One recurring problem with military planning is "planning for the last war." This has gone on for a long time. In the years leading up to WWII, many of our generals were interested in weapons needed for trench warfare like they fought in WWI. Similiarly, we weren't prepared for the type of fighting encountered in Korea or Vietnam. Fortunately, the weapons we bought to hold off the Soviets in the Fulda Gap worked well in the Gulf War. However, I remember reading articles suggesting that our invasion of Panama proved we no longer needed heavy armor forces. Those articles were written just a few months before Iraq invaded Kuwait.

Currently, most projections are that this will be a Special Forces war. If true, we don't need all of those Navy ships and Army divisions. However, if the war degenerates into a general ground action, then we're in trouble.

Some people seem to forget that it took several months to move all of the troops, planes, and equipment to the Gulf during Desert Shield. That's with the benefit of safe ports in friendly territory to off-load heavy equipment like tanks. We don't have safe ports in friendly areas to fight a ground war in Afghanistan. You'd have a very hard time trying to fly in the tanks for one simple reason: they're damned heavy at about 63 tons each. A C-17 can only carry one M-1 tank at a time. A C-5 could carry two M-1 tanks if you're willing to take off with a reduced fuel load and depend on aerial refueling to reach your destination. Even then, you need an airbase near the area of operations, something we don't currently have.

Of course, there's always the problem of what will happen next. Will we see articles saying that the war on terrorism proved we only need Special Operations forces, so we can gut the Army and Marines of their armored units? Probably. As Yogi Bera and Niels Bohr both pointed out, predictions are difficult, especially about the future.