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Stinger: Good Point. These aren't new ideas, just a renewed emphasis on implementing the ideas.
Anyway, here's an interview with Gen. Schoomaker from Army Times:
GENERAL SCHOOMAKER: I think you’ve all seen the Soldier’s Creed. I think it’s the heart and soul of what we are doing. I am very proud of our young people that we’ve got in uniform. I’ll tell you, it’s just inspiring to me.
I think you know my story. I am like a mobilized reservist. So I have kind of run the whole gamut, from a full career to retirement to mobilization and all the rest of it. But I am very, very proud to be able to serve with these young men and women and not just in the Army, but, you know, all of them: the Marines, the Navy, the Air Force and the civilians that we have got.
I just returned from theater again. I was there over — both in Iraq and Afghanistan over the Christmas period and then, of course, just came back late Saturday night from another week over there.
This trip was Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Pakistan, and then, I generally go through Landstuhl and see the soldiers and the young people that we’ve got in hospital there at Landstuhl.
I have said many times that we are in a period here where almost everything we’ve got has got to be turned over and evaluated and the strategic context in which we live; the one thing that, in my view, is inviolate are the values upon which our institution is based.
Again, I’m just very, very proud of our young folks. I think they are stepping up very well to the challenge that faces us. I will reemphasize to you that I don’t think this is a short-term challenge. I think this is a challenge that will face us in some form or fashion for many years to come. It is the reality of the new world we are in. It is a tension of ideas. It is a tension of views on life. It is the realities of progress as we go forward, and it is one in which the United States Army and our armed forces are going to play a big role.
And by the way, I don’t think that these are military solutions to this. I think this will require the engagement of all elements of our national power, diplomacy, the informational aspect, economics, obviously, the military and many other things.
Q: In terms of end strength, you’ve said that what your needs are for a temporary increase of 30,000 troops; you have been building towards that and are well along towards that now.
Given how things are going recently, how married are you to that number? Are you willing to reconsider more troops? Do you think that there might be a more permanent need for an increase, and how are you going to address the way things are going in Iraq, the Fallujah area right now?
A: Let me deal with the growth of the Army. First of all, I think unless you understand the full context of growing the Army, first of all, under the authorities that we have right now — that the Secretary of Defense has — we can grow the Army as big as it needs to grow, and we can use all sorts of means to do that, to include stop-loss, stop-move.
we can do all kinds of things to grow the Army. the 30K is a very deliberate, informed decision … that we would need to have about 30K over the next three years to allow us to do the transformational resection reorganization that is required.
That does not mean that the Army doesn’t have the flexibility to grow outside that 30K. We certainly can if we want to. But what I did, basically looking at all aspects of it with the staff, was to get permission to specifically target 30,000 that we would recruit, train and organize to form the brigade base that we feel is necessary to have the rotation base to do the kinds of things we need to do for the long-term and to have their dwell time that’s necessary.
That does not mean that’s the only growth we could have if necessary, but instead of doing it kind of as, on the tail end and only use stop-loss, stop-move and other methods, what we really are doing is increasing our recruiting goal and targeting, using the momentum and the supplemental funding that is available to us to actually target and organize the effort to do that.
And when we presented this, it was for a good reason, because we did the math, and we took a look at what it would cost to permanently encumber ourselves with that kind of personnel bill in the out years. And it is expensive.
In round figures, it’s about $3.6 billion a year for 30K. And to encumber ourselves in a permanent way, all the way out, it would cause us to have to not only mortgage our future, but it would also have impacts on current readiness.
And part of the problem is the way that the system works. If we were to absorb that kind of a bill, year in, year out, we would have to pay for it with a combination of operational and maintenance money, procurement money, [research, development, training and education] money and all the kind of funds we have.
And the way it works is, procurement money does not outlay one to one. you’d have to find about five procurement dollars to generate one personnel dollar. If you take a look at RDT&E outlays, it’s somewhere like 2½ for every personnel dollar.
So what that means is the amount of money in the program in the out years to generate year-by-year personnel dollars is far in excess of what it costs us. Congress deals only in the budget year; when they get inside of this and take a look at how they would pay for this kind of end strength without an increase in top line for the Army, they will find that they’re up against the same kind of problem that we have internally.
