Airbornelawyer
12-21-2004, 13:55
"You go to war with the Army you have"
Secretary Rumsfeld got a lot of grief for this frank and frankly accurate assessment. By leaving out the context of his remarks, he was effectively accused of callousness and arrogance.
But an even greater context was left out, which is the fact that the Army we have is not the Army we had in 2001, and the Army we will have in 2005, 2006 and further ahead will not be the same Army we have today.
Contrary to the implications of those who cite that Rumsfeld quote, the Army has not remained locked in a pre-9-11 and pre-war mindset. Rather, the Army has undergone and is undergoing a fundamental transformation at all levels. Rumsfeld's Pentagon has not blithely stood by.
Many critics, including members of Congress, focus on the "refusal" of the Pentagon to increase the size of the Army, failing to note that the end strength of the services is set by Congress, not the Pentagon, and Congress has shown little interest in funding an increase in Army strength. In this climate, the Pentagon has sought to transform the Army we have.
Some of these measures have aroused controversy themselves, such as stop-losses and IRR activations. Others have their positive and negative effects. But it is inaccurate if not disingenuous to accuse the Pentagon of callously ignoring the issue.
The following are just a few of the things that have been undertaken over the past few years: Greater integration of the National Guard into the war plan. For fifty years, since the Korean War, outside of combat support and combat service support units, the National Guard had little expectation of being called up for combat. In Vietnam a political decision was made to rely on active forces. In Desert Storm, the reserve components played a major role, but in the support field. The only major National Guard combat unit to be called up never left the United States. By the late 1990s, the National Guard had begun to be viewed as a backfill force – Guard units could be sent to peacekeeping missions like MFO in the Sinai and SFOR in Bosnia, freeing up active units for "real" missions.
Post 9-11, the transformation has gone much further. While this backfilling role remains, and has been combined with homeland security missions, Guard and Reserve units are also actively on the forefront of battle. The 19th and 20th Special Forces Groups, the infantry battalions of Florida's 53rd Infantry Brigade, North Carolina's 30th Brigade, the 81st Armored Brigade from Washington, and many other units have deployed to and fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. Cancellation of Cold War legacies. The Army was forced to cancel or curtail a number of high profile weapons systems, including the Crusader self-propelled howitzer and the Comanche light attack/scout helicopter. There are meritorious arguments on both sides to be made with regard to these and similar systems, but priorities needed to be set and decisions made. Changing the soldier's attitude. As a young officer in the mid-1990s, driving down Lumpkin Road outside Fort Benning, I would pass a little strip mall where an Army recruiting station was located. They had a banner hanging outside which stated "The Army: We're Still Hiring!" Army recruiting ads emphasized what you could get out of the Army – skill training, college money, etc. – a marked contrast to Marine Corps ads which tried to send the prospective recruit the message "prove to us why you think we should take you."
Once in the Army, the message seemed to be reinforced. Training in combat skills was not emphasized for soldiers in non-combat units. This came to a head in early 2003 when a maintenance unit found itself ambushed behind enemy lines. Many soldiers panicked and froze, others found that their weapons did not work due to improper maintenance, while others fought bravely. But the unit failed.
The Army's response to this incident and related concerns has been top-to-bottom. Rumsfeld went out of the hierarchy of senior generals and pulled an experienced special operator out of retirement to lead the effort to re-instill the warrior ethos. The Army has begun to revamp its leadership training to emphasize that you are a soldier first and your MOS second. As an interim measure, junior officers go to combat training courses run by the Infantry School before reporting to their regular branch officer's basic course. Convoy reaction drills, including live-fire exercises, have become a standard part of the curriculum for support troop training. Transforming the Army's structure. The Army that went into Iraq in February 2003 – the army we had when we went to war – on the outside looked similar to the Army that cut through Iraq in 1991: divisions with three maneuver brigades and a long logistics tail. But under the surface, a transformation had already begun that allowed brigades and smaller units to act more independently and deliver more combat power than their larger predecessors. The brigades of 2003 were more lethal than the divisions of 1991.
Now, an even more dramatic transformation is taking place, one that may see the disappearance of the division and the brigade. Gen. Schoomaker's warrior ethos is intended to get more fight out of the fighters. The Army's transformation into UAs and the like is intended to get more fighters within the constraint of the Army's authorized strength, by reducing the tail to beef up the teeth. It is the most fundamental transformation of the Army since World War Two.
This is just a small part of what is going on, and an honest debate on what more needs to be done may be necessary. But what we are getting the in media-led feeding frenzy on autopens and armored HMMWVs is not this debate.
