Posted on 07/28/2005 8:46:12 AM PDT by StarCMC
Presenter: Special Assistant to The Secetary of The Army Ray Bubois; Army Vice Chief of Staff Richard Cody Wednesday, July 27, 2005 2:04 p.m. EDT
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Defense Department Special Briefing on Announcement of New Locations for The Active Duty Army's Modular Brigade Combat Teams
MR. DUBOIS: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. As most of you know, I'm Ray DuBois. In my various guises in this building, today I'm the special assistant to the secretary of the Army. You know Dick Cody, the vice chief of staff of the Army.
We're going to discuss today with you all what we consider to be a true cornerstone of Army transformation in the 21st century. I'm going to give you a little bit of a strategic background, strategic framework, if you will, and the vice is going to give you the details on the restationing plan for the Army's 43 Active Brigade Combat Teams. And then we'll take some of your questions.
It's important to note, though, that, why are we doing it now? Three very important strategic initiatives are converging at this time. You know all about them, but I want to knit them together because they provide the basis for this announcement today.
Number one, of course, is the Army modularity or modularization initiative that builds from 33 Brigade Combat Teams to 43, as well as standardizes the Army's Brigade Combat Teams into three types -- Stryker, light, and heavy.
Number two. You all have heard about Secretary Rumsfeld's Integrated Global Presence and Basing Strategy. So the second strategic initiative that's knit together in this restationing announcement are the initial stages of the return to the United States from overseas of Army units, some 50,000 soldiers; from Germany, 1st ID and 1st AD -- 1st Infantry Division, 1st Armored Division, and from Korea, the 2nd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division.
The third, of course, is BRAC, Base Realignment and Closure, which the secretary of Defense from this podium on Thursday the 12th, and Mike Wynne on Friday, May 13th, announced the secretary's recommendations.
There is another issue that you probably are interested in that's related to all of this, and that's the Army end strength and modularity dynamic, if you will. You may recall that in November of 2003, we announced the building of the 10 additional Brigade Combat Teams, and for the last 18 months, the Army has been fielding these new formations and simultaneously converting existing brigades to the new modular structure.
Now the basing decisions for the additional 10 new brigades, these new formations, were influenced by the existing infrastructure that we had, to include training capacity. It was also influenced by the deployment opportunities or so-called deployment optimization -- that is to say proximity to railheads, airfields and seaports -- and of course the operational surge requirements, which we are living with today.
Now these stationing locations, when combined with the enhanced combat capabilities that the Army's Modular Brigade Combat Team brings, they are also to meet the joint warfighting needs of the combatant commanders. And General Cody will get into more of the rotational impact on our decisions with respect to Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.
Now there are three words that I want you to kind to remember: re-flag, re-station, and re-patching.
We're going to re-flag some of these formations as they move around, keeping in mind unit heraldry and the lineage of some of the more famous combat formations in the Army.
We're going to re-station some of these units coming off of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Operations -- Operation Enduring Freedom, as they rotate back to the United States. One in particular is the 2nd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division from Korea, which is now in Iraq, will not return to Korea.
And the third issue, the re-patching, so-called -- some soldiers who are currently at one installation belonging to one particular unit may in point of fact change patches on his left arm.
What does that do? That relieves some of the stress on the force. One of the things that we wanted to accomplish, one of the objectives here, was to reduce permanent change of station moves and obviously give a certain force stabilization or more stability to the Army soldiers and their families.
Now when the Army -- the Department of Defense raised the number of brigade combat teams from 33 to 43, with the support -- and I want to make -- give credit where credit's due -- with the support of the congressional leadership, that set the conditions for how the Army was going to support, as I said, the operational requirements of the joint and regional combat commanders. But it also was a commitment. It also had a relationship to the quality of life issue with respect to our soldiers and their families.
Now it is, as I indicated, very important to understand that this announcement today is closely synchronized with what Secretary Rumsfeld announced in terms of his Integrated Global Presence and Basing Strategy. We had a Cold War infrastructure, Cold War worldwide footprint for the last 60 years. This clearly brings the Army into the 21st century with respect to global basing.
Now, the DOD's overseas basing strategy -- I talked about the 50,000 soldiers. And if you do a calculation, that's probably 150,000 dependents or more returning to the United States. As I said, the First Armored Division and the First Infantry Division. And General Cody will give you a more detailed laydown, both (sic) time and place and unit. But these are the cornerstones, as I indicated in the beginning, of what this announcement is about.
Now, the selection of specific stations, specific installations for these brigade combat teams -- all 43 of them -- resulted in a very deliberate -- or, as a result of a very deliberate, analytic process. It was significantly influenced, significantly enhanced by the Base Realignment and Closure analysis and deliberations.
