Historically Speaking
Defense
Transformation
Redux
By BG John S. Brown
U.S. Army retired
efense transformation, although
D
topics worthy of concern is on the mark. In
not necessarily referred to by that
a Government Executive article, “The Next
term, again seems to be in the
War,” Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. discusses cur-
news. We note with interest that the Joint
rent approaches, particularly contrasting
Chiefs and regional commanders have con-
the high-tech AirSea Battle favored by the
ducted strategic seminars three times this
Navy and Air Force with the hybrid warfare
year, walking over a world map larger than
envisioned by the Army and, perhaps, the
a basketball court while pondering the
Marines. While we are not yet experiencing
emerging security environment and appro-
the intensity of discussion concerning de-
priate responses to it. Pundits have picked
fense transformation of a dozen years ago,
up on the theme. In a National Journal arti-
interest in the subject is clearly rising.
cle, “The Interwar Years,” James Kitfield ex-
It may be useful to draw lessons from our
amines earlier defense efforts to downsize
past. In Kevlar Legions: The Transformation of
and transform. Although some of his his-
the U.S. Army, 1989–2005, I argue that “the
tory is wrong, his appreciation of recurrent
United States Army attempted, and largely
November 2012 ■ ARMY
23
From left to right, GEN Gordon R.
Sullivan, Army Chief of Staff from
1991–95, and GEN Carl E. Vuono, who
served in the position from 1987–1991.
those agencies and the Army Staff, and such temporary
initiatives as the modern Louisiana Maneuvers, Force XXI
and the Objective Force Task Force.
There Will Be No Time-out from Readiness
Transformation Is Not About Technology Alone
This expression became famous for its prescience after it
appeared in GEN Gordon R. Sullivan’s arrival speech as
Chief of Staff of the Army in 1991. The Cold War was over.
Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and scores of lesser contingencies soon followed. These were not foreseen. Despite
downsizing and plummeting budgets, the Army got busier.
Projecting forward, we have not gotten cleanly away from
Iraq—nor will we get cleanly away from Afghanistan. Turmoil in the Middle East makes at least a dozen scenarios
requiring intervention plausible, not to mention security
responsibilities throughout the rest of the world. If past is
precedent, the Army and Marine Corps will be the services
most decisively engaged—by overwhelming margins. Current missions will necessarily trump hypothetical future
ones. Preoccupation with near targets can cause one to
miss far ones, however.
A historical parallel exists in the Interwar British Army,
which was so busy policing its empire it gave scant attention to the type of warfare the Germans were singularly
preparing to wage. Between 1989 and 2005 Army Chiefs of
Staff used various means to keep the far horizon in view.
These included their marching orders to U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) and U.S. Army
Materiel Command (AMC), the internal organization of
Americans tend to favor technical solutions. Kitfield and
Freedberg suggest this remains true, as does the notion
about a new way of war emerging from recent operations
in Libya and over Pakistan. Army Chief of Staff GEN Carl
E. Vuono (1987–1991) cautioned against such a narrowness
of view and promulgated Army imperatives of doctrine,
force mix, modernization, training, leader development
and quality people. Subsequent Chiefs of Staff followed his
lead. GEN George S. Patton did not just deploy tanks, for
example; he deployed armored divisions with capable
leaders and soldiers trained to execute combined armed
tactics exploiting all the tools mechanization had made
available. Similarly, Army digitization was not a willy-nilly
purchase of computers. It was a spiral development of
combat-capable networks that substantially altered organization, combat doctrine, expectations of leaders, recruitment, training and the manner in which technologies other
than digital were cobbled into the whole. Now we run the
risk of becoming drone-centric in our military thinking.
This could work as long as our objective is plinking highvalue targets and our adversaries are incapable of shooting
drones down. If the objectives or the threats become
broader, we will want to widen our approach with respect
to robots just as we have done in the past with respect to
mechanization and digitization.
