W(h)ither the Army?


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W(h)ither the Army?

Andrew Krepinevich	Published 01/18/2000 Highlight

January 18, 2000

A New Army Vision
Today, a decade following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States Army finds itself in a far different world from that which existed during the Cold War. Today’s threats are far lower than that posed by the Soviet military little more than a decade ago, while tomorrow’s challenges promise to be both more formidable, and quite different, from those the Army confronts today. The Army’s focus has shifted from waging a decisive land battle in Central Europe to containing rogue states in the Persian Gulf and on the Korean Peninsula, and to conducting peacekeeping operations that police democracy’s global empire. Moreover, today’s Army is much more of an expeditionary force than it was during the Cold War.

Recent Army chiefs of staff have confronted the need to see the Army through its post-Cold War drawdown, cope with the demands of today, and also prepare for the challenges of tomorrow. Concerning the latter, General Gordon Sullivan championed a latter-day “Louisiana Maneuvers” initiative to determine the kinds of doctrine, forces, equipment, and people the Army would require in the future.¹ General Dennis Reimer instituted the “Army After Next” (AAN) initiative in the hope of positioning the Service to effect a major transformation that would enable it to meet the very different challenges that are anticipated in the coming decades. Still, until very recently, the Army’s principal modernization effort, called Army XXI, centered on incorporating advances in information technologies to improve the capabilities of its heavy armored formations, which have dominated the Service’s force structure for generations.

Over the last few months, the Army’s new chief of staff, General Eric Shinseki, has reoriented the Service’s plans, scaling back both the AAN and Army XXI initiatives in favor of creating what is being called a “middleweight” force. A key stimulus for this change came from the criticism leveled against the Army over the relatively slow deployment of its forces (known as Task Force Hawk) into Albania during last year’s war over Kosovo. This latest attempt to jump start Army transformation has drawn considerable attention, and not a little controversy. The middleweight force is designed to favor lighter, wheeled combat vehicles (and thus be more rapidly deployable) than the Army’s heavy formations, which comprise such systems as the 70-ton Abrams tank and the proposed 80-90 ton modified Crusader artillery system.

The Army Vision: Can We Afford It? Do We Want It?
Fiscal Challenges
The Army has insufficient funds to cover its projected force levels and modernization programs, let alone realize its middleweight force vision. The prospects for increased funding are bleak. Simply put, the Army will almost certainly have to make tough choices concerning programs and force structure cuts to develop a middleweight force option. While some cutting and stretching of selected modernization programs is under way, they only represent a down payment. Future cuts will almost certainly be required if the Service is to free up the $10 billion or more required over the next five years to establish a middleweight force.

This, however, begs the question of whether the Army vision, and the capabilities that are derived from it, will best prepare the Service for future warfighting challenges. It makes little sense to argue over funding shortfalls to support a vision, if that vision is flawed strategically.

Strategic Challenges
Near-Term Readiness. Today’s challenges center on peacekeeping and major theater wars (MTWs). The Army has conducted a number of peacekeeping operations (e.g., Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, Bosnia) in recent years with high proficiency. However, while the Army has some forward-deployed forces in South Korea, it has few in the Persian Gulf region or in other potential Third World trouble spots. Moreover, the Army is encountering increasingly stiff competition, particularly from the Air Force, over the early use of strategic airlift assets to facilitate rapid force deployment.

The ramifications can be severe, as evidenced with Task Force Hawk. Proponents of air power argue that precision air strikes can substitute for much of the ground forces the Army provides, especially if those forces cannot be deployed quickly. Others note that the Marine Corps may be better suited than today’s Army for rapidly deploying ground forces to trouble spots. In short, the Army has found its strategic relevance challenged.

Middleweight forces, as currently conceived, may enable the Army to better address future “Kosovo-like” peacekeeping contingencies by deploying more rapidly to Third World trouble spots. Moreover, relative to heavy Army forces, these forces may well be able to operate more effectively in urban terrain, which promises to play an increasing role in future conflicts. A middleweight force may also serve as the first element of a transition force to a “post-transformation” Army, or “Army After Next.”

To be sure, the middleweight force vision is not without its problems. It may yield a “Worst of Both Worlds” force that still consumes substantial amounts of precious strategic lift, while lacking combat punch and sustainability.

Emerging Requirements. There is yet another, far more serious, problem. The Army also finds itself in the midst of a military revolution. New threats are emerging for which the Army is not currently prepared. Yet the Army remains preoccupied with defeating an updated version of the threat it confronted in Desert Storm. Should a major theater war occur in the near term, it would not likely resemble that conflict, either in scale or in form. Potential adversaries are increasingly emphasizing the development of “anti-access” capabilities in the form of ballistic and cruise missile forces, to include antiship missiles, along with sophisticated antiship mines and weapons of mass destruction. Senior US military leaders have warned that, as adversaries acquire these capabilities, American military access to forward bases (and perhaps the littorals as well) will become increasingly problematic. It is far from clear that the middleweight force will enable the Army to overcome this major challenge to its long-term power-projection capabilities. Nor is such a force likely to enable the Army to exploit perhaps its greatest potential opportunity—engaging in joint extended-range precision strikes.