So it just makes sense to organize the momentum in a way that allows us to do the things we need to do and find the efficiencies over that same period to offset that, so that we end up roughly in the same permanent end strength after the emergency is over that we currently are at but [with] a better-organized Army for the kind of strategic context in which we find ourselves operating.
Now, what are we doing to find the offsets? We’re doing things like military to civilian conversions, where we’re looking at every opportunity we have to be able to take soldiers that are in uniform out of positions that we could have civilians do.
We are looking at stabilizing the force. You know, we move on the magnitude of 290-plus-thousand people a year. About 190,000 of those can’t be helped, because there are soldiers coming into the Army, and there are soldiers retiring and [separating from service], plus those going to school and in hospital.
But about 90,000 to 100,000 of those moves a year are discretionary moves thathave to do with people being on station a certain length of time.Just by stabilizing the force, we can capture some of the approximate 63,000 people on a daily basis and apply them against units.
And so, if we could stabilize 10 to 15 percent of the force and recruit that, that’s a couple of brigades right there that we’re already paying for that we’re making moves.
The other thing is we take a look at our global force posturing and the types of opportunity we have as Europe changes, as potentially Korea changes, other reposturing things; there’s a lot of overhead that’s associated not with combat activities but with forward-basing activities, area support groups is an example that are uniformed end strength that we can apply.
So we’ve looked at this very carefully. We think it’s not only the fastest way to do it, but we think it’s the most fiscally prudent way to do it and the most realistic way to do it within the expected level of resourcing that we have. And we are moving out on it. I mean, we are seeing some good results.
If we stay on plan, over the next three years, we will generate the equivalent of about three and a half — well, about three and a third — divisions, 10 brigades, within our current end-strength authorization on the active side.
At the same time we’re doing that, we’re doing about 125,000 active component/reserve component rebalancing, restructuring moves that will end up with us having about 34 brigades in the National Guard. That’s about, I think, 10 heavy brigades; about 22 light brigades, scout—the Alaska scouts and one Stryker that will be in the Guard.
what we end up with if we stay on course is taking an active force of about 33 brigades, growing it to somewhere between 43 and 48 brigades, and taking the National Guard and organizing to about 34 fully-manned brigades; giving us a total Army force of combat brigades of somewhere between 77 and 82 brigades. And with that level of brigade structure, we can rotate and maintain the kind of dwell time necessary for us to, in a predictable fashion, meet the kind of stresses that we have right now.
So, you know, the biggest dilemma is trying to explain to people that this isn’t just a matter of just numbers of soldiers. the problem is really centered on being able to restructure and do the kinds of things that we’re doing.
Q: In the shorter term, the New York Times reports today that General John Abizaid (senior commander in Iraq) is drawing up contingency plans for more troops in Iraq. Do you think more troops are useful? And if so, in the short-term, where is the Army going to come up with more boots on the ground in Iraq?
A: I don’t want to discuss all of the options, but you have got to know that we are always looking at what flexibility we have and how we can surge and what we can do.
You know, we’re going through right now one of the biggest force rotations that we have undertaken since World War II. there are more than a quarter of a million people that are in motion. So there is a lot of flexibility within that.
Q: are you going to hold some people there?
A: that is a possibility. That could be an option. Now, we are very sensitive to red lines. And we certainly don’t see ourselves holding people beyond the 12 months boots on the ground, but there are some people that haven’t been there for 12 months that we could hold.
There is also a residual force here in [the continental U.S.] that, of course, we have on a string that we could use.
Q: Who is reset and ready to go? Who could go to Iraq on short notice?
A: you have to look across all of the services. The Marines, of course, have got some folks. We’ve got some people like the division ready brigades. We’ve got National Guard brigades that we’ve alerted and that are in the process of going. We have the 3rd Infantry Division that we’re resetting, and it is on tap to move to [Operation Iraqi Freedom III].
But the reality is that it’s unlikely, in my view, that the answer is having to actually increase the number of forces that are in Iraq. We’ve had a lot of discussions about this, and there’s a lot of flexibility with the forces that are there, maneuvering them within the theater. They’ve already been doing that, by the way.
Q: So you would not support a call for more troops in Iraq.
A: we’ll support what we’re told to do.
Q: If they asked your opinion.
