New Army Brigade Plan is Dangerous

Military.com ^ | 11/5/2003 | David Pyne

[walden]

New Army Brigade Plan is Dangerous

Following his unprecedented and premature retirement of 47 U.S. Army generals and with his installation of hand-picked replacements to lead the U.S. Army nearly completed, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is on the verge of moving full bore to begin implementing long-planned reforms, including the complete elimination of the Army's division-based force structure.

Rumsfeld and his hand-picked replacement as Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, plan to replace it with a force structure based on dismounted infantry-centric mini-brigade units consisting of about 1,800 men - each of which will be more optimized to fight small wars, but less suited to fighting major conflicts. These new mini-brigades will reportedly consist of only two battalions each down from the four battalions of today's combat brigades.

Schoomaker recently announced his plan to immediately begin implementing this reformed structure with the 101st Air Assault Division and the 3rd Infantry Division, both of which have just returned to the United States following a long-term deployment in Iraq.

Five mini-brigade size units will be derived from each of the two divisions, which will then be ready for action about a year from now, presumably for redeployment to Iraq. These mini-brigades will have a smaller complement of men and fighting vehicles than current brigade combat teams, but will also have limited integrated artillery and aviation assets as divisions do today on a much larger scale.

The divisions themselves will become similar to Army corps headquarters, which are little more than command-and-control units for attached subordinate elements. Once the reorganization of these two divisions is complete, Schoomaker will then report back to Rumsfeld with a recommendation on the future size of the Army. The presumption is that he will recommend a substantial reduction to the Army's end-strength.

At the annual Association of the United States Army conference last month, top Army officials including Schoomaker confirmed plans to disband all of the Army's heavy divisions and discard its tanks and tracked vehicles by 2025, without which the United States cannot fight or win major wars.

Schoomaker is also reportedly considering "transforming" in the near term one of the Army's existing six heavy divisions into a light infantry division by removing all of its tanks and tracked vehicle assets. This particular change will provide more optimized units for ongoing occupation and peacemaking duties in Iraq.

Given that the 3rd Infantry division, a heavy division, is already slated to undergo a major reorganization, it may well be the division selected for transformation from a heavy mechanized force to a light unarmored infantry force. These plans seem to indicate that the Army leadership does not anticipate that major conflicts such as the recent U.S. invasion of Iraq will be waged in the foreseeable future, and that Operations Other Than War (OOTW) such as U.N. peacemaking missions and occupation duties will remain the primary focus of the U.S. Army.

Perhaps the new Army leaders agree with Secretary Rumsfeld that all future wars the U.S. military fights will be small wars like Afghanistan, requiring no more than 50,000 special forces and light infantry troops supported by airpower. However, if history teaches us anything, it is that the United States will fight a major war that it did not plan on fighting sometime in the next decade or two. That being the case, any transformation effort that does not recognize that fact and disarms the Army of the weapons that it needs to fight and win major conflicts will inevitably result in the unnecessary deaths of countless thousands of American soldiers in the future.

Army generals successfully defended the Army's force structure from a two-division cut contemplated by Rumsfeld during the 2001 Quadrennial Review process, but it is doubtful that they will continue to resist such cuts for long in opposition to the autocratic Defense Secretary. Rumsfeld is accustomed to getting his own way and sometimes even resorts to firing those who disagree with him on matters of principle as in the case of former Secretary of the Army Thomas White.

The elimination of the Army's divisions would provide Rumsfeld with cover for his longtime plan to slash tens of thousands of troops from the service's payrolls, despite the fact that the Army remains severely overextended in Iraq. It has been unable to sustain the current level of deployments, forcing the call-up of tens of thousands of Army reservists and National Guard troops to fill the gap.

As recently as last year, Rumsfeld and his top confidante for transformation issues, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Steven Cambone, were reported to be continuing to plan to reduce the number of Army divisions from ten to as few as six, for a reduction of up to 40 percent. Under that earlier scenario, the few remaining Army divisions would then be transformed into an all-wheeled force of motorized light infantry brigades without the tanks or tracked vehicles necessary to fight and win major conflicts.

