text:
Bruce R. Nardulli and Thomas L. McNaugher
The Army faces the clear challenge of becoming more rapidly deployable
without sacrificing survivability and lethality. The transformed
organization must retain the survivability, lethality, and tactical
mobility of heavy forces and the agility and deployability of light forces.1
The Army has launched a major effort to transform itself and the way it
conducts land operations. Officials regard the endeavor as the "most
significant and comprehensive effort to change this Army in a century,"
one that will "revolutionize land-power capabilities."2
The goal is a ground force that is more rapidly deployable and tactically
agile than, but as survivable and lethal as, today's heavy forces. It will
be a "full spectrum" force, dominant not only in war but also, with
minimal modification, in peacekeeping, humanitarian intervention, and
disaster assistance operations. The centerpiece of the fully transformed
Army would be the Objective Force, a ground force that would bear little
physical or operational resemblance to today's Army. But long before the
Objective Force takes shape, the Army will begin to incorporate interim
brigade combat teams (IBCTs) equipped with light armored vehicles and
adapted to new tactics. Army transformation thus aims to make change very
rapidly, even while establishing the basis for more dramatic change over
the longer term.
Post-Cold War strategic realities, notably the emergence of a broad
array of missions in unpredictable locales, make transformation necessary.
Change is made possible by new technologies, especially information
technologies that promise to allow greater situation awareness, more
precise fires, and more distributed, nonlinear operations. The new
technologies were producing change even in the Cold War Army. The demands
of the new strategic setting add new dimensions to the transformation in
areas such as mobility and agility.
Like any other ambitious endeavor, transformation faces sizable risks.
These perils usually are defined largely in technological terms, many of
which are inherent in the Army vision of its future. Moreover, almost
every risk has a technological dimension to it. But the risks here run
well beyond those associated with technology. Can the Army find and train
people—followers as well as leaders—able to fight the distributed,
nonlinear, all-arms warfare it envisions? An even larger risk stems from
the steady elimination of a margin for error, ambiguity, or uncertainty.
Paring away armor to reduce weight shifts the burden of force protection
increasingly to information. Given what is available today in the way of
light antiarmor weaponry, the need for situation awareness is dauntingly
Another risk is that the strategic factors driving Army transformation
will evolve unfavorably over the years in which the Army hopes to
implement transformation. What if a Cold War-like set of strategic
circumstances—a more geographically focused, heavily armored threat—were
to reemerge over the next 20 years? Further compounding the complexity are
the uncertainties surrounding the unfolding war on terrorism and the Army
role in it, both in waging offensive operations against terrorists and
their sponsors and in the evolving area of homeland defense.
These risks compel the Army to move cautiously, relying on extensive
experimentation and employing significant hedges against full or partial
failure. If transformation is carried forward properly, however, even a
partial failure—measured against the Army's very high standards of
success—is likely to yield more effective ground forces. With this
perspective in mind, this chapter will examine the proposed Army
transformation and the opportunities and hurdles that lie ahead.
The chapter begins by outlining why transformation is necessary. It
then touches upon key enabling technologies, most notably the array of
information systems and networks underpinning the envisioned
transformation. We next describe the Army's three-pronged approach to
transformation, which provides for an Interim Force on the way to the
futuristic Objective Force, while maintaining and modernizing the present
Legacy Force. Issues crucial to the Army transformation—its organization
and doctrine as well as its technology—are explored, as are options for
transformation if conditions differ from present-day projections. These
options include both evolutionary and "leap-ahead" alternatives. Finally,
we outline the implications of the war on terrorism for U.S. military
missions and hence for demands on the Army.
Why Transform the U.S. Army?
Even before the Cold War ended, the Army was realizing that the
information revolution promised potentially radical improvements in the
effectiveness of ground forces, as well as significant changes in their
organization. The Soviet Union first called attention to this issue in the
1970s with discussion in military journals of what it called the
military technical revolution. By the 1980s, the label had been
altered in the United States to the revolution in military affairs,
but the core theme remained the same: given what the information
revolution was doing to commercial firms, surely it could work radical
change in military forces. The air services saw ways to exploit the new
technology to produce greater precision in air-to-air and air-to-ground
firepower while managing more complex air operations. Army officers also
sought advances in precision. In addition, watching commercial firms
eliminate layers of management, the Army also had cause to wonder whether
information technologies might not portend significant alterations in the
traditional combat hierarchy as well.3
In this sense, the strands of today's Army transformation reach well
back into the Cold War. The artillery branch, for example, exploits
satellites and electronics to use the global positioning system to lay in
its artillery pieces and to add speed and precision to aiming artillery
tubes (this was the role of the Tactical Artillery Fire Control [TACFIRE]
system). Information technologies have been used to improve the accuracy
and rate of fire of the M-1 tank. In the early 1990s, the Army inaugurated
Force XXI, an effort to use communication technologies to create a more
distributed, networked ground force armed not only with more precise
fires, but also with much better intelligence on the position of its own
as well as enemy forces. The 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized) at Fort
Hood, Texas, has served as an experimental testbed for these new
technologies and concepts, which are also referred to as digitization. The
4th Division became the Army's first fully digitized division in 2001.4
While one stimulus for transformation arose from technological trends
rooted in the Cold War era, a second set of forces rose out of the Army's
post-Cold War experience. The stable paradigm of large-scale,
high-intensity conflict with the Soviet Union gave way in the 1990s to a
series of diverse operations in disparate locations. These ranged from
heavy armor operations in the Persian Gulf War to rapid lighter
interventions in Haiti and Panama, to humanitarian intervention and urban
warfare in Somalia, ýnd then to peace enforcement in the Balkans. War
remained a possibility; indeed, throughout the 1990s, the Nation asked all
of the services to be ready to fight two major theater wars
simultaneously. But most deployments the Army experienced in the 1990s
were smaller-scale contingencies.5
This new and broader menu of missions called, first, for a
full-spectrum force, one as capable of performing operations other than
war (OOTW) as of fighting war itself. The difference in force requirements
is not trivial. While there are technologies, operational concepts, and
organizational functions that span both domains, there are also
substantial differences, as the Army has discovered in trying to
accommodate a steady diet of OOTW while retaining the strength and skill
for major high-intensity combat. In particular, it has discovered that
while it is already a full-spectrum force in terms of having the
capabilities needed for a diverse array of OOTW located somewhere in the
warfighting structure, these capabilities do not readily emerge from that
structure, and their use in OOTW can impose a heavy burden on the
warfighting force.6
Conversely, the Army has discovered that forces well designed and prepared
for wartime operations can find themselves deficient in OOTW.7
The Army's experience in the 1990s also revealed a need for much
improved strategic responsiveness. In sharp contrast to the geographic
focus of the Cold War experience, which allowed for massive prepositioning
of units, equipment, and supplies in Europe and Northeast Asia, the
post-Cold War Army must be able to deploy rapidly around the world. This
requirement favors a lighter force, hence the goal of an Objective Force
featuring a family of vehicles all considerably lighter than the M-1 tank
(65-70 tons) or the M-2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle (roughly 32 tons).8
Given that so much of what the Army takes on an operation consists of
fuel, ammunition, and spare parts, however, strategic responsiveness also
demands reduced logistics requirements for future Army forces. The stated
goal of Army transformation, achievable or not, is the ability to deliver
a brigade anywhere in the world 96 hours after "wheels up," a division
within 120 hours, and a full corps within 30 days.
Responsiveness is, however, more than a matter of delivering forces to
a theater rapidly. It includes the ability to move about the region once
there. In regions with very poor infrastructure, M-1 tanks may become
nothing more than expensive bunkers. Thus, even if the Army were able to
preposition equipment and supplies for its heavy forces in key locations
around the world, it would still need a lighter, more mobile force in many
tactical situations.
A final component of strategic responsiveness has to do with the
organization itself. Armies geared to fight big wars generally tend to be
organized around relatively large components. Combined with the Nation's
seeming aversion to casualties and the Army's own post-Vietnam desire to
mass forces for decisive operations, this organizational feature has often
seemed to prevent the Army from offering the President and the Secretary
of Defense a wide range of ground options in contingencies. When advising
senior military and civilian leadership on possible ground options during
the 1999 Kosovo conflict, for example, Army leaders appeared to offer only
very large ground force alternatives involving multiple divisions and
requiring months of preparation. Whatever the military merit of these
alternatives, they were not palatable politically. The Army risked being
viewed, rightly or wrongly, as unwieldy and inflexible, and thus
The need for greater strategic responsiveness was recognized during the
Clinton administration and has also been adopted by the Bush
administration. The terms of reference of Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld's Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) 2001 note the importance of
broadening the range of military options available to the President.9
They call for enhancing the employability and deployability of U.S.
forces, extending their reach, and minimizing their deployed footprint.