Secretary Rumsfeld got a lot of grief for this frank and frankly accurate assessment. By leaving out the context of his remarks, he was effectively accused of callousness and arrogance.
But an even greater context was left out, which is the fact that the Army we have is not the Army we had in 2001, and the Army we will have in 2005, 2006 and further ahead will not be the same Army we have today.
Contrary to the implications of those who cite that Rumsfeld quote, the Army has not remained locked in a pre-9-11 and pre-war mindset. Rather, the Army has undergone and is undergoing a fundamental transformation at all levels. Rumsfeld's Pentagon has not blithely stood by.
Many critics, including members of Congress, focus on the "refusal" of the Pentagon to increase the size of the Army, failing to note that the end strength of the services is set by Congress, not the Pentagon, and Congress has shown little interest in funding an increase in Army strength. In this climate, the Pentagon has sought to transform the Army we have.
Some of these measures have aroused controversy themselves, such as stop-losses and IRR activations. Others have their positive and negative effects. But it is inaccurate if not disingenuous to accuse the Pentagon of callously ignoring the issue.
The following are just a few of the things that have been undertaken over the past few years: Greater integration of the National Guard into the war plan. For fifty years, since the Korean War, outside of combat support and combat service support units, the National Guard had little expectation of being called up for combat. In Vietnam a political decision was made to rely on active forces. In Desert Storm, the reserve components played a major role, but in the support field. The only major National Guard combat unit to be called up never left the United States. By the late 1990s, the National Guard had begun to be viewed as a backfill force – Guard units could be sent to peacekeeping missions like MFO in the Sinai and SFOR in Bosnia, freeing up active units for "real" missions.
Post 9-11, the transformation has gone much further. While this backfilling role remains, and has been combined with homeland security missions, Guard and Reserve units are also actively on the forefront of battle. The 19th and 20th Special Forces Groups, the infantry battalions of Florida's 53rd Infantry Brigade, North Carolina's 30th Brigade, the 81st Armored Brigade from Washington, and many other units have deployed to and fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. Cancellation of Cold War legacies. The Army was forced to cancel or curtail a number of high profile weapons systems, including the Crusader self-propelled howitzer and the Comanche light attack/scout helicopter. There are meritorious arguments on both sides to be made with regard to these and similar systems, but priorities needed to be set and decisions made. Changing the soldier's attitude. As a young officer in the mid-1990s, driving down Lumpkin Road outside Fort Benning, I would pass a little strip mall where an Army recruiting station was located. They had a banner hanging outside which stated "The Army: We're Still Hiring!" Army recruiting ads emphasized what you could get out of the Army – skill training, college money, etc. – a marked contrast to Marine Corps ads which tried to send the prospective recruit the message "prove to us why you think we should take you."
Once in the Army, the message seemed to be reinforced. Training in combat skills was not emphasized for soldiers in non-combat units. This came to a head in early 2003 when a maintenance unit found itself ambushed behind enemy lines. Many soldiers panicked and froze, others found that their weapons did not work due to improper maintenance, while others fought bravely. But the unit failed.
The Army's response to this incident and related concerns has been top-to-bottom. Rumsfeld went out of the hierarchy of senior generals and pulled an experienced special operator out of retirement to lead the effort to re-instill the warrior ethos. The Army has begun to revamp its leadership training to emphasize that you are a soldier first and your MOS second. As an interim measure, junior officers go to combat training courses run by the Infantry School before reporting to their regular branch officer's basic course. Convoy reaction drills, including live-fire exercises, have become a standard part of the curriculum for support troop training. Transforming the Army's structure. The Army that went into Iraq in February 2003 – the army we had when we went to war – on the outside looked similar to the Army that cut through Iraq in 1991: divisions with three maneuver brigades and a long logistics tail. But under the surface, a transformation had already begun that allowed brigades and smaller units to act more independently and deliver more combat power than their larger predecessors. The brigades of 2003 were more lethal than the divisions of 1991.
Now, an even more dramatic transformation is taking place, one that may see the disappearance of the division and the brigade. Gen. Schoomaker's warrior ethos is intended to get more fight out of the fighters. The Army's transformation into UAs and the like is intended to get more fighters within the constraint of the Army's authorized strength, by reducing the tail to beef up the teeth. It is the most fundamental transformation of the Army since World War Two.
This is just a small part of what is going on, and an honest debate on what more needs to be done may be necessary. But what we are getting the in media-led feeding frenzy on autopens and armored HMMWVs is not this debate.