Under the Gun

Embroiled in a war with no clear end, the Army is undergoing its most significant reorganization since World War II.

As management challenges go, few are more daunting than those facing Army leaders today. While soldiers are stretched thin fighting insurgents in Iraq and building a nation in Afghanistan, and recruiters struggle to persuade skeptical young men and women to join the ranks, the service is undertaking the most comprehensive restructuring since Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency. Between now and the end of 2006, the Army intends to do away with its storied divisions around which combat power has been organized for generations. Replacing them will be smaller, self-sufficient combat brigade teams that can be deployed more rapidly to meet a broader range of contingencies. The 10 divisions now in the force will remain in name only, with their numeric designations given to 10 headquarters units created to command multi-brigade operations on the battlefield.

Restructuring a complex, tradition-rich institution such as the Army would be hugely difficult under any circumstances, but it is especially tricky right now. It's taking place amid a much wider reorganization of military forces across the globe. The United States is closing a number of bases throughout Europe and Asia and bringing home the bulk of troops stationed there. At the same time, other U.S. forces are moving to new overseas bases hosted by recently acquired allies with whom Pentagon planners believe they can forge critical relationships. These bases are nearer to emerging hot spots and should enable forces stationed at them to respond more effectively to crises. Meanwhile, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission is considering a significant overhaul of domestic bases. If the Pentagon's recommendations are adopted, some domestic posts would be eliminated and others would grow considerably.

And then there's the war in Iraq. With that burden falling most heavily on the Army, service leaders have been forced to re-examine and adjust nearly every aspect of how they manage the force, from how soldiers are recruited, trained and equipped to the size and shape of combat units.

The reorganization is part of an effort to transform the Army into a more adaptable, versatile organization. The idea is to create a service capable of fighting insurgencies and conducting peacekeeping missions, as well as waging conventional war. All combat brigades in the new Army will conform to a standard structure, forming modules that can be easily combined and tailored for a range of situations. Concurrently, the Army is realigning about 100,000 positions to increase by as much as 50 percent the number of active-duty soldiers with expertise in vitally needed areas, such as infantry, military police, civil affairs and intelligence.

"We had a Cold War infrastructure, a Cold War worldwide footprint for the last 60 years. This clearly brings the Army into the 21st century with respect to global basing," said Raymond F. DuBois at a recent press briefing. He is special assistant to Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey. DuBois and Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard A. Cody briefed reporters in late July about the evolving reorganization and announced the locations for the 43 active-duty combat brigades. Another 34 combat brigades will reside in the Army National Guard. While the basing decisions are not technically related to the BRAC recommendations, they were influenced by the process, DuBois said.

"The criteria for locating these brigade combat teams was based on military value [which is] the cornerstone of what the BRAC process is all about: available training space, locations of similar and supporting units, existing and potential capacities of installations in the surrounding communities," he said. Proximity to railheads, airfields and seaports was also a factor, he said.

More Combat Power

Like the Air Force and the Navy, the Army sustained substantial cuts at the end of the Cold War. By the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, it had fallen from an 18-division force with about 840,000 troops to 10 divisions and about 482,000 troops. While the Army that deployed troops to Afghanistan in late 2001 was substantially smaller than the Cold War Army, its structure was largely unchanged. For the most part, troops were still training to face off against a similarly equipped and structured enemy. With the Army now into its sixth rotation of troops in Afghanistan and its third rotation in Iraq, it is acutely clear to Army leaders that they need a new organization to sustain the pace of operations.

At the beginning of the global war on terrorism, the Army had 10 divisions comprising about 33 brigades based on 13 different designs, depending on their missions. Some divisions focused on war in Europe and others on war in Korea or Southwest Asia, so their structure, equipment and training differed. The brigades were not designed to operate independently; they were sustained by a system of supporting units controlled by their division headquarters. Under the new design, not only will the Army have more brigades-43 are authorized and the Army is considering asking Congress for several more-but they will share a common design and have artillery, reconnaissance, engineering, intelligence, logistics and medical capabilities that will enable them to operate independently.