A: my opinion right now, having talked to the leadership over there, is that nobody foresees right now that we’re going to have to surge more troops over there; that there’s adequate troops there and that we have a lot of flexibility with what we’ve got.
You know, you have to ask yourself the question — where does it end in terms of how many troops it takes? Are we going to put one soldier per square meter in Iraq? And is that really going to solve the problem? I don’t think so. I think that this really is maneuvering the resources that we have against the requirements in anticipation of what it is, and it is just not kind of a direct correlation to numbers.
You know, the other thing that I think we ought to remember is that we are generating a lot of coalition support over there, and included in that coalition are a lot of Iraqi security forces that we’re training, that we’re expediting the equipage of and ultimately they’re going to have a lot to do with how this has to go.
just coming back from over there [and] talking to the leadership, and by the way, these things were going on while I was over there, I think everybody is pretty confident that they have got the resources that they need.
Q: General, with regard to the reorganization of the divisions and increasing the number of maneuver brigades available, what are your plans for the 82nd and the 101st? We’ve heard from several sources that there’s a plan in the works potentially to not only increase each division to four maneuver brigades like the other divisions but to sort of cross-level the capabilities, so that you reflag a couple of the air assault brigades as 82nd brigades and reflag a couple of airborne brigades as 101st brigades.
A: We’ve looked at that. We haven’t come to decision there. What we are really trying to do is build an Army that has kind of a plug-and-play modular capabilities to it. And the question is do we want to actually move some capability out of the 82nd, cross-level it into the 101st … or do we have sufficient agility and modularity that we can task-organize from the current locations?
I think under our current scheme right now, we’re looking very much at probably having the flexibility and the modularity to go ahead and task-organize as required.
Q: So you don’t anticipate a reflagging of those brigades.
A: I don’t see it right now. It’s something we’ve discussed, but when you take a look at kind of the resourcing required to do that; in other words, you know, Fort Campbell is kind of optimized for the air assault business, and Fort Bragg is kind of optimized for the airborne business. And they’re both under the same corps, you know. It looks to me right now, anyway, like we’ve got a sufficient flexibility. …
Q: One version of the plan I heard yesterday was that maybe the brigades would be reflagged but would stay at the home post.
A: That’s a possibility, too, yes, that’s a possibility, too. But, you know, the patches are important for … the emotional side of things. people are proud to be in the 101st; they are proud to be in the 82nd.
We really do have sufficient flexibility without kind of getting wrapped up around the patches on the thing. So I think we are going to balance the traditions and legacies and all of those kinds of things in a way that it will become less important to us in terms of how we’ll actually fight these formations.
You know, we are going to end up with 10 what we are calling right now — we’re coming up with better names — units of action, which are kind of brigade combat team things, and UEs, which are units of employment, which are kind of divisions, corps-level headquarters, and they will take on other characteristics and give them more capability.
So we will have the equivalent of 10 active division headquarters and eight National Guard division headquarters in the force, 18 division command-and-control kinds of things, and of course, we will maintain the corps kinds of headquarters. And we will maneuver these units of action, these brigades, underneath those based on the situations that we have.
Q: Are you going to strip out any layers of command and control? folks I have talked to think that there’s not enough attention being paid to the savings that could be gained and the streamlining that you could achieve by stripping away at least one if not two of the layers of command and control that you have now.
A: Our future is looking at stripping away one echelon, but the reality of what we are doing is we are organizing these units of action in such a way that in some cases, they can act very much like a division has acted in the past, because they will have the enablers in them. We’re looking at the division headquarters being able not only to do division-level stuff like we have in the past with brigades under them, but in some cases, acting as corps have in the past. And we’re looking at corps, in some cases, being able to perform field army kinds of things.
And so, if you want to look at it that way, in fact we are stripping out an echelon, but again, that’s got a lot to do with how we tailor because we have Army service support responsibilities.
Q: Do you know how many personnel spaces you can save doing that?
A: I don’t know off the top of my head, but the people who are working it do. And once again, it’s really not an idea of saving spaces; it’s an idea of redirecting manpower in a way that’s useful.
Q: You mentioned the 3rd and OIF III. These are some of the busiest units we’ve had over the last couple of years. As these guys start heading over for their second and third deployments, looking at an Army life that’s a year out of every two deployed, how long do you think you can function like that before you’ve got to actually provide some real relief?
