BYLINE: JOHN J. LUMPKIN; Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
The Army plans to increase the ranks of the infantry by 23,000 soldiers in the next four years as part of its effort to simultaneously reorganize itself and maintain forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, a senior official with the service said Thursday.
The additional infantry troops will fill out a number of fighting units as the overall Army force swells to 510,000 troops, said the Army official, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity.
More infantry troops are needed to help the Army alter its force to create brigades that are more self-reliant in combat zones than the current force, the official said.
Under the plan, brigade commanders, who currently must seek some kinds of artillery, intelligence and other support from headquarters, would now have more of each at their disposal while on the battlefield. The plan would standardize the design of U.S. brigades into a few classes, better allowing the Army to fit together forces from bases around the world to deal with various contingencies, the official said.
The Army envisions having 48 such fighting brigades made up of several thousand troops each. Most would fit into existing divisions. Some brigades would contain heavier armored forces while others would primarily be composed of infantry.
**
BYLINE: RON MARTZ
SOURCE: AJC
Fort Stewart --- Last March, the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) led the U.S. Army's charge into Iraq.
This year, the Fort Stewart unit will again be at the forefront of an Army charge --- into a new era for the military as the Army attempts to radically alter the way it has gone to war for years in order to be more effective in the battle against global terrorism.
The 3rd will be the first of the Army's 10 active duty divisions to reorganize its primary fighting forces, the brigade combat teams, into smaller, more mobile units that are expected to retain their firepower and lethality.
But in order to do that, said Maj. Gen. Glenn Webster, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, "we've got to break some china."
That means the Army will have to set aside many of its conventional theories and practices, and many long-held traditions. It will also have to work more closely with the other services, relying heavily on the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy to do jobs it once did.
In the future, said Webster, forces from various services will be integrated into Army units, and vice versa.
Webster, who served as deputy commanding general for all land forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom, began working on the reorganization even before he took command of the division in late September.
The reorganization is the brainchild of Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff. Schoomaker, with a long background in special operations units, told Webster in July to experiment and reorganize the three combat brigades with which the division went to war into five.
"He said we don't have enough brigades to respond to all the [president's] needs now out in the world; we can't sustain this over the long haul in our present configuration, and we can't go back and ask for more troops until we've shown we're certain we're making the best use of the end strength we have now," said Webster, now in his third tour at Fort Stewart.
The 3rd Division is the only division in the active Army not currently committed to combat or about to be committed, making it the obvious choice for reorganization.
The 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) will be the next to reorganize when it returns from Iraq in March.
Actual reorganization for the 3rd Division will begin Jan. 15 with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, the unit that led the Army into Baghdad last April.
During the war the 2nd Brigade had about 5,000 soldiers in two armor battalions and one mechanized infantry battalion. The division's other two brigades were combinations of armor and mechanized infantry battalions.
Under the reorganization, said Webster, each brigade will have only one armor and one mechanized infantry battalion. But each will add engineer and artillery battalions and will have other assets such as intelligence, communications and transportation permanently assigned to it.
Brigades normally add these assets when they go to war in what the Army refers to as "task organization." When they return to their home posts, these assets go back to their own units.
The new plan has the brigades being permanently task-organized so they regularly train with additional assets in place.
"These brigades will now be able to operate independently or semi-independently out on the battlefield," said Webster.
They can also be deployed more quickly and mixed and matched with other units to fit the needs of a particular military mission. During the Persian Gulf War in 1991, it took the Fort Stewart unit, then designated as the 24th Infantry Division, more than a month to get its equipment to the gulf. That was followed by six months of training for a ground war that lasted 100 hours.
"You can't do that anymore," said Webster. "The crises are hotter than that. We've got to have the ability to impact and influence in all the regions of the world in a very quick fashion and then fairly quickly build combat power behind it."
Webster said for the most part he will be able to build four of the five new brigades Schoomaker wants out of the units now on hand at Fort Stewart. The fifth will be built around the aviation brigade at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah.
Additional units, such as military police, will be needed to fill out the brigades, Webster said. Requests for those troops and equipment will begin going out after Jan. 15.
The 2nd Brigade will unveil its new, reorganized look when it goes to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., in March for a month of field exercises.