"They become common building blocks," says Clifton L. Dickey, an Army force planner and retired aviation officer involved in the reorganization. "It allows us to scale up or down what we deploy. If it is a large-scale operation, we may send one or two two-star headquarters and five or six brigade combat teams." The plan calls for 10 headquarters units, each with about 1,022 soldiers and commanded by a two-star general. The headquarters units will carry the names of the existing 10 divisions. "We're maintaining the divisional designations for the history behind them. You serve with those people, you go to combat with those people. It's a brotherhood. It's important to maintain that continuity with the veterans and the soldiers," Dickey says.

During deployments, division headquarters will provide tactical command and control of multiple brigades. During peacetime, they will oversee training and manage personnel and equipment.

The Army also plans to create three corps headquarters units, also staffed with about 1,022 soldiers each. Those headquarters will be commanded by three-star generals and will run joint operations involving the other services. They could provide more strategic or operational oversight than the two-star headquarters, depending on the role played by the Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force or Coast Guard, Dickey says. "We're still working through that."

Initially, three types of brigades-light infantry, medium weight (troops in these units will rely on wheeled Stryker vehicles), and heavy brigades equipped with M1A1 Abrams tanks-will range in size from 3,300 to 3,900 troops. To provide the brigades with necessary skills, the Army will add about 30,000 new soldiers by the end of 2007, bringing the active force up to 512,000 soldiers.

According to planning documents, the reorganization will increase combat power in the active Army by 30 percent, and enlarge the pool of available forces by 60 percent, thus giving combatant commanders considerably more flexibility than they have now. By expanding the pool of combat units, service leaders hope to reduce the frequency of deployments and increase time at home between them, so soldiers are happier and more likely to stay in the Army.

The reorganization "represents the largest change of our Army since 1939," Cody says. That year, President Roosevelt asked Congress for more ground forces and reorganized the Army Air Corps, laying the groundwork for what would become the Air Force following World War II.

Fort Bliss, an early frontier post near El Paso on the Texas-Mexico border, will feel the biggest impact from reorganization. Though the post has 1.2 million acres suitable for heavy combat maneuver training-40 percent of the Army's land fit for such maneuvers, according to Cody-no combat units were located there until the Army recently started building the first of what eventually will become four brigades. The Air Defense School and Sergeants Major Academy are the current occupants. About 20,000 soldiers and 70,000 family members based in Germany with the 1st Armored Division will wind up at Fort Bliss during the next few years. Fort Riley, Kan.; Fort Carson, Colo.; Fort Lewis, Wash.; and Fort Drum, N.Y. also will see significant troop increases.

To minimize disruption, the Army will strive to keep soldiers and their families at their current posts as units are reshuffled. Instead of moving, many soldiers will stay put and just change the unit patches on their sleeves. "One of the objectives here was to reduce permanent change-of-station moves and give more stability to soldiers and their families," DuBois said.

'Many Moving Parts'

DuBois, who served as a combat intelligence operations sergeant in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in the late 1960s, knows as well as anyone how complex and disruptive the restructuring will be. From early 2001 through 2004, he managed studies of nearly $660 billion in Defense infrastructure. The Pentagon's recommendations to the base closure commission were based on that analysis.

He likens the reorganization to a complex set of chess moves. Every movement of troops will cause changes elsewhere-some predictable, some not. Stationing more troops in the United States will place greater demands on the airlift and sealift capacity required to move units to the battle- field. Additionally, prepositioned stocks of equipment will need to be changed to reflect the new brigades' requirements.

As a practical matter, the Army can't move troops until the bases receiving them have the facilities to house, feed and train them and maintain equipment. Families can't move before adequate housing, hospitals and schools exist. New construction will take years and millions of dollars that must be approved through multiple annual appropriations.