A: Well, our intention is not to have a year out of every two. Our intention is to eventually get to a level that we can manage. ideally, I would like to see six-month deployments in a predictable fashion, where on the active side, we’re talking about building unit cohesion into our force-stabilization policy, where there will be a life of a unit that will have a lot of cohesion and very little turbulence in it, because we will walk away from the individual replacement system … we will get a a one-in-three rotation.
Q: One in three in six months.
A: it could be a year, or it could be two six-month deployments or one six-month deployment in a three-year cycle. It depends on the level of effort that’s required in the future. On the National Guard side, we are looking at one in five or six years, not only the National Guard but the Reserves.
And what we want to do is grow this base and the structure in such a way that we can manage those in a way that we can actually be predictive in terms of who we’re going to [be in] the batter’s box, who’s going to be on the bench and maneuver our resources and our focus in a way that offers a lot more predictability of people’s lives.
Q: How long will that take?
A: you’ll start to see more of this predictability within this next year and that by the time we get through three years and add these 10 brigades to the active structure, and as we reorganize the Reserve structure, you are going to see a significant difference in the next two or three years towards predictability and the rest of it.
my expectation would be that we could see a future that would have less of a level of effort, but we are kind of stressing ourselves against the current level of effort.
Q: at some point, four, five, six, 10 years from now, you may not have 100,000 people in Iraq.
A: That’s right.
Q: But nobody would think right now that it doesn’t look like you’re going to have that kind of force for some significant time into the future.
A: Well, you know, of that 100,000 people in Iraq right now, about 25,000 of them are Marines.
Q: There are 137,000.
A: Yes, right now, today. That’s because we’ve still got some units overlapping.
Q: But you’ve also got support and command.
A: Right.
Q: That doesn’t count against that 137,000.
Q: I know. It counts against people in deployment.
Q: Did I understand you just to say that National Guard and Reserve could look forward to one year deployment in every five years?
A: No, what we’d like to do is have brigades that know that they’re going to be available for deployment. I mean, they may not deploy, but we know who we want in the batter’s box and who we want on deck in a predictable fashion, and we would look at a five or six year cycle for that.
Q: And would those be one-year or six months …
A: ideally, those would be six months. we certainly would have the capacity to a year if we had to. like I said, we are stressing it against the current level of effort, but I guess if 10 years from now we were operating at the same level we are right now, we’d have a different problem.
this really goes into a discussion of whether this is a spike, a plateau, a butte … that’s yet to be determined. here may have to be, in the future, other decisions taken in terms of whether or not we, all of the armed forces, need to be bigger. that is yet to be determined out there in the future. But at the current level, I think the plan we have got is a sound one.
Q: There was a survey recently where family members said that they would be much more predisposed to oppose a soldier re-enlisting after the two deployments in the past three years. That would suggest that it’s going to be hard to tell people, ‘Just give us five years and we’ll get this thing all squared away.’ What can you say to those people to keep them?
A: I think what we need to do is to be very clear on what people’s expectations should be; the efforts that we’re undertaking right now — we are trying to achieve a much higher level of family stability through our force stabilization business than what we have had in the past.
Some of this has been misrepresented as saying we’re going to a program that is built upon everybody being six or seven years at an installation. That is not true. we want to stabilize to the maximum extent possible, which may result in people being at larger installations like Hood, Bragg, Campbell, and these places for six or seven years.
But there are clearly places where we can’t professionally develop people for six or seven years at one location, and therefore, that’s where we’re going to use our flexibility. But the idea here is to the maximum extent possible, ask why do we need to move this soldier and this family? And if the answer isn’t that it’s essential; that we can professionally develop them and use them for longer periods of time, then we’re going to leave them.
That will take a lot of stress off the families. We are doing things like in Korea; we have offered an assignment-incentive package there and we’ve had a tremendous amount of takers, I think up around 3,700 to date, and the program is only two weeks old … soldiers are voluntarily extending their tours in Korea by 12 months, 24 months, and we’re incentivizing them to do that, because Korea, right now, is about 40 percent of our discretionary moves.
And so, every soldier who will extend a year in Korea, that saves us two PCS moves.