Even during that time, Webster said, he and his staff will be tweaking the reorganization plan, keeping what works and tossing out what doesn't.
**
By Ann Roosevelt
The first Stryker Brigade Combat Team (SBCT), the 3rd Brigade, 2nd
Infantry Division, deployed in Iraq with General Dynamics' [GD] wheeled armored
vehicles and Northrop Grumman's [NOC] Force XXI Battle Command, Brigade and
Below (FBCB2) is protected and performing well, the Army's top soldier said
recently.
"The Stryker vehicle with that that slat armor on it is only exceeded by
the M1 tank in terms of the level of protection," said Army Chief of Staff Gen.
Peter Schoomaker at an Association of the United States Army Institute for Land
Warfare breakfast in Arlington, Va.
"I think they're doing great," Schoomaker said "We've already had one of
them (Stryker vehicle) attacked by an IED and the only serious injury that we
got out of that was a fractured ankle, the driver, the IED went off underneath."
In October at his first meeting with reporters before the unit deployed,
Schoomaker said if the unit was properly employed, the Stryker brigade could do
"amazing" things on its first operational deployment (Defense Daily, Oct. 9).
Some critics questioned the ability of the vehicle's armor to protect
troops against heavy machine gun fire and rocket propelled grenades fired in
Iraq.
Before the unit deployed, General Dynamics fixed the armored tile
configurations protecting against machine gun fire that had failed tests
(Defense Daily, Sept. 17).
General Dynamics also provided slat armor for all the 309 Stryker
vehicles to deal with the potential RPG threat. The slat armor is an interim fix
until United Defense [UDI] builds add-on reactive armor kits for the Stryker
vehicles, the first of which will be delivered this spring (Defense Daily, Sept.
.
Schoomaker said Stryker vehicles in Iraq with slat armor are better
protected than United Defense's Bradley Fighting Vehicles, except for the few
Bradleys equipped reactive armor.
The Arrowhead Brigade's FBCB2 terrestrial networking and blue force
tracking equipment and vehicles allow the unit to move fast and bring
coordinated flexible firepower to its missions.
"They got into their first big ambush the other day, and they solved it,
just like that," Schoomaker said.
The SBCT, known as the Arrowhead Brigade, went into action in Iraq in
Early December as part of Task Force Iron Horse.
The Army wants a total of six Stryker brigades. Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld Dec. 8 approved an Army enhancement plan for the acquisition of
SBCTs 5 and 6 (Defense Daily, Dec. 18). SBCT 5 will be the 2nd Brigade, 25th
Infantry Division (Light) at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. It will be fielded in
2006. SBCT 6 will be the 56th Brigade, 28th Infantry Division (Mechanized) of
the Pennsylvania Army National Guard. It will be fielded between 2008 and 2010.
How the Army employs these brigades is now under discussion, Schoomaker
said.
**
BYLINE: Gregory L. Vistica, Washington Post Staff Writer
With Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pressuring the Pentagon to take a more aggressive role in tracking down terrorists, military and intelligence officials are engaged in a fierce debate over when and how elite military units should be deployed for maximum effectiveness.
Under Rumsfeld's direction, secret commando units known as hunter-killer teams have been ordered to "kick down the doors," as the generals put it, all over the world in search of al Qaeda members and their sympathizers.
The approach has succeeded in recent months in Iraq, as Special Operations forces have helped capture Saddam Hussein and other Baathist loyalists. But in other parts of the world, particularly Afghanistan, these soldiers and their civilian advocates have complained to superiors that the Pentagon's counterterrorism policy is too inflexible in the use of Special Forces overall and about what units are allowed to chase down suspected terrorists, according to former commandos and a Defense Department official.
In fact, these advocates said the U.S. military may have missed chances to capture two of its most-wanted fugitives -- Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader, and Ayman Zawahiri, deputy to Osama bin Laden -- during the past two years because of restrictions on Green Berets in favor of two other components of the Special Operations Command, the Delta Force and SEAL Team Six.
They said several credible sightings by CIA and military informants of Omar entering a mosque this spring in Kandahar, Afghanistan, were relayed to U.S. forces at nearby Firebase Gecko, where a Green Beret team was ready to deploy. But rather than send in the Green Berets, who were just minutes from the mosque, commanders followed strict military doctrine and called on the Delta Force, the team of commandos whose primary mission is to kill and capture targets such as Hussein.
