RESHAPING AMERICA'S ARMY

Lowe, Karl

A Proposal for the Future Army

Among the Army Reorganization Plan's objectives is trimming headquarters to just two unit of employment (UE) designs-UEx and UEy. UE is a temporary identity adopted to avoid sidetracking the Army's reorganization scheme with debates over what senior command echelons would be called. It is now time to select a naming convention that fits the new structure.

Atop the chain are Army component commands that fulfill Title 10 responsibilities for providing and supporting trained and ready forces for employment by joint and alliance commanders. They include U.S. Army Europe, supporting U.S. European Command, and Eighth Army, supporting U.N. Command/Combined Forces Command/ U.S. Forces Korea, both led by dual-hatted generals who also have alliance roles. In contrast, U.S. Army Pacific, supporting U.S. Pacific Command, and Third U.S. Army, supporting U.S. Central Command, are led by lieutenant generals, while U.S. Army South, supporting U.S. Southern Command, is led by a major general. Reporting to Forces Command (FORSCOM), First and Fifth Armies, led by lieutenant generals, each support two combatant commands. They support U.S. Northern Command for homeland defense and support civil authority missions and U.S. Joint Forces Command for training and mobilizing the reserve components. I, III, V and XVIII Corps, also commanded by lieutenant generals, are often interposed between regional combatant commands (RCCs) or Army component commands and divisions or brigades.

An echelon down, 20 divisions, 10 U.S. Army Reserve (USAR) regional commands, and three special commands (U.S. Army Alaska, U.S. Army Japan and Southern European Task Force), are commanded by major generals. Ten divisions have three to four active component (AC) maneuver brigades and two have responsibility for training, but not employing, six of the Army National Guard's high readiness brigades. When deployed, eight Army National Guard (ARNG) division headquarters are used interchangeably with AC counterparts.

Imagine trying to explain all that to a member of Congress or a senior civilian in the Defense Department, particularly one with no military experience. Arcane command arrangements and confusing names open nearly every aspect of the Army's structure to unsupportive critique.

Naming and Organizing the New UEx

An alternative, which would streamline and rationalize the Army's command structure, comply with congressional guidance to reduce management overhead and free up officers to staff new brigades, would be to reduce the current mixture of 46 army, corps, component command, special command, regional command and division headquarters in the Army's three components to seven theater armies, commanded by lieutenant generals, and 24 field forces, commanded by major generals.

The number of theater armies suggested is based on functions the Army must perform. They include providing regional combatant commands trained forces, support mandated by Title 10 and agreements with the other services and advice on the Army's employment. A theater army could be augmented with staff from other services to serve as a joint or combined land forces command for major combat operations.

Under a standardized naming convention, the seven theater armies could be assigned the numerical designations, lineages and insignia of former field armies, putting to use the rich histories of commands that distinguished them in past wars (Figure 1). An option for forming them and the rationale for each is described below their insignia.

* Headquarters First Army, at Fort Gillem, Ga., would be augmented with Army Reserve and Army National Guard personnel to help FORSCOM oversee reserve component training and mobilization nationwide, relieving Fifth Army of responsibility for the western United States.

* Headquarters Third Army, at Fort McPherson, Ga., would continue to support U.S. Central Command, its current mission.

* Headquarters Fifth Army, relieved of its current responsibilities, would be consolidated with Headquarters U.S. Army South, at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, to support U.S. Southern Command.

* Headquarters Sixth Army would be formed from Headquarters III Corps and moved to Fort Carson, Colo., to support U.S. Northern Command for homeland defense and to support civil authority missions.

* Headquarters Seventh Army, at Heidelberg, Germany, would be formed by reflagging the consolidated headquarters of U.S. Army Europe and V Corps to support U.S. European Command.

* Rather than retaining a theater army headquarters in Korea to oversee just one brigade or go through the costly process of moving the headquarters to Camp Humphries, Headquarters Eighth Army would be inactivated in Korea and Headquarters I Corps at Camp Zama, Japan, would concurrently be reflagged as Headquarters Eighth Army to support U.S. Pacific Command.

* Headquarters Ninth Army would be formed from Headquarters XVIII Airborne Corps to reinforce any theater in which two combat contingencies occur at the same time.

Organizing and Naming the New UEy

There are currently seven types of Army divisions, broadly designated as heavy or light. Terrain and enemies do not neatly align with heavy and light, however, often requiring a mixture of both under the same command. Divisions' fixed structures frustrate flexibility and make it difficult to shift artillery, aviation, engineers, intelligence or logistics from one division to another to address changing conditions and opportunities. Just try taking some of "my" aviation to support an airmobile assault by "your" division.

