Statement of Colonel Douglas Macgregor, PhD, USA (ret.

)
Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee on July 15, 2004 in 2118 of the
Rayburn House Office Building.

Army Transformation: Implications for the Future

1
 Current Army transformation programs are not informed by the realities of
modern combat or rigorous testing and experimentation. While it is gratifying to
see interest in the concepts of rotational readiness and unit cohesion, the
disastrous decision to keep American soldiers and units in Iraq for 12 months at
a time reinforces my broader reservations about Army transformation. Today, our
ground force is apparently exhausted and incapable of securing the stretch of
road from downtown Baghdad to Iraq’s international airport. Thus, my greatest
concern is that the current thrust of Army transformation may actually reduce the
Army's fighting power and operational flexibility just as the international
environment is placing greater demands on our ground forces.
I will begin by examining two of the fundamental assumptions that are
distorting Army transformation. The first of these distortions arises from the belief
that information can substitute for armored protection, firepower and off-road
mobility.

Assumptions

Perfect situational awareness, the key underlying assumption of the

Army's future combat system is an illusion, or perhaps a delusion. Situational
awareness promises that information about the enemy and his intentions will
always be available when it is needed. It also assumes that everyone inside the
battlespace will create and exploit information in exactly the same way.
As a result, situational awareness demands a greater level of
technological capability than is attainable today or in the decades ahead. Most
important, there is no evidence that plentiful networked information can replace
killing power and inherent survivability, especially in close combat. Timely and
useful information is critical, but it cannot substitute for firepower, mobility and
armored protection.
During Operation Iraqi Freedom, despite unparalleled intelligence assets,
most of the fighting on the ground was characterized by the participants as
resulting from meeting engagements-battles in which American forces
unexpectedly bumped into the enemy.i No one should have been surprised. Land
warfare is by its very nature chaotic. No technologies or systems exist to prevent
such surprises in towns, cities or complex terrain populated by non-combatants
and systems on today’s drawing boards are unlikely to be effective for many,
many years-if ever.
As experience in Iraq demonstrates, another flawed assumption is the
belief that strategic speed (deployment) is worth sacrificing protection and
firepower. What the Army does after it arrives in a theater of crisis or conflict is
much more important than how fast it gets there. Formidable Army ground forces
can be organized, equipped, trained, and postured through a joint rotational
readiness system to deploy a powerful force in a matter of days and decisively
influence events. Getting a light force to the same place a few hours or days
sooner does not have the same effect. In fact, it may produce a speedy defeat
rather than a decisive victory.

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 Large quantities of light infantry with nothing more than the weapons they
can carry after they dismount to attack from either up-armored HMMWVs or
Strykers will sustain heavy losses. Light infantry is not designed to lead
penetration attacks into urban areas or against any prepared enemy defense and
should never be used in that role.ii For light Infantry to succeed, it must be
integrated with real mobility, devastating firepower, and armored protection so
that it does not become a road-bound paramilitary police force subject to
blockade and ambush. If we stay on the current intellectual path, we risk fielding
Army units that will end up like the 1st Cavalry Division in the Ia Drang valley,
calling for air strikes on its own position to avoid annihilation.
The greatest irony is that our current inventory of tanks and armored
fighting vehicles actually arrive as quickly as the so-called light force. In the
future, Army forces arriving from the air or the sea must include heavy or true
medium weight armor – Abrams and Bradleys, or platforms similar to the M8
Armored Gun System and TRACER equipped with hybrid-electric engines and
band track, respectively. These platforms and systems are capable of
augmenting light infantry and punching through enemy forces with devastating
effect. Ultimately, airpower, armor, stand-off attack in the form of UCAVS,
mortars and artillery, special operations forces, engineers and infantry all must
cooperate in contemporary combat. But armored forces are central to dominating
the enemy on the ground with impunity.iii
Now, I will turn briefly to a short discussion of the Army’s three main
transformation initiatives or programs. I realize that the members of Congress
listen to a host of problems on a daily basis. As a result, I am including some
recommendations that may be of use to you as you work closely with the Army’s
senior leadership in the future.