In the several hours it took the Delta unit, based hundreds of miles away near Kabul, to review the information and prepare for the raid, Omar vanished, said the sources, all of whom advise Rumsfeld's senior aides.
Other informants reported spotting Zawahiri in a medical clinic in Gardez, Afghanistan, in the spring of 2002. Green Berets five minutes away were ordered to stand down so SEAL Team Six, another of the hunter-killer teams, could storm the clinic and capture or kill Zawahiri, according to the sources. But too much time elapsed during preparations, and Zawahiri escaped. The Special Operations Command declined to comment on the reports.
Both incidents spotlight the ongoing debate over how best to employ Special Operations forces in the global war against terrorism. Special Operations forces refer to a range of soldiers from the Army, Navy and Air Force who are specially trained for sensitive missions, typically secret in nature and frequently involving rescues or assaults on high-value enemy targets.
The military's policy, in practice, mandates using only "Special Mission Units," such as Delta Force and SEAL Team Six, to apprehend or assassinate specially targeted individuals. It precludes other Special Forces such as Green Berets -- who are trained primarily to work with indigenous fighters -- from pursuing the most sought-after targets when opportunities arise.
Some experts on counterterrorism contend that it takes the Special Mission Units too long to deploy for unanticipated raids. Some believe equal, if not more, emphasis should be placed on Special Operations forces to develop relationships with local villagers who supply the bulk of valuable information, which is known as counterinsurgency work. In the past year, poor intelligence has often led to the wrong targets being killed or captured.
"For all of the Special Mission Units' efforts, how many high-value targets did they get in Afghanistan?" asked one adviser, a civilian advocate of aggressive unconventional warfare with the Special Operations Command. "None."
Supporters say units such as Delta are the only ones trained specifically to carry out the apprehension or assassination of high-value targets.
"By doctrine and training, targets like that belong to the Special Mission Units," said Richard H. Shultz Jr., a scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a Pentagon consultant. "That's what they are for."
The Pentagon's official position is that there is no conflict between the two approaches. Marshall Billingslea, formerly the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, said both approaches are being followed and both are vital to achieving success against terrorist organizations. "The hearts and minds element is essential," Billingslea said.
But according to a classified Defense Department policy briefing on the war against the al Qaeda terrorist network and Baathist insurgents in Iraq, the Bush administration is moving away from work with insurgents and favoring more direct-action strikes.
Rumsfeld has long been enamored of the idea of expanding the role of Special Operations forces in fighting terrorists. He has dramatically boosted the budget of the forces and last year ordered the Special Operations Command to draft a strategy to send hunter-killer teams after terrorist cells.
He is considering expanding their role even more. Among proposals under review is to send the Special Mission Units into areas such as Somalia and Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, where little government authority exists and terrorists congregate, seemingly safe from the long arm of the United States, said officials who are reviewing the plan or have been briefed on it.
"There have been briefings about various operations against various targets," a State Department official said. "We're prepared to go into these areas," he said, but in a careful way.
Over the years, such proposals have faced roadblocks, including a shortage of resources, legal questions on Capitol Hill about assassinations, intelligence shortcomings and worries about the political willpower of some officials at the State Department and Pentagon.
According to four officials who have seen it, a top-secret report by Shultz, the Pentagon consultant, contends that despite reliable intelligence on those responsible for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, Special Mission Units were never sent to kill or capture the terrorists responsible.
"It was very, very frustrating," retired Gen. Peter Schoomaker told Shultz. "It was like having a brand-new Ferrari in the garage, and nobody wants to race it because you might dent the fender," said Schoomaker, a former head of the Delta Force who is now the Army's chief of staff. "We were never instructed to mount a serious operation against bin Laden, never."
It was not because of President Bill Clinton's reluctance to deploy the secret units, concluded Shultz, who would not discuss the classified study. Rather, the Pentagon's civilian leaders and generals repeatedly came up with what the report called "showstoppers" to dissuade the White House from launching each mission.
Officials in Billingslea's old office who spoke on background about the study said they are watching that such an attitude does not sabotage the current plans.