BG John S. Brown, USA Ret., was chief of military history at
the U.S. Army Center of Military History from December
1998 to October 2005. He commanded the 2nd Battalion, 66th
Armor, in Iraq and Kuwait during the Gulf War and returned
to Kuwait as commander of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, in 1995. He has a doctorate in history from Indiana
University. His book, Kevlar Legions: The Transformation
of the U.S. Army, 1989–2005, was published in 2011.
24 ARMY ■ November 2012
U.S. Army
achieved, a centrally directed and institutionally driven revolution in military
affairs relevant to ground warfare that
exploited Information Age technology,
adapted to post-Cold War strategic circumstances, and integrated into parallel joint and Department of Defense efforts.” Compared and contrasted with
the more than half-dozen parallel
transformative efforts extending back
through the Civil War, the evolution of
our contemporary Digitized Expeditionary Army comes across as a considerable achievement with respect to
effectiveness and efficiency. Surely there are lessons to be
drawn from this previous experience that may be of use to
those now on the basketball court. I propose six.
There Will Be Many Cooks
The last Army leader who jawboned with a small group
of confidants and had a reasonable chance of thus redesigning the Army was Secretary of War Elihu Root
(1899–1904). Subsequent transformational efforts have involved an ever-widening pool of players, not the least of
which included staff agencies Root envisioned. Between
Elihu Root, U.S. Secretary
of War from 1899–1904
Dynamic Commitment was a tiered
series of seminars that worked its
way through 46 scenarios to achieve
a conglomerate appreciation of necessary force structure. Drawing on
historical parallels, Army planners
established that more than 80 percent
of the manpower required would be
Army or Marine Corps. DAWMS was
widely viewed as an opportunity to
redirect funding from the Army to
the Air Force. Instead, detailed analyses flagged up the cost effectiveness
of helicopter-borne Hellfire missiles
and the Army Tactical Missile System II. The Vice Chief of
Staff quipped that Army “geeks” had saved two divisions. Subsequent QDRs have similarly demonstrated the
value of getting the Army story right in rigorous defense
deliberations.
Library of Congress
1989 and 2005 the Army Secretariat
and Army Staff were larger, more intermingled, and in most ways more
empowered than they had ever been
before. TRADOC, AMC and U.S. Army
Forces Command commanders and
their staffs had considerable independent auctoritas with respect to transformation, and other four-stars had
some. Through the prism of the Joint
Staff, the Navy and the Air Force had
more influence on Army deliberations
than one might think—and vice versa.
Contractors and their corporate leaders
were more than capable of becoming
the tail that wagged the dog. Congressional leaders dabbled intermittently
in the Army’s internal business, and
pundits were more than happy to
share their views. Now pundits are assisted by bloggers,
who are much quicker to opine and much less likely to be
edited.
This richness of participation may offer headaches to the
incumbent Secretary of the Army and Chief of Staff, but
this is not necessarily a bad thing. In Military Transformation
Past and Present: Historic Lessons for the 21st Century, Mark
D. Mandeles convincingly argues that freewheeling “multiorganizational” deliberations are and have been the most
fruitful approach when facing the non-routine. The trick is
to somehow tap all of this disparate intellectual energy and
translate it into a usable product.
GEN Sullivan’s modern Louisiana Maneuvers were precisely such an effort. Momentarily setting aside customary
wiring diagrams, they canvased broadly for relevant, innovative ideas. Reiterative “stockholder” meetings inched towards refinements. It was not actually decision making,
but it was consensus building. Subsequent Chiefs of Staff
have launched similar initiatives. Ultimately those empowered to do so must make and market decisions, but
their footing seems surer if they have absorbed the debate
beforehand.
Money Matters
A “vision” without funding is a hallucination. Absent the
imperatives of actual or imminent combat, Congress will
not have the incentive to fund a general transformation.
Advances will be incremental or prototypical. During the
lean years between 1991 and 2001, robust tactical unit digitization within the Army topped off at a brigade and a division base. Army tables of distribution and allowances, base
infrastructure and the logistical base were further along,
but relatively few tactical units could demonstrate what
right looked like with respect to the anticipated digital battlefield. Their prototypical example proved sufficient when
money flowed in with Iraqi Freedom, however. Army Chief
Analysts Matter
GEN Dennis J.
