New Chief of Staff of the Army Comments (Notes)

9/23/2003

[XEHRpa]

A colleague had a chance to hear the new Chief of Staff of the Army (GEN Schoomaker, Shinseki's replacement) speak (I'm not sure of the forum). He summarized the talk into a memo, which was distributed to the chain. Sorry about some of the jargon. I don't know it all myself. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the review, other than to say the source is credible. So inaccuracies, if any, are mistranscriptions, and not fabrications.

Here is what it said:

Subject: New CSA's Comments

Some of the highlights of what the CSA said:

1. He had no idea that he would be called back to service, and he thought the phone call asking him to come to Washington was a joke that a friend of his was playing. He does not know Sec Rumsfeld very well, he had no previous contacts with him before the call, and he was unaware of the details behind controversy surrounding Rumsfeld's relations with the former CSA. He knows now, of course.

2. He was picked because OSD felt that as a special operator with a heavy joint warfighting background, he would be the best possible person to break Army stereotypes, stovepipes, branch parochialism, opposition to expeditionary operations in a joint-coalition environment, and an underlying hesitancy to do anything other than fight major wars. His charter from the SecDef was to make the Army "relevant and ready." The days of Army foot-dragging when ordered to execute tasks it didn't like are over.

3. The byword will be, "what's good for the nation, is good for the Army." The attitude that says, "What's good for the Army is good for the nation" is dead.

4. The DAMPL (DA military priority list?) is out. There are no more CAT 1 or CAT 2 units. Only those that are deploying to an operation and those that are not. Priority of support will go to units heading to operations. One of the reasons the 507th Maint Co got lost and ambushed was because it deployed without any of the equipment that first line combat units did. The days of the "haves" and "have nots" in the active force must end.

5. We are going to re-look our organizations. The Army is going to have to figure out how to reorganize its structures so that we can deploy something other than light infantry brigades to a fight in 24 hours. The CG, 24 ID has been tasked to figure out how to create five brigades with all the enablers found at division/corps from his current organization. These may be smaller brigade-like units, but they will include all the functional capabilities found in a division.

6. The division HQ as we know it may be gone. What will probably develop in its place is a modular command and control structure capable of operating as a division, JTF, CJTF or other expeditionary, task-oriented headquarters.

7. The terms legacy force, interim force and objective force are out. Stop using them. There's only the current Army and the future Army. The one will evolve into the other, as it has since time immemorial. And the M1A2 tank will be with the force until at least 2025.

8. The Army is a critical component of the joint team. We will aggressively seek to put Army guys in joint warfighting slots. Any Army leader who balks, drags his feet, or complains about working in a joint or coalition environment will be fired. The days when an Army component commander will go behind the back of his combatant commander and complain to the CSA about his treatment are over. Any commander who tries to defy his combatant commander, whomever or whatever he may be, will be fired.

9. We must re-look Army Aviation - its equipment, tactics manning, etc - and be truly honest about its capabilities before we fly helicopters over any more heavily defended positions without combined arms and joint support.

10. We may go to a system of unit manning versus individual replacement. This is not the cohort revisited. It is the wholesale moving of units between headquarters on a grand, scheduled basis. We're not going to DEROS people, but units. Even so, a soldier will have to expect to be deployed for one year out of a three year tour.

11. We're getting out of the installation management business. Real estate companies take better care of on-post housing and facilities better and more professionally than any housing office, anyway.

[AlaninSA]

Good comments from the new CSA. Shinsheki was a Clintonista who destroyed MY Army during his tenure.

I'm still ticked off about the "ARMY OF ONE," Berets and such. Nothing irritates me more than seeing the fat REMF medics from Fort Sam Houston running around in their incorrectly worn black berets at lunchtime.

[Old Sarge]

If authentic, they make a boatload of sense.

ANYTHING is going to be better for the force than Shinseki-san was.

[IGOTMINE]

Looks like they're going to move to a Marine Corps like structure for task organization.

[cavtrooper21]

This guy is talking a good talk, now lets see if he can get the rest of the Army to walk the walk.
Hope he eats his Wheaties, he has a long battle to overcome the entrenched "Clintonista" senior officer corps.

[Ed_in_NJ]

SCHOOMAKER -- FRIEND OF YOURS?

Posted by archy to Ed_in_NJ
On News/Activism 09/23/2003 9:38 PM PDT #88 of 107

So who is next? Who else could damage Clark?

Documents released to Cox Newspapers on Friday by the FBI indicate that Col. William Boykin, then Delta Force commander, and Brig. Gen. Peter Schoomaker, then the assistant division commander of the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas, were the previously unidentified officers who told Reno use of CS gas, a potent form of tear gas, would make the compound "untenable."

[Arkie2]

Woah! Divisions a thing of the past. Brigade level mobile and more lethal is the name of the game.

I'm especially intrigued by the comments on air support. Being an old Air Force guy myself, my ears pricked up when I read that. The helicopters took a beating during the recent festivities and the Air Force has announced the retirement of the A-10 and its replacement will be the F-16. Not viable in my opinion. I smell a turf war brewing and given the Air Force's lack of concern for close air support I'm hoping the General can bloody their noses. Not very loyal I guess but the Army needs air support and the Air Force has announced they're going out of the business.

[inPhase]

Agree. The Warthog was a huge hero last spring in Iraq so they retired it.

[archy]

The DAMPL (DA military priority list?) is out.

Not quite. It's the Department of the Army Master Priority Listing. See here to get an idea of which piece of the S3 puzzle DAMPL fits into.

