REBUILDING THE ARMY
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Even while the Vietnam War was raging, the Army and the Department
of Defense had begun tentative planning to transition to an all-volunteer force. For most planners, this was new ground. Except for a short period of time immediately after World War II, the Army had not had a volunteer force since just before the United States entered World War II. Commanders could rely upon the steady flow of young men of reasonable physical and mental quality, since they had the entire manpower
of the country to draw upon. Recruiting was not a high priority: it was not seen as entirely necessary. Why struggle to meet a quota for recruits when the draft guaranteed enough men to fill the force? The reserve components, both the National Guard and Army Reserve, were at full strength and even overstrength, as young men flocked to those units to fulfill their service obligations with a minimal risk of going to Vietnam. |
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With the ending of that tax, the government would have to find enough money to provide monetary incentives—viable wages and even bonuses for some specialties—for new recruits. Without competitive pay, the Army could not enlist or retain the best soldiers. Money was also needed |
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When implemented consistently by conscientious officers and NCOs, the initiatives often resulted in soldiers’ being treated like mature adults and not like children, with a concomitant increase in pride, morale, and reenlistment rates. |
disciplinary problems (especially absent without leave, or AWOL, rates) to prove that with the right combination of leadership and incentives a volunteer force was possible. At each selected post, the leadership abolished harassing or “Mickey Mouse,” details; civilianized the infamous KP duties; relaxed grooming standards; allowed for weekends without duty or inspections; established junior enlisted councils to provide another channel for grievances; and put forth a host of other initiatives. When implemented consistently by conscientious officers and NCOs, the initiatives often resulted in soldiers’ being treated like mature adults and not like children, with a concomitant increase in pride, morale, and reenlistment rates. However, some ill-thought-out VOLAR initiatives such as beer in the barracks or severe relaxation of grooming and discipline standards led to more problems than they solved and presented the impression of a loss of control. Some programs, if implemented by poor leaders not really interested in taking care of soldiers or not believing that the volunteer force would work, sometimes led to a collapse of discipline, exacerbated existing racial problems, and alienated officers and noncommissioned officers. This time of experimentation showed what the Army needed to do to restore morale and improve the quality of life for soldiers, but it also revealed what it needed to avoid in order rebuild the force after decades of relying on the draft. The initial media and Army focus on making the Army more permissive and attractive soon faded as commanders and soldiers realized that the more important initiatives revolved around more and better training, instilling in the soldiers a stronger sense of professionalism, and building greater individual and unit pride. With the formal ending of direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and the formal establishment of the all-volunteer Army in 1973, the need to make the Army an effective military force rested first and foremost on the need to recruit more soldiers. At first it seemed an impossible task. Month after month in 1973 the Army, like many of the other services, failed to meet its recruiting quotas. Recruiters were initially able to fill only 68.5 percent of their quota for enlisting first-term male soldiers. Attempts to hold the line for high-quality recruits, those with high school diplomas, seemed doomed to failure. Some, including members of Congress, began claiming that the Army was secretly intent on subverting the Modern Volunteer Army Program and returning to the “safe” days of the unlimited manpower of the draft. Even with the reduction of the authorized end strength of the Army to 781,000 in 1974, the Army ended fiscal year 1973, the last year of the draft, understrength by almost 14,000. The pivotal year for the survival of the all-volunteer Army was fiscal year 1974 (July 1, 1973–June 30, 1974). For the first time, recruiting began to turn the corner; in November 1973 recruiting quotas were topped. Army recruiters enlisted 104 percent of their overall quota in that month. By June of the following year, they had attained 123 percent of their quota. Of those recruited, 84 percent were in the average or above average mental groups, proving that the Army was starting to turn the corner on quality enlistees. There were a number of reasons for this turnaround in recruiting. First, the smaller size of the Army helped. The Army during Vietnam |