In 1943, the Army solved inflexibility by making all corps alike, able to accept any mix of divisions and other forms of combat power appropriate to the mission. For example, XVIII Airborne Corps commanded one infantry, one airborne and two armored divisions in April 1945, a radical change from its all-airborne composition a month earlier. Its alteration on the fly was made possible by Lt. Gen. Lesley J. McNair's skip-echelon approach (Figure 2), which gave support responsibilities to field armies and divisions, leaving corps commanders free to concentrate on orchestrating tactical operations. If a corps' mission changed, its composition could change without disrupting support arrangements because most support was provided by higher echelons. There is logic in doing with the UEy what McNair did with the corps in 1943-standardize the headquarters, rename them and strip away all but their essentials to make them more agile.

If UEy are to become headquarters only, should they still be called divisions? Continuing to call them divisions is likely to handicap thinking about how to use them differently since they would still have armored, infantry, mountain, cavalry and airborne identities. Calling them corps would likely confuse their roles with those of today's corps. An alternative with some historical precedent would be to call them field forces and assign them the lineages and insignia of corps. Cascading lineages downward (Figure 3), maneuver brigades would be assigned the lineages and insignia of former divisions and historically independent maneuver brigades.

To manage the day-to-day training and employment of 43 to 48 active component UAs called for in the Army's plan, 12 active component field force headquarters would be about right, each commanding two to five UAs (Figure 4).

Consistent with the National Guard's expanded homeland defense role, 10 Army National Guard field force headquarters would replace eight existing division headquarters, aligning one with each Federal Emergency Management Agency region (Figure 5). They would serve as regional coordination centers for emergencies in the United States but would still have overseas contingency missions.

Two more field force headquarters could be formed by consolidating the Army Reserve's 10 regional commands and assigning them responsibility for training and mobilizing USAR units in areas corresponding to the current boundaries of the First and Fifth U.S. Armies (Figure 6).

In garrison, field forces would be assigned training responsibilities and legal jurisdictions on an area basis, but would not necessarily deploy to a contingency with units under their control in garrison. For example, a field force headquarters stationed at Fort Drum, N.Y, might deploy to combat with an infantry brigade from Fort Drum, an airborne brigade from Fort Bragg, N.C., an armored brigade from Fort Stewart, Ga., and an artillery brigade from Fort Sill, Okla., giving it a mixture of capabilities tailored to its mission. Any brigade could be swapped out or added if the mission changed. For support to civil authority missions, the same field force might have an infantry brigade from Fort Drum, an aviation brigade from Fort Bragg, military police and engineer brigades from the National Guard, and a civil affairs brigade from the Army Reserve.

Organizing and Naming New Units of Action

The Army is moving from a division-centric force to one organized around 43 to 48 units of action (UAs), similar to today's maneuver brigades. When the reorganization is complete, UAs will be disassociated from divisions, becoming independent modules that can operate under any higher command.

There are problems with the unit of action design, but a modular approach makes sense and so does an increase in numbers of brigades, given the difficulty of supporting today's overseas deployments. An impediment to implementing the new design is the number of officers it will require. Changes in the senior command structure proposed earlier in this article would help. A second problem with the UA design is that fielding just the first 43 will require 67 more non-maneuver battalions (10 brigade special troops, 10 forward support, 41 reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition, and six field artillery) to support 10 fewer maneuver battalions than exist today.

No matter how a UA is designed, it cannot be expected to have the right mixture of capabilities for all possible contingencies. There is no such thing as a self-contained brigade combat team. A modular UA will need flexibility, allowing its core structure to be augmented with capabilities appropriate to changing missions and operating environments. Today's international security environment also demands that UAs be able to respond with sufficient robustness to operate in any environment.

Adding a third maneuver battalion to each brigade would provide greater robustness, and making field artillery, aviation and air defense external add-ons, which would join maneuver brigades only when needed, would improve flexibility (Figure 7). Battalions in blue would be permanently assigned while those in red would be pooled at field force or theater army level under brigades of their own branch. Only 40 UAs would be formed, complemented by 10 small armored cavalry regiments (ACRs), consisting of headquarters and headquarters troop, three armored cavalry troops, three air cavalry troops, a sapper company and a support troop. Thirty-two maneuver brigades and eight ACRs would be formed from the existing structure in the National Guard. The number of active component field artillery battalions would be reduced to fewer than one per maneuver brigade, pooling them in brigades of their own branch.