They identify a need for forces that are "lighter, more lethal and
maneuverable, survivable, and more readily deployed and employed in an
integrated fashion."10
Although these phrases apply to all U.S. military forces, they have
obvious significance to the Nation's ground forces.
The demands for change emanating from the Army's 1990s experience mesh
with the technological impetus for change. A heavy tank force is also able
to exploit the information revolution to achieve greater effectiveness;
such is the case with the 4th Infantry Division. But as the Army seeks
lighter vehicles, the premium on good information rises sharply. Armor is,
in effect, an insurance policy against ignorance of the enemy's location
and weaponry. Short of truly miraculous improvements in the stopping power
of light armor, future Army vehicles will lack that insurance policy as
they advance into enemy forces likely to be armed with a growing
assortment of readily available antiarmor munitions. They will have to
know where the enemy is to a degree that heavy forces would like but do
not require. It will be even more crucial for them to be able to take the
enemy on at a distance and with lethal precision.
Getting There from Here: Key Enabling Technologies
General Eric Shinseki's "transformation speech" on October 12, 1999,
focused attention mainly on medium-weight vehicles. Since then, a major
competition among off-the-shelf candidates for the Army's interim armored
vehicle has reinforced this focus while drawing attention to the
underlying wheeled-versus-tracked debate that is roughly as old as
motorized vehicles. Yet clearly at the core of the Army's transformation
are information technologies, with which the Army had begun to experiment
well before October 1999, notably in Force XXI and the digitization
program. Presumably the fruits of that effort can be transferred, in whole
or in part, to the Interim and Objective Forces of the future. Army
transformation will stand or fall mainly on its success in exploiting
information technologies.
The technological challenges in this area are daunting. The ground
environment has always been less forgiving to complicated devices than the
air or sea. Hence the Army has found it more difficult than its sister
services to pack electronic components into its platforms. Nonetheless,
the effort continues to equip future Army forces with new and better
capabilities, including greatly improved situation awareness, enhanced
command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance,
and reconnaissance (C4ISR), and expanded use of robotics.
The objective of greatly improved situation awareness is to have
ready access to a wide scope of information relevant to ongoing Army
operations, from initial deployment to reception in the theater to
engagement and sustainment of the deployed forces. In particular, the
ability to have real-time information and shared displays on the
disposition of friendly and enemy forces—the common operational
picture—should allow the Army to engage enemy units more effectively. This
in turn holds out the prospect that physically lighter Army forces can
retain high lethality and survivability against heavier enemy forces, and
thus it directly contributes to the Army's strategic responsiveness.11
This information is also essential to driving down logistics requirements,
which for many heavy units make up about 80 percent of the Army's
strategic lift requirement.12
C4ISR must be enhanced. ýundamental to future force
survivability and lethality is the ability to see and hit enemy forces
before they can engage lighter U.S. units. The Army concept for doing so
calls for a highly networked system of sensors and communications
permitting rapid direct and indirect fires. Improving the speed, quality,
and reliability of sensor-to-shooter links is essential to minimizing the
time between target identification and engagement by direct or indirect
fires, using Army or other joint service assets. Likewise, networked fires
allow strikes in quicker succession, over increasingly wide areas, and
against more dispersed targets. All these capabilities should contribute
to the combat effectiveness of a much lighter U.S. Army against a heavier
and perhaps larger enemy ground force.
Army officials envision a significantly expanded role for robotics at
various levels of sophistication to reduce both casualties and the need
for extensive logistics support. On the high end in this realm are largely
autonomous unmanned ground vehicles that can locate and engage targets.13
Less futuristic are robotic vehicles that can be directed by manned
command vehicles to perform various tasks.
How far the Army can exploit information technologies—and in
particular, whether it can achieve the extremely high levels of situation
awareness some senior officers expect—remains an item for speculation. The
key hedge against failure in the information realm is improved armor or
better active protection systems, such as sensors that see an antiarmor
munition in flight toward the vehicle and activate some mechanism to kill
it before it hits (ideally, without also endangering friendly soldiers
nearby). Improved armor includes an array of composite and self-repairing,
self-strengthening "smart" armors now in laboratory development. Some
combination of enhanced situation awareness and enhanced vehicular
protection presumably can yield an acceptable overall level of
Reducing the logistics footprint of deployed Army forces calls for
advances in a range of technological areas. The Army speaks of
"ultra-reliability" in its machinery, for example. Success in this area
would involve not only the development of new technologies but also a
willingness—rarely seen in Cold War-era weapon development projects—to
sacrifice performance goals for greater reliability. Developing munitions
of smaller caliber could cut the physical size of ammunition deliveries
substantially, while greater accuracy could reduce the numbers required
for success. New engine technologies could reduce fuel consumption or, in
the more distant future, totally change the kind of fuel required. One
promising technology is fuel cells producing water as a byproduct,
allowing the Army to reduce water supplies to its deployed units.
Given that so much of the Army emphasis is on rapid deployment, the
future of long-distance transportation technology is relevant as well. The
service emphasis on exploiting technology to reduce the weight of any
deploying force is partly driven by the limits of technology in making
advances in long-distance transportation, especially in airlift. There is
little indication of any pending revolution over the next few decades in
the ability to move great weights long distances rapidly by air. While
some promising uses of technology are in the works for improving airlift
capacity, such as heavy-lift dirigibles, the mainstay of long-distance
deployment by air will remain traditional fixed-wing transport aircraft.
Substantial improvements undoubtedly will be made in avionics, durability,
engine efficiencies, and overall supportability, but the strategic and
tactical airlift fleet of 2025, in terms of raw lift per aircraft, will
not be significantly different from today's.14
Fast sealift technologies continue to demonstrate prospects for
incremental increases in speed. Far less sensitive to weight and
dimensional restrictions than aircraft (barring a truly revolutionary
breakthrough in airlift), sealift will remain the principal mode of
strategic deployment for most Army units, whether they be Legacy, Interim,
or Objective Forces.
The risks here are obvious. Ground forces are not well adapted for
rapid and dramatic technological advances; ground warfare is too complex
and unfolds in too unforgiving an environment to permit leaps into the
technological unknown. Yet the proposed Army transformation depends on
significant advances in a staggeringly wide array of technological realms.
To be sure, advances across the whole array are not essential for
progress. But the reduction in armored protection and the need for
strategic responsiveness nonetheless create huge demands for significant
improvements in today's accepted performance.
The Plan for Transformation
The Army's specific roadmap for transformation is captured in the
trident chart (figure 4-1) that has become familiar since Chief of Staff
General Shinseki launched formal transformation in October 1999. The three
prongs on this chart—Legacy Force, Interim Force, and Objective Force—seem
redundant unless the risks inherent in achieving the Objective Force are
appreciated. Backups and hedges are essential, and if they are pursued
properly, a variety of transformation outcomes could yield improved ground
The three prongs serve different purposes and offer different backups.
The Interim Force is a near-term effort to produce lighter and more mobile
brigades and divisions. It is meant above all to solve an operational
shortfall that was exposed when the 82d Airborne Division deployed to
Saudi Arabia in 1990, days after Iraqi heavy forces invaded Kuwait. The
inability of these airborne units to do much against the heavier Iraqi
armored forces highlighted the Army's lack of a force that was both
rapidly deployable and sufficiently survivable and lethal to engage
heavier opposing forces successfully. Creation of the Interim Force also
gives the Army a vehicle for experimenting with lighter and more networked
capabilities. These new units could, if successful operationally, also
help create a constituency within the Army for medium-weight units.
The Objective Force is the force of the distant future, the end product
of long-term research and development efforts meant to culminate in
radically improved Army effectiveness and responsiveness. As such, it is
the most dependent of the three forces upon advances in science and
technology and the ability to incorporate these new technologies into the
force. The Objective Force is to be based on a class of completely new
platforms, collectively known as the Future Combat Systems, which are to
weigh 20 tons or less. Initial elements of the Objective Force are
currently scheduled to enter the force by 2010, with the entire Army
converted by about 2032.