We are also targeting individual units as we take a look at building them. For instance, we are looking at enlistment options that would allow people to enlist for training plus three years, which would allow us, then, to place them in a unit and stay in that unit through the whole cycle of that unit. And then, of course, make a decision whether they want to stay in the Army and go through another cycle, which allows you to have a lot of residual experience and cohesion in units as they cycle through the future.
Right now, these initiatives seem to be working. I mean, we are at 100 percent of enlistment right now across the force, re-enlistment, active, Guard and Reserve, and our recruiting is going very, very well.
Q: You mean 100 percent of goal?
A: Yes, 100 percent of goal.
Q: General, do you think that there are more incentives needed, more retention incentives, and also, is it time to start looking at some kind of field pay to soften the high-op temp that’s out there?
A: Well, we’re already doing that. We’re providing not only assignment incentives, family separation, combat pay, hardship duty pay, all of those things; there’s a tax incentive for people that are deployed in a combat zone. these are significant incentives that are real money in people’s pockets for those that we’ve got deployed.
And as I told you, in Korea, I think we’re offering $300 a month for those that extend it over there, and people are taking that. We have got a lot of flexibility in how to target these things, and by stabilizing the force, we recoup a lot of PCS money. There’s about $1 billion involved at the level of PCSing that we’ve been doing; that 290,000 moves averages about $7,000 a move, and so, those can be redirected in terms of incentives.
And I think, yes, I think what we have got to do is be creative. I personally feel good about taking care of soldiers. You know, I think that these soldiers are wonderful people. We ask a lot of them, and I think we should do what we can.
Q: Are there any incentives coming down the pike that you’d like to announce right now?
[Laughter.]
A: Well, I mean, I’ve told you the kinds of things we’re going to do.
Q: For Korea, there was some discussion the last year or two of increasing the number of deployments versus PCSs there. Is that something you’re looking at?
A: Yes. we’re looking at, when we get to steady, rotating units into Korea. ideally, what I would like to do is rotate brigades into Korea for six-month deployments.
It does several things; first of all, allows us to stabilize a unit, train them up to a very high standard, deploy them where they can sustain their skills, and over a time, what you do is you end up with higher readiness and a greater percentage of the force that’s familiar with the terrain and the whole thing. It also gives us a lot of flexibility.
We can do the same thing in Europe: have a significantly smaller number of units that are permanently assigned in Europe and rotate as required for exercises and other terms.
Q: Would this be all brigades rotating in, or would there be some permanently stationed?
A: I would say if you kept the same level that you’ve got over there in Korea, and we were using this assignment-incentive business to kind of bridge the thing until we get it in stride, I think in the future you will see us rotating brigades there at whatever level is required to maintain our commitment to Korea.
In Europe, eventually, I think you will see a significantly smaller number of units permanently assigned over there and rotating out of home station. And what’s good about that is the family, then, is stable. And this is really important. You know, I grew up in an Army family, and the feedback we’re getting from a lot of people is a lot of spouses work; they want their kids to be in school, and they want to invest in a home and develop equity like people do.
Q: General, this rotation plan sounds a lot like the Air Force’s. Are you using any of those same models?
A: No, we’re using our own model. There probably are some similarities. I mean, they packaged mixed wings and all this kind of stuff to do that. And the thing that’s similar is the predictability that we want. But I don’t think it’s a direct lift. And just like the Navy, what we’re also looking at is, you know, the Navy is going to more of a surge [approach versus ] a set piece cookie cutter approach to the way they do business. So all of us have talked; we’ve got different kinds of requirements, and what’s important is you’ve got to remember we have fundamentally different kinds of forces in terms of what it takes to train them.
But there are some similarities and we do talk about them.
It’s kind of like Legos: building blocks that we can snap together in different kinds of ways and do it in a predictable fashion.
Q: a lot of the effort’s focus, obviously, is on transforming the force and how it functions in order to give you that Lego capability.
On the other hand, you have the programmatic side. folks at DOD have been talking about changing the way that everybody does acquisition, taking sort of the Title 10 buy stuff away from the services and then sort of vesting it into a broader organization that would look at force projections.
Do you think that’s a good approach to go to, in order to sort of harmonize what everybody wants?