Naming Maneuver Units of Action

Unit of action is a neutral term intended only to convey a function. Its neutrality between brigade and regimental preferences spared the Army acrimony that might have robbed reorganization planning of its ability to focus. Because UA has no historical roots, a choice now has to be made between "brigadist" and "regimentalist" preferences.

Historically, regiments were fixed entities made up of units of mostly the same branch. When field artillery and engineers were grouped with an infantry regiment, the combination formed a regimental combat team. Transforming them to brigades in the early 1960s provided greater flexibility and brought infantry and armored formations of roughly equal size and function under a common naming convention. An exception was made for armored cavalry regiments, which, while roughly the same size, are fixed formations in which a single branch predominates.

If the Army were to call its maneuver UAs regimental combat teams, only half or less of the armor, cavalry and infantry regiments in today's combat arms regimental system (CARS) would be preserved. In contrast, calling UAs brigades would preserve all existing regiments. For example, the 1st Cavalry Brigade would carry on the 1st Cavalry Division's lineage and insignia and include representative battalions and squadrons of the division's historically associated 5th, 7th, 8th and 12th Cavalry Regiments (three as maneuver battalions and one as the brigade cavalry squadron). Other maneuver brigades of the current 1st Cavalry Division would be assigned the designations of former armored divisions.

Forming Maneuver Brigade Combat Teams

Three types of maneuver brigades would exist-heavy, medium and light. Apportioning brigades among those types should be driven by need, not consensus. The current heavy force is larger than it should be relative to the Army's needs, as affirmed by the last Quadrennial Defense Review. That some tank and artillery battalions are serving in Iraq as ad hoc infantry, cavalry or military police illustrates the force-mission imbalance. The current heavy force includes 10 armored brigades (one infantry and two tank battalions each) and six mechanized brigades (the opposite mix). To correct the force-mission imbalance, the armorheavy brigades would become new-model heavy brigades while existing mechanized brigades would become standard medium brigades, with their tank battalions converted to cavalry squadrons.

Mechanized, motorized, air assault and light infantry brigades would be standardized to form 24 identical medium brigades, each with three infantry battalions and a cavalry squadron. Two of the infantry battalions would have a modified air assault design while the remaining infantry battalion and brigade cavalry squadron would be equipped with Strykers or, on an interim basis, Bradleys. That would give all brigades some armor, consistent with experience in Iraq. Six airborne-qualified light brigades would be similarly organized but with lighter vehicles.

Because there are too few Regular Army division lineages, some former Army of the United States (AUS) divisions (63rd, 69th, 70th, 71st and 75th), the four most decorated independent brigades (196th through 199th), and two cavalry divisions would round out the mix. Some AUS lineages currently used by the Army Reserve would be reallocated to the AC. While other combinations would work, Figure 8 illustrates the possibilities. Most Army National Guard maneuver brigades could also be assigned division lineages.

When committed to combat, a field force would be assigned an armored cavalry regiment to serve as its eyes and ears (Figure 9). With around 1,800 soldiers, the proposed new-model ACR would be larger than a divisional cavalry squadron but smaller than today's ACR. Each would include tanks, Bradleys, helicopters, robotic air and ground reconnaissance vehicles, heavy mortars, robotic loitering attack munitions, manned and robotic counterobstacle and demolitions capabilities and electronic warfare and intelligence assets. Like maneuver brigades, ACRs would be part of the maneuver rotation base but would be assigned missions consistent with their unique capabilities.

If implemented, the concept proposed in this paper would give the Army a simple, flexible mixture of capabilities on which to build contingency responses, including a robust, 90 UA rotation base (72 brigades and 18 ACRs). The proposed three-echelon naming convention (theater army, field force and brigade) is easy to explain and justify. It signals a clean break with current ways of organizing and fighting, is consistent with contemporary mission needs, and exploits the Army's rich history.

Reactivated lineages offer new sources of influence for Army interests and a possible attraction for young people whose fathers and grandfathers served under the colors represented. The approach seems a natural fit with the core ideas motivating the Army's reorganization plan.

KARL LOWE is a retired officer who served in tank, mechanized, airmobile, and riverine battalions and brigades in his 32 years of service.

Copyright Association of the United States Army Mar 2005
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