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Interview Col. Carl Bernard, USA (Ret.)
June 30, 1999
ADM's Jon Lottman
interviews Col. Carl Bernard, USA (Ret.) for "The Limits of Air Power"
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Ask the Expert Writer and producer Interview Transcripts
Congressional Testimony
Gen. Henry Shelton
| LOTTMAN: When did you first start hearing theories to the effect
that air power alone could win a war?
BERNARD: The myth of the rule of air power really came from an
Admiral Duhey, General Duhey, an Italian. This was the early
20s. He explained, and this was well-publicized, he explained
how - probably in revulsion from the trench warfare of World War
I - that airplanes were going to make the difference.
And we had our own marvelous explanation of this by Gen. Billy Mitchell.
And Gen. Billy Mitchell took his airplanes out and bombed ships,
tied up. And this made aircraft - it gave them their role, their
place. And it seemed totally reasonable.
Pearl Harbor made it
even more credible. And that was, and people my age, reared in
this time, were certainly believers in airplanes, and we thought
that this was the answer to everything.
Now, the problem with the airplanes, those days when we didn't
seem to have them in the right place, enough of them, those were
the only objections to it. Then of course, the movies were such
a powerful influence. Everyone saw these marvelous photographs
of airplanes sweeping in, shooting up the bad guys, and then going
off while the music was playing. And so there was a myth of aircraft
that had caught the American imagination. And those of us who
were soldiers believed in this as well. And we believed in this
until we had to learn differently. Better.
LOTTMAN: That original demonstration you referred to, that was
not in the midst of a conflict?
BERNARD: That of Billy Mitchell? These were ships, obsolete
ships, anchored out in the ocean. And no, it was not in any combat.
LOTTMAN: The majority of military historians tend to refute this
theory, look at it as dangerous, inappropriate, and a variety
of other things. Could you elaborate on that perspective? What
are the theoretical limits of air power?
BERNARD: That's gotten demonstrated to us. Over and over again.
That the airplanes don't make enough difference. Now, can they
hit a building? Sure. Can they hit a bridge? Yeah. Can they
obstruct easy passageways? Sure. Can they beat a fighting element?
No. That's not proven at all. As a matter of fact, we keep
proving it over and over again. We taught the Vietnamese, after
we taught the Koreans, that having aircraft overhead meant merely
that you were prudent. It didn't mean they could hit you. And
quite often they didn't.
The first thing we Americans learned about American aircraft,
while they might be lost, and shooting at you, they didn't hit
you. And that's the big secret. They don't hit you.
Now it's
pretty easy to visualize an infantryman, who isn't carrying much
equipment anyway, and an airplane traveling 700 miles an hour
doesn't see him. And then, he's generally pretty prudent. He
digs a hole and gets in it, and an aircraft would have to be shooting
exactly down in the hole, and he's down two feet underground.
At a slant angle, a machine gun shooting at you, he doesn't hit
you. And we learned this from their shooting at us. We taught
it to the Koreans. We taught it to the Vietnamese as well. And
they're exciting... it's frightening to start with, but you don't
get hit by them. We just had this illustration in Kosovo.
LOTTMAN: What's your assessment of air power's performance in
Kosovo, empirically? What was its effectiveness?
BERNARD: Two ways. Now, did the air power show a commitment
to the Serbians, that in fact the NATO in general, the United
Sates in particular, intended to beat on them until they surrender?
I think the airplanes showed that. Did it show, in fact, that
they could have a serious impact on their military forces? I
don't think so. I think we have, as, uh, the futility of aircraft
trying to attack a ground element is well known. And every military
school teaches you how to protect yourself. You protect yourself,
actively, passively. A hole is a happy thing to be in. Digging
yourself into the ground gives you a certain feeling of competence,
superiority, it allows you to look at the airplanes, to admire
them, but they don't make much difference to your holding that
piece of ground. And each of the enemies that we have flown airplanes
against has learned that.
Now we learned it ourselves. What we would do when we were attacked
by our own aircraft, is get protected. An infantryman, out close,
doesn't have many friends. He's got a shovel - I think you've
seen this called an entrenching tool - and that entrenching tool
is a very good friend. And to dig yourself into the ground is
exactly what you should be doing. The infantrymen learn that
in a hurry. Now, I certainly...