Reimer, Army
Chief of Staff
from 1995–99.
U.S. Army
Defense decision making is not entirely rational. Try closing an unwanted domestic base or shutting down an unwanted line of procurement to test this theory. Nevertheless, defense decision making has structured itself to better
take rigorous analysis into account. A watershed in that regard was the first Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), that
of 1997. Rather than relying on each service to develop its
own arguments and metrics, the Department of Defense
stipulated models to be used and directed multiservice analytic drills of its own. The most notable of these were Dynamic Commitment and the Deep Attack Weapons Mix
Study (DAWMS). Recognizing what was at stake, Army
Chief of Staff GEN Dennis J. Reimer (1995–1999) mustered
top drawer Army talent at each level of the deliberations.
November 2012 ■ ARMY
25
All U.S. Army
GEN Peter J.
Schoomaker
(right), Army
Chief of Staff
from 2003–07,
succeeded GEN
Eric K. Shinseki
(below, left),
1999–2003.
GEN Martin E.
Dempsey served
from April to
September 2011
before becoming
Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs
of Staff.
of Staff GEN Peter J. Schoomaker (2003–2007) consciously
steered money to decisively accelerate the Army-wide
transformation that had been years in the making. The Iraqi
Freedom invasion force sported 1,200 bolt-on appliqué Blue
Force Tracking sets, and that number ballooned past 55,000
in a few years. Units deploying to Iraq were hosed down
with new equipment as they joined the queue. The digitized expeditionary army expanded from the prototypical
to the pervasive overnight. This explosive pattern, seen in
World Wars I and II as well as Iraqi Freedom, seems likely
to repeat itself. A primary emphasis during interwar years
should be figuring out how best to quickly and effectively
spend lots of money when it suddenly becomes available.
The Goalposts Will Change
Our current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, GEN
Martin E. Dempsey, correctly observes that “conflict picks
you” more often than the other way around, and soberly
26 ARMY ■ November 2012
adds that “we will get it wrong again” at times when trying to predict the future. This is largely because our adversaries “get a vote” and are inclined to attack weakness
rather than strength. This makes a breadth of preparation
and education flexible enough to allow for rapid change
imperative. The most recent example of this is provided
by Iraqi Freedom. In expeditionary capabilities and in
conventional warfare, our Army’s performance markedly
exceeded even the notably superb performance of Desert
Storm. The pivot to unconventional warfare proved difficult, although too many pundits attribute this primarily to
failures of conceptualization and preparation rather than
to the mathematics of troops on the ground versus expectations of them. Army Chief of Staff GEN Eric K. Shinseki
(1999–2003) is the most noted of a fistful of professional
soldiers who argued for appropriate numbers of “boots on
the ground” were we to occupy Iraq. In Chapter 9 of
Kevlar Legions, I argue that the Army adapted well and
performed capably—albeit not flawlessly—against trying
circumstances and long odds in Iraq.
One tangible example of its adaptability is provided by the anti-IED
campaign. Despite a quadrupling of
such attacks and rapidly accelerating
insurgent sophistication with respect
to them, American casualties went
down. That said, however one assesses Army performance in Iraq and
Afghanistan, there remains a need for
broad preparation and ingrained
adaptability when preparing for an
uncertain future.
Defense transformation is and should
be a timely topic. Budget cuts planned
or prospective deepen the sense of urgency. Hopefully those in the saddle
now will borrow from those who have
gone before. If they do, admonitions
to balance current and future readiness, consider technology but one of a half-dozen imperatives, accommodate numerous cooks, muster capable analysts, plot realistic funding and consciously ingrain
adaptability may be worthy of their consideration. Make
the past serve the present.
✭
Recommended Reading:
Brown, John S., Kevlar Legions: The Transformation of
the U.S. Army 1989–2005 (Washington, D.C.: Center of
Military History, 2011)
Freedberg, Sydney J. Jr., “The Next War,” Government
Executive, August 15, 2012, 10–17.
Mandeles, Mark D., Military Transformation Past and
Present: Historic Lessons for the 21st Century (Westport,
Conn.: Praeger Security International, 2007)