The Future of U.S. Ground Forces

A FullSpectrum Force

Given the advent of an era of persistent irregular conflict, with its emphasis on manpower-intensive operations on land, the Army is destined to play a central role in U.S. defense strategy. The Service will need to build on its hard-won expertise in conducting these kinds of operations, whether they go by the name of stability operations; foreign internal defense; internal defense and development; stability, security, transition and reconstruction operations; counterinsurgency; or irregular warfare.⁴ At the same time, the Army must also hedge against a resurrection of rivals who look to challenge its dominance in more traditional, or conventional, forms of warfare.

These disparate missions argue for an Army that can operate effectively across the entire conflict spectrum. However, because the range of missions is so broad, and the skill sets required sufficiently different, attempting to field forces that can move quickly and seamlessly from irregular warfare to conventional warfare seems destined to produce an Army that is barely a “jack-of-all-trades,” and clearly a master of none. This approach becomes all the more problematic when one considers the ongoing erosion of quality in the officer and Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) corps, and in the Service’s recruiting standards.5 Yet this is what the Army is attempting to accomplish through its “full-spectrum” force.

The Army has understandably felt compelled to pursue the “full-spectrum” approach owing to the need to cover a range of missions within the limitations on its size imposed by fiscal constraints and its all-volunteer character. Yet even if this approach were viable, the Army remains too small for larger irregular warfare contingencies, let alone those that occur simultaneously.

Fortunately, the authors of the U.S. defense strategy have wisely chosen to address the gap between the scale of the challenges confronting the nation and the forces available to address them by focusing on building up the military capabilities of threatened states, and of America’s allies and partners. The Army must give greater attention to supporting this strategy, especially with regard to stability operations, as the best means of addressing the challenge of preparing to conduct operations at high levels of effectiveness across the conflict spectrum.

The Army has specialized forces. It will need more.

The Service has for decades fielded forces specialized for airborne operations and air assault operations. Of course, the Army also has its Special Forces, expert in a range of irregular warfare operations. It has forces specially designed for high-end warfare, and plans to continue in this vein with the Future Combat Systems Brigade Combat Teams (FCS BCTs), which the Army properly recognized are “optimized” for conventional warfare. These kinds of forces are designed to surge on short notice to address conventional contingencies. While it was once argued that such “general-purpose” forces could readily shift gears to handle contingencies at the lower end of the conflict spectrum, the evidence of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq suggests the contrary. Moreover, the Army’s new doctrine confirms the triumph of real-world experience over wishful thinking. Thus what the Army lacks are forces designed to surge in the event of a major contingency at the lower end of the conflict spectrum, as well as forces designed to prevent such a contingency from arising in the first place.

The Army needs to field two surge forces, one for conventional operations, the other for irregular warfare. Should either form of conflict prove protracted, the other wing of the force could, over the course of the initial twelve- to fifteen-month surge, undergo training and the appropriate force structure modifications to enable it to “swing” in behind the surge force to sustain operations.

This approach might be termed the “Dual-Surge” Army, comprising two wings, one oriented (but not uniquely specialized in) operations along the lower end of the conflict spectrum, while the other wing would be oriented on operations along the high end of the conflict spectrum. Structured in this manner, the Army could rightfully claim to be a truly capable “Full-Spectrum” Force.

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