A: I think there is significant progress to be made in how we acquire things. I think most of us agree that it takes too long right now, and it is too bureaucratic, and there’s too much that you have to fight your way through, and I think that we’re learning some things.
You know, I come out of a {Special Operations Command] background where we have a significantly different way of doing things down there, that I think that there’s some goodness in that that we can take a look at. We are doing more things; for instance, if you take a look at the Comanche decision, one of the things we wanted to do is push the tech base that we can take from that out to a future joint rotor craft kind of solution for 2020, 2025.
We have several initiatives where we have joint programs, joint missiles, for instance, that we can work together. We’re working with the other services as to what kinds of things we might be able to do more jointly and leverage not only core expertise but get some synergy out of the resources that are required to do certain things; theater support vessels, for instance. I talked to (Chief of Naval Operations Adm.)Vern Clark about how we might … work together on some of those joint programs.
So I think there is a lot of money to be made as we talk about how we might do better in the acquisition business.
Q: there has been a lot of talk, obviously, with the Blackwater guys dying, about contracting soldiers. At some point, does there have to be any kind of coordination between troops like this that are being used or being rented by government organizations in order to do security? I mean, some of the stuff they’re doing seems to me to transgress the line of pure security into certain operational realms as well. But what are the challenges associated with the evolution and growth of forces like this?
A: Well, I mean, I am not sure I agree with you that they are contract soldiers. For instance, as I understand the most recent thing in Fallujah there, these four individuals were providing security for some trucks that were, I think, delivering food or something.
It’s like gate guards. When you contract security for an office building in Manhattan, are they soldiers? I don’t think so. I think, you know, you’re contracting for a certain level of service. When you start talking about operationalizing civilians like that, where I don’t see them in the same light; they don’t have the same rules of engagement; they don’t have the same kinds of legal standing and everything else that organized armies have.
But the point of coordinating these kinds of things, I think, is a reality. they’re not the only ones you have to coordinate on the battlefield. I mean, you have nongovernmental organizations, you have media, you have State Department, Department of Justice, all the interagency kinds of things.
Q: Most of those guys aren’t carrying weapons, aren’t flying their own helicopters. Your enemy perceives them more as soldiers or as potential adversaries.
A: I can’t help how they perceive them, but I can tell you I don’t see them organizing for attacks on military forces; I don’t see them doing the kinds of things that are militarily significant.
Q: Scouting targets for potential action, you don’t see those people doing that sort of thing?
A: I’m not aware of anybody we’re contracting to do that.
Q: $150,000, $200,000 a year seems pretty fancy pay to guard food convoys.
A: that’s what the market bears, I guess. I don’t know that they’re paying them that, to be honest with you. But they’re paying people to take a lot of risk.
Q: The Army has embraced a Rapid Fielding Initiative. It started a couple of years ago; this year, they’re putting $400 million into equipping units with a basic list on Iraq or Afghanistan. How do you see this playing out in the future? Do you see a more standardized program or, when we ever do get back into peacetime, do you see it slipping back into the older acquisition process of only some units getting specialized or modern technology?
A: the Rapid Fielding Initiative of a year ago is a lot different than the Rapid Fielding Initiative of today. we have moved a lot of money into that, and we are committed. we put the first major efforts into the National Guard forces over there that were being mobilized on that. And we are on track for 100 percent of the Army to undergo Rapid Fielding.
in fact, I just looked at the new combat uniform that we may be announcing very shortly that is a significant improvement over, you know, what I’m wearing here right now.
It looks very similar to what Stryker [troops are] wearing, a lot like what we have designed over the years in [special operations]: you can wear your body armor and still get to your pockets and … a different camouflage pattern that is useful for multiple environments, to include urban.
Q: Is this for all soldiers or just deploying?
A: All soldiers.
Q: When do you think that might happen?
A: Very soon, and I’d like to see the Army—I’d like to see us be able to equip the entire Army over the next three years in that uniform.
But we need to refine a few things. but listen: I think that the most important element of our Army is our people, and that’s why the warrior ethos, that’s why the commitment to properly equipping and training our soldiers.
And I think that we’re in an era that this definition of war and peace is being overcome by reality here. I think what you’re going to see is much more conflict and an increased level of focus on the kind of things that we see here in the world that we’ve got, and my commitment to the Army is to absolutely prepare people and invest in our people to the maximum extent that we can to be sure that they’re ready.
