An Army for New Threats

The Army is being prodded to undertake that most difficult of military operations, refashioning itself to meet an entirely different threat than the one it has spent half a century training and arming to combat. The prodding is being led by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, who took over as chief of staff last June, but the need for radical change has been clear for some time. The Army remains basically organized and equipped to respond to Cold War-era challenges. As a fighting force, it continues to depend on ponderous tanks and self-propelled artillery pieces, useful weapons for repelling a Red Army invasion in Central Europe but not what’s needed when its task is to respond rapidly to smaller-scale threats.

Shinseki’s goal is to shape a force that is lighter, far more mobile and at least as lethal as today’s divisions. Among other things, that means replacing the mainstay 70-ton M1-A1 tank with a more easily transportable armored vehicle of about 20 tons. It means being able to put fighting forces into the field without large support units like intelligence and communications. Shinseki believes technology is at or near the point where combat troops could have a “reach-back” capability to get current intelligence from distant centers instead of carrying these resources with them. Their absence would speed mobilization and ease pressures on transport.

The 1990s have left the Army struggling with a dual mission. It is supposed to maintain the capability to fight a major war at the same time it is increasingly called upon to intervene in regional crises. It performed admirably in its last major conflict, against Iraq in 1991. But before it went into combat it had six months to build up its strength in Saudi Arabia, a gift of time unlikely to recur. Big wars in the Persian Gulf or Korea remain possible, and the Army must be ready. But smaller crises, as in the Balkans, are more probable. And for those the Army has to be able to move with a speed its current structure prevents.

Shinseki plans to start small. In a few years he hopes the Army will be able to move a 5,000-soldier brigade anywhere in the world within four days. The plan is eventually to make all 10 active-duty Army divisions lighter and more mobile. That could take a decade.

Two things are needed. A Congress that cherishes the political benefits that come from spending defense dollars on high-profile weapons and projects--or redundant military bases--will have to be persuaded to fund smaller armored vehicles, gun systems and communications improvements that the rapid-response brigades must have. And in the Army itself, the bureaucratic resistance to doing things differently that dogs most organizations--nowhere more so than in the military--will have to be overcome. “This commitment to change will require a comprehensive transformation of the Army,” Shinseki says of his challenge. It is a bold agenda, suited to a new global era.