This should offer some real interesting questions for those involved in inactive reserve force and mobilization/training command readiness programs.

Anyone heard any rumbles about a draft or other conscription authorization bill being drafted or offered lately...?

-archy-/-

[Steely Glint]

A rumor says that those notes are dead accurate and that they got out via a senior officer in TRADOC.

But that's just a rumor, of course.

[Steely Glint]

The F-16 is about as useful at air support as a kite would be. Too high, too fast, too fighter-pilot-oriented.

Close Air Support needs to be delivered near ground level, which is why the Warthogs and all of Marine Aviation are so very deadly (and so very valued) for CAS: they fly low and hit hard. Meanwhile, the cowards that fly F-16's stay in the clouds where they can't be hit and never even get near the battlefield and if all you have is F-16 CAS then you have to watch good men die with no support.

Don't let the warthogs be killed off by the USAF Fighter Pilot Mafia. We don't need fancy fighters in the post-USSR world; we need effective CAS and lots of it.

[archy]

Being an old Air Force guy myself, my ears pricked up when I read that. The helicopters took a beating during the recent festivities and the Air Force has announced the retirement of the A-10 and its replacement will be the F-16. Not viable in my opinion. I smell a turf war brewing and given the Air Force's lack of concern for close air support I'm hoping the General can bloody their noses. Not very loyal I guess but the Army needs air support and the Air Force has announced they're going out of the business.

When I took a tour group of USAF cadets from Colorado Springs to the St Louis McDonnell-Douglas plant in the mid-1990s, we were told a little story about the time the USAF brass decided to cancel the A-10 while it was still under development. Unofficially, or maybe not, depending on how sneaky some Army senior brass at DCSOPS were, the Army sent a handfull of Army aviators to transition from rotary wing aviators to fly the fixed-wing Marine AV-8B Harrier, which of course the Army doesn't operate. The Air Force got wind of the thought of the Army developing its own fixed-wing CAS assets, and the 1000 or so Warthogs got built as planned instead.

Well, I guess the Army could always reopen the former rotary wing basic pilot's school at Ft. Wolters Texas, now the *Ft Wolters Industrial Park* as a Harrier driver's school....

[Arkie2]

Well I was with you there until you called F-16 pilots cowards. I assume you know Air Force pilots transition from one aircraft to another, sometimes several times in a career? An F-16 pilot today may be a warthog driver tomorrow and vice versa. If you were trying to make a point you blew it pal.

[archy]

10. We may go to a system of unit manning versus individual replacement. This is not the cohort revisited. It is the wholesale moving of units between headquarters on a grand, scheduled basis. We're not going to DEROS people, but units. Even so, a soldier will have to expect to be deployed for one year out of a three year tour.

Uhoh. *FORCE XXI* rears its ugly and untested head [unless it worked out a LOT better in Iraq than appears to have been the case.] There goes the *institutional memory* of activity in particular operational areas, unless they're hoping it can be managed via SEP and FBCB2 *digital battlefield* C4.

No more Division-level HQs? Hmmm, looks like no more Division Capstone Exercises at Ft Irwin....

<10. We may go to a system of unit manning versus individual replacement. This is not the cohort revisited. It is the wholesale moving of units between headquarters on a grand, scheduled basis. We're not going to DEROS people, but units. Even so, a soldier will have to expect to be deployed for one year out of a three year tour.

Better mobilize those family-support group assets RIGHT quickly....

[archy]

Well I was with you there until you called F-16 pilots cowards. I assume you know Air Force pilots transition from one aircraft to another, sometimes several times in a career? An F-16 pilot today may be a warthog driver tomorrow and vice versa. If you were trying to make a point you blew it pal.

Count on the bluesuiters getting called a lot worse things by the grunts, and for the potential of a lot worse things happening than namecalling if the family members of grunts killed because they've got no close air support come home in boxes.

Remember the cancellation of the army's 155mm Crusader artillery because the USAF air support would always be there to save them- as it mostly was during Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan? Whatr happens when the grunts have no artillery and the USAF won't give them *danger close* support in populated areas? More Jessica Lynchs and Lori Ann Piestewas?

That is NOT what the *Aim High, avoid shooting yourself in the foot* Air Force needs right now....

-archy-/-

[Arkie2]

The discussion is about the right machine for the job, not the courage of Air Force pilots. Steely Glint owes an apology and if the grunts have a beef, and I believe they do, they can take it up with the Air Force brass hats and not the pilots.

[inPhase]

Thanks for posting this, I read a lot and miss a lot.

[inPhase]

should read

"miss a lot"

[xzins]

Any Army leader who balks, drags his feet, or complains about working in a joint or coalition environment will be fired.

This sounds like a comment from someone who's been in special ops for a career, as has schoomaker.

He doesn't need to worry. All the officers I've known since 1995 would KILL to get a joint assignment. They believe them to be absolute career enhancers.

The other stuff sounds about right. The MIA2 until 2025 is unrealistic. I'd bet it'll still be the MI, but it'll be like the M1A4. Technology is changing, and so will our equipment, or our guys will die.

The housing business is humorous. The army has long hated having to manage on-post housing. Why haven't they changed it? Because there's a whole civilian government jobs system built in support of it. Everytime it's tried to change, the gov unions and politicians get called into it, and then the initiative dies.

If Rumsfeld leaves after Bush's first term, the civilians will outlast this one, and it will not change.

[inPhase]

Boy if what you said is not the truth!
And those civilians survive the military too, everyday counting the days to retirement paid out of that entitlement pie they "work" to create.