And our people know that. they’re seeing it with what we’re doing.
Q: how is the Army going to deal with all of the sexual assaults that have been reported?
A: Very aggressively.
Q: How?
A: the full gamut: everything from aggressively investigating to making sure that the proper medical [care] and counseling and the rest of it and all the way up through [military disciplinary] actions; through education, through training, through reinforcement of our values. believe me, this is something that we are taking very, very seriously.
Q: Have you been surprised by all the reports?
A: I’m disappointed and not just in the Army but across the whole thing. But am I surprised by it? I think that it’s reflective of our society. I think we deal with it much more aggressively than society as a whole does, because we have a discipline-focused force on. I just think that that kind of thing is absolutely contrary to what we think is central in terms of our values.
I have a 20-year-old daughter. I know that some of you know that she’s in ROTC right now, looking forward to an Army career, and I want for all of the soldiers we have exactly what I want for my daughter when she enters in here. I’m committed to making sure the environment that she’s going to operate in is the kind we all want.
Q: Do you remember a time in the Army when it’s been like this?
A: Well, I remember times when it didn’t have the—saying it didn’t have the attention is not the right thing, but the visibility, I think, is different today than perhaps it was. I think, perhaps, in the past, there was a lot more suppression, self-suppression … people weren’t coming forward … people weren’t aware of it like they are today.
And in many respects, I think that’s good news that we’re moving to surface it and deal with it.
Q: There’s been a lot of talk lately about pulling Future Combat System technologies into the current force. … that the Army has developed a plan specifically for how to do this and how to pay for it, because in the long run, it could end up costing more than what the Army intended to pay for pay for FCS transformation.
A: In the past, we kind of had this business about having a legacy force, an interim force, and an objective force, and what that was an expression of a different reality than what I think we see today.
The current force we have today, the heavy force, for instance, is still going to be in this Army out to 2030—M-1 tanks, Bradleys and all the rest of them. The FCS, as we design that, we know the kinds of capabilities that we want resident in that force. the challenge is to balance that future with the current readiness that’s required [in order] to perform.
I’m telling you right now Stryker is part of the current force. And as we bring that on, it’s going to be more part of the current force. And the things we’re learning there, we want to populate what in the past was called legacy forces with some of those capabilities to the maximum extent we can. And what we’re learning there is going to inform FCS in a way that’s going to make it more understandable and definable. Some of the things that we are working on out there in FCS, things like increased robotics and increased situational awareness, unattended air vehicles and all these kinds of things, we want to pull back those things as they become mature enough to use into the current force.
And so, really, the path that we’re on means that every day, as we go ahead, more of the future is resident in the current force, and that’s kind of why that line is slanted.
So this is not only spiraling experience forward to inform FCS, but it is also pulling things back that makes our current force ready. So it walks away from the notion that we’ve got some kind of legacy here that we’re not investing in and that we’re going to discard at some point and putting everything out there in the future.
I was always a little bit bothered by “objective,” because it sounds like someplace you’re going to go out and stop. And the fact of the matter is the Army is going to continue to transform as long as we have an Army, just like it has in the past. it’s transformed more rapidly some times than others, and it’s been very slow at other times, but fundamentally, an organization like the Army has got to continue to adapt.
Q: In terms of paying for it, is it going to be handled kind of like the RFI has been handled?
A: In some cases.
Q: Or are we going to start seeing massive changes in the out-year spending, perhaps reprioritization, pulling things forward taking priority.
A: I think if you take a look at our program, you’ll see we’re protecting the effort that we’re putting into FCS considerably. But making decisions like [killing the Comanche program] was very much informed by this. we had $14.6 billion that was basically going to buy 121 aircraft — 121 Comanches that were really an idea from the ’80s against a threat that existed then … that had invested a whole lot in its low observability against a radar threat; was not protected against the kind of threat that’s present on the battlefield today, the IR threat. And for us to make it survivable on today’s battlefield, it would cost us billions of dollars to put. And when you hang the kinds of things that give you IR protection on Comanche, you lose your radar advantage.