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Army could not have made its recruiting quotas without this dramatic expansion of the number of women who willingly joined the service. |
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lems with sexual harassment and inappropriate relationships between ranks did not vanish completely and programs continued in place to mitigate the problem as much as possible. The Army’s reliance on its reserve components changed the very nature
of its active and reserve force structure and mobilization plans. The resulting Total Force Policy grew out of the closing days of the Vietnam War. In 1969 President Nixon established a policy of Vietnamization, under which the burden of the war was increasingly transferred to the South Vietnamese Army. This action and the eventual U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973 meant, among other things, lower defense budgets. |
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“high-risk” force. Could such a small Army fulfill all its obligations and still retain an adequate contingency force? In response, General Abrams obtained the Secretary of Defense’s approval to increase the Army’s active divisions to sixteen without an increase in Army end strength. Abrams laid the basis for the sixteen divisions by shifting manpower from the Table of Distribution and Allowances (TDA) Army (headquarters and educational infrastructure) to Table of Organization and Equipment (TO&E) units, assigning reserve component “round-out” brigades as integral units in late-deploying active divisions, and moving combat support and combat service support (CSS) functions to the reserve components. By the end of fiscal year 1973, 66 percent of CS/CSS was in the reserve components. General Abrams and much of the Army’s senior leadership, following the lead of Secretaries of Defense Laird’s and Schlesinger’s commitment to the total force policy, believed that President Lyndon B. Johnson’s failure to fully mobilize the reserve components was a major cause of the lack of popular support for the Vietnam War. By helping ensure that the Army could not be involved in a major war again without the reserve components, Abrams and his successors sought to prevent such insufficient support in the future. The Army leadership realized that one of the dangers of a volunteer Army was that an elite professional force might weaken the bonds between the American people and the service that the draft had engendered. Greater integration of the reserve components into the active force would strengthen the Army’s ties with the states, the Congress, and the public. Such ties were seen as increasingly important: the collapse of the national will to continue the struggle, rather than outright military defeat, had essentially ended the Vietnam War. As the Army implemented its new Total Force Policy, the National Guard and Army Reserve recovered from Vietnam and the immediate |
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post–Vietnam War doldrums to gain new heights of readiness. Each component was reduced in size throughout the 1970s but rebounded by the end of the 1980s. The National Guard, at an authorized strength of 402,175 in 1971, was down to only 368,254 soldiers a decade later, only to increase to 456,960 by 1989. The Army Ready Reserve end strength was only at 263,299 in 1971 and fell with the end of the draft to 202,627 by 1980. However, it had recovered to the level of 312,825 soldiers by 1989. By the eve of Operation DESERT SHIELD/STORM in 1990, the Guard and the Army Reserve would be, like their active-duty counterparts, as strong and well trained as they ever had been in the nation’s history. The new volunteer Total Army needed more than mere numbers. It needed a mission; it needed to focus on what type of war it might need to fight. As a result, the Army began developing a new doctrine to regain its perspective and focus on its new missions after Vietnam. A reassessment of how the Army would fight began in essence with President Nixon’s 1969 Guam Doctrine, in which he stated that the United States would maintain a smaller defense establishment to fight a “1 1/2 war” contingency. This was generally interpreted to mean that the Army would prepare to engage in a general war, probably in the European
or Northeast Asian theaters, and at the same time fight a minor conflict, presumably a Third World counterinsurgency. |
