Defense officials speak up for low-tech

The military has learned an important lesson from the war in Iraq -- that high-tech weapons do not guarantee success in combat, an official with the National Defense University said yesterday.

Navy Captain Chen Teh-men (陳德門), deputy chief of education with the university, cautioned against an over-reliance on high-tech weapons.

"We are learning from this war in Iraq that high-tech weapons cannot replace conventional ones in achieving combat success," Chen said.

"Nor can high-tech reconnaissance and surveillance equipment prevent fatal human errors from happening," he said. "Intelligence gathered by high-tech devices cannot replace intelligence collected by man."

Chen made the remarks yesterday at a meeting in which the university made public its assessment of the war in Iraq.

Chen and other officials presented reports during the meeting at the university's head office in Taoyuan.

Despite having technological superiority over Iraq, the US military still needs conventional troops to win the war, he said.

"The US military now deploys only two divisions of troops, around 30,000, in Iraq. Such a number will not be enough to win the war," he said.

Army Colonel Hsu Shu-nan (許舜南), another university official, agreed that the US has not deployed enough ground troops in Iraq.

"In the 1991 Gulf War, the US-led coalition force exceeded 500,000 people. That number was still not quite enough, although the coalition forces won the war," Hsu said.

"Ground forces are still the key to winning a war. The 1999 Kosovo war and 2001 anti-terror campaign in Afghanistan are most recent examples," he said. "The same is true of the current war in Iraq.

"These wars tell us that mere air strikes will not achieve decisive battle results," he said.

Officials in other services disagreed with Hsu's assessment. An air force official defended the need for air superiority.

"Air superiority might not necessarily be the winning factor of a war. But what we have seen from the war in Iraq is that Iraq is doomed to lose the war because it does not have air superiority," said air force Colonel Chen Han-hua (陳漢華).

Captain Albert Wu (吳東林), a marine and a researcher with the university's National Strategic Studies Institute, said he does not see a need to put too much emphasis on any individual armed service.

"Compared with the 1991 Gulf War, the media is paying greater attention to coalition ground forces. The US air force is still contributing a lot to this war, but this has not been recognized by many people," Wu said.

"It does not make sense to argue which armed service is more important or useful. It is essential to know that different wars require different deployments of troops and different tactics," he said.