As many of you know, I've been intimately involved with that for the past three years, and I can tell you that while the brigade combat team laydown is not technically a part of BRAC, it was influenced and informed by BRAC. The criteria for locating these brigade combat teams was based on military value -- again, the cornerstone of what the BRAC process is all about: available training space, locations of similar and supporting units, existing and potential capacities of installations in the surrounding communities.
We reviewed -- General Cody and I, because of this very reason, reviewed this announcement, reviewed these decisions with Chairman Tony Principi, the chairman of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission ,to ensure that the commissioners understood the operational rationale for this announcement today. And Chairman Principi supports the release of this information at this time.
Lastly, I want to leave you with a thought about our soldiers and their families. I think that you will see -- albeit a complex set of chess moves in a way -- you will see that these restationing decisions truly ensure that our soldiers and their families remain at the centerpiece of all that we do, especially from the point of view of reducing net stress on the force, reducing the -- and making more predictable both force rotation and permanent changes of station for our families.
I'm going to turn it over to General Cody now for, some would say, a delicious amount of detail. And I hope that you will listen to him carefully.
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carefully. I know you're going to have some questions afterward, but there are a lot of moving parts here.
Dick?
GEN. CODY: Thank you, Ray.
First what I'd like to do is set the stage a little bit. This is about the operational part of the active component of our Army. We also have a detailed plan for the Army National Guard, as well as the Army Reserve.
But today what I wanted to lay out for you, with Mr. DuBois, is the changes we're making and the decisions we've made in the basing strategy for our operational 43 combat brigades, the 10 divisions, as well as the three operational headquarters, our Corps, and walk you through that. And it's very complex, and I'll try to do it, and if you have questions, we can go back to the charts afterwards.
The first chart I want to lay out for you is this is a chart that lays out where our brigades were, where our divisions were prior to 9/11 and post the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review.
You had two brigades in Korea with a division headquarters in Korea. That was a heavy brigade and a mix between a heavy air assault and light brigade. Those two brigades did not look like anything we had in CONUS.
Up at Fort Lewis, we transformed two of our brigades -- one light and one heavy -- to our first two Stryker brigades. We had a world- class op fort, Fort Irwin, the 11th Armored Cav Regiment that was a late deployer because they were dual mission. At Fort Carson, as you know, we had one brigade of the 4th Infantry Division and the 3rd Armored Cav Regiment. At Fort Bliss, which has 1.2 million acres of maneuver and ranges, 40 percent of what the Army owns, we had no maneuver formations; we had the Air Defense School and the Sergeant Majors Academy. At Fort Hood we had two divisions and a corps -- 4th ID and the 1st Cav Division. Two brigades of the 4th ID were here; its 3rd Brigade was up at Carson, and you had three maneuver brigades with the 1st Cav. These five brigades here were the closest of any of our heavy brigades that looked alike. At Fort Riley we had the two roundout brigades for the 1st Armor and for the 1st Infantry Division; they were separate armor and mechanized brigades at Fort Riley. And then, of course, at Fort Campbell you had the Air Assault Division with three infantry brigades. These brigades and the 10th Mountain up at Fort Drum, which is also a light infantry, they did not look alike. And of course we had the airborne brigade -- three brigades in the 82nd and the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg. These two divisions look pretty close alike, but the 10th Mountain and the 25th -- two brigades out here which are light infantry, they weren't looking -- they weren't structured the same way.
And then in Europe, after the draw down of 7th Corps, we were left with 1st Infantry Division forward, 1st Armored Division forward with two of their brigades each, and then of course a light brigade minus airborne brigade in Vincenza, Italy -- the 173rd. That was the laydown.
It also represented that -- if you counted up these brigades, these 33 brigades, there was 33 brigade combat teams, but about 13 different designs. Over time, from the '80s through the '90s and as we drew down our Army from 18 divisions down to 16, down to 12, down to 10; moved the Army from 840,000 and restructured it all the way down to 482.4 thousand where we started off.
During this timeframe, we had 13 different brigade combat teams. That caused us to have an awful lot of different combat support and combat support structure.
Additionally, the headquarters -- the combat headquarters of these divisions weren't all the same. Some were structured to focus for a European campaign, some were structured to focus for the Southwest Asia, and then of course, in the third core area, they were structured to reinforce the Korean peninsula.
Additionally, our Army prepositioned stock -- because of these different formations -- weren't set up to support full-up brigade combat teams with all the different trucks and equipping sets.