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tank units, bolstering the importance of carefully coordinated combined- arms units. It seemed clear that in future wars American forces would fight powerful and well-equipped armies with soldiers proficient in the use of extremely deadly weapons. Such fighting would consume large numbers of men and quantities of materiel. It became imperative for the Army to devise a way to win any future war quickly. A new operations field manual, the Army’s specific response to new conditions that required new doctrine, was preeminently the work of General William E. DePuy, commander of the new U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC). General DePuy, a combat-tested infantry officer in World War II and the commander of the 1st Infantry Division in Vietnam during some of its hardest fighting, brought a wealth of experience to his position. Surveying conditions of modern warfare that appeared to reconfirm the lessons he and his men had learned so painfully in World War II, DePuy in 1976 wrote much of a new edition of Field Manual (FM) 100–5, Operations, the Army’s premier tactical doctrine manual of the time. DePuy’s FM 100–5 initially touted a concept known as the Active Defense, which once more focused on “the primacy of the defense.” The handbook evolved from its first publication to become the keystone of a family of Army manuals that completely replaced the doctrine practiced at the end of the Vietnam War. From these modest beginnings the Army’s new doctrine, AirLand Battle, slowly emerged. In its final form AirLand Battle doctrine was actually a clear articulation of fundamentals that American generals had understood and practiced as early as World War II, with an appropriate and explicit recognition of the role air power played in making decisive ground maneuver possible. The U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, acknowledged AirLand Battle’s basis in traditional concepts of maneuver warfare by teaching it and making frequent use of historical examples to explain its principles more fully. In practical terms, the doctrine required commanders to simultaneously supervise three types of operations: close, deep, and rear. In close operations, large tactical formations such as corps and divisions fought |
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battles through maneuver, close combat, and indirect fire support. Deep operations helped to win the close battle by engaging enemy formations not by contact, but chiefly through deception, deep surveillance, and ground and air interdiction of enemy reserves. Objectives of deep operations
were to isolate the battlefield and influence when, where, and against whom later battles would be fought. Rear operations proceeded simultaneously with close and deep operations and focused on assembling Military theorists generally agree that a defending army can hope for success if the attacking enemy has no greater than a 3:1 advantage in combat power. The best intelligence estimates in the 1970s concluded |
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that the Warsaw Pact armies enjoyed a much larger advantage. Continuing
budget constrictions made unlikely the possibility of increasing the size of the American military to match Soviet growth. To solve the problem of how to fight an enemy that would almost certainly be larger, the United States relied in part on technologically superior hardware that could defeat an enemy with an advantage ratio higher than 1:3. To achieve that end, the Army in the early 1970s began work on the new “big five” equipment systems: a tank, an infantry combat vehicle, an attack
helicopter, a transport helicopter, and an antiaircraft missile. |
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connaissance vehicle, both armed with the MGM51 Shillelagh gun-launcher system. In the late 1960s tank guns were rejuvenated by new technical developments that included a fin-stabilized, very-high-velocity
projectile that used long-rod kinetic energy penetrators. Attention centered on 105-mm. and 120-mm. guns as the main armament of any new tank. |
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confidence in it. In fact, many believed it was the first American tank since World War II that was qualitatively superior to Soviet models. |
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interior was too small for the standard rifle squad of nine: it carried six or seven riflemen, depending on the model. That limitation led to discussions about using the vehicle as the “base of fire” element and to consequent revisions of tactical doctrine for maneuver. The Bradley, with its superior weapons and armor protection, could move close into the battle, unload its infantrymen for dismounted combat, and stay in position to assist the infantrymen by accurate and powerful machine-gun and antitank or antibunker fire. It was both an infantry “taxi” (the former role of the M113 armored personnel carrier) and a supporting weapons platform that could lay down a base of fire to suppress the enemy and support the infantry assault. Another critical aspect of its usefulness in the combined-arms team, however, was that the Bradley could keep up with the Abrams tank on the battlefield. If tanks and infantry fought together, they brought their own level of synergy to the battlefield. However, this could only happen if the infantry vehicle could sustain the pace and speed of the formidable M1 tank. By 1990 forty-seven battalions and squadrons of the Regular Army and four Army National Guard battalions had M2 and M3 Bradleys. A continuing modernization program that began in 1987 gave the vehicles, redesignated M2A1 and M3A1, the improved TOW 2 missile. Various redesigns to increase survivability of the Bradley began production in May 1988, with these most recent models