Stryker Brigades

The current stryker brigade combat team lacks the joint C4ISR, firepower,
protection, mobility and organic logistical support to be a full-dimensional
warfighting organization and its operational utility will continue to be limited to
peace support or paramilitary police operations. A glance at the stryker brigade in
Northern Iraq provides ample evidence for this statement. The Army’s senior
leadership wisely decided to keep the stryker brigade remote from the scene of
the action in Central Iraq where the lethal quality of close combat might inflict
serious casualties on it. Frankly, in peace support operations, the block III LAV
with its stabilized 25mm chain gun with stand-off engagement capability, though
lighter and never designed for close combat, is more lethal and less expensive
than the stryker carrier.
According to its published doctrine, the stryker brigade is designed to
move light infantry quickly on primary or secondary roads to a point where the
infantry will dismount and conduct combat operations on foot with unstabilized
machine guns and, eventually, 105mm guns on strykers in support, presuming
the mobile gun system can be made to work.

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 This approach is familiar to anyone who has read tactical manuals for
mechanized infantry in the 1960s. In anything but an environment where the
enemy’s anti-armor, artillery and mining capabilities are slim to nonexistent,
these tactics are a prescription for mass slaughter. The lethality of small arms is
simply too great.
Lastly, the claim that this formation can deploy into action anywhere in the
world on C130s in 96 hours is not supported by empirical evidence.iv Given the
size, weight and volume of wheeled armored vehicles, the stryker brigade is not
suitable for strategic air lift and will deploy as a unit via sealift as seen quite
recently when the stryker brigade currently serving in Iraq arrived via ship in
Kuwait City harbor.

RECOMMENDATION: Recommend that Congress curtail the acquisition of more

Strykers and shift funds into the acquisition of more promising technologies and
platforms with close combat capability in urban or complex terrain. Congress
should also demand that the Army provide a plan for pooling Strykers in support
of Army units rotating through peace support missions on the British Army model.
A cost-effective alternative to permanently equipping light infantry with Strykers
would involve the purchase of a limited number of wheeled armored vehicles for
use by Army units rotating through routine peace support missions. The British
Army uses this approach in Ulster and Cyprus with considerable success.

Modular Brigade Plan

Let me turn now to the Army’s "modular" brigade plan – a plan for smaller,
less capable versions of today’s formations. The Army’s plan to reorganize the
Army’s ten division force into two battalion brigades with reconnaissance
elements, half of whom are mounted in up-armored HMMWVs is dangerous and
When is a Brigade no longer viable?
Loss of Combat Power in reinforced Mechanized Infantry Brigade
Combat Teams*
1994 1998 2004 Total % Change
Change

M1 67 53 56 -11 -16%

M2/M3 149 121 76 -73 - 48%

Infantry Squads 72 54 36 - 36 - 50%

120mm Mortars 20 14 14 -6 - 30%

155mm Artillery 24 18 16 -8 - 33%

Total Troops
4,900 4709 3700 - 1300 - 26%
(reinforced)

•Comparison based on heavy mechanized infantry brigade combat team with MI, Signal, Artillery, Cavalry, Air Defense,
Military Police attached. During OIF, 3rd ID BCTs were reinforced to 5,000 or more troops. In garrison, brigades number
roughly 2300.

unsupported by either contemporary battlefield experience or rigorous analysis.

Because no thorough plan to fundamentally restructure how the Army supports

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fighting forces was developed in parallel, the more numerous two-battalion
brigades actually result in a personnel requirement for more support troops.
Organizationally, the concept increases dependency on external support from
Army division and corps echelons, as well as the larger joint force and defeats
the very idea of independence in mobile, dispersed, 360 degree warfare.
In practice, modular means “stand alone” and these new formations will
not be capable of independent operations inside a joint expeditionary force. The
concept looks like an attempt to equate a near-term requirement to rotate smaller
formations through occupation duty in Iraq or Afghanistan with the transformation
of the Army into a new warfighting structure, but the two missions are not the
same at all. We can do both.
During Operation Iraqi Freedom, Army brigades in the 3rd Infantry Division
had to be significantly reinforced to operate across the Iraq in an environment
where units fought in all directions or 360 degrees. This condition resulted in the
expansion of brigade combat teams in the 3rd Infantry Division from 3,900 troops
to 5,000 or more troops. This was necessary to give brigades the fighting power
and organic logistical support to operate independently. The formations to which I
am referring, combat maneuver groups, are detailed in my two books, Breaking

Brigadier General
Commands 5,000 – 5,500 Troops
Combat Maneuver Group is an Independent Battlegroup
Designed for Close Combat inside a Joint Expeditionary Force