So that was kind of the state of the affairs of the Army as we moved towards Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. And so that's what drove the chief of staff of the Army to -- when he took over, General Schoomaker, to look at modularity.
And the task he gave us was to -- let's form our Army up around a brigade combat team. Let's have three types. Let's have a Stryker brigade, a heavy brigade and a light brigade. And no matter where they are, let's have them all the same. And then let's take our division headquarters and our core headquarters and make them joint- capable, but also the same so that they're interchangeable. And so that's what we've been doing.
And then the core -- since the global war on terrorism, as part of modularity, we got the decision to grow the Army in strength by 30,000, so that we could continue to prosecute the global war on terrorism, and at the same time grow the Army and transform it.
Just moving the Army to modularity and the Army National Guard to modularity represents the largest change of our army since 1939. A hundred thousand spaces inside the MTOEs -- the Modified Tables of Organization and Equipment -- we've already done 44,000 while we're still fighting this war. And so we needed that additional 30,000 in strength so we could start with the right MOSs, because you can't mass-produce, overnight, some of these critical MOSs and still prosecute the war that we're doing.
So that was the -- that was the piece that I wanted to talk to you up front. And that's what drove Army modularity.
Now what I want to show you is, we're into the third rotation in OIF in Iraq and the sixth rotation on OEF. At the same time, simultaneously, while that was going on, as Mr. DuBois said, we've been resetting the Army, we have been transforming the Army, we have been growing the Army, and at the same time we have been repositioning the Army. And so today we're at a point where all of those are converging, and we need to communicate now these decisions to our families, our soldiers, and our commanders in the field what the master plan is.
And BRAC allowed us also, as Mr. DuBois said, to be able to optimize all the posts, camps and stations that have maneuver training and get the footprint of the Army, as it comes back from Europe and as parts of the Army comes back from Korea and as we grow to 43 maneuver brigades. It affords the opportunity to put the right formations at the right posts, camps and stations for training, for quality of life for the families, for power projection, for a(n) Army expeditionary force, to sustain a global war on terrorism.
So here's the footprint we have today, and I'll walk you through it right now.
As Mr. DuBois said, this used to be two brigades. That brigade's 2nd of the 2nd. That's the one that we put into Operation Iraqi Freedom, rotation number three. They have already started redeploying. Those soldiers came from Korea, fully trained, and moved right into Iraq and, as you know, have fought there for 12 months and done a super job. Their families are all over the United States. Usually those soldiers would come back to another post, camp or station and rejoin their old outfit.
Now that we're moving the whole brigade back, we had to find a place for -- because the 3rd -- because of our studies, we looked at all the different posts, and because the 3rd Army Cav Regiment was deployed, we elected to put them here, at Fort Carson. And there was a good reason for it. We looked at everything else.
So they're already coming home. Their families are already moving there.
That unit will change its flag over time and become a brigade of the 4th Infantry Division. And we'll stabilize that formation.
If you take a look here at these squares, these are the 10 brigades that Mr. DuBois talked about, the 10 brigades. We're building a brigade this year at Bliss. We've already built this brigade of the 4th Infantry Division. We're building this brigade now at Fort Polk. We'll start this one at Fort Riley in '06. We've completed the 4th Brigade of the 101st. We'll starting building a light infantry brigade of the Big Red One at Fort Knox in '06. We have completed a brigade of the 10th Mountain Division here, and that will give them three at Fort Drum. We've completed -- this was the first one we completed. That's the one that's over there now with the 3rd Infantry Division. And then that accounts for the 10 new builds.
During this time frame, between '06 and '07, the 10 new brigades we built -- nine of them are in a rotation. Okay? So they will be going down range and then coming back.
And then of course we'll build the 4th Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division in FY '06.
Some of the complexities of what we're doing right now -- you'll notice that we have a Big Red One patch here. This unit is 3rd Brigade of the Big Red One. They were in Iraq, they were relieved by the 42nd Infantry Division. They came home. Most of their families and those soldiers have been over in Europe three to four years. It was time for them to redeploy back to the United States. Based upon the proposed move of the 1st Infantry Division and their brigade out of Europe during the '06 time frame, we elected not to send families and soldiers over to Europe to backfill those soldiers coming out. So basically, we're moving that unit over there now into a cadre status. And sometime here at the end of the year we'll move the flag. The families are continuing to come home, and the soldiers are coming home, and they're going in to fill the needs of the Army at different posts, camps and stations. We'll plant the flag out here at Fort Lewis, and then it'll be the sixth Stryker brigade on active duty. And we will build it over time. And that's some of the complexity of these moves.