designated A2. The third of the big five systems was the AH–64A Apache attack helicopter. The experience of Vietnam showed that the existing attack helicopter, the AH–1 Cobra, was vulnerable even to light antiaircraft fire and lacked the agility to fly close to the ground for long periods of time. The AH–56A Cheyenne, canceled in 1969, had been intended to correct those deficiencies. The new attack helicopter program announced in August 1972 drew from the combat experience of the Cobra and the developmental experience of the Cheyenne to specify an aircraft that could absorb battle damage and had the power for rapid movement and heavy loads. The helicopter would have to be able to fly nap of the earth and maneuver with great agility to succeed in a new antitank mission on a high-intensity battlefield. The first prototypes flew in September 1975, and in December 1976 the Army selected the Hughes YAM–64 for production. Sophisticated night-vision and target-sensing devices allowed the pilot to fly nap of the earth even at night. The aircraft’s main weapon was the heat-seeking Hellfire missile, sixteen of which could be carried in four launchers. In place of the antitank missile the Apache could carry seventy-six 70-mm. (2.75-inch) rockets. It could also mount a combination of eight Hellfire missiles and thirty-eight rockets. In the nose, the aircraft mounted a Hughes 30-mm. single-barrel chain gun. Full-scale production of the Apache began in 1982, and the Army received the first aircraft in December 1983. By the end of 1990 the McDonnell-Douglas Helicopter Company (which purchased Hughes in 1984) had delivered 629 Apaches to equip 19 active attack-helicopter battalions. When production was completed, the Apaches were intended to equip 26 Regular Army, 2 Reserve, and 12 National Guard battalions, a total of 807 aircraft. The fourth of the big five systems, the fleet of utility helicopters, had already been modernized with the fielding of the UH–60A Black |
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Hawk to replace the UH–1 Iroquois (“Huey”) used during the Vietnam War. The Black Hawk could lift an entire infantry squad or a 105-mm. howitzer with its crew and some ammunition. The new utility helicopter
was both faster and quieter than the UH–1 and proved a reliable and sturdy platform during combat operations in Grenada and Panama. The last of the big five equipment was the Patriot air defense missile, conceived in 1965 as a replacement for the HAWK (Homing All the Way Killer) and the Nike-Hercules missiles, both based on 1950s technology. The Patriot benefited from lessons drawn from design of the antiballistic missile system, particularly the highly capable phased-array radar. The solid-fuel Patriot missile required virtually no maintenance and had the speed and agility to match known threats. At the same time its system design was more compact, more mobile, and demanded smaller crews than had previous air-defense missiles. Despite its many advantages, or perhaps because of the ambitious design that yielded those advantages, the development program of the missile, initially known as the SAM-D (Surface-to-Air Missile–Developmental), was extraordinarily long, spanning virtually the entire careers of officers commissioned at the end of the 1960s. The long gestation and escalating costs incident to the Patriot’s technical sophistication made it a continuing target of both media and congressional critics. Despite controversy, the missile went into production in the early 1980s; the Army fielded the first fire units in 1984. A single battalion with Patriot missiles had more firepower than several HAWK battalions, the mainstay of the 32d Army Air Defense Command in Germany. Initial fielding plans envisaged forty-two units, or batteries, in Europe and eighteen in the United States; but funding and various delays slowed the deployment. By 1991 only ten half-battalions, each with three batteries, were active. Originally designed as an antiaircraft weapon guided by a computer and radar system that could cope with multiple targets, the Patriot also had the potential to defend against battlefield tactical missiles such as the Soviet FROG (Free Rocket Over Ground) and Scud. About the time the first units were fielded, the Army began to explore the possibility that the Patriot could also have an ATBM, or antitactical ballistic missile, mission. In 1988 testing authenticated the PAC–1 (Patriot Antitactical ballistic missile Capability, Phase 1) computer software, which was promptly installed in existing systems. The PAC–2 upgrade was still being tested in early 1991 as it prepared for action in DESERT STORM. The big five were by no means the only significant equipment modernization programs the Army pursued between 1970 and 1991. Other important Army purchases included the Multiple-Launch Rocket System (MLRS); a new generation of tube artillery to upgrade fire support; improved small arms; tactical wheeled vehicles, such as a new 5-ton truck and utility vehicle (the high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle, or HMMWV) to replace the venerable World War II jeep; and a family of new command, control, communications, and intelligence hardware. By the summer of 1990 this equipment had been tested and delivered to Army divisions. While most of those developments began before the Training and Doctrine Command’s first publication of AirLand Battle doctrine, a close relationship between doctrine and equipment swiftly developed. |
