Dismantling the Armor Force?

The U. S. Army is in advanced stages of discussion oriented around decisions to restructure the numbers and types of its brigade combat teams (BCTs). The likely outcome is a request for funding in future budget years to purchase more Stryker fighting vehicles and convert some number of existing brigade combat teams to additional Stryker brigades beyond the six already formed in the active component. This shift would reflect current thinking in the Department of Defense (DoD) and among senior Army leaders, expected to be validated by the ongoing Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), that the force mix should be adjusted toward a force designed for medium-intensity conflict and away from the long-standing objective of fighting two high-intensity conflicts simultaneously. As a result, it is natural to presume that existing heavy brigades will be earmarked for conversion, leaving infantry brigade combat teams (IBCTs) unaffected. We should be concerned that reducing the number of heavy brigades in our force structure will jeopardize the U. S. Army’s capability to conduct major combat operations. The total number of Stryker BCTs sought in the future force structure is the subject of this QDR study, but has not yet been revealed. However, we can take an educated guess by examining both the Army Force Generation (ARFORGEN) model and past comments of Army leaders. ARFORGEN places Army BCTs into ‘pools’ wherein unit readiness progresses over time from ‘not-ready’ to ‘train’ to ‘ready/ available’ and ‘deployed.’ Our leaders have repeatedly stated the need to reach an eventual end state within the Army that supports commitments to enduring conflicts while giving soldiers 3 years at home station for each deployment. These two factors — ARFORGEN and the linked dwell time of our soldiers — leads us to reasonably expect the Army and DoD are seeking Stryker BCTs in multiples of four. There are currently six active component Stryker brigades, so the Army is probably seeking to add, or convert, either two or six brigades to the Stryker design. (See Figure 1.) DoD and Army leaders currently believe that wars, such as the current foreign internal defense/counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, will predominate the future. While this is likely true for the foreseeable future, it is not the only plausible scenario and properly preparing for the most likely threats does not necessitate significantly dismantling the armored force. Current and Future Threats Two of the four major conflicts, Desert Storm and the initial invasion of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), involving U. S. forces in the past 20 years were mechanized, high-intensity conflicts. Desert Storm came on the heels of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and was totally unanticipated — an easy il- 14 — lustration that not all conflicts fit the mold of operations forecasted in think tanks and decision centers of Washington. Further, a deliberate attack to liberate or regain territory, people, or assets — as seen during Desert Storm and OIF I — absolutely calls for both maneuverable and dominant forces. While the Stryker brigade provides exceptional maneuverability and its large number of anti-tank systems provide considerable firepower, the vehicle itself lacks protection and cannot face a tank. A Stryker brigade cannot take up the offense against any fairly equipped and organized enemy in the defense. Only the tank combines firepower, maneuver, and shock effect on a highly survivable platform. While our current extensive involvement in counterinsurgencies/small wars/irregular warfare is obvious, and these commitments are expected to continue into the foreseeable future, for our Army to so single-mindedly plan, organize, and equip for this model comes at a great cost in capability for other scenarios. Defense policy critics have long assailed all armed forces for seeking capabilities beyond those of ‘peer’ or ‘near-peer’ threats. This shortsightedness rests on a fundamental fallacy of logic — we should not intend to design a force that lacks a decisive advantage. Parity is not good, dominance is. Our Army’s stated purpose is to fight and win our nation’s wars — not to tie. By focusing so doggedly on refining a force for low-end wars or unstable peace, we are reducing the price of conflict for near-peer competitors. Flexibility Contrary to currently fashionable criticisms, the heavy brigades are in fact highly flexible and adaptable organizations. All of the legacy and modular heavy BCTs, save one committed to Korea, have performed with distinction during at least one rotation to Iraq. Its ability to operate multiple fleets of Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, uparmored HMMWVs, and eventually the mine resistant, ambush protected (MRAP) vehicle, proves the heavy BCT’s ability to reconfigure, as needed, based on threat. Had they not been formed as heavy units and deployed with tracked vehicles, they would not have been able to ‘up-gun’ once in theater as the situation changed (scalability of violence/firepower). The 1st Cavalry Division’s first rotation to OIF in 2004 serves as a good example. Deployed without its tanks, the division encountered a fight hotter than expected and the Army had to rush to its aid and provide an emergency shipment of tanks to Iraq to marry up with the unit. This battlefield fix would not have been possible with the light units of the 10th Mountain Division or a Stryker brigade from Fort Lewis. Heavy units can employ heavy, medium (MRAP), and light platforms across the spectrum of conflict thanks to the directed mission-essential task list (DMETL) training during the ARFORGEN cycle. Medium-weight units cannot do the same due to their military occupational specialties (MOS) and equipping limitations. Without tanks and 19K armor crewmen, units cannot adjust to lethal conditions greater than what are considered in the basis of the Stryker brigade’s design. Adding organic tanks to a Stryker brigade based on changing conditions would require new equipment fielded to non-armor MOS soldiers. This would be a painful and time-consuming proposition at homestation and impossible in combat. Conversely, countless 19K soldiers learned to drive the MRAP during brief stays in Kuwait before moving north into Iraq. Opportunity Costs Should heavy brigades be programmed to serve as advise-and-assist brigades or deploy as an embedded trainer team donor force, they can reorient to these missions in either the train or ready phase of the ARFORGEN cycle and deploy simply leaving their tracked vehicles in the care of Army Materiel Command field support units at home station. Alight unit cannot reconfigure as a heavy force without a full-fledged BCT conversion, which the Army currently recognizes as a 2-year undertaking. BCT conversion removes the unit from its position in the ARFORGEN cycle, reducing the number of combat deployable brigades fielded by the Army. Further Reduction of Combat Power The combat power of the Army’s ground maneuver force has been significantly reduced over the past decade. As a lieutenant, I served in a legacy armor brigade of two tank battalions and one infantry battalion, totaling 12 tank and mechanized infantry companies. Today’s modular heavy BCT is comprised of two combined arms battalions, totaling just eight tank and mechanized infantry companies. Based on where we were 18 years ago, the reduction in the Army’s heavy force ground combat power has been severe. No one should legitimately consider the armored reconnaissance squadron (ARS) in heavy brigades a fair substitute for the missing third battalion. Army force planners have explicitly acknowledged that the ARS was intentionally limited in design to perform surveillance activities and, as a result, is not sufficiently organized and equipped to perform reconnaissance in direct-fire contact with the enemy. Furthermore, it cannot perform guard missions without being augmented with forces from the parent brigade’s combined arms battalions. Figure 1 — 15 Army BCT Active Force Planned Structure X Heavy BCT x 19 (incl 1 x ACR) X Heavy BCT x?? Gates Budget HQDA Modeling / QDR Review X IBCT / Airborne IBCT x 20 X IBCT / Airborne IBCT x 20 2-6? X SBCT x 6 X SBCT x?? 0? Pre-FY10 Gates Budget X Heavy BCT x 19 (incl 1 x ACR) X IBCT / Airborne IBCT x 23 X SBCT x 6

