Cleveland Plain Dealer
April 4, 2000
Technology Will Never Replace A Marine's Brain, General Says
By Elizabeth Sullivan, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
The Marine of the future will be a politically savvy warrior
fighting
on a digitized battlefield with unmanned airplanes and aerial
spy
platforms overhead - but making the critical decisions himself.
New political realities on the battlefield mean the savvy
warrior is
already here, said Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James L. Jones
yesterday during a visit to Cleveland.
He said this was driven in part by "instant reporting" as well
as a
dizzying array of new mission requirements.
"Right down to the small unit level you do have people who can
decide
on the spot what is the appropriate action," said Jones.
"Sometimes,"
he added, it can be very "high stakes."
The first U.S. ground troops in Kosovo, for instance, came from
a
Marine expeditionary unit. Within a month, they had moved to
Turkey,
doing humanitarian work after the earthquake there, said Jones.
The nearly 6-foot, five-inch general, a Vietnam combat veteran
who
took over the Marines and joined the Joint Chiefs of Staff last
fall,
was interviewed before a private function at the Union Club last
night.
Jones foresees no return to the conscript military, nor much
growth
in current Marine strength of 171,000 - but predicts the number
of
missions will keep growing.
"Technology is what's going to allow us to do that," he said.
His wish list includes more unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs;
more
digitized battlefield communication systems; and a "more modern
concept" of how to do logistics on the battlefield.
Jones, 57, who cut his teeth as a platoon commander in Vietnam,
believes "the future is in unmanned aviation." Aerial drones
were
first heavily used in the Kosovo air campaign.
Kosovo also revealed the huge demand for an old aerial workhorse
-
the EA-6B Prowler, a radar-jamming and spy plane with so many
electronic countermeasures "that no potential adversary has come
up
with a way to negate it," Jones said.
The Prowlers were "ridden hard and put up wet,"- and so heavily
used
that many of its Marine and Navy pilots are leaving, he said.
Kosovo caused a reassessment, and not just for the Marines.
Jones said his fellow Army chief of staff feels the Army is
"running
out of Army." And the Air Force chief believes we're
"overutilizing
his aircraft," with an average age of 20 years.
Sailors and Marines "exist to deploy," he said, but need to be
given
more modern tools to deploy with.
"We are paying too much for readiness out of our modernization
accounts," he said. "Our Marines are working too hard and two
long on
old equipment."
He said more naval long-range artillery, better Marine artillery
and
more high-speed land and surface vehicles are needed.
Jones said the Marines have the best recruiting record of the
military services - but also have to worry constantly about
replenishing the corps, with annual turnover of 68 percent.
Cleveland is one of the best recruiting stations, accounting for
about 2.5 percent of the approximately 35,000 Marines signed up
yearly, an aide to the general said.
But Jones said if there was one lesson of the 20th century, it
was
the benefits from a forward-deployed military. "The military
does a
whole lot more than just win the wars," said Jones. It also, he
said,
frames the circumstances under which the U.S. exercises
leadership
overseas, promotes democracy, civilian governance and free
trade.
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