In fact, there are four principal requirements the Army must address to maintain its long-term strategic relevance. The future security environment will challenge the Army, as part of a joint force, to:

Develop the capability to project substantial land power rapidly, and sustain it indefinitely, in the absence of access to forward bases and large, fixed logistics centers. This also implies an ability to conduct highly distributed operations.

Exploit the potential to conduct precision strikes at extended ranges.

Prepare to conduct an effective defense of the American homeland against both missile strikes, and strikes conducted by irregular forces—operating either independently or as part of an organized military campaign conducted by a hostile state—employing WMD or electronic (information warfare) means.

Develop the ability to conduct eviction and control operations, against enemy irregular and regular forces, respectively, operating in restricted terrain (e.g., urban areas, mountains, jungles).

While it may function as a useful transition force, it is not yet clear how the middleweight force will address these emerging requirements. Indeed, it is possible to envision such a force suffering a catastrophic failure. For example, a key measure of effectiveness of the middleweight force is its ability to deploy rapidly through forward bases. Yet as the competitive environment is transformed, such bases are likely to be increasingly at risk from enemy cruise and ballistic missile attack. (Indeed, the Pentagon’s own war games bear this out.) As this occurs, the middleweight force will essentially allow the Army to move its forces more quickly to the forward bases that form the focal point of the enemy’s extended-range missile ambush.

Moreover, the middleweight force, as currently conceived, does little to exploit the Army’s potential to develop forces capable of massed precision deep fires. Such deep-strike formations, centered on extended-range reconnaissance (e.g., UAVs, sensors, light infantry, SOF, helicopters) and strike (e.g., missile artillery, attack helicopters) elements, may represent for this military revolution what the panzer division did for blitzkrieg.

“Winners” and “Losers”
It is unlikely that the force elements that have dominated the Army for roughly half a century will be those at the center of post-transformation operations. For instance, forces that can deploy rapidly while avoiding dependence on large, fixed, forward bases will likely have to be smaller, lighter and operate more dispersed than current forces with comparable combat potential. Army formations that strike deep will actually avoid executing the Service’s traditional mission of “closing with and destroying the enemy.” Homeland defense will likely require emphasis on missile defense and consequence management operations. Forces developed for operations in restricted terrain will find themselves in close combat with the enemy, but in a very different operational environment than occurred in the tank battles of Desert Storm.

In brief, preparing for tomorrow’s challenges will almost certainly find the Army’s dominant cultures—the armor, mechanized infantry and “tube” artillery—playing less dominant roles than they have for the last 60 years. Correspondingly, those subcultures on the Army’s periphery—the light infantry, rocket artillery, aviation, special operations forces, “consequence management” teams, and signals/information elements will likely see their relative importance enhanced.

Unfortunately, the historic unwillingness of the dominant elements of a military organization (indeed, of any organization) to accept a less central—let alone subordinate—role are rare. This represents a major barrier to Army transformation.

First Steps
What should the Army do to better meet the challenge of transformation? A short list of initial steps would include (but not necessarily be limited to) the following:

Reorient transformation efforts to focus, at the operational level, much more heavily on the future security requirements listed above (i.e., projected power in the absence of forward bases, combat in restricted terrain, homeland defense, joint extended-range precision strikes).

Establish standing experimentation forces for addressing future requirements beyond the two middleweight brigades. Such forces might include provisional deep-strike brigades, urban operations battalions, and homeland defense formations. It is important to note that the Army has created such experimental forces repeatedly during periods of far greater near-term risk than exist today. An important function of these units will be to determine, through Service and joint experimentation, how to leverage the other Services’ existing and emerging capabilities. It cannot be overemphasized, however, that if experimentation focuses on meeting today’s contingencies—and not the very different requirements posed by the emerging challenges of tomorrow—the Army will likely find it has fielded a force in 2010 that is far better prepared for the threats of 1995 than those of 2010, let alone 2015.

Move aggressively to provide experimental forces with a broader range of military capabilities than are currently projected. Examples include tactical UAVs, ATACMS Block II, and the Comanche, as well as some more futuristic capabilities involving robotics and advanced sensors. Such systems should be produced in limited, but “operationally significant,” quantities to enable experimentation with new operational concepts until their true potential is determined.

Reduce Army force structure to pay the bill for transformation. There is no free lunch here. Service efficiency savings projections have proven to be chimeras, and no budget surplus windfall is likely. If the Army is serious about transformation, it will have to effect significant force structure reductions, in addition to the force structure diversions required to establish experimental forces.

Develop a strategy for dealing with internal opposition to transformation, and with the other Services, senior DoD leaders, the Congress, the media, and our allies. Historically, transformations occur only when a “critical mass” of key players can be formed to support it.

Conclusion
The Army clearly, and correctly, sees the need to undertake a transformation of sorts if it is to be more responsive to the security challenges of today, as well as those that will emerge over the long term. Substantial barriers to Army transformation exist, including resistance from dominant Army subcultures, and fiscal constraints. The biggest barriers to change, however, are intellectual, or strategic, in nature. The Army has yet to put forth a compelling vision of the future operational environment, including its challenges and opportunities, and to present a transformation strategy to address it. Until that happens, the world’s most successful Army of the 20th century may well find itself increasingly irrelevant to meeting the challenges of the 21st century.

The Louisiana Maneuvers were conducted by the Army prior to America’s entry into World War II. They proved important to the Service’s development of the mechanized air-land operations pioneered by the German Army as the blitzkrieg form of warfare.