Let me tell a brief war story. In Vietnam, I was posted twelve
miles from the end of the Bin Wah runway. There were airplanes
sitting all over that runway. They would come help us beat up
on the Viet Cong. Any time we wanted air support, we could get
it. Now, what we would do is show where the Vietcong were lurking.
Where they were hiding. We'd find 'em. They'd let you know
where they were, machine guns let you know. The other end, look
where the machine gun is firing from, you know where they are.
Okay, and now, where we were at the end of that runway, little villages
were about 100 square meters. These weren't really villages,
these were farmhouses. About 100 square meters, ringed with bamboo
and the dikes for the rice patties.
Well, when we would run in, whether it was an American unit or
a Vietnamese unit, run into the Vietnamese there, machine gun
fire stops you. So we would stop, and as was our habit, call
in airplanes. And after an hour, not enough to complete our shooting
but by the time you get them there, show them where the targets
are, have them shoot at the targets, and then start again it's
an hour. The machine guns are still working, and not only the
machine guns, anti-tank weapons are still working. This caused
us casualties. Stop, put in airplanes again.
Well, this is going to keep going until after dark. After dark,
then they would pull out. They would pull out carefully, prudently,
sometimes our units were very pleased to watch them go. And we
didn't try to hold them in position. We'd put artillery on them,
put air on them, but they decided when the fight was over. And
we would find several bodies. Period. Were we winning? I don't
think so. And as you note how that war ended, we certainly didn't
wind up winning it.
LOTTMAN: As far as air power's effectiveness in killing the enemy,
which is one of the major objectives in any military operation,
what about this idea that new, precision, satellite-guided weapons
are more effective, and therefore that argument may be a thing
of the past?
BERNARD: It's marvelous, and it's pleasing, the thought. But
look at the numbers that they're using now about Kosovo. They
had 1,000 tanks there, and we find 13 beat-up bits of iron that
were destroyed, and that's not many for 78 days and thousands
of strikes. I realize we weren't always shooting at the tanks,
but a tank is a big piece of equipment, and it's important. We
couldn't even find those. And these marvelous weapons, that reach
and see everything, doesn't defeat the ingenuity of someone dedicated
to staying alive and understanding how to fight.
No, I'm not at all convinced that these - and I'm not really a
luddite - however, most of these things, most of these things are
advertised. They're explained. They're joyous things to describe.
They just don't work very well. The mind of a human being is
a very versatile tool. He'll figure out a way to think his way
around it. And I think we have illustrations. Could we hit buildings?
Sure, you can hit a building. But do you know whether there's
anything in it? No. Not really. Now can we bomb up all of the
buildings? Not really. I'm sure we have many folk who would
simply black out the country. There are many people who would
use hundreds of nuclear weapons to really destroy the country.
Well, that's not fighting. Could it be done? Probably not.
Probably not. We'll never do that. There is no objective worth
that.
LOTTMAN: Did we have clear objectives, and to the extent that
we did, what does that have to do with the bombardment strategy?
BERNARD: Well there was a total disconnect - if our objectives
were protecting the people, causing the Serbians to withdraw,
to behave more humanly towards their minorities, their ethnic
minorities, or the majority as it turned out to be, we simply
had totally misjudged what air power could do.
Now, one of the
things that airplanes, marvelous as they are, can't overcome,
is inadequate intelligence. We didn't know what we were doing,
we didn't know those people, and probably we didn't know ourselves
well enough. To believe that we had the capability to make a
difference. So our objectives, we never came close to achieving
them.
LOTTMAN: This declaration of victory, and the view that the conflict
and its results are a validation of air power, what are the implications
for the future of the military and our ability to protect our
national security.
BERNARD: The implication of our ability to think critically is
very gloomy. If we consider that a victory, than I'm enormously
suspicious of our ability to think critically. There's no way
to believe that this is a guarantee of the future. This
is not a guarantee of the future at all. And if we had had to
fight, i.e. put ground soldiers in there, we would have had a
totally different world. The history of the Serbian people, their
WWII record, and then the way they prepared and took care of themselves,
the way they looked when they left, said a great deal about how
effective our air power was and whether we should do it again.