The Legacy Force consists primarily of the Army's current heavy armored
and mechanized divisions, modernized at some level to retain their
effectiveness. This part of the transforming Army will remain essential
for missions where heavy forces can dominate. It will also serve to ensure
against an uncertain future in which threats may materialize that require
the range and depth of capabilities contained in the heavy forces. Like
the IBCTs, elements of the heavy force can be used to test various
advanced technologies and concepts in support of the longer term
transformation, most notably digitization. The Legacy Force also serves as
a hedge against setbacks in aggressive Army transformation efforts;
maintaining this force is a way to mitigate the many risks the push toward
the Objective Force entails.
In sum, the Army transformation plan pursues all three prongs as the
means to balance current and near-term risks against future risks. The
risks to be balanced are multidimensional: risks due to uncertainty about
the future strategic environment, technology risks associated with the
transformation, and institutional risks of pushing the Army too fast or in
too many directions during the transformation process. The Army
transformation does not fall neatly into either of the two dominant
schools described in chapter 3 about transformation strategies. The
Objective Force and the envisioned end-state of the full transformation
embody truly revolutionary military change, but the overall process is
much more evolutionary in nature. By adopting the three-pronged approach
to transformation, the Army has in fact embraced a mixed strategy.
What follows is a detailed examination of the three forces to reveal
the relative scale of the technologies and risks involved, their
implications for long-term risk management and force tradeoffs, and how
the Army intends to straddle the evolutionary/revolutionary transformation
The Interim Force
The Interim Force is intended to be a full-spectrum combat force
consisting of medium-weight brigades, known as Interim Brigade Combat
Teams (IBCTs). Embedded within division structures, the teams are designed
to complement the capabilities of existing light and mechanized forces.
Although optimized for small-scale contingencies, these brigades are
expected to be employed across a range of military operations, from
conducting stability and support operations to participating in major
theater war as a subordinate maneuver element of heavier forces. The
force's principal operational attribute is its high operational and
tactical mobility.15
The IBCTs are designed to have several core qualities. In addition to
being C-130-transportable and full-spectrum-capable, they must also be
able to operate in environments with very limited infrastructure. The
IBCTs should not require major air/sea ports of debarkation and are not
intended to need much time and resources for reception, staging, onward
movement, and integration.16They
are designed to be ready for operations, including combat, almost
immediately after arriving. These highly mobile forces must also be
capable of moving long distances rapidly. The intent is to have them
organized to deploy with a minimal logistics footprint, carrying enough
supplies for 3 days of operations without outside support.17
To keep the IBCT footprint small, they are to rely on division and higher
echelons for additional capabilities from outside the operational area,
such as intelligence and indirect fire support. Robust, advanced C4ISR
systems are therefore needed to ensure that they have the full range of
necessary capabilities.
The interim armored vehicle (IAV) is a light wheeled vehicle that will
come in two variants, a mobile gun system and an infantry carrier, and is
intended to be the Interim Force's primary combat platform. The IAV is
based on existing light armored vehicles modified with advanced digital
communications and information enhancements, many of which will be
upgrades based on relatively mature technologies. The Army is currently
planning to fund six to eight IBCTs; the first is being organized at Fort
Lewis, Washington.18
The first IBCT is scheduled to be fully fielded in spring 2003 and to
reach full operational capability in 2005.19
Between 2,131 and 2,791 IAVs will be needed to equip the IBCTs (depending
upon the number of teams actually fielded).20
As currently organized, the IBCT is infantry-heavy and will have a
combined arms capability at the battalion and company level. This
structure is intended to give the teams a greater range of operational
capabilities at the brigade level. The IBCTs also will reduce the need to
pull together a task force from different units on short notice, which can
slow deployment, add time to achieving full operational capability in the
field, increase the size of the deploying force, and reduce force
effectiveness by losing unit cohesion. Integrating a combined arms
capability at these lower echelons is also meant to provide the IBCT with
enhanced combat power. The team's heavy infantry orientation is best
suited for military activities, whether peacekeeping or combat operations,
in terrain where dismounted infantry will be in especially high demand.
Three motorized combined arms infantry battalions are the major IBCT
fighting components. Other elements include the reconnaissance,
surveillance, and target acquisition (RSTA) squadron, an anti-tank
company, an artillery battalion, a brigade support battalion, engineering,
military intelligence and signal companies, and the brigade headquarters
and headquarters company.21
IBCTs will rely greatly on situational understanding, provided by the
RSTA squadron, to compensate for their lack of heavy armor protection. For
example, the organic artillery battalion of the IBCT would be expected to
conduct counterbattery fire before the enemy shoots, based on RSTA
squadron targeting information. Thus, its information flows will be
essential to survivability of the medium-weight brigades.
The RSTA squadron is responsible for the traditional roles of
reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition, with a much greater
emphasis on precision and speed in conducting these roles. It is also
intended to provide a much broader situational understanding of the
overall operational environment, including not just military but also
political, cultural, economic, and other information relevant to the
operation. With information and mobility, augmented by RSTA and
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets, the IBCT will be
able to conduct dispersed, nonlinear operations with its units, even
though individual tactical engagements may be widely separated
geographically (a typical IBCT area of operations will be 50 square kilometers).22
Operating in the smaller-scale contingencies for which they are
optimized, the IBCTs are expected to require little or no augmentation
from higher echelons. Augmentations will likely be required for other
roles, especially for major theater war-like high-intensity combat, in
which the IBCT may require additional nonorganic assets such as lift and
attack helicopter assets, more artillery, and air defense. Any significant
augmentation would increase the amount of time a team would need to
deploy. Although IBCTs are designed principally to fill the near-term
light-heavy gap, they will also help explore innovative doctrine and
organization employing medium-weight forces. As such, the IBCTs are
envisioned as "the vanguard of the future Objective Force."23
The Objective Force
The Objective Force is built around the Future Combat Systems (FCS), a
family of vehicles that will weigh 16 to 20 tons and will be sized to be
transportable within the C-130 or similar aircraft. If fully realized, the
Objective Force is meant to provide the Army with the ability to deploy a
combat-capable brigade anywhere in the world in 96 hours, a division in
120 hours, and 5 divisions in 30 days. As they are characterized by senior
Army leadership, "Forces equipped with FCS will network fires and maneuver
in direct combat, deliver direct and indirect fires, perform intelligence,
surveillance, and reconnaissance functions, and transport soldiers and material."24
ühe FCS is envisioned as a system of systems in which manned command
and control vehicles are networked with many unmanned reconnaissance
assets and platforms delivering weapons. This networked group of systems
is intended to perform as a combined arms team. Manned vehicles would
perform many combat operations from concealed positions, reducing their
exposure to enemy fires and direct engagements and helping these light FCS
platforms survive on the modern battlefield. Superior sensors and networks
would provide the means to locate and track targets from these more
concealed positions. Robotic vehicles operating as necessary in more
exposed areas could fill requirements for line-of-sight capability.25
Advanced composite armor and active protection systems, including a
variety of sensors to detect and rapidly engage incoming weapons, enhance
vehicle and crew survivability, as do a variety of low-observable
(stealth) characteristics built into the platforms.26
The Army's investment in science and technology for the Objective Force
aims to resolve several challenges posed by the FCS concept:
Overcoming these challenges depends heavily on solving the networking
of all the system elements and ensuring that the network has the capacity,
security, and versatility to provide necessary linkages throughout the
area of operations. FCS network capabilities go beyond those envisaged for
the current Army Battle Command System. The network must be capable of
integrating numerous remote ground and aerial sensors, maneuvering robotic
systems, and controlling and directing both direct fire and
beyond-line-of-sight weapon systems, and it must be able to do so on a
highly mobile battlefield. The architecture and protocols for such a
system are presently underdeveloped. In addition, there are challenging
issues involving the availability and management of the necessary
bandwidth for the network. This networking has been identified as one of
the major technical hurdles in implementing the FCS concept.27
The FCS concept also envisions direct and indirect fires coming from
the same platform, using modular ammunition. One design concept is for
missiles to be vertically launched from boxes carried onboard robotic
indirect-fire platforms and capable of using different types of munitions.
