March 15, 2007
In lieu of my regular personal remarks for this edition of President's Corner, I have included a very timely piece written by one of the Senior Fellows of our Institute of Land Warfare, General Frederick J. "Fritz" Kroesen, USA Retired. GEN Kroesen is a regular contributor to ARMY magazine's “Front and Center,” as most of you well know. In reviewing his latest submission for the upcoming ARMY, I thought that I could not have said it better about the challenges and circumstances facing our Army in the near future. Hence, I commend and recommend to you GEN Fritz Kroesen's “Growing the Army” as a thoughtful and insightful glimpse of what our national leaders and congressional leaders need to recognize and consider for our Army of today and of tomorrow. We have to get it right. - GRS
Growing the Army
Requirements for a larger Army transcend those of the immediate present. Solving the problems of the effort in Iraq and Afghanistan is and will be the job of the forces in being, and only if the problem persists into future years will Army expansion begin to play a role. If the commitment does persist, however, thinking that today’s Soldiers, most of whom are returning to a combat theater for the second, third or fourth time, will in another three years be returning for a fifth or sixth tour, combines wishful thinking with disastrous force management. The most pressing need to grow the Army is the possibility that the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns will continue.
Aside from that primary requirement, growing the Army has even as great an importance for the long-term health of our military establishment and the nation’s ability to satisfy its national military strategy. We are sustaining our current war capabilities by expending our materiel assets and over-taxing our manpower. We are either ignoring our strategic requirement for coping with another major contingency or we are presuming too great a capability for the other services to handle such crisis. We have depreciated if not endangered our future by reducing the resources available to TRADOC for the training and education of our leadership and to AMC for the research and development of new equipment and technology. We are contracting for services once provided by “in being” Army structure and expertise.
A number of forces have been at work for the past twenty-five years to cause the current conditions. First, the desire for the “peace dividend due the American people” at the end of the Cold War. The drastic reductions in the military forces, especially the Army, were in fact deletions of capabilities. The first Persian Gulf War, fought before those reductions took effect, provides a comparison of the troop basis available then and now. The loss of 300,000 active Army Soldiers was a precursor of what “doing more with less” is now costing.
The tiresome, age-old contention that technology replaces manpower on the battlefield is always a reason to reduce the size of the Army. It cost us two more divisions in the downsizing of the early 1990s when the remaining ten were to be fully equipped, modernized and manned with highly qualified technicians. It inhibited any thought of additional manpower in 2001 and 2003 when our current wars commenced. The realization of the need for infantrymen to control territory and populations always seems to come late to decision makers at the highest levels.
“Contracting out,” a sometimes sensible, sometimes expedient and sometimes almost covert means of adding capabilities to an inadequate structure, has also had the effect of limiting the size of the Army. Sensible when Soldiers were relieved of kitchen police and grass cutting duties so they could devote full time to training. Expedient when neither the Army nor Navy could man the port operations in Vietnam or when Soldiers and Sailors were not trained sufficiently to repair and maintain the new missile systems entering the force. Covert when a hundred thousand contract personnel augment the force in Iraq when during the same period additional Army strength was deemed unnecessary.
Contracting, supposedly a cheaper and more proficient practice, is not a panacea. Rules, regulations and laws have not kept pace with the expansion of the system. Commanders’ authorities and responsibilities for task assignment and definition, for job performance, for personnel management and discipline and for war zone liabilities are unclear and troublesome. The recent fiasco concerning outpatient care and processing at Walter Reed Army Medical Center may well have a linkage with a contract for these services.
Too often the contracting officer, not the commander, becomes the decision maker regarding contract specifications; then fulfillment becomes a matter of interpretation rather than the commander’s will.
The long-term health of the Army, the ability to satisfy the requirements of our National Security Strategy and the capacity to sustain any lasting operational commitment are today an absolute demand. Recognition and acknowledgment have come late and counter-argument has already spawned, but the requirement must not be ignored, diminished or postponed further if the Army is to be competent and prepared for its enduring mission.
|