Posted on 06/05/2003 10:48:02 PM PDT by Stultis
WASHINGTON - If the Army isn't broken, then why is Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld so hell-bent on fixing it?
From his first day in office Rumsfeld has fixed his sights on the Army - questioning its leadership, strategy and tactics, and its weaponry. He and his principal lieutenants, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Deputy Secretary Douglas Feith, seemingly found nothing right about America's senior service.
They have postulated a world where a revolutionary new American way of war will command the battlefields of the future, and the Army will play no more than a secondary, follow-on role. Special operations forces teamed up with precision air strikes with precision munitions will, they say, crack any opposing force.
Then the Army, so slow and reliable and uncomplaining, will come in last to police up the wreckage and rubble.
Oh yes. For the last two years the Pentagon civilians have been trying to whack two full divisions and a corps out of an already painfully thin 10-division Army stretched to the max doing America's business and keeping the peace in nasty places around the globe. They would take an additional 100,000 troops out of an Army that presently has just 480,000 men and women. They would also take down four Army National Guard divisions.
Defense experts note that killing programs and closing bases only recapture about 20 cents on the dollar, whereas personnel cuts capture the full dollar. Rumsfeld and crew are looking high and low for $40 billion to $50 billion to jumpstart Star Wars II. Cutting Army strength would be a downpayment on space-based antimissile defenses.
All of this overlooks the fact that even as stretched and stressed as it is, the Army we have today is without equal in the world. It is the best it has ever been: the best led, the best trained, the best equipped.
Witness the single Army Division, the 3rd Mech, which blasted down the gates to Baghdad in three weeks, from start to finish. Witness the brigades of paratroopers and mountain soldiers who continue operations, unseen and unsung, in Afghanistan. Witness the brigades that keep the warring parties from each other's throats in Bosnia, Kosovo, the Suez.
Even as this is written a third Army division, the 1st Armored, is pouring into Iraq to join the 3rd and 4th Divisions to try to restore law and order. Among those three divisions, which two will Rumsfeld choose to kill and will he wait until they have finished the job in Iraq?
Murmuring of a dinosaur force prepared only to fight the Cold War battles, the Pentagon civilians early this year ordered the creation of an independent panel, headed by a retired Air Force general, to review the Army's advanced plans for its future - the Objective Force and Future Combat Systems.
The Welch panel, named for its chairman Gen. Larry Welch, has finished its work and written a 71-page report that declares the Army is well on its way to transforming itself into a much more agile and lethal force.
The Army's plans, said one member of the Welch panel, are so far advanced now that to halt them or radically revise them would bring the Army to a screeching halt and leave it adrift for five years.
That panel member, who asked that he not be identified, added that the Army has built so great a level of "jointness" - or cooperation with the other armed services - into its future that it is now incumbent on the other services to get cracking with their own transformation programs.
The outgoing Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, was the driving force behind the Army's decision to change itself into a faster-moving and deadlier force. Shinseki, who retires on June 11 after 38 years service, is fond of telling his generals: "If you don't like change, how are you going to like irrelevance?"
Shinseki, a quiet warrior who avoided the media at every opportunity, has been treated shamefully by Rumsfeld and his people. He soldiered on faithfully and loyally, driving the engine of change inside an institution he loves.
The Army, and the nation, owe Gen. Shinseki a salute and their gratitude for a job well done when he steps out onto the parade ground at Fort Meyer and says his farewell next week.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Joseph L. Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and co-author of the national best-seller "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young." Readers may write to him at: Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, 700 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045.
who gave the army the stryker and tried to give it the crusader.
Just another Perfumed princed groomed by the klintoons.
Ranks right up there with WC Clark as a military leader.
Is my memory failing or is it not the case that the USMC was founded well before the Army of the United States?
No War College graduate here, but I'd wager a whole lot of money that the Army (and the other services) could lose 30-35% or more of the chair-polishing, ticket-punching REMFs in the Pentagon and elsewhere, and never miss a lick. These are the JIQs that Rumsfeld ought to be after.
Details can be worked out.
I noticed that two threads, very close together, both had titles that mentioned a "Galloway". Is this Galloway night?
This is my question as well. Hey, it's his first column, but he has left a lot of room for improvement.
Left-wingers fight to reinstate Galloway (they'll want to reinstate Saddam next)
Is Rumsfeld proposing taking away the Green Berets, Rangers and Delta Force from the Army, and transferring them to the Air Force, or is the writer missing something here?
The Navy didn't follow until the war was actually underway. The USMC came AFTER the Navy was developed.
For what it's worth, the CHAPLAIN CORPS predates the USMC.
Rumsfeld wants to rid the Army of all but spec-ops and follow-on forces. Shinseki wants to emphasize lighter and faster. Each of those strategies have their place in this world. It's another case of "fighting the last war."
These guys have watched Panama, Gulf Wars I&II, Kosovo/Bosnia and they are comparing our capabilities against Panamanians, Iraqis, and Yugoslavs.
We need to understand that these WERE NOT forces that possessed HIGH INTENSITY CONFLICT capabilities. None of these forces had the capacity to oppose our air supremacy.
We make a horrible mistake if we don't prepare to fight against the enemies who have the greatest AIR & PRECISION capabilities. This would include the Europeans, the Russians, and the Chinese.
Without air supremacy and precision munitions domination, then the forces we have on the ground had better be really heavy. In fact, AARs coming out of Iraq say they were disabling (not destroying) some M1s with RPGs.
Imagine that being a wheeled stryker vehicle with lighter armor just as both Rumsfeld and Shinseki envision. I see rubber wheels burning and lighter armor pierced. Someone has their heads up their as$es.
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