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Weapons modernization encouraged doctrinal thinkers to consider more ambitious concepts that would exploit the capabilities new systems
offered. A successful melding of the two, however, depended on the creation of tactical organizations properly designed to use the weapons After Vietnam the Army underwent a number of organizational changes at the higher headquarters and tactical levels. At the highest level the Army determined to reorganize its command structure for the continental United States (CONUS) and separate its essentially command |
Weapons modernization encouraged doctrinal thinkers to consider more ambitious concepts that would exploit the capabilities new systems offered. |
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Vice Chief of Staff, then Lt. Gen. William E. DePuy, to begin a separate Headquarters, Department of the Army (HQDA), study to examine ways to streamline CONARC’s organization and resource management processes. DePuy concluded that CONARC was unwieldy, unresponsive |
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During the same time that STEADFAST focused on CONARC and CDC, the Army also established the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command
and the Military Traffic Management Command as MACOMs. In 1984 the U.S. Army Information Systems Command consolidated operations from two FOAs into a separate MACOM until, pursuant to the Force XXI Functional Area Analyses, the Army subordinated this command to FORSCOM in 1997. As in the post–World War II era, conflicting influences complicated decisions about the correct size and organization of divisions and corps. The hazards of the nuclear and chemical battlefield deeply ingrained the notion that any concentration of large bodies of troops was dangerous. Improved weapons technology further strengthened the imperative for dispersion, a trend facilitated by steadily improving communications systems. Despite that, the classic need to exert overwhelming force at the decisive point and time remained the basic prescription for winning battles. America’s isolated strategic position posed additional problems, particularly in view of the growth of Soviet conventional power in Europe in the 1960s and 1970s and the belief that the Warsaw Pact intended to fight a quick ground war that would yield victory before NATO could mobilize and before the United States could send divisions across the Atlantic. Time and politics thus governed decisions that led to forward deployment of substantial ground forces in overseas theaters and the pre-positioning of military equipment in threatened areas. Issues of strategic force projection likewise influenced decisions about the types, numbers, and composition of divisions. Differing schools of thought within the Army tended to pull force designers in different directions. There were those, strongly influenced by the war in Vietnam, who believed that the future of warfare lay in similar wars, probably in the Third World. Accordingly, they emphasized counterinsurgency doctrine, low-intensity conflict, and light and airmobile infantry organization. Advocates of light divisions found justification for their ideas in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, when it appeared possible that the United States might have to confront Soviet forces outside the boundaries of Europe. That uncertainty encouraged ideas that called for the creation of light, quickly deployable infantry divisions. Still, the emphasis within the Army throughout the decade of the 1970s remained on conventional war in Europe. Generals Abrams and DePuy and like-minded officers believed the greatest hazard, if not the greatest probability of war, existed there. They conceived of an intense armored battle, reminiscent of World War II, to be fought in the European Theater. If the Army could fight the most intense battle possible, some argued, it also had the ability to fight wars of lesser magnitude . While contemplating the doctrinal issues that led to publication of Field Manual 100–5, General DePuy also questioned the appropriateness of existing tactical organizations to meet the Warsaw Pact threat. He believed that the Army should study the problem more closely. Thus, in May 1976 DePuy organized the Division Restructuring Study Group to consider how the Army divisions might best use existing weapons of the 1970s and the planned weapons of the 1980s. |
Time and politics governed decisions |
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Anticipating a faster pace of battle, planners also tried to give the divisions flexibility by increasing the number of junior leaders in troop units, thereby decreasing the span of control.