Dispensing with the division structure altogether and replacing the Army's current thirty-three brigades with forty-eight much smaller regiment-sized units, each with fifty-five percent less personnel than modern-day brigades, would allow Rumsfeld to conceal many of his planned Army personnel reductions as part of the transformation to a brigade-focused structure. Rumsfeld may even find a way to bypass the congressional authorization necessary to approve his planned force reductions.

There is another reason behind Rumsfeld's plan to eliminate the Army's divisions. Since the Vietnam War, the Army's mobilization plan has ensured that the Army would have to rely upon reserve and National Guard units in any major or protracted conflict. This policy, devised by former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Creighton Abrams, was intended to prevent the U.S. Army from being used in no-win wars in the future without a highly-publicized mobilization of reservists and Guardsmen.

That decades-old policy is causing the Bush administration headaches as reservists and their families complain about being sent to Iraq for twelve to eighteen months at a time, creating potential political problems for the president's re-election campaign.

While restructuring the Army will take several years to fully implement, it will make it easier for future presidents to bog down the U.S. Army in future no-win wars - like the one now being waged in Iraq - without the necessity of widespread public support.

David T. Pyne, president of the Center for the National Security Interest, a national security think-tank in Arlington, Va., has joined DefenseWatch as a Contributing Editor. He can be reached at pyne@national-security.org. ©2003 DefenseWatch. All opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of Military.com.

[sauropod]

Not true. At least as far as the electronics end of it was.

The decision of a diesel engine was a political one and not very well advised, IMO.

[optimistically_conservative]

This is the lynchpin undermining his argument.

He argues that "The elimination of the Army's divisions would provide Rumsfeld with cover for his longtime plan to slash tens of thousands of troops from the service's payrolls" and " it will make it easier for future presidents to bog down the U.S. Army in future no-win wars - like the one now being waged in Iraq".

Difficult to do both, cut active forces and rely less on the RC. It also makes little sense to maintain the current heavy force deployment that takes 6 months to put in place and restructure for Homeland Defense. Simply, Abrams' plan was to keep the combat arms (specifically heavy) in the active portion while moving the support they need for large-scale long-term deployments into the Guard/Reserves.

What we're finding is wars are "won" much quicker and devolve into a truce/nation building in months. Abrams' plan becomes obsolete if the combat is over so quickly, but at the same time the forces needed to fight in Afghanistan/Iraq are not being maintained in the standing Army.

Also, under Eric "window-dressing" Shinseki, the Army was moving in the wrong direction for joint/coalition global operations under unified commands. AUSA has often been guilty of leading the conventional ground war line of thinking.

[Bombard]

The year 2025 is the date given for the end of phase out of the heavy divisions. That is 21 years from now. Who can say what military technology will be like by then. To say that heavy weapons of today will be needed by then is ignoring the advances that the military has seen in the last 25 years. It is likely that todays heavy weapons will be the dinosaurs of the battlefield by 2025.

[Bombard]

The question is what will be considered heavy armor by 2025?

[sauropod]

I'm not ignoring anything. What do you think it was the soldiers used in the Thunder Run into Baghdad?

[sauropod]

ok then. Let's just ignore the many-thousand artillery pieces DPRK has. Let's just ignore the PRC army.

Every operation is not going to be a cakewalk. It is foolish to assume that all wars will be "won" the way the Iraqi war was.

China believes that by 2030 they will be fighting us. It is foolish not to prepare for it.

[DarkWaters]

I wonder if we are even factoring in nukes(the small tactical kind) on the battlefield. Given everyone is talking about conventional means but the world is pushing to the more unconventional mean(ironically making it of the more conventional as time goes on).

[optimistically_conservative]

Let's just ignore the many-thousand artillery pieces DPRK has. Let's just ignore the PRC army.

Korea actually makes my point. That conflict is largely decided in the first two to three weeks. After that, mobility of forces flowing in become the focus. Thinking 40 ton tanks are going to make the difference in that war is dumb. Are you suggesting counter-battery and air superiority are at risk in Korea by this plan?

China believes that by 2030 they will be fighting us. It is foolish not to prepare for it.