The piece that Mr. DuBois talked about in terms of articulating to our family members that, yes, there'll be a lot of changes in the Army, but we're not going to move our people, is the good example of this brigade here. This brigade is the 4th Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division. We moved families in there, we moved troops in it, and we built it. And we transformed the other brigades of the 4th Infantry Division.
Because they just got there, this division, as you know, with these four brigades are going to move to Iraq and relieve the 3rd Infantry Division here in the fall. When this tour of duty is done, they will come back. And as you know, our plan is to put the 4th Infantry Division with four brigades up to Fort Carson over time.
All three of these brigades will come back to Fort Hood after a year. The division troops will come back to Fort Hood. 3rd Brigade will go right back to where it came from. But over time, in about 120 days, the division headquarters, these two brigades, because they've been there for a while and their families have been there for a while, will move up to Fort Carson. This brigade, because it's brand new, will just take its patch off, and it'll put the patch of the 1st Cav Division on, so that we can stabilize those families and those soldiers there. And the beauty of the plan overall is, because we're putting like capabilities at these posts, we're able to stabilize our soldiers and, again, stabilize our families.
Another complex move -- and I'll do a couple of these, and then I'll go to the end state to show you how complex this is -- the 3rd ACR. The 3rd ACR is in combat now. It'll be coming home in the fall -- late fall. And it will go, all the troops will go back to Fort Carson. Their equipment will stop, and most of their heavy equipment will go to Fort Hood. And then, in a 120-day time period, those personnel that haven't been stationed longer than three years at Fort Carson will stay there and start filling out the two brigades of the 4th Infantry Division. The rest of them will come down here and will build the 3rd Armored Cav Regiment in its permanent end state down at Fort Hood, Texas.
So these are the new builds, these four that we've talked about. And then, of course, the -- I'll talk a little bit about Alaska and Hawaii, and then I'll go to the next slide.
This new build here we're building this year, that's an airborne brigade, and you can see it's got the 25th patch. This is a Stryker build. This is Stryker number 3. It is getting ready to deploy now to relieve Stryker 2 that's in country, the 1st of the 25th. And so it will go over and come back.
This is Stryker 2, that will come back to Fort Lewis. The complexity of this is, as it comes back we will refit it, reset it. And the aggregation of the Stryker population here, in June of '06 we will move this organization lock, stock and barrel, and it will come over here and reflag itself as the 2nd Cav Regiment to replace the 3/1 out of 1st Infantry Division and start setting ourselves up for the final footprint in Europe.
So this is the complexity of the moves and one of the reasons why we're making the announcement.
Here's what the end state's going to be. Of the 43 brigades that we'll have, 40 of them will be aligned under divisions. And so the 2nd Infantry Division headquarters will be in Korea, with its heavy brigade, and it will be modularized over time. In fact, they're moving towards it now. The rest of the three brigades assigned to wear the 2nd Infantry Division patch will be Stryker brigades at Fort Lewis, Washington.
In Hawaii, we'll be building the 5th Stryker Brigade, and the other brigade, the 1st Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division, that just came back from Afghanistan, will reorganize itself as a light Army modular brigade. The division headquarters will be here, and an operational command post will be in Alaska because the other two brigades will be in Alaska. That's the new build we're doing this year. And this is the 172nd, Stryker number 3. When it comes back from combat after next year, it will reflag itself as a Stryker brigade with the 25th patch.
Here at Carson, when they come home the 4th Infantry Division next year will move back up to Fort Carson. And as you know, it was at Fort Carson back in the '80s. It will have its two brigades that came out of Hood, its 3rd Brigade that was already there. And this would be the 2nd of the 2nd Infantry Brigade that came out -- that's coming out now, and it will be a light brigade, and it will transform over time this year.
Down at Fort Bliss we're building a new brigade now out of the 1st Cav Division. It will go over and come back, and then over time, under the proposal of the IGPBS, the 1st Armored Division and its brigades will come back to Fort Bliss in about the '08 to '09 time frame. And that will give us a full-up heavy division at Fort Bliss, Texas.
And of course I think you know part of the BRAC proposal that they're looking at now is we're going to move -- we've proposed to move the Air Defense Artillery School to Fort Sill, and this frees up the land. But I also remind everybody, 1.2 million acres of maneuver space out there, and we want to optimize the power projection platform of Fort Bliss and Fort Hood in particular with our heavy divisions.
Fort Hood I've talked to you about. It will have four heavy brigades. It will have the 1st Cav headquarters and a full-up 3rd Armored Cav regiment as well as the (3 Corps ?) headquarters.