It also had some challenges in terms of its weight, its size, lots of things. So I can assure you that when we went into this, the idea wasn’t to kill Comanche. It was what’s it going to take to invest in the current capabilities that we have, which is well in excess of $100 billion worth of inventory and everything else.
so, $14.6 billion that was going to go for 121 aircraft now is going to recapitalize, really, and reset 1,400 aircraft.
We are going to put in there digitization, we are going to put in there fly-by-wire that really is going to help us in the dust environment, and some other things. We are going to standardize the cockpits, not only for the Army but across Special Operations. We are looking at bringing Longbow, almost 300 Longbow Apaches up to Block Three, which gives you Comanche Block One capability.
We made a huge investment in fixing the ammunition problem for aviation. We are going to buy 800 new aircraft that we are going to go across the active Guard and Reserve to flesh that out; standardize these aviation brigades; I mean, it’s huge. And plus, we’re going to put about $300 million into UAV, which is a huge piece of our future.
Q: Is the Army looking at any other aspects of its development base, any other developmental programs or even programs in research and development to see whether they were designed, as Comanche was, for a Cold War threat, and they’re no longer valid, given the current operations?
A: Well, I think we’re looking across the whole force at those kind of things — future munitions, networking, the ability not only for blue force situational awareness but red situational awareness, moving analysis lower into our organizations, pulling joint fires lower into our organizations.
I’m talking to the Air Force about, you know, getting what they call battlefield airmen, which are [enlisted tactical air controllers] and stuff lower, down to perhaps company level within our future brigades.
Q: What is your budget assumption? I mean, doing all of this stuff is very costly. Is your assumption that your budget is going to keep trending upwards? And how dependent is achieving what you want to achieve?
A: I think the converse is true. I think that what we’re going to see in the future beyond this emergency is increased pressure on the top line.
Q: Downward pressure.
A: Yes, downward pressure on the top-line and that’s why when you go back to the original thing we talked about, and that’s how you modularize the Army and transform [end strength].
Q: So you’re doing this now to get set up for the downturn.
A: Exactly, and I want to use the momentum that we’ve got with this supplemental funding and the focus on the war that allows us to get our head and shoulders through this window of opportunity now to set ourselves up properly for a future [in which]I think we’re going to see pressures that will make this more difficult here.
Q: How large is the window that you’re projecting, and how steep is that downturn? Five percent? Ten percent?
A: I don’t know what the top line pressures will be, but my sense is that this three-year window that I’ve asked for is probably about right, and only the future will tell us. if this emergency continues, it may be longer, but we made it very clear just like after Desert Shield/Desert Storm, we are going to need supplemental funding to reset this force for about two years beyond the emergency.
Now, it will tail off, but we’re going to need more, because we’re using this equipment, we’re going to have to recapitalize; we’re going to have to reset, and … you don’t budget that way. people asked why isn’t the cost of the war in your ’05 budget? Well, when was the ’05 budget set? when did it start getting worked? it was started back in January of ’04.
So this is the way we’ve done it in the past in my understanding, and a way that makes some sense. instead of just subordinating ourselves to the winds, what we ought to do is organize the momentum that’s here and use this momentum to our advantage to set ourselves for a day when we won’t have some of this opportunity.
Q: The issue in the disparity of the treatment of the regular Army and the reserves has come up, especially in the medical arena. Recently, Air Force Brig. Gen. Douglas Burnett, adjutant general of the Florida National Guard, told Congress that there was limited care for reservists in terms of redeployed reservists getting help adjusting to coming back home; the emotional and psychological effects of going from a war zone to home.
A: I can tell you unequivocally that we are committed to equal care for all elements of the Army. Now, part of the challenge, I think, on the first call-ups was that the things like pre-mobilization physicals and stuff in the past presented a challenge. I think that there was no dental coverage, and there was only one physical in five years or something before mobilization in the past. Now, I’m talking about Reserve soldiers.
And so, during mobilization, some challenges [emerged].We have an obligation to everybody that’s mobilized to make sure that they are healthy [and] their record is tracked. that’s why during mobilization now we are going to great efforts to make sure that we have a very accurate baseline of what their medical care is or their level of fitness is and that we track that all the way through to when we demobilize and make sure that they’re corrected when they get out.
Edited by - ViperTTB on May 20 2004 10:04 AM
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