It would be foolish not to be prepared to fight it with superior forces to China's strategy in 2030. Did 40 ton tanks win the WWII war in the Pacific?

[xsrdx]

the author of the article is fear mongering and needs to shut up or tell the whole story.

Roger.

M1/M2 platforms will be replaced by an "FCS" combatant with improved lethality and survivability.

This author has a stake in preserving the status quo, but the transition to networked Units of Action will enhance - not reduce - our ability to kill anything on the battlefield.

We're not giving up Abrams for Stryker, not even close.

[Bombard]

You still focus on past history. Focus on the future and what warfare might look like in the year 2025.

[StarCMC]

Hey - I seriously want your thoughts on this article -- ???

[Magnum44]

This is what Rumsfeld is doing, and I said this two three years ago when 'transformation' began:

The army is being reorganized for rapid deployment, ala Marine Corp. The new combat brigades will be able to deploy in a few weeks, and self sustain (have the logistics support) to fight wars in places that getting a heavy division into would take months. The problem with the heavy division was demonstrated when Turkey refused to let us into Iraq from the north. It took months to get those forces back into action.

In the briefings I have had on this, I did not see any emphasis on getting rid of the heavy armor. I did see emphasis on acquisition of light armor. The heavy stuff will still be there, but as it always is, it will be late to the fight. The key to (most) future wars is getting there today. First in will get the win.

I think this is a good move for the army. It is a mindset change for soldiers in terms of deployment cycles (they will have to start thinking like sailors and marines, but hey, the air force figured it out in only a few years with their deployable airwings.)

The articles political slant is garbage.

[Old Sarge]

Okay, let's look at this virtual catbox liner:

First, the source, "Military.com", is good stuff generally, but the disclaimer at the bottom tells it all: the author is obscenely Leftist.

The maneuver commanders love the idea of lighter fighters. We've been at three-brigade divisions for a long time. Going to a two-Bde structure cuts out the tail needed for supporting a larger unit; therefore, the unit is lighter, and more easily deployable.

A heavy-maneuver division can have this done, too, without the sacrifice of too much combat power. Even if the CBT SPT units - Artillery, Engineers, etc. - are made to be attached and not assigned, they would still support the division ops.

Another advantage of 2-BDE Div's, is there's less tail/teeth ratios to deal with. The new Div. couldn't sustain independent ops for as long, but the rapidity of deployment more than compensates. Further, during a major deployment, there would be more support units called up from the RC/ARNG, so the suporting structure would still be there, under the Div. CDR's control anyway.

And there's the turf wars to be considered, unfortunately. All those flag-ranks that got cut, had their little fiefdoms carved out for themselves, with contractor jobs lined up after retirement. SecDef knows this: it's got a stranglehold on R&D, and we need weapons systems and concepts NOW, and not trickling thru the pipeline a generation form now.

[Travis McGee]

It's way above my (former) pay grade.

[Lion Den Dan]

We'll see if they stick with it this time. Last major vehicles were developed quite some time ago (Early/Mid 80s.).

Actually, the seeds of the M1 Abrams was sown with the MBT70 project in the late 60s and early 70s. New vehicles, particularly armor systems take a while.

Lest we forget, the best time to have a tank is when the other guy does not.

[Stonewall Jackson]

Have you ever read The Compleat Bolo by Keith Laumer? (Yes, the spelling is correct.)

[verity]

"I also think we ought to hedge our bets and stick with some heavy armor."

If I read the article correctly, the MBT will be around until 2025. By that time, the MBT will probably be obsolete as an effective weapons platform. I am reminded that there were some cavalry officers who were panicked when their beloved horses were declared obsolete.

[sauropod]

Correctamundo.

M1 and BFVS were fielded around 1980 or thereabouts. I don't know the current weight of the M2A3+ or whatever the latest variant is, but it was becoming quite heavy last time i checked.

[sauropod]

Why are you stuck on the number "40 ton"? The M1 is about 70 tons.

Take a look at the Korean terrain and tell me that airpower is gonna win it.

Air power did not prove decisive in Bosnia, in large part because of the terrain.

[sauropod]

I've been paying attention. The DARPA race this weekend shows us how really far away we are from what some are envisioning.