Fort Riley we talked about. We'll have a new build at Riley. The 1st Armored Brigade that's there and the heavy brigade from the 1st ID will all transform themselves into heavy modular brigades. This will be a new build, light brigade, and then proposed in '06 we'll bring back the Big Red One headquarters back to Fort Riley, where it used to be, and start setting this footprint up.
The 4th Brigade, wearing that patch, will be a new build-up here at Fort Knox, Kentucky, a light brigade that we'll build in '06. We've got a lot of maneuver training areas for Fort Knox, a great (mount ?) site. And if you take a look at the Fort Knox, the Fort Campbell corridor down here, as well the Bragg, we've aggregated our light units. Fort Campbell will not be much change, except they'll have two multifunctional aviation brigades assigned there, as well as its modular infantry. Fort Polk will have the light infantry brigade. That will be the 4th Brigade of the 10th Mountain, and that will be located at our Joint Readiness Training Center. Fort Drum, I've already talked to you about. It will have that headquarters with its three brigades. Bragg, in '06, will end up with four brigades, plus the 18th Airborne Corps. And then, of course, Fort Stewart and Fort Benning, when the 3rd Infantry Division is relieved later this year by the 4th ID, they'll come back to Fort Stewart and Fort Benning, and then they will refinish the job they started in terms of modularity. As you know, they went over there about 90 percent in the modular formation, and then when they come back, we'll put them in a full modular force.
Now, what this does for us is it sets up the footprint of the United States Army and optimizes the training areas, the posts, camps and stations that are structured properly for the new weapon systems we have, the new Army modular formations we have. As well as teaming with our joint partners -- the Air Force, the Navy and Marines, it sets us up for some great joint training opportunities. As well as we're restructuring the National Guard's 34 brigades -- 11 heavies, 23 lights. And if I had them up here, you would see that they fit very nicely in teaming with the active components.
And so that will be the new footprint of the Army over time. By '07, 90 percent of this will be done. The last part of it to be done will be, of course, the Fort Bliss area. And tied to this entire plan, once BRAC is completed, the Army has a military construction plan that is timed to all these new builds.
So I think I'll pause there and we'll take some questions.
MR. DUBOIS: I think there's one issue that needs to be emphasized, and that's Europe. There has been some question about well, we're -- the 1st Armored, 1st Infantry leaving Europe; U.S. presence disappearing. Remember, the 1st Armored and the 1st Infantry Divisions had two brigades each. The 73rd in Vicenza was really a light, light brigade. What's going into Europe, what's leaving Europe, you're going to result in two full brigades in Europe. So it's a reduction of a little bit more than half, but certainly not a disappearance from Western Europe. That's an important point to remember.
GEN. CODY: And it will also have an MI outfit, a full-up multifunctional aviation brigade in Europe, as well as a pretty robust headquarters.
MR. DUBOIS: And, of course, Landstuhl Medical Center, Ramstein, Spangdahlem, Camp Darby, the Grafenwoehr, Hohenfels, Vilseck complex which will house the Stryker brigade and the headquarters -- EUCOM headquarters, Stuttgart, all remain in Germany. But the IGPBS has reduced, by over half, the number of individual discrete installations that the United States currently occupies. That is a significant amount of money savings to the U.S. taxpayer.
Charlie.
Q General, you have a list here of the active brigade combat team posture. Just so we can explain to the great unwashed out there numbers, as opposed to numbers of brigade combat teams, do you have an average number of troops --
GEN. CODY: Any kind of brigade?
Q -- in a Stryker brigade, a light brigade and heavy brigade?
GEN. CODY: Sure. Sure. A Stryker brigade -- in all seven Stryker brigades, the six in the active force and the one that's going to Pennsylvania, the strength, plus or minus a few people, is 3,900.
Q Thirty-nine hundred.
GEN. CODY: Yes.
Q And the light and the heavy brigade?
GEN. CODY: The heavy brigade, active and National Guard, is 3,800.
Q That's the heavy?
GEN. CODY: That's the heavy.
And then the infantry light-heavy -- excuse me -- the light infantry brigade, again, active and National Guard, airborne, air assault or light -- all the same -- will be about 3,500.
Q How about a division headquarters?
GEN. CODY: Division headquarters would be 1,022; as well as the corps headquarters would be about 1,022 give or take a few spaces. We're still working that out. And as you know, what we did was we took the MI Battalion, the Signal Battalion, the -- (word inaudible) -- headquarters, and we took all of those enabler headquarters and moved those staff officers and NCOs and built a main CP, and two forward-deployed tactical command posts for both the division and the corps headquarters.