Rumsfeld's "manhunter" plan, as described in memos, is more daring than efforts against terrorist networks during the Clinton years, according to those who have seen it or have been briefed. Rumsfeld's plan calls for sending Special Mission Units into a number of countries throughout the world.
The capture of Hussein may increase support for Rumsfeld's global vision for the hunter-killer teams. But this worries some in the Special Operations forces community who see more emphasis on direct action and less on unconventional warfare.
Special Operations forces are divided into two distinct but complementary kinds of combat teams: those involved in direct action -- the "black" Special Mission Units such as Delta Force and SEAL Team Six -- and those that support unconventional warfare, the "white" Green Berets and, on occasion, other SEAL platoons.
Although they are capable of killing or capturing terrorists, Green Berets and other "white" units traditionally work to win the trust of local villagers by living and eating with them and taking on their customs and garb. They are also called "force multipliers" because a few Green Berets can turn insurgent groups such as Afghanistan's Northern Alliance into a more lethal fighting force. Building such relationships takes time, but the payoff is the ability to solicit the kind of intelligence that enables operations.
But "Delta envy" now permeates the ranks, especially among younger soldiers who realize early in their careers that the "kick down the door approach" is what Washington wants, said one civilian advocate of unconventional warfare. "All they want to do is strike missions," he said.
The better policy, he recently told Rumsfeld's senior aides, is to focus more on counterinsurgency rather than assassinations and snatches.
"We want to know where the high-value targets are in Afghanistan and Iraq," he said. "Who has that information? People at the neighborhood and village level."
A top-secret report by the Defense Intelligence Agency that began circulating in November for senior executives in the intelligence community points out that a "hearts and minds" campaign may have more benefits, particularly in Iraq, than the approach now being followed.
"One of the ways to success in Iraq is . . . creating relationships with the heads of tribes in villages to counter the influences of [Saddam's] Fedayeen and radical sheiks," said an administration official who cited passages from the report. "The strategy would take time and appropriate resources," the report said, according to the official.
In locating Hussein, Army officers partly followed this approach, interrogating distant members of the former Iraqi president's tribe. But this was more of a police tactic, rather than using Special Forces to build goodwill with local Iraqis to garner intelligence.
In Afghanistan, Special Operations forces face different problems. Officials with the Special Operations Command, some of whom have made multiple trips to Afghanistan, said little emphasis is being placed on unconventional warfare.
Not only are the Special Forces excluded from major raids, any mission that takes them farther than two miles from a firebase requires as long as 72 hours to be approved, said several officials. When Special Forces do deploy, which is infrequently, say officials who have interviewed troops there, they are required to travel in armed convoys, a practice that alerts the enemy. They also have been ordered to stop assisting militias that helped topple the Taliban to avoid competing with the new national army Afghanistan is trying to organize.
A good example to follow, said several officials, was set by a Green Beret team operating along the Afghan-Pakistani border last year. The team drove an abusive warlord out of the region, helped to establish a town council, and rebuilt schools and roads.
With the help of some Afghan workers, they cut up several 40-ton tanks captured from the Taliban into large chunks of steel. The Afghans sold it last year at a market for enough money to build a much-needed medical clinic.
The villagers repaid the Army team many times over with valuable information, which led to the closure of routes used by the Taliban and al Qaeda to infiltrate parts of Afghanistan, according to Defense Department sources.
But this ingenuity violated at least the spirit of the Pentagon's kill-and-capture-only policy.
"This type of indirect approach does not fit with the current kick-down-the-door mentality," said one official, a 30-year Army veteran and retired Special Forces officer who has made multiple trips to Afghanistan to interview troops. "Their focus is to capture and kill. It's easier, it's quick, and more glamorous," he said. "Based on what I saw, clearly no, it's not working."
Meanwhile, the Special Forces and others continue to debate whether the emphasis on Special Mission Units is, at times, counterproductive. When Omar and Zawahiri were sighted, for example, it might have been more productive to let the Green Berets scout the mosque and the medical clinic to determine the accuracy of the information.
"Did we know with 100 percent certainty that it was Zawahiri and Omar?" asked the official with the Special Operations Command. "How would you know that if you never went into town? We never got to take a look."
Edited by - viperttb on Jan 30 2004 1:13 PM
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