COMBINED
RECON ARMS C4I GRP SPT
STRIKE BN BN
SQDN BN
600 750
450 TROOPS
750 TROOPS
TROOPS
TROOPS
2200
COMBINED TROOPS
ARMS = (2) TANK CO AND (2) MECH INF CO RECON 16 AH58D or 16
BN + COMBAT ENGINEER CO SQDN MD600s
MAJOR EQUIPMENT IN THE GROUP Plus
: I
114 M1A1/2 TANKS R
RECON
RECON A
3 UH-60X
131 M2/3A2 AFVS RECON
TROOP
27 120mm SP Mortars
24 155mm SP Artillery (Paladin)
TROOP
TROOP …U
41 M2/3A2 AFVs

9 MLRS, 27 M1A1/2 Tanks

UCAV (300 TAIFUNS)
9 120mm Mortars
16 AH58Ds or 16 MD600s I
3 UH60S

the Phalanx and Transformation under Fire.

What these reinforced brigades lacked, however, were the joint

C4ISR plugs, armed helicopters, adequate organic support and depth in the

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command and staff structures; the very capabilities provided inside the
combat maneuver group shown above. As the reinforced brigades grew in
size and complexity, the commanders and their staffs were required to perform
tasks historically coordinated and executed at division and corps levels. These
tasks were really too challenging for a colonel with a staff of one lieutenant
colonel, two majors and numerous captains and lieutenants to handle on an ad
hoc basis. Furthermore, as our commanders in the field repeatedly tell us,
today’s battalions and brigades are already too small for either sustained combat
or post-war security operations. To be independent, combat formations must be
able to sustain casualties and keep fighting. Making brigades smaller is not the
answer. It just makes us weaker.

Recommendation: Congress should suspend the Army’s on-going plans to

reorganize the ten-division force into new two-battalion brigades. Congress
should direct the Army to stand-up the alternative of brigadier-general
commanded formations of between 5,000 and 5,500 troops, formations larger
than current brigades, but smaller than existing divisions. Congress should
mandate the independent examination of this force design in the field, as well as
in joint simulation within a prescribed schedule for completion in not more than
12 months.v

Future Combat System

Next in line for discussion is the Army’s Future Combat System or FCS. In
theory, the FCS will produce a family of systems that will replace virtually the
entire mix of Army combat systems, as they exist today. FCS, however, is not a
single system, but an undefined architecture of force structure, systems, and
tactics without any tie to field-testing or examination. The problem is that it is
difficult enough to test all the systems in a single platform without requiring
multiple platforms to function in a coordinated fashion when the tools to evaluate
and test such an array do not presently exist. There is also the unspoken and
unsupported assumption that FCS will be cheaper and easier to employ and
require fewer soldiers. The catch, however, is that the complex network of
unmanned vehicles, and precision fires may reduce personnel, but increase the
cost and the complexity of the system to unacceptable levels.vi
In terms of doctrine, tactics and organization, the Army views FCS as
shaping the battle “out of contact,” assuming that perfect situational awareness
will turn every actual engagement into an exploitation operation rather than a
decisive battle. Of course, unless the network operates perfectly the FCS-
equipped force may not be powerful enough to shape the battle extensively,
much less win an engagement in contact. More important, the kind of thinking
that underpins the FCS also denies the enemy a vote in how he will fight.vii
In a period when rapid obsolescence is a high risk, “wildcatting” with new
designs, even aggressively courting failure with limited numbers of prototypes, is
absolutely necessary. The Army transformational methodology should be: Look
forward to the next technology we can exploit that will help. Field it in limited

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 quantities to the current force. Play with it. Test it. Develop new operational,
organizational and doctrinal modes for it. Feed that back into building the next
capability and iterate. This means going through a rigorous process of
experimentation in order to reach the goal of sustained military superiority.viii

Recommendation: Congress should insist on the rapid prototyping of new

technologies and platforms as they mature inside new organizations with new
mixes of capabilities and require demonstrated performance of the proposed
FCS network before more funds are released. In budget terms, scaling back FCS
in this way would see FCS funding drop to perhaps a billion dollars a year. This
would be enough money for aggressive prototyping and true experimentation, but
would allow the army to pay other important bills. The Army should not halt R&D,
but it must avoid approaches that are unlikely to succeed.