Current operational concepts rely heavily on networked fires to destroy
targets from beyond line of sight as a means to combine high lethality
with the concealment that improves survivability. But line-of-sight fires
will still be needed for close engagements. Advanced cannon designs are
being explored for the FCS that would have the lethality of the Abrams
120-millimeter gun but use a smaller gun to fit on the 20-ton platform. By
incorporating both indirect and direct fires into the FCS, the platforms
should be capable of delivering ordnance up to 50 kilometers.28
According to Army plans, the initial FCS will incorporate the most
advanced capabilities feasible, and later upgrades will incorporate
additional assets as technologies mature.29
The Legacy Force
The Legacy Force plays a central role in Army transformation, that of
insurance while the major changes of the Interim and Objective Force take
hold and mature. Regardless of its experimentation with new technologies,
doctrine, and force mixes, the Army is required to maintain its
warfighting readiness throughout the 30-year transformation period.
Currently, that means being able to conduct major high-intensity warfare
in the foreseeable future, a role that will fall primarily to the Legacy
Force, supplemented by Interim and Objective Force capabilities as they
become available and demonstrate their effectiveness.
The Legacy Force is a hedge against risk at three levels. First, it is
a hedge against an uncertain strategic future in which threats and
contingencies might materialize in unanticipated ways. Conditions may
emerge in which significant numbers of U.S. land forces must intervene
against unexpectedly lethal adversaries, under very adverse circumstances,
and on high-intensity battlefields. U.S. forces may be tasked to occupy a
hostile country and bring down the existing regime. A force in being is
needed to achieve such missions under these demanding conditions at
acceptable loss rates. Second, the Legacy Force offers insurance against
clever adversaries seeking to find a "silver bullet" solution to thwart
technically advanced (and therefore technically dependent) U.S. ground
forces, especially while those forces are still transforming. Such an
adversary will still have to confront a traditional force that, whatever
its other limitations, would not present the same types of
vulnerabilities. In this sense, the Legacy Force precludes an adversary
from finding an easy solution and thereby enhances deterrence in the process.30
Third, the Legacy Force is a hedge against the technical risks confronting
the Interim and Objective Forces. In many instances, the Army is pushing
the limits of technology, either in specific technological areas or in
integrating technologies in complex ways, particularly for the Objective
Force. Failures and setbacks are inevitable, even though the concept
itself may prove out in the end.
As part of the Legacy Force transformation, the future of the Army
light forces is another important area of change. Some light brigades will
become IBCTs, but to date plans for the 82d Airborne and 101st Air Assault
Divisions remain uncertain. These units may remain fixtures of the Army
Legacy and future forces. Even with advanced technology, the light forces
will not become a substitute for heavy- and medium-weight forces, in terms
of combat power. But considerable opportunity exists for improving the
capabilities of the light forces even against heavier enemy forces. Such
enhanced light forces could complement other transforming forces and add
important dimensions to improvements to the range and mix of force options
the Army can provide national decisionmakers.
Many of the same information technologies being used to enhance heavier
Legacy and Interim forces would be applicable to light forces as well.
Improved situational awareness could increase the ability of light forces
to avoid engagements in which they are seriously outmatched, while
illuminating opportunities where their lighter assets could inflict
significant damage on opposing heavier forces. Advanced RSTA, combined
with modified operational concepts, could give light forces a much greater
indirect fire capability, permitting lethal attacks from safer distances.
A more dramatic change could give light forces enhanced mobility and
maneuver capability by equipping them with light vehicles. In this case,
the price paid in speed of deployment would have to be weighed against
potentially significant improvements in the range of threats and operating
environments in which light forces could make major contributions.31
Simply maintaining today's Legacy Force involves a major resource
investment for the Army. Furthermore, a central tenet of transformation is
the need both to modernize elements of the Legacy Force—develop and
procure new systems—and to recapitalize it—rebuild and selectively upgrade
currently fielded systems. As Secretary of the Army Thomas White and
General Shinseki have repeatedly noted in testimony before Congress, this
entails substantial costs. With 75 percent of major combat systems
currently exceeding their engineered design half-life and expected to
exceed their full design life by 2010, the cost of operating and
supporting these aging systems is on the rise.32
Consequently, the Army maintains that recapitalization is needed both to
enhance force capabilities and to reduce costs, themselves important goals
in the overall transformation. These investments create the tension
identified in chapter 3 between allocating resources to near- and mid-term
improvements versus long-term, more radical changes in the force. New
engines for Abrams tanks, Army aviation upgrades, and the introduction of
new systems such as the Comanche helicopter into the Legacy Force, for
example, compete with resources that the Army needs to realize the Interim
and Objective Forces.
Transformation Issues
Observers sometimes tend to reduce much of the Army's transformation to
its technological dimension. Will information technologies yield the kind
of situation awareness and networking required to support the operation of
medium-weight distributed forces? Will new engines and guns reduce
logistics requirements? Will new armors offer markedly higher protection
per ton than the armor available today? Given the pace at which the Army
hopes to transform itself, each of these technological questions comes
with the appended question: How quickly can we convert what we barely see
today on the horizon into serious capability?
Yet ground forces consist of complex combined arms teams in which the
role of technology per se is complemented by the role of
organization and doctrine. Thus the major obstacles to any ground force
transformation have less to do with achieving miraculous advances in
technology than with finding the best doctrine to exploit the technologies
available at any given time. One can, of course, identify transformational
ground force technologies: the stirrup, the breechloading rifle, the tank.
Yet in each of these cases, combat success went not to the side with the
best technology but to the side having the best combination of technology
and doctrine. As is frequently pointed out, France had the superior tank
in 1939, but Germany had great doctrine as well as good tanks.
An army develops new organizational concepts and doctrine exploiting
the technologies available to it through field experimentation. The U.S.
Army experimentation within its Force XXI program highlights how
expensive, complicated, and often highly politicized the experimentation
process can become. The pressures of cost and politics can result in
stylized experiments that validate preconceived tactical notions rather
than fostering innovation. Thus, the first issue confronting Army
transformation has to do with whether it can develop a level of field
experimentation that actually produces optimal new combinations of tactics
and technology.
The search for optimal organizations and doctrine applies to the Army's
logistics as well as to its combat forces. The tendency again is to seek
technological solutions to bigger organizational problems by, for example,
designing ultrareliable components, fuel cells that produce water as a
byproduct, highly accurate and lethal small-caliber munitions, and so
forth. All these technological improvements are desirable, and some may
even be achievable, if in markedly different timeframes. Chances are very
small, however, that there is a magic technical solution that would
significantly reduce the Army's logistics footprint in the combat zone.
Achieving that goal will instead require the development of new logistics
concepts, comparable to but much grander in scope than the "velocity
management" paradigm that has significantly reduced order and ship times
in today's Army.33
This, too, will require a willingness to experiment with innovative ways
of doing business.
Experimentation must be linked to the outside world as well as to the
Army's own view of its future. Just as the current transformation was
prompted by the post-Cold War shift in the strategic situation and the
missions the service was asked to perform, so will the course of its
transformation, extending over two or three decades, be shaped by further
change in the world and in its likely missions. Thus a major issue for
Army transformation is whether the strategic environment does actually
change enough in the years ahead to require substantially altered
capabilities. At one extreme, the reemergence of a heavily armored Russian
threat to Eastern Europe could suddenly give the Army's Legacy Force a new
lease on life. At the other extreme, light forces may begin to look more
attractive in a world of lightly armed guerrillas who present very few
targets to airborne sensors yet nonetheless pack lethal punch against both
light armor and low-flying aircraft. In all cases, some portion of Army
transformation will no doubt pay dividends. But the specific current
direction of transformation may take a sharp turn.
Another issue for Army transformation has to do with the availability
of financing for it over the long haul. Given the Army's size and the
number of platforms it supports, it faces particularly challenging fiscal
constraints when it comes to funding the transformation. The continuing
peacekeeping demands levied on ground forces in overseas operations
exacerbate the resource constraints.
