WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 (UPI) -- Two of the greatest generals in U.S. history won their greatest battles because they were out of touch with their headquarters or refused to be reined in by them.

The long, bloody stalemate in the U.S. Civil War that cost 650,000 lives out of a total population of only 30 million did not end until Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman and his Army of the West cut loose its telegraph communications with Washington and drove its way across Georgia and the Carolinas, breaking the back of Confederate resistance at long last.

In World War II, Gen. George S. Patton, easily the greatest tank commander among the Western Allies, repeatedly complained that over-cautious commanders at headquarters far back were trying to rein in his hard-charging Third Army as it drove spectacularly across Europe from Normandy to the outskirts of Prague.

And even in the German army, the early dazzling victories of Panzer Gen. "Hurrying Heinz" Guderian across Poland, France and Russia were eventually halted and ended by Adolf Hitler's obsessive caution.

Yet the assumption of the Future Combat Systems program, now being developed by the U.S. Army and other U.S. forces at a cost of at least $200 billion is that if an integrated, reliable software that can function well amid the stress of battle in real time can be created, the enhanced control from the center that it offers will make future wars far easier to win.