Army’s Current and Modified Echelons of C2 as outlined in

Projected Future SECDEF’s April ‘03 guidance and in
Echelons of C2 Transformation under Fire
Commander, Commander,
Regional Unified Regional Unified
Command Command
(Joint)
CORPS CMD
UEy
(From 3 Standing Joint
echelons to
DIVISION CMD
Force
2 echelons
UEx driving (Joint) Headquarters
jointness
lower) BATTLEGROUP
BRIGADE CMD
CMD
UA
BATTALION BATTALION
CMD LTC LTC CMD

COMPANY
CPT CPT CMD/STAFF
COMPANY
CMD/STAFF
PLATOON
PLATOON
LT LT LEADER/STAFF
LEADER/STAFF

We need a plan for more combat power and less, not more overhead!

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W2A New Operational Architecture

Let me now turn to the Army’s proposed, new operational architecture. It

appears that this new architecture is not new, but instead arbitrarily derived from
the Cold War force structure. The principle result is a unit of action or UA that is
actually nothing more than a conventional brigade while the unit of employment
or UE equates to a division or corps as shown in the chart above.ix
The Unit of Employment discussion (in which the Army conceals the truth
that UEx = division and UEy = corps) is at best confusing and at worst
misleading.x Other than adding still more inadequately staffed brigade
headquarters to an already top-heavy force plus many more support troops, the
approach amounts to no change in the way the army is commanded, and
controlled. In sum, chopping up the existing division into smaller pieces does not
change the current warfighting paradigm, reduce or eliminate echelons of
unneeded C2, or advance jointness on the operational level where it must be
seamless.

Recommendation: Congress should demand that the Army explore new force
designs that eliminate unnecessary command levels and create viable joint
planning and execution capability under a Standing Joint Force Headquarters.
Congress should instruct the Secretary of Defense to establish one Standing
Joint Force Headquarters under a three-star officer within six months. An
independent assessment monitored by this Congress should follow the stand-up
of this new command structure.

Army Culture

Finally, a discussion of Army transformation without a note on Army

service culture would miss a key element in the transformation process.
Whenever an Army Chief of Staff makes a pronouncement, regardless of
whether the pronouncement is based on sound analysis and accurate data,
every officer knows that in order to be promoted, he or she must sign on
unconditionally for the “party line.” In this cultural setting, there is no argument,
no debate and no experimentation. One experienced observer of Army
experimentation remarked to me that current programs remind him of the
Queen’s declaration in Alice in Wonderland: “First the verdict, then the trial!”xi
Experimentation is simply designed to demonstrate the rightness of whatever the
Chief of Staff or any other four star general said.
This condition was the consequence of the former Army Chief of Staff’s
statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee in the spring of 2000 that “it
was now possible to think of placing the whole Army on wheels.” Although the
statement had no basis in fact whatsoever, no one in either the Congress or the
Senate challenged it so it was never challenged inside the Army.
The current emphasis on the formation of two battalion brigades and an
army composed increasingly of light, vulnerable forces has had a similar chilling
effect inside the Army even though the evidence from Iraq and Afghanistan does

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not support this conclusion. Our soldiers, sergeants, lieutenants and captains are
among the best we have ever had. They now have much more combat
experience than the generals commanding them, but they are not being listened
to. If asked, they will tell congress that when we have armor and firepower, we
crush the enemy.
When we match our unsupported light infantry against the Iraqi insurgent
under conditions of symmetry, we take losses and the attacking enemy
frequently escapes. Ignoring this reality because it contradicts our personal
preferences is unacceptable. This sort of bias reinforces a flawed institutional
culture that teaches officers to “always give the boss what the boss wants” in a
setting where every officer knows that the senior man present is always right.
The result is that caution, conservatism, and compliance are the qualities that the
Army cultivates, and, during the initial stages of any conflict, these qualities
always convey an impression of reasoned judgment.
A sobering example of how seductive these qualities can be was
illustrated by the decision in April of this year that we should negotiate a
settlement with the insurgents in Fallujah instead of eliminating them. The result
is that until crisis and conflict demand decisive action, officers who are willing to
risk action—the essence of initiative—are viewed with considerable
apprehension.
As long as this culture is allowed to persist, it will also militate against the
agility of mind that is so critical to success in both nation-state and sub-national
war. It is important to remember, that the balance of force on the ground is much
less meaningful in defeating insurgencies. The success of counter-insurgency
operations depends much more on the agility of mind than on any other single
factor and it’s the absence of this agility at high levels that, I suspect, constrains
us most today in Iraq.

Recommendation: This is a complex issue because people carry culture.

Congress should investigate how officers in the Army are advanced to senior
rank and what can be done to change the current institutional culture.

