Q: Mr. Secretary?
Rumsfeld: Yes, sir?
Q: Danny Davis from the Army Operations Center. I have a question in regards to your vision for -- specifically Army transformation, speaking about that. In the first Persian Gulf War, I fought with the 2nd Armored Cav. Regiment, and before we went into battle for the first time, one of the things our leaders told us that gave us the most amount of confidence was, he said, "Fellows, the safest place to be on the battlefield is in an M1 Tank driving straight toward the gun tube of any enemy armored vehicle." And that just gave us the ability and the confidence to attack with reckless abandon because we knew we were going to crush anything we faced. (Laughter.) And in fact we did.
It's been widely reported that as far as this transformation to take care of the obvious necessity for more deployability and lighter armored vehicles to be able to deploy by air, that they're going to sacrifice in the armor protection. And especially for some of my brethren in the armored community, we're a little concerned about that because we want to maintain that ability to continue to attack with the confidence that we know we can still go with fire power and protection, as well as maneuverability to attack the future enemies.
And we just wonder what your vision was to be able to, I guess, have that balance to have more deployable vehicles, but still have the protection for the crew members.
Rumsfeld: Well, thank you. I think you answered your own question when you used the word "balance." The United States is going to have to have the ability to fight armies and navies and air forces of considerable magnitude for sure, and armor is critically important. However, the United States also has to be able to do things other than fight armies, navies and air forces because there we find that the -- most of the armies and navies and air forces of the world recognize the overwhelming capability of the United States and our allies, and as a result, they are dealing with us or addressing us with asymmetric threats that are not heavy tank forces coming across the north German plain, and they're not the kinds of major sea battles that we've seen in prior wars, and they're not the major air battles. Indeed, they're going for points of weakness. They're going to school on how we do things, and they will be attacking us in a variety of different ways, and we have to have the capabilities across that spectrum. And as a result, I begin as I ended (sic): the word "balance" is exactly right.
And the new chief of staff of the Army and the new secretary of the Army, who will be confirmed this fall, Jim Roche and Pete Schoomaker, will have on their desk the issues that have been so important and which General Shinseki and his predecessors have worked on, namely, the future combat system and the question of what the Army should look like in the period ahead. And they've got a lot of fine people working very hard to figure that out.
Q: Thank you.
Rumsfeld: But there will certainly be a role for armor. (Laughter.)
Secretary Rumsfeld Pentagon Town Hall Meeting
Dept of Defense ^ | 8/14/03 | Rumsfeld, Meyers
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/964314/posts Rumsfeld: But there will certainly be a role for armor. (Laughter.) Before Iraq II what Rummy would have meant by that is Stryker and the Future Combat Vehicle. His braniacs thought the M-1 was a dinosaur and that the future was opeations other than war (peacekeeping or what I would call colonial wars).
Iraq II demonstrated with clarity that we continue to need the current tip of the spear, the Abrams and Bradley armored force. It is my hope that Rummy and his brain trust are rethinking the concept of throwing away the best armored force in the world for a much less survivable light force. True, there will always be Liberias and Kosovos out there, but we must be prepared to fight the Syrias, Irans and North Koreas, the countries that truly threaten our allies and us.