Transformation: Let's Get it Right this Time

Abstract

The lessons of Task Force Hawk and Kosovo have rung loudly in the halls of Congress and the Pentagon. However, the immense difficulty the US Army faced in deploying a capable, warfighting force to northern Albania is only symptomatic of a much larger problem that the Army has grappled with for several decades: how to develop a force light enough to get where it is needed quickly and yet lethal enough to win when it gets there. Task Force Hawk was just the most recent manifestation of this problem, demonstrating yet again that the Army is still far from a solution. In response, General Eric Shinseki, the Army's Chief of Staff, has launched the Army on a path to transform itself into a deployable force fully capable of meeting the national strategic challenges of this new century. This is a path the Army has trod before. Unfortunately, it is strewn with dashed hopes and lost opportunities, victims of the landmines of the Army's own institutional nature. As George Santayana wrote, Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it. This article, then, is a cautionary tale; its purpose is to relate the story of the Army's effort to transform itself in the 1980s in the hope that the current generation of transformers will learn to avoid these landmines by studying the failures--and successes--of their predecessors. Saudi Arabia, 1990 When the United States responded to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in the summer of 1990, US forces faced the prospect of a major military defeat. Had Saddam Hussein continued to attack south, there was the very real possibility of a disaster unmatched since the lightly armed troops of Task Force Smith had been brutally overrun by North Korean armor in the opening episode of our involvement in the Korean War. At the beginning of the Gulf War, American soldiers and the success of our overall Mideast policy were placed in grave danger, not only by Saddam Hussein but also by an Army decisionmaking process that years earlier had deprived the United States of air-deployable forces capable of defeating heavy armor on Middle Eastern terrain. When President Bush drew his famous in the sand to thwart the potential advance of Iraqi forces into Saudi Arabia, the line was held for several weeks by only the lightly armed and relatively immobile 82d Airborne Division and a Marine Expeditionary Force. The airborne division--even backed by considerable air power--was no match for the heavy Iraqi armored forces poised north of the Saudi border. Had Saddam Hussein elected to invade Saudi Arabia, this light infantry force--the only type of Army force that could be rapidly deployed by air--might have been quickly overrun. This force imbalance created an extremely dangerous of that closed only when reinforcing heavy forces arrived by sea several weeks later. Until the arrival of the Army's heavy force, the deployed ground units were left to hope that Baghdad would be deterred by the possible adverse implications of directly attacking American forces. It's worth repeating: we hoped they would be deterred. Although this wishful det errence worked in this instance, as former Army Chief of Staff Gordon Sullivan is fond of saying, Hope is not a method. Few if any of the paratroopers anxiously scanning the northern sky for the telltale dust columns of Iraqi armor advancing south knew that this window of vulnerability could have been avoided. For years the Army had been preparing to field a high-technology light division that combined the air deployability of a light infantry division with the firepower and mobility of a heavy division. It was also intentionally designed to fight heavy armored forces in the Middle East. Unfortunately, this division disappeared completely from the Army force structure in 1989, only a year before it was critically needed. Why did this happen? An analysis of the internal Army decisionmaking involved provides a few answers--and perhaps hope of avoiding past mistakes. …