Summary

To briefly sum up, today’s senior leaders, dealing as they do with life and
death should be as utterly realistic and ruthless in discarding the old for the new,
as General Marshall from the time he was elevated from one star to four stars in
June 1939. But the historical record makes clear that senior officers are not
always realistic. Comfort with the status quo breeds distrust of change. Victory
over weak, incompetent adversaries creates the illusion of strength and capability
when the reality may be quite different.
Ultimately, new fighting forces with new ideas and new capabilities
emerge as the result of political interest and private sector pressure. In the 1930s
for instance, the Germans got tanks and the French got forts. In the United
States where there was no interest in the Army at all, there was no pressure to

9
make substantive change and the Army’s generals were given tacit leave to
romanticize warfare in the form of horse cavalry.
Today, the Army’s generals are investing approximately 12 billion dollars
in stryker initiatives, when much of that money could be invested more usefully in
new fuel-efficient engines inside more survivable and lethal armored platforms for
use in urban environments and dispersed mobile warfare. Congress should
remember that a pipeline carrying fuel from a refinery in Kuwait to Iraq had to be
built to sustain the offensive to Baghdad. This obvious vulnerability demonstrated
first during Desert Storm is too dangerous to ignore for another 12 years.
The soldiers, sergeants, lieutenants and captains fighting this war must
have a decisive role in shaping the content of new tactical organizations and
equipment. Based on personal conversation with officers ranging in rank from
lieutenant to general, this Congress should know that had the officers of the 3rd
Infantry Division been allowed to do so, the formations that would have emerged
in the wake of Operation Iraqi Freedom would have resembled those outlined in
Transformation under Fire and Breaking the Phalanx, not the ones they are
currently compelled to establish.
The Army must provide the joint force with a diversity of capabilities from
theater missile defense to rapidly deployable armored fighting forces. One size
does not fit all. In fact, if Iran launched its numerous tactical ballistic and cruise
missiles at US targets in the Persian Gulf today, we would be discussing the
shortfalls in the Army’s theater missile defense capabilities, rather than up-
armored HMMWVs and strykers.

What happens if nothing is done?

Real change in the international system is outpacing anticipated change.

Future, large-scale regional war aimed at American interests now seems no
more than 4 to 5 years off with the strategic threat that the United States could be
deprived of oil from the Middle East. However, these conditions were not
inevitable.
Our friends in Egypt and Jordan along with our British and Italian Allies
watched in disbelief through the summer and fall of 2003 as our strategy of
indecision on the ground in Iraq produced inaction against known pockets of
resistance on the one hand and, on the other, humiliated, killed or incarcerated
thousands of Iraqi Arabs without trial, the vast majority of which were not the
enemy. The result was: we nurtured the insurgency.
We cannot change the past, so we must confront the present and act
decisively or face the possibility that our perceived failure to control Iraq seduces
millions of poor, hopeless Arabs from Morocco to the Persian Gulf to join forces
with our enemies throughout the Islamic World. Keep in mind that our enemies
do not have to defeat us in the conventional sense to achieve their strategic aims
now or in the future. They simply have to create conditions similar to those we
see today in Iraq on a wider regional level.
We must face facts. Saudi Arabia may be reaching the end of its fragile
existence. Iran is in a race to develop and field nuclear warheads for its already

10
impressive arsenal of theater ballistic missiles and cruise missiles in the hope
that it will be positioned to pick up the pieces if we just leave. A nuclear-armed
Pakistan could lurch openly into the Islamist camp on very short notice.
Back off now, Iraq will ulcerate and regional order will eventually
disintegrate.xii The oil may well stop flowing from the Persian Gulf and chaos
could infect the whole region, producing a global economic disaster. Incidentally,
if the oil stops flowing, who will intervene to secure the oil fields and guarantee
that oil is exported to the United States, China, India, Japan and the rest of the
World? The answer is obvious: American Soldiers and Marines.
Facing an enemy willing to take heavy losses to inflict pain on the
American body politic through our armed forces demands that our ground forces
do much more than win engagements or defeat improvised explosive devices.
Transformation must result in an Army organized, trained, equipped and
led to create a sense of futility in the mind of any current or future enemy
by systematically crushing him using every asymmetrical advantage we
possess.