While the Army has struggled with recruiting this year, one bright spot has been the high rate at which soldiers are electing to continue serving after their enlistment contracts expire. The re-enlistment rate among active troops is 106 percent of the Army's goal. Among soldiers in the Army National Guard and Army Reserve, the rate is 104 percent of the goal. Maintaining retention rates is a high priority for Army leaders, one reason they are determined to minimize the disruption caused by reorganization.

But disruption is inevitable when troops now stationed overseas return to the United States. Just to move back the elements of the 1st Infantry Division and the 1st Armored Division now based in Germany, "We have to coordinate with the German government, the European Command, the [base closure] commission and members of Congress," Dickey says. And then there is the challenge of coordinating with the soldiers, many of whom are in Iraq, and their families scattered in hometowns all over the United States.

Sharon Pickup, director of defense capabilities and management at the Government Accountability Office, testified in March that operations in Iraq are jeopardizing the reorganization. "The Army has not provided its new modular brigades with required quantities of critical equipment, such as unmanned aerial vehicles, communications equipment and trucks, because they are not currently available in sufficient quantities. Moreover, it may take years to meet increased requirements for critical skills such as military intelligence analysts, because they are in high demand and take years to train," she said.

Last year, GAO auditors visited brigades belonging to the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Ga., the first units to convert to the new structure. Auditors found that the brigades had filled less than 50 percent of their military intelligence positions. Just before the brigades deployed to Iraq last January, the jobs were filled, mostly with soldiers who had just returned from overseas.

"The Army needs to add 2,800 military intelligence specialists by the end of 2005 to meet near-term military intelligence shortages," and another 6,200 through 2010 to meet reorganization requirements, Pickup said. "Providing additional military intelligence specialists, particularly at the more senior levels, may take several years because of the extensive training required," she said.

Concerned that the Army was over-extended in Iraq, Congress authorized in 2004 the recruitment of 30,000 additional soldiers, raising active-duty end strength to 512,000 troops. The soldiers are needed to meet the simultaneous demands of the war in Iraq and the reorganization. But uneasiness about the war is making recruitment extraordinarily difficult.

To keep personnel in the pipeline, the Army annually signs up more than 165,000 new soldiers-more than the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps combined. Army recruiters liken it to enlisting the entire Marine Corps every year. After several months of missing its goals by thousands, the Army this summer exceeded quotas for July and August. While service leaders hope the increases signal a turnaround, the Army likely will be several thousand short of its goal at the end of the fiscal year.

Transformation Costs

Reorganizing while at the same time conducting operations in Iraq is expensive. Last year, service leaders restructured or canceled 126 programs to pay for more urgent needs. Most significant, the Army shut down its Comanche helicopter program and diverted $14.6 billion in savings to existing aviation programs plagued with repair backlogs and chronic equipment shortfalls.

Army leaders now worry about the outlook for the Future Combat Systems, an electronically linked suite of manned and unmanned vehicles and aircraft, sensors and munitions. Leaders believe the program is essential to transforming the Army, but with costs estimated at $108 billion and the system dependent on unproven technology, they worry that support in Congress might flag. In August, the program passed a major technical review, potentially clearing the way to move forward on software, vehicle design and other critical program work. The Army requested $3.4 billion for FCS research and development in 2006, but in mid-August it wasn't clear whether Congress would fully support that request.

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in June, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker said troops were wearing out equipment in Iraq anywhere from three to 10 times faster than expected. "It will take us at least two years to reset this force from what we are consuming in this war," he said. He called the Future Combat Systems critical because officials expect to incorporate its technologies into existing equipment as they become available.

"One of the few silver linings in the cloud of having to be at war is the fact that it gives us the opportunity to take advantage of the velocity and the momentum you gain as you reset the force, to reset it the way you want it to be in the future," Schoomaker said. "I don't know how to get from here to there without going through the ugliness that's required to make the transformation."