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DePuy’s force structure planners, like those concerned with phrasing the new doctrine, were also powerfully influenced by the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The Division Restructuring Study Group investigated the optimum size of armored and mechanized divisions and the best mix of battalions within divisions. Weapons capabilities influenced much of the work and had a powerful effect on force design. Planners noted a continuing trend toward an increasing number of technicians and combat support troops (the “tail”) to keep a decreasing number of combat troops (the “teeth”) in action. In general, the group concluded that the division should retain three brigades, each brigade having a mix of armored and mechanized infantry battalions and supported by the same artillery and combat-service units. To simplify the task of the combat company commander, the group recommended grouping the same type of weapons together in the same organization, rather than mixing them in units, and transferring the task of coordinating fire support from the company commander to the more experienced battalion commander. The group suggested creating a combat aviation battalion to consolidate the employment of helicopters and adjusting the numbers of weapons in various units. General Starry, Commander of the Training and Doctrine Command, a noted cavalry leader in Vietnam, and a soldier-scholar, had reservations about various details of the Division Restructuring Study. He was especially concerned that an emphasis on the division and tactics was too limiting. In his view, the operational level of war above the division demanded the focus of Army attention. After reviewing an evaluation of the Division Restructuring Plan, Starry ordered his planners to build on that work in a study he called Division 86. The Division 86 proposal examined existing and proposed doctrine in designing organizations that could both exploit modern firepower and foster the introduction of new weapons and equipment. In outlining an armored division with six tank and four mechanized infantry battalions and a mechanized division with five tank and five mechanized infantry battalions, it also concentrated on heavy divisions specifically designed for combat in Europe, rather than on the generic division. Anticipating a faster pace of battle, planners also tried to give the divisions flexibility by increasing the number of junior leaders in troop units, thereby decreasing the span of control. The Army adopted Division 86 before approving and publishing the new AirLand Battle doctrine, yet General Starry’s planners assumed that the new doctrine would be accepted and therefore used it to state the tasks the new divisions would be called on to accomplish. Similar efforts, collectively known as the Army 86 studies, pondered the correct structure for the infantry division, the corps, and larger organizations. Although Infantry Division 86 moved in the direction of a much lighter organization that would be easy to transport to other continents, such rapidly deployable contingency forces lacked the endurance and, frankly, the survivability, to fight alongside NATO divisions in open terrain. The search for a high-technology solution that would give light divisions such a capacity led to a wide range of inconclusive experiments with the motorized 9th Infantry Division at Fort Lewis, Washington, officially designated a high-technology test-bed unit. |
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Under the Army of Excellence program, military leaders further investigated the Division 86 plans for a heavier mechanized and armored
force but reconsidered the role of light divisions. In August 1983 Chief of Staff General John A. Wickham, Jr., directed the Training and Doctrine Command to restudy the entire question of organization. The resulting Army of Excellence force design acknowledged the need for smaller, easily transportable light infantry divisions for the express purpose
of fighting limited wars. At the same time, the plan kept the heavy divisions of the Division 86 study with some modifications. The Renaissance infantryman who trailed a pike and followed the flag, like his successor in later wars who shouldered a musket and stood in the line of battle, needed stamina and courage but required neither a particularly high order of intelligence nor sophisticated training. The modern infantryman, expected to master a wide range of skills and think for himself on an extended battlefield, faced a far more daunting |
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challenge. To prepare such soldiers for contemporary battle, TRADOC planners in the 1970s and 1980s evolved a comprehensive and interconnected
training program that systematically developed individual and unit proficiency and then tested that competence in tough, realistic exercises. To some in the Army it seemed as if they were on the verge of a revolution in training; to others it was a return to the basics of soldier training, focused on the simple concept “Be-Know-Do.” Individual training was the heart of the program, and the Training and Doctrine Command gradually developed a methodology for training that clearly defined the desired skills and then trained the soldier accordingly. This technique cut away much of the superfluous and was an exceptional approach to the repetitive tasks that made up much of soldier training. Once the soldier mastered the skills appropriate to his grade, skill qualification tests continued to measure his grasp of his profession through a series of written and performance tests. The training of leaders for those soldiers became increasingly important through the 1970s and 1980s. By the summer of 1990 the Training and Doctrine Command had created a coherent series of schools to train officers in their principal duties at each major turning point in their careers. Lieutenants began with an officer basic course that introduced them to the duties of their branch of service. After a leavening of experience as senior lieutenants or junior captains, the officers returned for an officer advanced course that trained them for the requirements of