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CULTURES IN COMBAT By RALPH PETERS March 23, 2003 -- AMATEURS judge militaries by counting and comparing artillery pieces, tanks and aircraft. But the system behind the shooters - especially the human system - is far more important to a war's outcome than the number of weapons fielded by either side. Our combat technologies, from "smart bombs" whose accuracy appears supernatural to the individual equipment of a Navy SEAL, are certainly of great value - impressive to our friends and enemies alike. But even if our forces were equipped with exactly the same types and quantities of tanks and guns as the Iraqis possess, we would still be destined for victory. Of course, the war would be longer and there would be more casualties. But our military culture, our system of seamlessly integrating skilled military personnel and machines into a huge war engine fueled by a constant flow of reliable information, gives us a far greater battlefield advantage than does any weapon. Traditional military values, from good training and discipline to physical fitness, remain essential. But our greatest strength is simply that our entire military fights as a team. This may sound obvious, but genuine teamwork is rare in military history - and still surprisingly rare today. In short, we fight like Americans. Every American servicemember knows that he or she can count on every other servicemember during wartime. This, too, sounds like a given. But it isn't. In Iraq's military, no one can trust anyone else. Allegiances are to blood relations, not to military units or to the government. The army doesn't trust (or train with) the Republican Guards, while the Special Republican Guards do their own thing off to the side. The "Gestapo" that answers to Saddam and his sons watches everyone - exciting fear, but certainly not trust. And the Iraqi air force (what still exists of it) is kept apart from the other services. All this is done to prevent coup attempts or the development of alternative bases of power. Saddam's system is "divide and rule" at every level. It makes for successful domestic tyranny, but it isn't much good for post-modern warfighting. America's troops, on the other hand, train together at every level. Oh, there's no lack of friction. We're all human. In peacetime, you'll hear officers and men from one service bitching about the other guys. But once the shooting starts, the sense that we're all Americans and all in the fight together takes over. That Marine heading north of Basra knows that, if there are no Marine aircraft in the sky when he needs support, he can call on our Air Force - and the enemy positions will erupt in flame as soon as the fast-movers can divert to the target. The trooper from the 7th Cav crossing the Euphrates River and heading for Baghdad knows that, if the Army's attack helicopters are busy elsewhere, any Navy ground-attack aviation in the area is ready to help him out. And a downed pilot knows that every service will move heaven and earth to rescue him. Famously, we even bring back our dead. But the quality of unstinting cooperation between the living keeps our casualties to a minimum. Naturally, our attention is riveted by battlefield events, by the speed and precision with which our forces are striking. But those successes would be impossible without the enormous support networks in the rear. It's impossible to describe adequately how much skill and effort is required just to "deconflict" the skies, to keep aircraft safe not only from enemy fire but from one another, to keep them out of the fans of our artillery fire, and to insure they know where our troops are moving on the ground - and where special operations teams are active. And that's just one aspect of an overall effort so complex that it has no like in any other human endeavor. Armchair generals make fun of the REMFs (sorry, folks - can't explain that acronym in a family newspaper), the support troops behind the tip of the spear, but every tanker wants his fuel to come up on time. Every commander wants his communications to work without interruption. And every soldier wants a reliable MEDEVAC system backing him up. We cherish the individual hero, but it's the great, cooperative system that brings us victory. The couch commandos complain about our "tooth-to- tail ratio," the high proportion of support troops to the much-lower number of soldiers actually shooting at the enemy. But it is exactly that powerful system of support and services that enables our combat troops to fight so effectively and with casualty rates that are astonishingly low by historical standards. You cannot measure our military against any other force in history. We're simply too different for comparisons. You can only judge us by our success. The way we handle information supercharges all this cooperation. We and the Iraqis agree that information is power. But we enhance that power by sharing information wherever and whenever it's needed. The Iraqi approach is to hoard available information as if sharing it would dissipate its strength. And our information, from our rates of fuel consumption to the most critical intelligence, is reliable. We are a fact-based society and military, facing an opponent who relies on lies, myths and rumors. Our approach enables us to bring precisely the right tools to bear at the right time. In his first briefing of this war, Gen. Tommy Franks stressed how each of the services might appear to lead the effort at different times and how our plans exploit our institutional flexibility. We can react to war's surprises or opportunities in hours or even minutes, while our opponents require days or weeks - if they can react at all. This openness to innovative solutions goes all the way down to the individual soldier. The initiative of our sergeants and lieutenants on the battlefield is justly famous. But that spirit of initiative also inspires battle staffs, logistics headquarters - and even the young private in the maintenance section repairing a vehicle during our charge across Iraq. A decade ago, one of our country's most courageous intellectuals, Samuel P. Huntington, wrote a controversial essay called "The Clash of Civilizations," suggesting that some measure of conflict was inevitable between the West and its failed rivals. Many will argue that the current war is a clash of civilizations. Whether or not this is so, we are certainly seeing a contest of military cultures. And we need not doubt which side will win. Ralph Peters is a retired military officer and strategist. Under the pen name "Owen Parry" he writes a series of novels about America's Civil war.