As the operations officer of an ARS deployed to Baghdad in support of OIF, I noticed that the unit’s cavalry mindset was very well suited to the counterinsurgency fight, and our table of organization and equipment (TOE) was adequate to accomplish tasks in low- to mid-intensity environments, as long as the brigade did not assign too much terrain. At the same time, I realized my squadron would not fare well in a Korea-based operations plan (OPLAN) or decisive operations in any potential theater of war. It is simply not a viable fighting force at the higher end of the spectrum of conflict. The squadron cannot fight for information against an enemy armored force equipped with even an obsolete generation of tanks or anything more than a smattering of anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs). Future Budget Challenges News articles in recent weeks have discussed instructions from Mr. David Och-manek, Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary for Force Transformation and Resources, to each of the military services to find $50 to $60 billion dollars in current budget programming to redirect toward new or expanded DoD irregular warfare efforts. This directive is clearly evident of the constrained budget environment the Army is entering into after a decade of steadily expanding funding. Because converting either a heavy or an infantry brigade to the Stryker configuration involves adding a third battalion, both courses of action will incur an aggregate manpower bill. However, the cost is not unusually large (1,000 to 3,000 soldiers, depending on the number of brigades converted), nor is it inescapable — force structure elsewhere could be trimmed in tradeoff. But, adding Stryker brigades means buying more Strykers; there is no idle inventory of these vehicles resting somewhere within the Army. Each additional brigade will have a cost of around $1 billion dollars in Stryker vehicle acquisition alone. We can expect additional costs from sustainment needs and facility construction. In contrast, maintaining our existing heavy force does not ‘add’ any cost to the baseline budget, those funds are already programmed and the Army has an adequate inventory of tracked vehicles. Role of the Armored Cavalry Regiment Another cause for alarm is the potential end to the Brave Rifles of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR) if it is chosen as one of the units to be converted to a Stryker brigade. Threats to the heavy cavalry regimental organization are not new. Inexplicably, the 3d ACR has been a thorn in the side of Army headquarters — its unique organization as the sole-surviving ACR is a true square peg in around hole for our leaders who view the heavy, infantry, and Stryker designs as the only three substantiated brigade combat teams in the force structure. They could not have it more wrong! The ACR, with or without an organic attack/scout aviation component, is absolutely the most lethal and capable formation in our Army today. Its weight and firepower should be embraced, not disdained. My experiences as an S3 in an ARS modular heavy BCT compares with my captain time as a cavalry troop commander in a divisional cavalry squadron; the cavalry troop was identical to the squadron troops in the 3d ACR, but the difference in capability was vast. The ACR employs twice the number of tanks as the heavy

BCT.

