or absent
• Harbor and port facilities: many or few; antiquated or modern.

Exits Inland.

• Natural obstacles: cliffs, terraces, promontories, pinnacles, grottoes, caves, and caverns; sand dunes, marshes, swamps, and forests
• Cities, towns, villages, and isolated dwellings: large or small, many or few, flimsy or solid construction
• Roads and railways: many or few; high or low capacity; unobstructed or bottlenecked
• Airfields and landing zones: large or small, conveniently or inconveniently located, few or many modern facilities.

SELF-PRESERVATION PROBLEMS

Self-preservation takes precedence over other naval missions whenever hostile armed forces convert littorals into combat zones, because enemy guns and guided missiles aloft, afloat, and concealed ashore expose slow-moving surface ships to high-density, high-intensity, short-range surprise attacks (grottos and caves make grand hiding places). Assorted surface combatants, amphibious ships, cargo/troop transports, oil tankers, and auxiliaries in cramped quarters all make tempting targets. Egyptian Styx surface-to-surface antiship missiles that were primitive by modern standards set a precedent during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War when they sank the Israeli destroyer Eilath in shallow water. Moored and floating mines, the "weapons that wait," are cost effective as well as devastating. Italian frogmen, for example, surreptitiously planted limpet mines that put two British battleships on the harbor bed outside Alexandria, Egypt, in 1941. Fifty years later the U.S. Navy spent $17 million and 2 months to repair the billion-dollar Aegis guided missile cruiser Princeton after it rammed one Iraqi mine worth about $3,500.⁹⁹

Littoral warriors who lack split-second reflexes and state-of-the-art computers are out of luck, because reaction times often are measured in a minute or two at most. Subsonic, sea-skimming cruise missiles flying 600 miles per hour (965 kph) hit targets 25 miles (40 kilometers) away 150 seconds after launch. Half that time likely elapses before missile defense crews can detect hostile projectiles with head-on radar cross-sections roughly equivalent in size to cormorants, leaving 75 seconds in which to confirm threats, track them, compute altitudes, ranges, and velocities, then fire. Saturation attacks, supersonic missiles, enemy evasive actions, false images caused by coastal clutter, and restrictive rules of engagement designed to safeguard friendly forces and neutrals are further complications.¹⁰⁰

Effective countermeasures are hard to conceive. Stealthy ship designs could reduce visual, acoustic, electronic, infrared, and radar "signatures," but skeptics contend that such advantages would be far from foolproof, because laws of physics make it impossible for large surface combatants to "disappear" within small search areas. Budgetary constraints probably limit applications to a few high-value surface combatants other than huge aircraft carriers, which would be very costly to convert.¹⁰¹ Some students of littoral warfare consequently are convinced that submarines able to sit quietly on muddy sea bottoms and maneuver well in shallow water may be the most effective countermeasures, because adversaries that lack an astonishing array of ASW sensors and weapon systems would be hard pressed to find them and finish them off (figure 21). Others advocate an influx of fast boats. ¹⁰²

POWER PROJECTION PROBLEMS

Power projection missions along littorals and in small seas prominently feature sea control and amphibious assaults. Shallow water mines figure positively in the first instance and negatively in the second.

Shallow Water Sea Control. Sea control in some respects is more difficult to achieve along littorals than on open oceans, because enemy forces can bring land-based as well as naval combat power to bear. Shallow waters, however, simplify the accomplishment of less demanding sea denial missions, which seek to suppress enemy maritime commerce and limit options open to enemy naval commanders.

Blockades customarily are considered acts of war under international law, but they also are the most economical way to bottle up opposing navies and merchant marines in port, prevent enemy ships at sea from returning for rest, recuperation, maintenance, and replenishment, seal off seaborne support by sympathizers, and generally deny foes freedom of the seas. Cordons sanitaire that employ men-of-war to deter, deflect, stop, board, search, seize, or sink blockade runners expose implementing crews to considerable risk. A cheaper, equally or more effective technique relies on bottom, floating, or tethered mines that variously activate on command, on contact, or in response to magnetic, acoustic, or pressure stimuli. They are easy to install and hard to avoid in coastal channels, but only if seeded en masse. Mines that Iran deposited piecemeal in the Persian Gulf to impede petroleum tankers and their escorts (1987-88) therefore proved to be more of a nuisance than a menace, whereas traffic into and out of Haiphong harbor ceased for 10 months after U.S. carrier-based aircraft laid 8,000 influence mines across its entrance in April 1972. ¹⁰³

Transit from Sea to Shore. The transit from ships onto heavily defended shores is a traumatic experience in large part because geographic features favor defenders and oppose waterborne assault forces who must fight rough surf, long-shore currents, and occasionally strong winds on their way to designated beaches over routes devoid of natural cover or concealment. Mine hunters and mine sweepers whose dangerous duty is to detect, mark, and clear lanes through the "foam zone" need one set of implements for use where shifting sands or soft mud bury bottom mines, another set where sediments suspended in breaking waves act as obscurants, and yet another where rocky approaches cause sonar signals to bounce about. Some naval inventories already include sizable helicopter fleets and a few ship-to-shore vehicles that ride on or above rather than in the water, but unmanned submersibles and remote control systems that eventually may be able to elude shallow water mines are still in early stages of development.¹⁰⁴

Figure 21. Shallow Water Antisubmarine Warfare Suites