The difference between the corps headquarters and the division headquarters; one corps will be operational headquarters, joint task force capable. The divisions will be joint capable, but the same structure; two star commanding those; three star commanding the corps; and it's just the grade structure is different. But the functionalities are the same.
Q Two other questions. What will the Army's end strength be in about `08 or `09 when you finish this, when you add the --
GEN. CODY: I can't answer the `08 question. I know that by `07 we hope to have leveraged the growth -- the temporary growth that we've been authorized to get to 512.4, so that we can get the right types of MOSs and grow the right types of NCOs and officers to meet the changes that I talked to you about. The different numbers of MI soldiers we have to grow, the different numbers of 88-Mikes -- truck drivers -- all those numbers changed as we restructured the Army. This is -- as I told you, this is the largest restructuring of your Army since 1939, and we're doing it while we have 17 brigades committed every day. It's pretty exciting and it's pretty fast-paced.
Q And who are the big winners here in terms of -- two, three bases ended up -- (inaudible) --
GEN. CODY: The big -- the big --
Q In terms of size, troops --
GEN. CODY: I think the big winner is America. And the big winners are our soldiers, because we finally get our footprint right. I mean, if we took a clean map, we would do this because it optimizes the investment strategies over the last 10 years for our airfields, our rail heads, our training areas. It also allows us to optimize our Army prepositioned stock forward, deploy its stock and that stock that's afloat.
And it also -- I think, over time, the big winners are going to be our Army families, because by able to aggregate -- and I may not have explained this well -- heavies, heavies, heavy and light, heavies, all Stryker, light, light, heavies, light -- this way, we can put a soldier and his family at a post-camper station there, and leave them there for four to five years. And they will have and go through the cyclic training of these brigades. And we have enough structure there so that they can continue to grow as young leaders and as soldiers through this.
MR. DUBOIS: Yes?
Q What of 1st and 5th Corps, and what is the unit in Germany? Is that the Stryker --
GEN. CODY: That is a Stryker.
Q What's the name of it?
GEN. CODY: That'll be the 2nd Cav Regiment.
Q They're going to still call it Cav, but it's going to be Stryker?
GEN. CODY: It's going to look just like a regular Stryker outfit, except it's going to retain, as General -- as Mr. DuBois said -- I promoted you!
MR. DUBOIS: Hmmmmmmmm.
GEN. CODY: Or maybe not.
MR. DUBOIS: Maybe not.
GEN. CODY: Yeah (ayuh ?).
(Chuckling.)
GEN. CODY: The lineage of the 2nd Cav Regiment -- that has a long history in our Army, but certainly a long history on the European plains.
Q And then the Corps Headquarters, 1st and 5th?
GEN. CODY: 5th Corps, over time, under our proposal will be combined with the 7th Army in Europe, based upon the proposal for the global repositioning. 1st Corps, as you know, we're proposing to move that forward in Japan. And those negotiations are ongoing. And then, of course, 18th Airborne Corps remains at Fort Bragg, and the 3rd Corps remains at Fort Hood.
Q So, how would that work with 5th Corps combining with 7th Army? Does that leave a --
GEN. CODY: Well, look at the footprints you got. I don't have it here, but you had --
MR. DUBOIS: (Off mike) -- full-fledged brigades --
Q I understand -- (inaudible).
GEN. CODY: Yeah, but you had (two ?) division headquarters, so --
MR. DUBOIS: (Inaudible) -- there's two full brigades.
GEN. CODY: So there's no need to have that there.
MR. DUBOIS: It's also important to point out, I think, Dick, that the so-called Army or Corps headquarters are not your father's Corps headquarters.
GEN. CODY: Right.
MR. DUBOIS: It's a Joint Task Force configuration. And that is, as you've heard from Secretary Rumsfeld, one of his objectives. And it has been one of his objectives over the last several years.
Q Sir --
GEN. CODY: Let me tell you -- you asked a great question, and we don't explain it well, and I'm going to try.
I told you that all these division headquarters now are the same, in terms of structure, in terms of equipment and everything else. The corps are the same. And you're asking what happens when you don't have 5th Corps anymore. We could take -- just like we did now, we could take the 101st headquarters, and if it required a three-star, we could put a three-star commander on top of this and put that headquarters in place without having to make major changes.
As you know, during this OIF and OEF, we've had to create an MCI, an MFI, CJTF-76, and we've had to take it out of hide, and we've done it with over 2,500 individual augementees and officers that we had to pull out of other formations.
And so what this finally does for us is get the Army structure set to the realities of the 21st century, and what type of command headquarters we need to have to fight this. And so it's not just modularity in terms of these brigades; it's modularity in terms of the operational headquarters and the tactical headquarters.