company, battery, and troop command. The new Combined Arms and Services Staff School at Fort Leavenworth instructed successful company commanders in the art of battalion staff duty. The premier officer school remained the Command and General Staff College, also at Fort Leavenworth, which junior majors attended before serving as executive and operations officers of battalions and brigades. Although all Army schools taught the concepts and language of AirLand Battle, it was at Leavenworth that the professional officer attained real fluency in that doctrine. For the select few, a second year at Fort Leavenworth in the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) offered preparation as division and higher operations officers and Army strategists. Finally, those lieutenant colonels with successful battalion commands behind them might be chosen to attend the services’ prestigious senior schools: the Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania; |
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SAMS In 1983 the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, established |
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Polk, Louisiana. |
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untested in combat. The decades of the 1970s and 1980s were largely peaceful from the U.S. perspective, except for some low-intensity conflict In 1979 a Communist-inspired takeover of Nicaragua led to Leftist insurrections in El Salvador and prompted U.S. concerns about the stability
of a number of other countries in the region. Moving quickly to stem the tide, the United States focused on a combination of economic sanctions, political maneuvers, and military support to allies to cope with the threat from Communist insurgents. Various American intelligence
agencies worked to undermine the Communist government of Nicaragua while the Army worked on providing open military support for the insurrection-wracked country of El Salvador. This small country was soon seen as a test case for American resolve in the use of the appropriate
level of force for the emergency at hand, including advisers and limited direct military support. It was also an important test of how well we had learned our lessons from the defeat in Vietnam. |
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THE U.S. ARMY IN EL SALVADOR Limited American military assistance to El Salvador dates from the 1940's, but with the Reagan ad- |
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In addition to training Salvadoran soldiers, noncommissioned officers,
and officers, the U.S. Army sent advisers to each of the brigade headquarters in the six military zones of El Salvador. Regular teams of advisers (generally no more than two or three officers and NCOs) lived, worked, and trained with Salvadoran soldiers for six months to a year. It was not possible to send more to each location because a 1981 agreement between the government of El Salvador and the U.S. State Department limited the number of official advisers in country to
fifty-five. Many sites would have only a single officer or NCO assigned,
making close cooperation with Salvadoran counterparts a matter of life or death. However, U.S. advisers were strictly prohibited from engaging in offensive combat operations to avoid giving the impression that this was a U.S.-led war. The lesson learned from Vietnam was clear; the host nation had to fight its own war. There were times, of course, when the strict adherence to the combat prohibition rule was not enough. The fight often came to the adviser. Given the nature of guerrilla war, an attack could occur at any El Salvador cuartel (fortified army camp) at any time. In the most publicized incident, which led to the death of a Special Forces NCO, the FMLN guerrillas attacked the headquarters of the 4th Infantry Brigade in El Paraiso, Chalatenango. The attack on March 31, 1987, included demolitions and mortars and was preceded by effective infiltration of the camp by well-trained assault squads. Sixty-four Salvadoran soldiers were killed and seventy-nine wounded. Staff Sgt. Gregory A. Fronius of the 3d Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), was killed while attempting to organize the resistance to the attack. In 1988 a similar attack on the 4th Brigade cuartel found the Salvadorans and their U.S. advisers more prepared. Despite some initial success in penetrating the wire, the El Salvadoran Army forces and U.S. advisers fought back and by dawn had recaptured the camp. At least 11 enemy guerrillas were killed at the cost of 17 friendly killed and 31 wounded. Despite some continuing concerns about potential human rights abuses by Salvadorans, the U.S. advisory effort in El Salvador was remarkably successful. The professional training imparted to the Salvadoran military led to ultimate success on the battlefield against the guerrillas. Despite some military setbacks and the increase of international support to the enemy, the Salvadoran military fought back and beat the |
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A bloody coup on the small Caribbean
island of Grenada and the possible involvement of Cuba in those troubled waters prompted the United States to launch a hasty invasion, Operation URGENT
FURY, in October 1983. (See Map 22.) This involved fewer than 8,000 Army soldiers, with actual Army combat
limited to the 1st and 2d Battalions of the 75th Rangers, two brigades of the 82d Airborne Division, and some Special Forces elements. In fact, Army strength on the island during the period
of combat probably did not exceed 2,500; the heaviest combat, occurring during the first hours of the landing on October 25, was borne by Company A, 1st Battalion, 75th Rangers. The operation,
though successful, pointed out a number of problems with joint operations,
especially communications and |
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viet Union had induced the United States to cooperate with many unsavory international leaders. Panama’s General Manuel Antonio Noriega was among the worst. The last free election in Panama had been in 1968, when a military coup expelled the populist Arnulfo Arias from the Presidency he had won at the ballot box. Noriega, a capable