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i
Source: Colonel Richard Hooker, USA, former special assistant in the office of the Secretary of
the Army.
ii
In the past four months of fighting, the 2nd Battalion of the 4th Marine Regiment has lost 31
killed and 175 wounded, roughly 20% of its 1,000-man fighting strength.
iii
These points relate to another flawed assumption: The belief that we should optimize our
tactical units for the lowest level threat, not the high-end threat. Special Operations Infantry
received well-deserved credit for its performance in Iraq, but we must be careful not to assume
that conventional infantry will fight similar enemies under the same conditions. When
conventional light infantry, Army or Marine, advanced on foot or in wheeled vehicles in Iraq they
habitually conducted "movements to defense." Why? When American light infantry is armed with
automatic weapons and the enemy has automatic weapons, any resistance is stiff because the
two forces are on an equal footing. When this happens, the light infantry turns to the most
powerful weapon in its
inventory-the radio, because the radio calls in the U.S.A.F., U.S.N., artillery, or armor. Armor may
be the first help to arrive, and when it does, the battle ends quickly. Why would a nation with
global interests and a population dwarfed by its prospective enemies seek symmetry in combat?
Why not instead lead with irresistible strength?
iv
Megan Scully, “Permanent Waiver Allows Strykers To Be Deployed By C-130s,” Inside the
Army, August 12, 2002, page 1.
v
There are unintended benefits from this approach. 5,000 – 6,000 man formations can sustain
casualties and keep fighting. Another is that eliminating some of the career gates on the Army
career ladder also changes career patterns, allowing more time for lieutenant colonels and
colonels to become educated and joint; something that the current Army career patterns obstruct.
This promotes breadth of experience that is not rewarded in a branch-dominated promotion
system that reinforces narrowness of experience. Another is the placement of a brigadier general
in command on the tactical level.
vi
Current Blueforce tracking systems are not interoperable with FBCB2 and neither of these systems is
interoperable with FCS. Since FCS-equipped and non-FCS-equipped formations will operate side by side
until after 2030, this is a serious problem.
vii
Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great
Firms to Fail (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1997), 159. In his landmark book, The
Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen explains why the massive Army investment program in
Stryker and the undefined FCS may be a mistake. He does so by explaining why the Intel
struggle to figure out how to market micro-processing technology was successful when the efforts
of other firms were not: “Many of the ideas prevailing at Intel about where the disruptive
microprocessor could be used were wrong; fortunately, Intel had not expended all of its resources
implementing wrong-headed marketing plans while the right market direction was still
unknowable. As a company, Intel survived many false starts in its search for the major market for
microprocessors
viii
Limited numbers of prototypes can be examined under fire before billions of dollars in scarce
investment funding are committed to much larger acquisition programs.viii In many ways, what I
am recommending is no different from the “experiments” undertaken by both the Russians and
Germans during the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s. The Germans in particular benefited
from this practice through the use of a limited number of selected aircraft, tanks, and guns that
were tested under combat conditions. Some platforms, such as the Junkers Tri-Motor bomber,
turned out to be better suited as a transport aircraft. In other cases, there were clear winners such
as the 88-mm antiaircraft gun that proved valuable as an antitank weapon.
Why is this experience with experimentation important? The Technological pace is quickening
again. For instance, over time, unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) have the potential to
exert a similar influence on the conduct of land warfare. It is increasingly clear that a larger UCAV
with more range, loiter time, and payload will eventually be able to fulfill many of the armed
reconnaissance and sensor relay functions that armed helicopters are expected to perform.

12
However, it takes time to perfect new warfighting systems within new organizations to realize true
potential—and therein lies the rub.viii Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) ability to provide a
substantial capacity for fires to the point where they can supplant manned aviation or artillery
systems is limited. At the moment, they present a command and control (C2) nightmare for fires
and can carry only limited munitions load.
ix
Nothing in the current CSA’s plan deviates substantially from this statement: “The Objective
Force is organized around a common divisional design, allowing interchangeable full spectrum
capability. Division and Corps level headquarters set the conditions for and integrate all elements
of the joint/multinational/interagency force, directing and supporting the operations of its
maneuver and fighting units through inter-netted linkages to joint C4ISR and joint effects.” See
Louis Caldera, Secretary of the Army, and General Eric K. Shinseki, Army Chief of Staff, United
States Army Transformation Campaign Plan, August 1, 2000, 5.
x
See TRADOC Pamphlet 525-3-90/Operational and Organizational Plan for Maneuver Unit of
Action, July 22, 2002.
xi
Suggested to the author by Lieutenant Colonel (P) H.R. McMaster, US Army.
xii
Patrick J. McDonnell and Suhail Ahmed, “Resentment is Festering in Little Falloujahs,” Los
Angeles Times, July 13, 2004, page 1.

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