The Change Mariner

Pentagon’s Plan to Eliminate US Army Division-Based Force Structure Unwise?

Intellectual Conservative:

Following his unprecedented premature retirement of forty-seven US Army generals and with his installation of hand-picked replacements to lead the US Army nearly completed, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is on the verge of moving full bore to begin implementing long-planned reforms. The most radical of these reforms envisions the complete elimination of the Army’s division-based force structure. Rumsfeld and his hand-picked replacement as Army Chief of Staff, General Shoemaker, plan to replace it with a force structure based on dismounted infantry-centric mini-brigade units of action consisting of about 1800 men each more optimized to fight small wars, but less suited to fighting major conflicts.

General Shoemaker recently announced his plan to immediately begin implementing this reformed structure with the 101st Air Assault Division and the 3rd Infantry Division, which have just returned to the US following a long-term deployment in Iraq. Five mini-brigade size units will be derived from each of the two divisions, which will then be ready for action about a year from now, at which time they will be redeployed to Iraq. Each ‘brigade unit of action’ will consist of only two battalions, rather than the three to four battalions found in each of the Army’s current combat brigades. These mini-brigades will have a much smaller compliment of men and fighting vehicles than current brigade combat teams, but may have limited integrated artillery and aviation assets, as divisions do today on a much larger scale. The divisions themselves will then become similar to Army corps headquarters, which are little more than command and control units for attached subordinate elements. Once the reorganization of these two divisions is complete, General Shoemaker will then report back to Rumsfeld with a recommendation on the size of the Army, presumably a recommendation to reduce it by a yet to be determined level.
... This planned transformation of the Army to a smaller, less capable force seems to indicate that the Army leadership does not anticipate that major conflicts such as the recent US invasion of Iraq will be waged in the foreseeable future. It reflects the prevailing viewpoint in Pentagon circles that Operations Other Than War (OOTW) such as UN peacemaking missions and occupation duties will remain the primary focus of the US Army and that the Army must transform itself accordingly, if it hopes to remain ‘relevant.’ Secretary Rumsfeld has expressed his belief that all future wars the US military fights will be small wars like Afghanistan, requiring no more than 50,000 special forces and light infantry troops supported by airpower.

Posted by Norm M. Wada at November 7, 2003 05:38 PM | TrackBack
Related Categories: Theme - 'Military Transformation'