The House Appropriations Committee recently estimated that over the
next 12 to 15 years, the Army's transformation costs alone could exceed
$70 billion.34
The unpredictability of successes and failures in key enabling
technologies will certainly affect these numbers. If historical experience
is any guide, the cost of realizing the necessary technologies is likely
to be on the high end of current estimates. The Army faces a daunting
long-term challenge in allocating resources in the coming decades among
each of the three forces so as to maintain transformation's momentum
without jeopardizing essential forces and capabilities in being.35
The Army has already taken several actions to adjust its transformation to
budget realities. The scheduled introduction of the IBCTs has been
lengthened from two per year to one per year; several major legacy
programs have been cancelled. Although the September 11 attacks will lead
to additional resources for DOD, both scale and allocation priorities are
yet to be determined. Regardless of funding increases, more hard choices
likely await.
Transformation Options
Technical risks in Army transformation combined with the broader issues
discussed above suggest the need for flexibility as the service moves
ahead. The Army must continue to transform itself, but it may have to
change emphasis and direction as future funding, missions, and
technological and doctrinal options become clearer. The three-pronged
approach to transformation that the organization is now taking hedges
significantly against risks at many levels and thus yields the kind of
flexibility the Army is likely to need.
One option that would be forced on the Army if development of needed
technologies is slower than expected would be to focus on near- to
mid-term evolutionary advances, deferring more revolutionary change until
the technologies to support it have matured. This would mean emphasizing
selective modernization of the Legacy Force and elements of the Interim
Force using the more advanced technologies that emerge from development.
Although less mature technologies would be left in development or perhaps
dropped, this approach could still produce substantial improvements in
strategic responsiveness and other capabilities.
Over the last several years, the Army has undertaken a major effort to
preposition equipment sets overseas, both afloat and ashore, to reduce the
amount of time necessary to get a force to the area of operations and have
it ready for battle. As a result, significant improvements have been
realized in the ability of Army forces to arrive in many theaters. While
the timelines are not as fast as those proposed for the Objective Force,
major force elements can be moved fairly quickly. Efforts may be made to
reduce the size and weight of the force packages further by exploiting
certain technologies. Much greater precision and availability of indirect
fires, along with greater reliance on resources that do not physically go
with the units (for example, relying on intelligence capabilities located
in the United States) could reduce the size of the forces deployed,
including the logistics support required. Using the IBCTs as a base for
experimentation, the Army could further explore various brigade structures
to enhance responsiveness.
The brigade combat teams could serve as experimental as well as
operational elements for a considerably longer period than currently
envisioned. The road to the Objective Force would be a gradual, iterative
path in which exotic technologies are introduced sequentially and only
after much testing and experimentation with the medium-weight Interim
Progress would also draw heavily on experience with the digitized
forces at Fort Hood. At every step, new doctrine would be developed and
tested. The first FCS might be little more than an IAV with the
digitization appliqués from Fort Hood overlaid on it. The first Objective
Force thus might be little more than an IBCT with significantly enhanced
C4ISR. All the while, the heavy forces at Fort Hood would continue to
focus on evolutionary advances.
Throughout this process, the IBCTs could also serve as the Army's rapid
early-deployment medium-weight force, considerably expanding the range of
options the Army can provide. A brigade with substantial combat power
could be delivered very quickly using a combination of airlift and fast
sealift, with additional follow-on forces (IBCTs or heavier elements of
the First Digitized Corps) closing rapidly by exploiting prepositioning
ashore and afloat, perhaps with a network of intermediate support bases.
An entire medium-weight brigade could be transported by two large,
medium-speed roll-on/roll-off ships, each ship having a capacity of 18,000
tons and about 250,000 square feet of usable space.36
Depending on the location of the IBCT and plausible constraints on airlift
availability, it could move more quickly by sea than by air.37
The Army could allocate some portion of its prepositioned stocks afloat to
this role instead of moving heavier maneuver force elements, as is
currently the plan. This would allow the Army to become more
responsive—lighter and more mobile—fairly soon.
Significant increases in the combat power and mobility of the Army's
light forces could be another contributing element.
When all are combined with evolutionary technical advances that
significantly improve the weight/survivability/lethality tradeoffs (and
logistics load), the result could be a much more strategically responsive
force of the type envisioned by General Shinseki, even well short of the
Objective Force ideal. Such an approach would represent an essentially
evolutionary path but could result in dramatic increases in the Army's
ability to bring combat power quickly to bear in many contingencies. It
would not foreclose pursuing more revolutionary force concepts but would
instead permit much more time to develop them.
Another option would be to embrace a "leap-ahead" approach. While the
Legacy Force still would function as insurance, investments in its
modernization would be substantially reduced, along with reductions in the
size of the Legacy Forces themselves, to shift more resources into science
and technology accounts. The primary focus would be on pushing digitized,
networked elements of the Legacy Force to the fullest extent possible to
serve as a testbed to derive the most experience possible for leap-ahead
applications for the Objective Force. Investment in the Interim Force
likewise would contract, with fewer IBCTs fielded, and again with greater
emphasis on their role in experimentation in support of the futuristic
leap-ahead force. This tradeoff would assume much more near- to mid-term
risk by reducing the capabilities of the Legacy and Interim Forces.
Advocates of this approach might argue that the existence of a "strategic
pause" makes such risks acceptable and that risks are outweighed by the
benefits of more quickly developing a far more advanced and capable force.
A more technically and fiscally constrained Army transformation would
also heighten the need for examining more joint force options that could
alleviate some of the Army burden and provide synergies that might make
better use of Army resources. Major advances in integrating joint forces
and realizing the full potential of joint force synergies could
potentially constitute if not a military revolution, then a vast increase
in the effectiveness of U.S. forces and of individual service elements. In
this sense, technological advances that can magnify the power of joint
force integration could yield large dividends in terms of combat power. As
a service highly attuned to the importance of and need for joint forces,
the Army would have to determine what investments it should make in the
joint domain as a means to enhance its own land-force capabilities. For
example, as the number, sophistication, and responsiveness of indirect
fires from naval and air platforms increase, the Army might invest more
heavily in C4ISR architectures that will allow ground commanders to
reliably call in these fires and less heavily in retaining a full
complement of organic land-based indirect fires. Among the benefits would
be reductions in the size and weight of rapidly deploying early-entry land
forces. Weightier questions would concern future trades between close and
deep battle and between maneuver and deep fires and would examine how much
the Army should rely on other joint forces to perform the deeper, indirect
fire missions. In making such calculations, the Army must evaluate how far
joint integration can be relied upon to progress, both technically and
operationally, as a complement to its own service improvements, and
thereby offer potential savings and tradeoffs. The joint aspect is clearly
an element of the Army's transformation equation that has important
investment implications.
Finally, even if much of the enabling technology is realized, the
question remains whether the entire Army force should be transformed into
a homogenous FCS-centric force, or whether a more mixed future force is
preferable, with some significant portion containing FCS-like platforms
and capabilities, complemented by other force capabilities and attributes.
Other blends of Legacy, Interim, and Objective force elements might be
devised and must be assessed. For example, if major limits remain to how
quickly even advanced medium-weight forces can be strategically deployed
by air, and if many heavier digitized forces, using fast sealift along
with prepositioned assets, can arrive in theaters on comparable timelines,
a blended light/medium/heavy force might represent a more strategically
responsive and capable force than a medium-weight force alone. Many
important comparisons and force combinations remain to be explored before
a definitive decision is made on the makeup of Objective Force units.
Possible Implications of the War on Terrorism
Army transformation clearly needs to be reexamined in light of the
events of September 11 and the announced war on terrorism, which raise two
major issues for the Army. First, what will it be called upon to do as
part of the campaign against terrorism outside the continental United
States, and are its current and future planned forces well designed for
these missions? Second, what will the Army's revised role in homeland
defense be, and how might that role affect the organization of the total
Army, specifically the Army National Guard and Reserve? In addressing
these two major issues, the Army will face a period of considerable
uncertainty as real-world events and U.S. policy evolve to define the
parameters of the war and the scale and type of military missions it
requires. As part of any overall reassessment of the trajectory of the
transformation, the Army will also have to receive guidance on how the new
war on terrorism will affect existing commitments and responsibilities
around the globe.