Only the ACR, with its extra punch, can adequately perform the advance guard mission in front of a U. S. Army formation on the offense during major combat operations, and only the ACR can adequately perform a cover mission in a defense scenario. The ill-formed heavy brigades in today’s Army need an ACR alongside or out in front of them on a lethal battlefield. It is true that the ACR has not functioned as a guard or cover force, traditional cavalry roles, during major combat operations in this decade, which does not in any way invalidate the organization’s place in a proper force structure designed for more than just medium-/low-intensity irregular warfare. That the 3d ACR was uninvolved in the attack north from Kuwait to Baghdad in 2003 has nothing to do with “While the Stryker brigade provides exceptional maneuverability and its large number of anti-tank systems provide considerable firepower, the vehicle itself lacks protection and cannot face a tank. A Stryker brigade cannot take up the offense against any fairly equipped and organized enemy in the defense. Only the tank combines firepower, maneuver, and shock effect on a highly survivable platform.”

its design, which ironically was highly desired by planners of the ground invasion. It does, however, have more to do with the late arrival to Iraq, for the regiment and the 4th Infantry Division, after the government of Turkey denied a northern invasion route. In fact, it can easily be argued that the ACR successfully accomplished its tasks in 2005, in a counterinsurgency environment, across far-flung reaches of Iraq, solely based on its unique, robust organization. Shift the Center of Gravity Shifting the center of gravity of the Army’s brigades toward a medium force while adding to the aggregate capability of the Army, rather than reducing it, improves the overall posture of the Army. If the Army can surmount the budget challenge associated with equipping more brigades with Strykers, then it should move forward. There is plenty of positive feedback from several deployments to Iraq on the organization’s speed, agility, and depth (unlike the heavy and infantry brigades, the Stryker BCT has the sought-after third maneuver battalion). Its utility, in the appropriate operating environment, is proven. The right answer for the Army, budget conditions supporting, is to look first at light units as donor forces for Stryker brigade conversions. We will have 20 poor ly armed and equipped infantry brigades in the Army structure following completion of the “grow the Army plan.” Is there conceivable utility for 20 such IBCTs? The IBCT design does not succeed without the enormous hidden cost of a vehicle fleet that is not represented in the TOE. No IBCT has ever been successful in Iraq without a dramatic wheeled vehicle fleet augmentation (initially uparmored HMMWVs and later MRAPs). The contrast is stark — in certain environments (and not just the contemporary environment in Iraq), where a heavy brigade combat team (HBCT) may have surplus capability, there is an entire range of the spectrum of conflict where the IBCT is unusable. Converting the one IBCT in Hawaii, the four brigades of the 10th Mountain Division, and the 3d Brigade of the 1st Infantry at Fort Knox, would generate significant medium-force capability for the Army without impacting a single one of the 10 airborne and air-assault/airmobile IBCTs. Our Army leaders should have to convincingly demonstrate why this is not a better course of action. Three sound force mix options are depicted in Figure 2. (Options 2 and 3 reflect the continued commitment of one heavy BCT in Korea that falls outside the ARFORGEN cycle). Fix What Needs Fixing Drawing down the number of heavy brigades in the force mix underscores the need to expand the number of ACRs in the active Army from one to four. A force structure including four ACRs rests on the same ARFORGEN-based analytical underpinning behind the department’s push for more Stryker brigades, and it is every bit as applicable and appropriate. This should be done by converting three existing heavy brigades to the ACR design. With 19 heavy formations in the active component, the operational and tactical rationale for increasing the count of ACRs from one to four is already absolutely compelling. Should the number of heavy brigades decrease, the case for more ACRs only grows — building cavalry regiments from heavy brigade combat teams will reduce accepted risk in the overall force mix restructuring. As a cost-saving measure, Brave Rifles and the additional three ACRs could be organized without an organic aviation component, thanks to the highly successful and proven design of the Army’s modular combat aviation brigade (CAB). A division maneuvering multiple BCTs on the battlefield also employs a CAB, and when the ACR serves as the main effort, it expects to receive weighted support from the CAB. In fact, the Army could use aviation assets now found within the 3d ACR as the cornerstone of a 12th CAB, thereby exploiting a retooling of the ground maneuver force to build up the Army’s aviation component to that magic ARFORGEN multiple of four. Similarly, if the Army forges ahead with converting a number of heavy BCTs to Stryker formations, it must address the lack of the third combined arms battalion and the underweight reconnaissance squadron in the surviving heavy units, which is as important as the contemplated Stryker conversions. There is substantial documentation, such as commander comments, official U. S. Army Training and Doctrine (TRADOC) studies (at least one commissioned by the Chief of Staff of the Army), and other simulations modeling, both inside and outside the Army, repeatedly validating both the requirement for the third maneuver battalion and the need to add strength to the painfully small reconnaissance squadron. The squadron and the larger brigade organization simply lack both lethality and survivability. The drive for ‘flexibility’ and reduced shipping weight over the past 10 years has resulted in a design acknowledged as inadequately capable for major combat operations and inadequately sized for the contemporary counterinsurgency environment. Even the Government Accounting Office (GAO) has questioned the two-battalion design. With a reduced number of total heavy brigades in the Ar my following a large-scale Stryker conversion, remedying these two signature issues will become increasingly necessary. By improving the reconnaissance squadron design, the Army could, in one stroke, restore the capability to fight like cavalry and generate a true third maneuver battalion in the heavy brigade combat team. The Army should replace the hybrid HMMWV/Bradley scout platoons with all-Bradley platoons and add two tank platoons to each troop, essentially restoring the squadron to the divisional cavalry design, minus the aviation component. Providing for additional dismounted scouts is another low-cost incremental improvement. With these changes, the cavalry could once again fight for information; conduct doctrinal reconnaissance and security missions without augmenta- — 17 Figure 2 Active Force Structure (Maximized Capabilities) X Heavy BCT x 15 (-3) X IBCT / Airborne IBCT x 14 (-6) X SBCT x 12 (+6)