Now, watch. This doesn't mean that people who are in the business
of selling airplanes or building airplanes won't declare a victory.
Therefore their next explanation is we need more airplanes.
That inability to be intellectually honest, to face what's actually
happened, or to have someone look critically at this - now they
are certainly, probably going to avoid that critical thinking
as we see in a lot of the advertising already. Now I'm not speaking
because I'm a partisan to the, for ground soldiering, yet if you're
not on the ground, in control of it with a rifle, you don't control
it.
Another war story. Some airplanes in Korea shooting for us, and
they were beating up the hillside over opposite. Then they went
away. One of our young men said, "Well, they may have won
the war. They sure didn't fight it." The Koreans we were
fighting then didn't give up because they'd been shot at by airplanes.
Nor did the Vietnamese, and obviously, the Serbian army didn't
either. And I don't think anyone else will.
LOTTMAN: You referred to the Serb forces pulling out of Kosovo
compared to the Serb forces who were put in there in the first
place. What exactly do you mean by that?
BERNARD: The forces they put in came out in the same number,
and they looked as though they hadn't been beat up on for 78 days.
They hadn't been damaged, or the damage that was visible took
better eyes than most of us have to see.
LOTTMAN: What lessons can we take away from this and what kinds
of things can we do to make sure that the constructive lessons
that are there to be learned, stick?
BERNARD: The first lesson, and it's a very old one, it's 2500
years old now, and it's from Sun Tzu. And he said, "know
your enemy, know yourself." We don't know our enemy because
of a pitiful intelligence service which isn't prepared, isn't
focused, doesn't know the world we're going into. We don't have
people who know every part of the world in which we're working.
That's first.
Second, this believing in hardware... this believing that if a tank
is bigger, or an artillery shell can shoot further, or an airplane's
got more motors on it, then it's more effective. That's not the
criteria. Men fight, tools don't fight. You shouldn't have mediocre
equipment. I've been in outfits that had mediocre equipment,
but look again. Look back at Vietnam. We had 5000 helicopters
knocked down.
The best soldier I know, he was a Colonel, he was shot down - he
wasn't flying the helicopter, he was riding in it - he was shot
down three times in one day. Now, his pilots were good, and they
auto-gyroed in, and then they brought him in and did it again.
And of course this was in a bad area, but of course an airplane
is a very vulnerable thing. You saw this, keeping ours at
15,000 feet overhead. Little old ladies with AK-47s were knocking
down helicopters. I exaggerate, those little old ladies were
a salty lot. We got helicopters knocked down, and we will again.
Now, picking your enemy is important. And deciding how to fight
him is very important as well. We have not been expert in these
as we keep on illustrating over and over again.
LOTTMAN: Now, is it better to pretend you know nothing than to
pretend you know everything in this kind of a situation? Pretend
you know everything, that you can do anything using technology?
BERNARD: I appreciate this enormous faith, belief, and you have
to jack yourself up in order to go do things. You have to believe.
It might be better to be far, a bit more critical as to what
you're doing. It might be good to have a red team look at what
you're going to do and decide whether or not you should do it
at all. Because it may be that you should not be doing it. And
I'm high over on that subject. We have no right to believe that
because we're taller or faster or I've got my glasses cleaned that
this makes me superior. It's not enough. LOTTMAN: I think this is gonna be my last question. If there's
one word, or 25 words to sum this all up, what's your assessment
of this decision to go into Kosovo just using airplanes. BERNARD: Anyone who could believe that would work, will also
tell you exactly about the Easter Bunny, and probably believes
in Santa Claus. He has an ability to believe in things that won't
survive very long. Now, sadly, we have a habit of not believing,
not remembering, not recognizing,... denial is as American as
apple pie. People simply deny what reality is. Therefore they
can keep this clean open mind and keep going on. Making the same
errors over and over again. And I suspect, I fear that that's
tomorrow. It doesn't sound to me as though we have learned much,
in my lifetime.
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