Still, as of late 2001, certain realities were emerging. Both President
Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld have stated that the United States will wage
an aggressive and sustained offensive campaign against global terrorism
abroad. While much of this may take nonmilitary forms, several elements
will require military—and specifically Army—forces. Raids of various types
undoubtedly will be required to take down camps, seize or kill terrorist
elements, neutralize dangerous facilities and weapons, and rescue
kidnapped Americans. For many of these contingencies, Army Special
Operations Forces (ARSOF) will be the instrument of choice. But as in
Afghanistan, U.S. forces are likely to confront not only terrorist forces
but also elements of the militaries of states that harbor them. The
capabilities of the opposing forces and the scale and duration of the
counterterrorism missions may mean that ARSOF will have to be supplemented
by regular Army or other joint forces. Furthermore, given the global
nature of the terrorist network and the likely prospect that U.S. military
forces will be required to respond simultaneously to terrorist events
abroad as well as at home, ARSOF assets could find themselves spread thin.
One obvious option is for the Army to expand its ARSOF capabilities.
Given the specialization and training requirements of such forces, any
significant expansion will take considerable time. In the interim, the
Army may want to consider ways in which the institution can better support
and perhaps supplement ARSOF by taking on certain missions. The
transformation must certainly reexamine the entire relationship between
ARSOF and regular Army forces and how these two elements can best
complement each other in the future. The traditional separation of the two
may have to change to account for the expanded counterterrorism dimension
of Army operations and the need for much closer coordination of
A more substantial shift would entail elements of the regular Army
becoming more like Special Operations Forces in their ability to deploy
rapidly and conduct complex counterterrorism operations. In the near term,
the role of the IBCTs in this context might have to be reevaluated. What
do they bring to this type of contingency? How might they best be
configured for these types of operations, including the need for close
cooperation with ARSOF and other (joint) special operations forces?
Furthermore, the war on terrorism might further stress the deployability
of the Army medium-weight force. While the IBCTs and the Objective Force
are clearly designed with rapid deployability in mind, the constraints of
deploying these forces exclusively by air have already been noted. So too
have the clear advantages of moving the force by fast sealift, especially
if one assumes that many operations will be conducted relatively close to
the littoral. Yet the need to eliminate terrorist sanctuaries suggests
that U.S. Army forces might have to be prepared to operate in more remote,
austere, and landlocked areas falling outside of traditional U.S. national
interests. These conditions would compound the challenges of both rapid
deployment (which might require air) and sustainment. New types of units
combining light- and medium-weight forces should be considered. A strike
force hybrid that is considerably more lethal than light forces alone, but
more rapidly deployable by air than the full IBCT, is one possibility.
The many surveillance and targeting technologies embedded in the IBCTs
and anticipated for the Objective Force have applicability for the
counterterrorism war, but they too are likely to require modifications.
How, for example, might future unmanned aerial vehicles be better designed
and employed to monitor, track, and rapidly attack a range of targets
associated with terrorist training camps and facilities? What types of
ground sensors hold promise for related missions? How might these
capabilities best be integrated and tied to rapid strike assets, be they
Army or joint? The most demanding technology issues are, however, still
likely to rest on the Army's ability to deploy rapidly and to sustain and
command the right types of forces in the area of operations.
The war on terrorism could easily come to challenge Army command and
control. Ground operations could be relatively brief yet extremely complex
and geographically dispersed. Such operations might have to be undertaken
quickly to take advantage of fleeting targets or to minimize warning to
sponsoring states. If the operations are of a scale and type beyond the
capabilities of traditional Special Operations Forces, the Army must be
prepared for rapid deployment of headquarters that can provide the
necessary joint (and perhaps combined) command and control for such
operations. The emphasis could well be on standing headquarters at lower
echelons, particularly the brigade level. The alternative of drawing on
division and corps headquarters assets would likely prove too cumbersome
and time-consuming for such rapidly unfolding scenarios. The enhanced
command and control embedded in the IBCTs is a step in the right
The aftermath of September 11 added to the command burden of working
operationally with allies and coalition partners. A sustained effort
against global terrorist networks will increasingly require Army
involvement with a wide range of partners, including some nontraditional
ones. Transformation's counterterrorism component must allow for ease of
operation with very disparate militaries, local police, and other security
While counterterrorism operations will generally involve lighter Army
forces, President Bush has also made it clear that countries and regimes
that harbor terrorists will be held accountable. This includes the
possibility of occupying particular countries or otherwise bringing down
their regimes by direct U.S. use of force. Even against lesser opponents,
this would require a serious land combat capability. There is also the
prospect that offensive counterproliferation aimed at nuclear, chemical,
and biological threats will become a key element of the larger war on
terrorism. This opens up a number of complex and demanding missions for
the Army, whether countering state or subnational opponents. In assessing
future requirements to fight the war on terrorism, the Army must also
include the forces necessary to conduct these types of demanding
The Army also will have additional responsibilities in homeland
security, at least in the near term. Its traditional support functions to
state and local authorities, primarily through National Guard units, are
likely to be expanded to deal with terrorist threats to the homeland. The
Army may have both growing near-term responsibilities (pending the buildup
of civilian alternatives in particular areas) and additional longer term
and enduring roles and missions for which the Army is best suited. These
could include greater emphasis on consequence management, especially in
terms of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high-explosive
attacks and protection of key infrastructure, both military and
Most Army assets for homeland defense reside in the Army National Guard
and Reserve units. The Nation must decide whether these components will
require significant reorganization in light of the new mission. Arguably,
for example, many homeland defense missions could be handled by civilians,
as has been the case in federalizing airport security guards since
September 11, 2001. Critical infrastructure security might be handled in
substantial part by detection technology, minimizing personnel
requirements of any kind. Army personnel, whether from the active or
Reserve components, might still serve as early responders, surging to fill
near-term needs. But civilians might fill in quickly thereafter in most
To the extent that the Reserve components are asked to handle homeland
defense, they will require modification in training and equipment.38
But the effects on the total Army are likely to run well beyond the
immediate need to train and equip specialized units for these tasks.
Because so much of the total Army's combat support and service support
capabilities lies in the Reserve components, Reserve soldiers and units
have come to play a significant role in peacekeeping and stability
operations, which call for these capabilities. In this capacity they also
have helped reduce operational tempo problems in the active force
associated with repetitive deployments to Bosnia and Kosovo. If
substantial numbers of reservists are now pulled over to homeland defense,
the active force may have to consider a new mix of skills as well as new
policies to calm its tempo problems.
It is fitting to end a chapter on Army transformation with an
assessment of the Nation's war on terrorism, since that war highlights the
need for, but also the risks facing, the Army's transformation. What
better way to highlight the expeditionary, unpredictable nature of the
Nation's global military engagement, after all, than through military
action in the rugged, landlocked terrain of distant Afghanistan? What
better illustration of the potential of information technologies than the
"air-land battle" fought by small special forces teams linked to
high-flying bombers with their precision-guided munitions? And what better
example of the phrase "full-spectrum" than a war that would seem to
portend a little—perhaps a lot—of almost every mission, from combat raids
to peacekeeping and humanitarian relief? Against the backdrop of a decade
in which the Army engaged in heavy armored warfare on the Arabian
Peninsula, a humanitarian relief mission in Somalia, the stabilization of
politics in Haiti, and peace enforcement in Bosnia and Kosovo, the war on
terrorism embodies the unpredictable missions and theaters for which the
Army must now prepare. The contrast with the Cold War's predictable
stability, its mature theaters, stable allies, and established enemies
could not be sharper. Nor could the need for transformation be much
Yet the risks, too, are evident and lie well beyond the realm of pure
technology. Post-Cold War missions have tested the Army's diversity. They
have called for armor, but also for special forces; for infantry, but also
for military police and civil affairs experts. They have called for large
deployments with massive backup, but also for very small deployments that
benefit from leaner logistics and support. The Army has met these
challenges because, somewhere in its structure, it has these capabilities.
In theory, it makes sense to "collapse the difference between heavy and
light forces" to produce a coherent, generally uniform Army called the
Objective Force. But it remains to be seen whether this can be done. The
Army needs to move down this path carefully, testing at every step.
Above all, the Army needs to remain wary of the information revolution
even as it exploits it aggressively. There is no more demanding
environment for information technologies than that encountered on the
ground in land warfare. Whether those technologies can operate at the
exquisitely high performance levels that transformation seems to require,
much less do so reliably, remains to be seen. Even if those performance
requirements can be met, however, it should never be forgotten that
potential enemies have choices in the years ahead as well. As the Army
(like the other services) transforms, adversaries surely will adapt as
well; only time will tell whether they can find weaknesses in the realm of
information more easily than they could poke holes in or avoid the Army's
traditional heavy formations.