ACR x 4 (+3) (Robust ARFORGEN Alignment) X Heavy BCT x 13 (-5) X IBCT / Airborne IBCT x 16 (-4) X SBCT x 12 (+6)

ACR x 4 (+3) (Lower Cost ARFORGEN Alignment) X Heavy BCT x 13 (-5) X IBCT / Airborne IBCT x 20 (-0) X SBCT x 8 (+2)

ACR x 4 (+3)

Current ARS Redesigned ARS (Max Capability) (Lower Cost) I

Fire Spt Plt I II I

Fire Spt Plt I tion that robs other units of their power; and possess the larger manpower count needed to hold terrain and conduct operations in the counterinsurgency environment on par with the two combined arms battalions of the brigade combat team. The expanded logistics support required for the redesigned ARS would be minimal — perhaps as little as three mechanics and alight medium tactical vehicle (LMTV) shop van per line troop maintenance team; six mechanics and three M88A2 Hercules in the service/recovery section, replacing the existing four M88s across the forward support company with the Hercules; adding 12 soldiers and six additional fuel trucks to the class III section; and adding two soldiers and one palletized load system (PLS) truck and trailer to the five already in the class V section. In total, solving the problems of each heavy brigade’s reconnaissance squadron entails growing its tail by as few as 29 sustainers and a few vehicles (see Figure 3). A step beyond these improvements would be to add an armor company and associated support to the squadron’s structure, but the potential for that development is likely quite remote, given the Army’s other needs and the requirement to stay within budget and manpower ceilings. At some point, a diminished armored force will leave our Army unable to fight and win the Nation’s wars — we should reconsider current intentions and move in a different direction. Major Aaron Lilley is the operations officer, 5th Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, 2d Brigade Combat Team (2BCT), 1st Infantry Division (1ID), Fort Riley, KS, currently deployed to Iraq. He received a B. S. from the United States Military Academy. His military education includes the U. S. Army Command and General Staff College and Cavalry Leader Course. He has served in various command and staff positions, to include operations officer, Special Troops Battalion, 2BCT, 1ID, Fort Riley; future operations officer, G3, 1ID, Fort Riley; XO, 1st Battalion, 310th Infantry (AC/RC Training Support Battalion), Fort Bragg, NC; and commander, B Troop, 1st Squadron, 10th Cavalry, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, TX. “If the Army can surmount the budget challenge associated with equipping more brigades with Strykers, then it should move forward. There is plenty of positive feedback from several deployments to Iraq on the organization’s speed, agility, and depth (unlike the heavy and infantry brigades, the Stryker BCT has the sought-after third maneuver battalion). Its utility, in the appropriate operating environment, is proven.” 18 — Figure 3