MR. DUBOIS: But it's also important -- and I think some of you have already probably picked up on this -- the Army's operational and organizational structure has moved from a division-centric Army to a brigade-centric Army, for two very important reasons.
One is that you can now mix and match. You can take brigades from different divisions, depending upon what the requirements are of the combatant commander, and put them together, A.
B, you do not have to take an entire division from Fort Campbell and leave Fort Campbell empty. You can take two brigades -- two brigades. You now have -- you know, the Army's like nature. It likes balance and symmetry. You've now got an opportunity to mobilize Guard and Reserve forces into an installation that still has active-duty force structure there. That netting -- knitting, if you will, is going to have, we think, very positive implications, but it also has positive implications of how you manage these installations and not leave one totally denuded. That has a community impact, economic impact. You can now manage much better across the United States as you deploy forward into a combat zone.
Q General, for those of us who can't do the math, which bases are going to enjoy the greatest increase in population? And do you have the facilities for them?
GEN. CODY: Yes, that's a fair question. I'll take one base that really grows a lot, and then the others we'll have to get you the numbers. I have them, but I want to be accurate.
Fort Bliss, Texas, as I told you, has over 40 percent of our maneuver training area. Over time, the growth at Fort Bliss -- and I'm talking about the '06 through the '09 time frame -- will be plus 20,000. And a large part of that is the fact that about 2,200 soldiers, under the BRAC proposal, will move the Air Defense Artillery School and combined (sic) it with the artillery school at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to become a net fire center. And so, when that -- as they start executing that, we'll build one brigade there, then bring three brigades sequenced back, tied to the billets, milcon that we're going to put in there, the family housing infrastructure we're going to put in there, the medical facilities, the hangars, and all that. We have a master plan -- I probably should have said this up front. Based upon this, we have a master plan for about six or seven years that some of it's inside a BRAC, some of it's outside a BRAC, to sequence our military construction with the build of these forces and the movement of our families into these posts.
Q So 20,000 is troops and families.
GEN. CODY: That's 20,000 troops.
Q Add another 3.5 --
GEN. CODY: Fifty.
Q -- 60(,000), 70,000 more?
GEN. CODY: Yeah.
Q But clearly, Bliss, we're -- which does not have a combat unit today, is, to put it in the vernacular, a big winner. But you also have an increase at Carson, you also have an increase at Drum. But -- a rebalancing here, except for those three posts, is essentially getting back to -- and Hood gets back to basically where it was in the beginning.
GEN. CODY: Yes. Remember, a growth of 30,000, 50,000 coming home. That's 80,000 troops. And this really puts us in a pretty good structure.
Q How about Carson and Drum? How much -- what's the number?
GEN. CODY: The numbers, we'll get -- we'll get them to you, Charlie. I don't want to give you an inaccurate number, because so many people are listening, and we've already got it with the piece. So we can get you those numbers accurately.
Q All right.
GEN. CODY: Yes, sir.
Q Sir, can you explain how this makes it easier for the Army to carry out sustained operations, high op tempo --
GEN. CODY: Sure. Sure. One of the challenges that our division commanders have today is, because we -- one, we only had 33 brigades to start with, and we're starting to build up to 43. And as Mr. DuBois said, that's probably the number we need, and we'll make a decision in '07 whether we go from 43 to 48, and that'll be a department decision as well as, I'm sure, other people. That's to relieve the stress off the National Guard, as well as relieve the stress off the active component. But division commanders now, like the 101st Division commander and this post, because he's going as a full division back, he's having to totally strain Fort Campbell's training areas not to have just one brigade fully combat trained, but all four of them fully combat trained. Same down here at Fort Hood, the 4th Infantry Division. You've got the 1st Cav getting themselves reset in training, but you've got the 4th Infantry Division having to have all their brigades fully trained.
And so, under that -- where we are now, that puts an awful lot of stress on our training resources. But if you go back over to here, say in '07, and we still have whatever number of brigade combat teams and division-required headquarters, you can go now to Fort Campbell and say, "Give me your division headquarters, and give me you first up training brigade that's ready to go, that's fully trained." You don't disrupt these; these guys are in reset. Their families are there. The soldiers are off to schools doing the military stuff. And then these guys are the next ones to get ready.
And so you've got a regular sequence of training and you won't disrupt it. So you'd send this guy and two of these brigades, and maybe two from over here that are the first up, and you can keep a steady flow on your training resources and not have to spin inside of ourselves, and that's what we're doing right now trying to maintain all of these brigades in a go-to-war status.