The Army does not represent its transformation as a three-pronged
undertaking without reason. Those prongs are, among other things, hedges
against the risks that attend the effort. The Interim Force prong, with
its IBCTs already being formed, allows for considerable experimentation
and operational experience in advance of the more ambitious FCS project.
And the Legacy prong provides the Army with armored backup until it is
sure that the far more information-intensive Objective Force will work as
intended. Future experience and experimentation will determine when and
how those prongs come together.
5. While smaller-scale contingencies represent one
broad category of operations, in the case of ground operations, this
category alone encompasses a great diversity of Army missions and
activities. [BACK]
6. For an assessment of how even relatively small
noncombat operations can have substantial impacts on Army forces well
beyond the deploying units, see J. Michael Polich, Bruce R. Orvis, and
Michael Hix, Small Deployments, Big Problems, Issue Paper IP-197
(Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2000). [BACK]
7. For example, command and control problems arose
in Somalia when the 10th Mountain Division, normally expected to cover a
30-kilometer front in wartime, had elements deployed out to over 100
kilometers. Line-of-sight FM communications well suited for traditional
combat frontages proved inadequate over these much greater distances. [BACK]
8. An earlier Army effort to close the gap between
deployment speed and combat capability was the High-Technology Light
Division of the 1980s. For a description of its history and fate, see
Richard J. Dunn III, "Transformation: Let's Get it Right this Time,"
Parameters, Spring 2001, 22-28. The 1990 Gulf experience
highlighted the deficiency more dramatically and heightened the sense of
9. Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense,
Guidance and Terms of Reference for the 2001 Quadrennial Defense
Review, June 22, 2001. [BACK]
10. Ibid. [BACK]
11. It can also reduce the quantities of forces
required and their density. As Army FM 1 notes, "The common operational
picture provided through integration of real-time intelligence and
accurate targeting reduces the need to fill space with forces and direct
fire weapons." [BACK]
12. Joint Statement before the Senate Armed
Services Committee by the Honorable Thomas E. White, Secretary of the
Army; and General Eric K. Shinseki, Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, On the
Fiscal Year 2002 Defense Budget, Committee on Armed Services, U.S.
Senate, July 10, 2001, 18 (hereafter Joint White/Shinseki Statement of
July 10, 2001). [BACK]
13. In its June 2000 overall "Technology
Assessment" of technologies required for the Army transformation, the
Army Science Board concluded that autonomous robotics were unlikely to
be available until after 2015. [BACK]
14. Indeed, much of that force is already
programmed with the future C-17 purchases. [BACK]
15. The IBCTs can be moved within the theater
quickly by C-130s to enhance flexibility and commanders' options for
using the force. Still, a single 20-ton light armored vehicle would
consume the entire lift capacity of a C-130. [BACK]
16. Reception, staging, onward movement, and
integration (RSOI) is the last step of the strategic deployment process
that reunites personnel and equipment in the theater as coherent units,
moves the units to the operational area, and prepares them for
employment. The Army's emphasis on strategic responsiveness, along with
mounting concerns over enemy efforts to deny or disrupt deploying
forces, places a premium of minimizing RSOI requirements and timelines.
17. Steele, "The Hooah Guide to Army
Transformation," 26. [BACK]
18. On July 12, 2001, the Army announced that the
next four brigades to be transformed to IBCTs would be the 172d Infantry
Brigade, Forts Richardson and Wainwright, Alaska; the 2d Armored Cavalry
Regiment (Light), Fort Polk, Louisiana; the 2d Brigade, 25th Infantry
Division (Light), Schofield Barracks, Hawaii; and the 56th Brigade of
the 28th Infantry Division (Mechanized) of the Pennsylvania Army
National Guard. See Joint White/Shinseki Statement of July 18, 2001. [BACK]
19. Frank Wolfe, "Shinseki: Earliest Full Fielding
of First IBCT Projected In Spring 2003," Defense Daily, June 14,
20001, 9; and Joint White/Shinseki Statement of July 18, 2001. [BACK]
20. U.S. General Accounting Office, Defense
Acquisition: Army Transformation Faces Weapon Systems Challenges,
GAO-01-311, May 2001, 8. [BACK]
21. U.S. Army, "The Interim Brigade Combat Team,
Organizational and Operational Concept," draft, June 30, 2000. [BACK]
22. Ibid. [BACK]
23. Prepared Statement of General Eric K.
Shinseki, Department of Defense Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2001,
Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, U.S.
Senate, April 25, 2000, 402. [BACK]
24. Joint White/Shinseki Statement of July 18,
25. U.S. General Accounting Office, Defense
Acquisition: Army Transformation Faces Weapon Systems ChallengesÅ
GAO-01-311, May 2001, 6. The U.S. Army and the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency entered into a 6-year collaborative program to develop
and demonstrate the Future Combat Systems concept. [BACK]
26. In terms of technical maturity, passive
protection of lightweight ground vehicles with ceramic and
composite-based lightweight armors capable of surviving a first-round
hit from a medium-caliber weapon have been developed. Outstanding
research issues in active protection systems and stealth technology
indicate that these capabilities will not be available before the end of
the decade. [BACK]
27. Glenn W. Goodman, Jr., "Futuristic Army
Vision," Armed Forces Journal International, May 2001, 26-34. [BACK]
28. Army Transformation Briefings, Association of
the U.S. Army (AUSA) Transformation Panel, Institute for Land Warfare,
October 2000, accessed at <http://www.ausa.org/>; and Glenn W. Goodman, Jr.,
"Futuristic Army Vision," Armed Forces Journal International, May
29. See Army Transformation Briefings. For details
of the Army's science and technology strategy and key objectives in
support of the transformation, see 2001 Army Science and Technology
Master Plan, U.S. Army, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense for Research and Technology. [BACK]
30. An adversary could, of course, prove wrong in
believing it had found a chink in the Objective Force armor; when
engaged by that force, it could instead suffer a devastating defeat. But
even so, one would want to compel an adversary to confront the Legacy
Force challenge as well. The more roadblocks there are to a perceived
"win on the cheap," the stronger deterrence will be. [BACK]
31. These and other future options for U.S. Army
light forces are covered in detail in John Matsumura, et al.,
Sightning Over Water: Sharpening America's Light Forces for Rapid
Reaction Missions, MR-1196-A/OSD (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Arroyo
Center/National Defense Research Institute, 2000). [BACK]
32. Joint White/Shinseki Statement of July 10,
33. In 1995, the Army implemented a logistics
Velocity Management initiative focused on improving the speed and
accuracy of material and information flows from providers to users.
Emphasis was on replacing the traditional reliance on mass with
velocity. For a discussion of the initiative and its various elements,
see John Dumond, et al., Velocity Management, The Business Paradigm
That Has Transformed U.S. Army Logistics, MR-1108-A (Santa Monica,
34. U.S. General Accounting Office, Defense
Acquisition: Army Transformation Faces Weapon Systems Challenges,
GAO-01-311, May 2001, 1. [BACK]
35. In the fiscal year 2002 Army budget, for
example, Secretary White testified that science and technology for the
transformation was fully funded, but with a shortfall in the
modernization and recapitalization of the Legacy Force. Testimony before
the Senate Armed Services Committee, Hearing on Defense Authorization
Request for FY 2002, July 10, 2001. [BACK]
36. An IBCT would weigh somewhere between 16,000
and 20,000 tons, depending upon the level of augmentation, while a
"pure" IBCT would likely require more than 250,000 square feet of deck
space. [BACK]
37. Positioning more Army assets forward, DOD
recently decided to have an IBCT stationed in Europe by 2007 and
directed that the Army explore additional options for enhancing ground
capabilities in the Gulf region. See Department of Defense, Quadrennial
Defense Review Report (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, September
38. On suggested adjustments to the Army National
Guard for homeland security see, for example, Reserve Component
Employment Study 2005 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, June


text:
Brand Label: Sies Marjan
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
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"This blog is like a fusion of the Baroque 'salon' with its well-tuned harpsichord around which polite society gathered for entertainment and edification and, on the other hand, a Wild West "saloon" with its out-of-tune piano and swinging doors, where everyone has a gun and something to say. Nevertheless, we try to point our discussions back to what it is to be Catholic in this increasingly difficult age, to love God, and how to get to heaven." – Fr. Z
Some words of wisdom…
The more vigorously the primacy was displayed, the more the question came up about the extent and and limits of [papal] authority, which of course, as such, had never been considered. After the Second Vatican Council, the impression arose that the pope really could do anything in liturgical matters, especially if he were acting on the mandate of an ecumenical council. Eventually, the idea of the givenness of the liturgy, the fact that one cannot do with it what one will, faded from the public consciousness of the West. In fact, the First Vatican Council had in no way defined the pope as an absolute monarch. On the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed Word. The pope's authority is bound to the Tradition of faith. … The authority of the pope is not unlimited; it is at the service of Sacred Tradition.
