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RAND to the Army: You're Still Broken
Is the Army stretched too thin? A recent study conducted by the government-funded RAND Corporation says that the deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan will prevent the Army from effectively responding to a crisis in another theatre. The report also indicates that the Army’s current plans to transform its force into 43 ‘modular brigades’ will not solve the problem. One analyst commented that ‘the challenge the Army faces is profound.’
To meet its strategic requirements, train soldiers, and provide troops with needed rest RAND says the Army must increase the number of brigades in the National Guard, use light and heavy reserve forces interchangeably, or increase the number of medium to heavy units within the active/reserve contingent. All of the options, however, present the Army with tough choices, some of which would require an additional outlay of billions of dollars. Couple this with an Army that still faces a 40% recruiting shortfall and it would appear the options become bleaker still. So what is the Army to do? And, as some have asked, is the current course the best one?
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Not this month by romanizzo
This month the Army met its recruiting goals.
Other than that, unfortunately, I have to agree with RAND in the sense that the Army is in a tough place. This modular re-organization thing works great in theory, but I’m still not seeing a significant number more riflemen on the front lines.
The Army is currently robbing Peter to pay Paul in the way of vehicles and soldiers, and wearing itself out. As for not being able to respond to another crisis, that is not true, but any sort of additional sustained conflict would indeed be a problem.
Of course, if our society is this sick then this is a downward spiraling problem that will not go away until we show a yellow belly to the world. And that, of course, would be the beginning of the end, instead of the beginning of a solution.
Any poor judgement in this post is brought to you by Bombay Sapphire Dry Gin.
some thoughts by willwaddell
At first glance it seems that the Army will have to abandon the premise of a two-front major war capability. But I really don’t think that is a major concession. It would also seem that the Army will get worse at major conventional war, or "high intensity conflict" to use the Army term, as the rotations in Iraq continue. Most units right now go to either Afghanistan or Iraq and then come back with only enough time to really focus on what they will have to do when they get back to Iraq. There isn’t really much time to train for anything but the next rotation. Now I don’t think this is a major drawback either, but some are very concerned that the Army will lose its ability to prosecute a major war with the same kind of effectiveness.
The really concerning aspect to all of this is the idea that the Army is spending billions of dollars on top of what is already being paid out for Iraq/Afghanistan and the reforms will not fundamentally alter the situation, at least according to RAND. That begs the question: Why do it now? Why not wait for the war to end? The Army is now operating so over-budget that even small expenditures become burdensome. The natural counter-argument is that the Army must form the new modular brigades in order to take the strain off units that are deploying year after year. That would be a valid and compelling counterpoint except that RAND contends the "transformation" will not radically improve the situation. I suppose it now falls to the Army to reexamine its plotted course, although we may be too far along to change tack now.
The next real issue is these Modular Brigades themselves. They are sort of like the Ford Explorer Sport Trac of military units. The Sport Trac, in my mind, combines all the disadvantages of a car with all the disadvantages of a truck. It has little more carrying capacity than a car and the discomfort of a truck all rolled into one. The point is that these new brigades, like the Sport Trac, are essentially structured to not be really good at anything. They are jacks of all trades, masters of none.
The new heavy modular brigades are still fairly light on infantry, which is your most important arm when dealing with an insurgency. In this respect the new brigades are probably not much more capable than a standard infantry brigade. When it comes to "conventional" war the new BCTs are more than equally handicapped. The new units only have two maneuver battalions. For a conventional fight against a similarly equipped enemy this means that a brigade commander has no force to hold in reserve. Both are committed at once or the commander must reduce his battlespace to the frontage of a single battalion. (Admittedly I don’t think this second shortcoming is a big concern.)
It is certainly nice that individual brigades now have assets like military intelligence, psychological ops, and police, but I’m not so sure if the advantage is so great as to warrant the massive outlay of money.
This all leads me to propose my "Red Giant; theory for the Army at present. Just as a sun that has reached the end of its fuel will begin to expand as a portent of its coming collapse, so has the Army started to grow even while its recruiting falters and its equipment wears out. This artificial dilation is happening because the war on terror has presented the Army with a situation outside of the rubric in which it was designed to operate.
The supranational terrorist is a wholly different animal from the enemies the Army was built to fight. The frustration incumbent in such a situation is made manifest in the increscent flailing we have dubbed "modularization." In real terms this modular army will most likely be not one wit more capable of dealing with terrorism than was the ante-modularized force, but the complex problem of Iraq has left the Army no other apparent alternative. The rut becomes "When faced with perplexity do the only thing we know – expand." Eventually, however, the fundamental disconnect between conventional army, no matter how "modular," and non state-based warfare will be too great. At that time the Army will collapse under the weight of its own costly irrelevance and enter into a white dwarf phase. It will continue to exist for a great long time, but it will hardly ever find use for itself. Those expeditions it does embark upon will be too obscure to be worth mentioning.
We have to remember that the record of conventional armies in counter-insurgency wars is abysmal, to say the least. The British victory in Malaysia is the over-used and misunderstood exception. The War on Terrorism, which is even more profoundly different than counter-insurgency, should cast longer shadows on our prospects for victory via conventional arms. To assure survival we will have to realize that Iraq is not the central front in the War on Terror. Terrorists can only fight us there so long as we decide to stay. The front is at home, in London or in New York. The battle-lines are indeed hazy. Soldier and civilian are becoming meaningless appellations. Even democratic freedom, the export of the West, will slowly die of necessity in the very ground of its germination and the Army may actually find itself deployed within its own borders. And until strategy makes common cause with the ideological nature of this contest no change in Army form will prevent the unraveling of success.
CRAP by Anonymous
I think Waddell’s comments are way out of line and he should be in line with promoting the war
"Kill em’ all"