MR. DUBOIS: We'll take one or two more questions. In the middle.
Q Yeah. General Cody, a question for you. You say that a soldier will now not only just spend four to five years at the same post, but also with the same brigade. Within that brigade, will officers and NCOs be able to spend more time in key positions?
GEN. CODY: Yes.
Q For example, will a company commander spend more time as a company commander, a battalion commander, a 1st sergeant?
GEN. CODY: You ask a great question. We're doing that now, as you know. We've extended -- because of 12 months boots on the ground, we've got battalion commanders that have 26, 30 months of command time -- 1st sergeants, company commanders. In the life cycle management of our brigade combat teams, as I explained here, where you have this guy fully trained, this guy working to get up to that, this guy out of individual training into collective training, and this patch may be resetting because they just came back, they'll be able to stabilize themselves through this three-year cycle. And so you'd keep the leadership, you'd keep the key cadre through a three-year cycle. And then, because we're not moving people as much, we'll reduce the amount of turbulence in each one of the battalions and brigades. As I think you know, we average anywhere from 13 to 14 percent turbulence per month because we're feeding -- not feeding, but we were -- had a three-year OCONUS over here with a larger Army; we had a 12-month OCONUS. And so when you put those into the equation back here, you're constantly turning over troops in each one of your brigade combat teams at a pretty high rate. This stabilizes the force much better and gives us more cohesion in those brigade combat teams.
MR. DUBOIS: Yes, ma'am?
Q How many aviation brigades will there be under this plan?
GEN. CODY: Eleven.
Q And is that tied to any particular division or --
GEN. CODY: They will wear division patches, but they are modular in terms of the attack units, multifunctional aviation brigade. And we built five of them already. They'll have two attack battalions, an assault battalion, a general support battalion, and then a maintenance battalion, and then a brigade headquarters. The modular pieces of the aviation units are the companies and the battalions, and they're designed so that they're interchangeable amongst any one of the brigades. And so they will wear the division patches, but quite frankly, they will be used as task forces to support whatever requirements we have.
MR. DUBOIS: The division patch will not restrict their deployability under different command structures, depending upon the needs of the combatant commander.
GEN. CODY: Yes.
MR. DUBOIS: One last question.
Q Can you say why you're not talking about the Guard today? What's the status of that plan?
GEN. CODY: The Guard is transforming their 34 brigades. We have a similar plan for them. The reason why we didn't do it is because, quite frankly, the changes aren't as significant as what we're doing right here.
MR. DUBOIS: But there's 43 active BCTs, 34 Guard and Reserve BCTs. Guard, of course, is much more state and regionally laid down and will not change. The construct -- the internal construct, table of organization, equipment may very well change in some of these Guard brigades.
Last question. Yes, ma'am?
Q Could you please give a little bit more detail about the moves back from Germany, especially considering the fact that the 1st Armored is getting ready to go back to Iraq? Are they going to come back to Germany and then back to the United States?
GEN. CODY: That's a great question. I'm glad you asked it.
In all cases, no matter where the soldier's patch is going to end up, the soldier will link up with his family and be stabilized there, and then we'll redeploy them. Whether it's in CONUS and the unit's going to move to someplace else -- the patch, or the flag -- or in the case of our OCONUS soldiers in Europe, they will come back to Europe and they will PCS out of Europe with their families just the way they came in.
Q That same 120 time?
GEN. CODY: I don't know the time lines. We'll have to work with General Bell, because the phasing of that, we want to be sensitive to General Bell's plan so that we phase it in properly.
MR. DUBOIS: The people may come back to Germany; the equipment will not.
GEN. CODY: That's right.
MR. DUBOIS: It could stay in Kuwait for reset, for another rotation. It could come back to another installation in the United States.
Anyway, thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.
Ping - LONG!
Whoops - left you off the ping - sorry!
I would note that they're moving a BCT to Fort Hood, closer to the Mexican border.
I don't understand what you're talking about. Ft. Hood has had two divisions until now -- after the change there will be one division at Hood with another at Ft. Bliss, Texas. So there really aren't any net changes in Texas. And if you think these moves have something to do with Mexico then you're the only one.
Yuppers the Big Red One is coming home to Ft. Riley...and Old Ironsides is going to Texas.
HOOAH!!!
Hey TX - goodtaseeya!
Well, it's not because I expect trouble with Mexico; it seems, however, that many of the World War II leaders got experience with the Army along the Mexican border.
Thanks, It would be helpful to have the Powerpoint briefing that goes with this transcript, but it doesn't seem to be posted anywhere. Freepers go to work.
20,000 going to Fort Bliss which is ON the border.
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