Joseph Ratzinger in The Spirit of the Liturgy
"The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine—but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight."
-Hilaire Belloc
Outstanding. Informative. Moving. - Fr. Z
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"We as Catholics have not properly combated (the culture) because we have not been taught our Catholic Faith, especially in the depth needed to address these grave evils of our time. This is a failure of catechesis both of children and young people that has been going on for fifty years. It is being addressed, but it needs much more radical attention... What has also contributed greatly to the situation is an exaltation of the virtue of tolerance which is falsely seen as the virtue which governs all other virtues. In other words, we should tolerate other people in their immoral actions to the extent that we seem also to accept the moral wrong. Tolerance is a virtue, but it is certainly not the principal virtue; the principal virtue is charity... Charity means speaking the truth. I have encountered it (not speaking the truth) many times myself as a priest and bishop. It is something we simply need to address. There is far too much silence — people do not want to talk about it because the topic is not 'politically correct.' But we cannot be silent any longer."
Raymond Card. Burke
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
My CHALLENGE COINS for my 25th Anniversary of Ordination (26 May 1991) arrived.
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- Aedificantium enim unusquisque gladio erat accinctus.
- Nehemiah 4:18
"Where priest and people together face the same way, what we have is a cosmic orientation and also in interpretation of the Eucharist in terms of resurrection and trinitarian theology. Hence it is also an interpretation in terms of parousia, a theology of hope, in which every Mass is an approach to the return of Christ."
Joseph Ratzinger - The Feast of Faith"In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. ... If all Catholics are obliged to oppose the legal recognition of homosexual unions, Catholic politicians are obliged to do so in a particular way, in keeping with their responsibility as politicians." CDF 2003
One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting. — C. S. Lewis
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For contemplation…
"One of the few things in life you can be absolutely sure about is that, if Management tells you it doesn't like your Tone, you are getting something right."
"Latin is a precise, essential language. It will be abandoned, not because it is unsuitable for the new requirements of progress, but because the new men will not be suitable for it. When the age of demagogues and charlatans begins, a language like Latin will no longer be useful, and any oaf will be able to give a speech in public and talk in such a way that he will not be kicked off the stage. The secret to this will consist in the fact that, by making use of words that are general, elusive, and sound good, he will be able to speak for an hour without saying anything. With Latin, this is impossible."
- - Giovanni Guareschi
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Some OBLIGATORY reading…
God or Nothing: A Conversation on Faith by Robert Card. Sarah
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Let us pray…
Grant unto thy Church, we beseech Thee, O merciful God, that She, being gathered together by the Holy Ghost, may be in no wise troubled by attack from her foes. O God, who by sin art offended and by penance pacified, mercifully regard the prayers of Thy people making supplication unto Thee,and turn away the scourges of Thine anger which we deserve for our sins. Almighty and Everlasting God, in whose Hand are the power and the government of every realm: look down upon and help the Christian people that the heathen nations who trust in the fierceness of their own might may be crushed by the power of thine Arm. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
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Mystic Monk Coffee also has TEA!
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I carry one of these super-strong rosaries in my spare mag pouch! The Swiss Guards have them too!
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Food For Thought
"The legalization of the termination of pregnancy is none other than the authorization given to an adult, with the approval of an established law, to take the lives of children yet unborn and thus incapable of defending themselves. It is difficult to imagine a more unjust situation, and it is very difficult to speak of obsession in a matter such as this, where we are dealing with a fundamental imperative of every good conscience — the defense of the right to life of an innocent and defenseless human being."
- St. John Paul II
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A morsel for thought…
"If your work is strong enough for someone to hate you, it's strong enough for someone to love you. The middle is what you should fear."
- Sean McCabe @seanwes
Recent Posts
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- Happy 242nd Birthday, USMC!
- Rereading "Lord Of The World" by Robert Hugh Benson – Brrrrr!
- More about photos during Mass and Pope Francis' admonisment
For your consideration…
"One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting."
- C.S. Lewis
More food for thought:
"I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history."
Francis Card. George
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- "It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been committed for fear of not looking sufficiently progressive."
Charles Pierre Péguy Notre Patrie, 1905"If I ought to write the truth, I am of the mind that I ought to flee all meetings of bishops, because I have never seen any happy or satisfactory outcome to any council, nor one that has deterred evils more than it has occasioned their acceptance and growth."
St. Gregory Nazianzus ep. 131 - AD 382"We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women. If we do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market."
Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, Chief Spokesman the Islamic State, 2014 Quoted in James Wesley Rawles, Land of Promise (Counter-Caliphate Chronicles Series Book 1) See also HERE
Reading and gift ideas!
Tag Archives: ad limina
Pope Francis to German Bishops: Your Church is a mess! Fix it and … GO TO CONFESSION!
The German bishops are making their ad limina visit. Every few years diocesan bishops have to go to Rome to meet with offices of the Roman Curia and, usually, the Pope.
Pope Francis gave an address to the German bishops that was clear, … Continue reading →
Benedict XVI to French bishops about liturgy. (Reason #5457 for Summorum Pontificum)
On Saturday 17 November Pope Benedict granted an audience to French bishops during their ad limina visit. The Holy Father addressed them about, inter alia, liturgy.
[…] As the Council recalls, the Church's liturgical action is also a part of her contribution … Continue reading →
Benedict XVI's address to US bishops of Regions VII-IX: marriage and sexuality
His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI gave an audience to American bishops (MN, ND, SD) making their ad limina visit. His last address – on the eve of Pres. Obama's attack on the religious liberty of the Catholic Church – was … Continue reading →
Card. George writes about unity, Pres. Obama's attacks, and Catholics who don't stand with the bishops.
Card. George of Chicago offers observations about the present situation we face as a Church in the United States even as the President of the United States attacks the Church.
He first speaks about the "ad limina" visit he is making … Continue reading →
PODCAzT 126: Benedict XVI's important address to US Bishops on Religious Freedom and the Church in the Public Square
In this PODCAzT we drill into an important address given by Pope Benedict XVI on 19 January 2012 to the bishops of Regions 4-6 in the United States.
This was Benedict's second major discourse to US bishops who are making their ad limina … Continue reading →
Benedict XVI important address to US Bishops of Regions IV-VI about attacks on religious liberty in the public square
This is important.
The US bishops are this year making their over-due ad limina visits. The Holy Father generally gives an address to groups of bishops when they come.
Benedict XVI spoke to the bishops of Regions IV-VI in the USA. He … Continue reading →
Benedict XVI to US bishops (Region I-II-III) during their ad limina visit
The Holy Father delivered the following address to the bishops of the USA (regions I-II-III) during their ad limina visit.
Let's have a glance with my emphases and comments.
Dear Brother Bishops,
I greet you all with affection in the Lord and, through … Continue reading →
Benedict XVI to Scottish Bishops: "complete fidelity"
Every five years bishops are required to make an ad limina apostolorum pilgrimage to Rome to visit the "thresholds" and the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul and to meet with the Holy Father and Curia for status quaestionis … Continue reading →
Our work here is done.
Not quite sure what to do with this, but…
In other news, I understand that some important ad limina visits have recently been concluded.
Benedict XVI's talk with the bishops of England and Wales
First… read this:
In a social milieu that encourages the expression of a variety of opinions on every question that arises, it is important to recognize dissent for what it is, and not to mistake it for a mature contribution to … Continue reading →


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Calling All Digital Scrapbook Designers
2 weeks ago
Thank you so much for this post. I want to let you know that I posted a link to your blog in CBH Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, under the Page 2 post on Jul. 30, 2010. Thanks again.
Just a quick note to let you know that a link to this post will be placed on CraftCrave in the Graphics category today [30 Jul 12:00pm GMT]. Thanks, Maria
Thank you for freebies. Link on your post was added to Lori's freebie list