intelligence officer at the time, ingratiated himself with the new military leadership of Panama by ruthlessly facilitating their consolidation
of power. He subsequently gained a measure of favor with the United States by assisting the Central Intelligence Agency in covert operations against Nicaraguan and Salvadoran Leftists. Ultimately he himself attained absolute power, his rise assisted by blackmail, fraud, corruption, intimidation, drug dealing, and outright murder. |
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Panama when the political decision to do so was made. Under the operational
command of the XVIII Airborne Corps out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, 13,000 soldiers from a half-dozen major posts across the United States airlifted into Panama to join the 13,000 soldiers and marines already there. H-hour was 1:00 A.M. on December 20, 1989. At that time the Americans simultaneously assaulted the two battalions, ten independent infantry companies, cavalry squadron, and special forces command of the PDF at over a dozen localities while fanning out to secure American lives and property in over a dozen more locations. (See Map 23.) |
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occurred in the dark; and the Americans had overwhelming advantages with respect to night combat, including
more-effective night-vision devices. Such devices, in their infancy during Vietnam, were now sufficiently refined to provide near-daytime light quality or thermal imaging and were available to individual soldiers
as well as to crew-served weapons. Even more important, American
units had trained extensively in night fighting and were fully prepared
to make the best use of their technical advantages. The Americans also enjoyed absolute air supremacy and had sufficient airlift to parachute
or helicopter to dozens of targets at the same time—with overwhelming
force at each such target. Air power meant radically enhanced firepower as well, particularly with respect to the formidable AC–130 Spectre gunships and deadly efficient munitions. A final and in some ways decisive advantage was that the Americans were long familiar with Panama and were not only exhaustively trained but also carefully rehearsed
for their combat roles. Indeed, in many cases American soldiers had driven through, physically observed, or even exercised on their
H-hour objectives during the weeks prior to the attack. The combat |
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results were correspondingly lopsided; the Americans lost 26 killed and 325 wounded to the 314 killed and thousands of captured or wounded Panamanians. Operations in Panama quickly shifted from combat to peacekeeping. The legitimately elected government was restored to power within days of the invasion. The American soldiers were welcomed as liberators virtually everywhere, which greatly eased such tasks as restoring law, order, public utilities, and civil government. Noriega had fled the fighting almost immediately, hidden in one refuge and then another, and ultimately sought asylum in the Papal Nunciature, which American troops quickly surrounded. He surrendered after a short siege. While frustrating for a number of days, Noriega’s neutralization took the heart out of whatever sustained resistance the PDF or dignity battalions might have contemplated: open opposition collapsed. The American military presence in the Canal Zone soon dropped to precrisis levels, and U.S. attention turned to building a new Panamanian police force to replace the corrupt PDF. On December 14, 1999, true to earlier commitments, the American government surrendered its 100-year lease in Panama and shortly thereafter evacuated its military forces from the Canal Zone. Neither URGENT FURY nor JUST CAUSE offered serious opposition of the kind the Army had been training for decades to meet. Far and away the most important aspects of both of these interventions were their utility in testing the effectiveness of U.S. joint forces command and control procedures, in which both operations, as well as subsequent joint deployments, revealed continuing problems. Joint doctrine and joint warfighting was so great a concern of Congress that it had created in 1986, after a major legislative struggle, the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Act that gave additional power to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, established the office of Deputy Chairman, and created seven warfighting Commanders in Chief to conduct joint military operations in their respective geographic regions or, in the case of the newly created U.S. Special Operations Command, anywhere in the world. (See Map 24.) The Army would have to fight all its future wars as part of a joint, if not combined, team. |
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GOLDWATER-NICHOLS
In 1986, after three years of testimony by retired military leaders and defense experts in favor of vari- |
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peace was now the order of the day and we could dismantle our “bloated” military establishment. |
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out suspending retirements from active duty and routine separations from the Army. Still, uncertainty about the future, both for individuals and for major Army units, persisted as the Army prepared for overseas service and possibly for war. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. Why was the post-Vietnam Army in such poor shape? What did the Army leadership have to do to turn things around? RECOMMENDED READINGS Bolger, Daniel P. Americans at War, 1975–1986: An Era of Violent Peace. Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1988 |
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Chapman, Anne E. The Origins and Development of the National Training
Center, 1976–1984. Fort Monroe, Va.: U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, 1992. Other Readings Brownlee, Romie L., and William J. Mullen. Changing an Army: An Oral History of General William E. DePuy, USA Retired. Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1987. |
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Last updated 23 May 2006 |