A Look Forward
 
In 1990 the U.S. Army began deploying major units to Southwest Asia as part of a coalition effort to counter the military aggression of the Iraqi armed forces. But even before that, major changes in the Army's organization had begun. Between 1989 and 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed and with it the Communist Warsaw Pact alliance system that had posed a major threat to the United States and its West European NATO allies for nearly fifty years. In the wake of those momentous events, the national leadership began to transform the Army from a "forward-deployed" force to a "power-projection" force based in the United States, with the war in Southwest Asia the first test of that concept. But at the same time, the Army assumed a host of major humanitarian and peacekeeping missions that soon took it to new areas of the globe, many of which it had never visited previously in any major way. Although an objective assessment of these developments is premature, some brief observations about what happened during the years between 1990 and 1996 are appropriate.
 
Even before the successful 100-hour Persian Gulf War in February 1991, Army plans called for a significant reduction in the number of divisions and brigades. Without the threat posed by the Soviet Union, the nation no longer saw the need to field twenty-eight divisions and twenty-seven combined arms brigades. Both political pundits and national leaders expected that the American "victory" in the Cold War would result in what was termed a "peace dividend," allowing the government to shift its economic priorities from military readiness to other programs, including the pressing need to reduce the annual deficit. One of the first Army units to feel the axe was the 9th Infantry Division at Fort Lewis, Washington, with one of its two remaining brigades inactivated in September 1990, and then the entire division the following year. With what remained, the Army organized the independent 199th Infantry Brigade, but that unit would enjoy only a short existence.
 
As divisions and brigades returned from Southwest Asia in the summer of 1991, the force underwent further change. Readiness concerns had prevented the deployment of the National Guard round-out brigades to the Gulf region with the 24th Infantry Division and 1st Cavalry Division. Consequently, to fill, or round out, these divisions, the active duty 197th Infantry Brigade from Fort Benning, Georgia, and 1st Brigade, 2d Armored Division, at Fort Hood, Texas, had taken their place. Now these brigades were inactivated, with their personnel and equip-
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ment used to organize third maneuver brigades in the 24th Infantry and 1st Cavalry Divisions. At the same time, the failure to deploy the reserve component round-out units set off a debate over the utility of the twenty-year-old concept, which remained to be settled in 1996.
 
Meanwhile, US. Army, Europe, resumed its plans to inactivate two divisions and two brigades and to realign its two remaining divisions as a part of the expected peace dividend. In August 1991 the 1st Infantry Division Forward (a reinforced brigade) left the active force. Five months later the 8th Infantry Division was inactivated, followed by the 3d Armored Division in August 1992 and the 3d Brigade, 2d Armored Division (the forward-deployed brigade in Garlstedt, Germany), in December of that year. About the same time, the VII Corps, one of the two corps headquarters in Europe, also was inactivated, with its armored cavalry regiment, the 2d Armored Cavalry, returning to the United States. The reduction left only the V Corps headquarters in Europe, along with the 1st Armored Division, the 3d Infantry Division, and one armored cavalry regiment, the 11th Armored Cavalry.
 
Forces in the United States also took their share of cuts in 1992. The 2d Armored Division, the only armored division continuously active since the organization of the Armored Force in 1940, was slated for inactivation but, to keep it on the active rolls, it replaced the 5th Infantry Division, which was scheduled to move from Fort Polk, Louisiana, to Fort Hood, Texas. In the summer of 1992 the 199th Infantry Brigade was inactivated when the 2d Armored Cavalry moved to Fort Lewis, Washington. In addition, forces in Korea felt the reduction knife, with the 2d Infantry Division forced to inactivate one of its brigades. Less than two years after fighting in Southwest Asia, the Regular Army had thus lost four divisions, one divisional brigade, and two separate brigades.
 
The precipitous decline in the number of Regular Army divisions and brigades continued after 1992, with Congress tentatively setting the strength of the active Army at 495,000 by end of 1996. In 1994 the 6th and 7th Infantry Divisions were inactivated, with one brigade of each division remaining active at Fort Richardson, Alaska, and Fort Lewis, Washington, respectively. In Germany the 2d Brigade, 3d Infantry Division, was eliminated, and the 3d Brigade, 1st Armored Division, the only divisional unit to redeploy with its personnel and equipment, moved from Germany to Fort Lewis, Washington. These cuts reduced the Army's forward-deployed European maneuver force to the 1st Armored Division and the 3d Infantry Division, both with only two brigades each, and the 11th Armored Cavalry.
 
To meet the projected end strength of 495,000, political as well as economic factors had to be considered, and a series of flag and designation changes began in 1995. Three factors drove the decision of which flags would continue to fly: the desire to retain historic divisions in the active force; the decision to field all divisions with a full complement of maneuver brigades; and the advantages of maintaining a regional distribution of divisional troops in the United States. In
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April 1995 the 3d Brigade, 2d Infantry Division, replaced the 3d Brigade, 1st Armored Division, at Fort Lewis, Washington, with the latter's flag moving to Fort Riley, Kansas. Also, the flag of the 3d Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, moved to Fort Lewis from Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, to dislodge the 1st Brigade, 7th Infantry, which was inactivated. In November 1995 the 1st Brigade, 6th Infantry Division, in Alaska was associated with the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, New York, but without a change in the brigade's designation. The following month the 4th Infantry Division (less its 3d Brigade, which remained at Fort Carson, Colorado) relocated to Fort Hood, Texas, where it replaced the 2d Armored Division, which was eliminated from the active force.
 
A significant change took place in January 1996, when the 1st Infantry Division (less its 3d Brigade) transferred its flags and colors from Fort Riley, Kansas, to Germany, where it succeeded the 3d Infantry Division; concurrently the 3d Infantry Division shifted its division and brigade flags and colors to Forts Stewart and Benning, Georgia, to replace the 24th Infantry Division, which was inactivated. In order to have three maneuver brigades in the 1st Infantry Division, its 3d Brigade, inactivated in 1991, returned to the active rolls. Upon completion of the programmed changes the Regular Army force had been pared down to 10 divisions-1 airborne, 1 air assault, 2 light, and 6 heavy divisions. Only the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas; the 82d Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina; and the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, were concentrated; all of the others were split between two or more installations.
 
The independent brigades in the active Army suffered more severe reductions. When the 199th Infantry Brigade was inactivated in 1992, only the Berlin Brigade, the 193d Infantry Brigade, and the 177th and 194th Armored Brigades remained in the force. For almost fifty years the Army had units stationed in Berlin, but with the end of the Cold War and the return of the city of Berlin to the German government, the Berlin Brigade fell from the force in the summer of 1994. Next to go was the 193d Infantry Brigade, stationed in the Panama Canal Zone. In anticipation of the Panamanian government's taking over complete control of the Canal Zone in 1999, the 193d Infantry Brigade was inactivated in 1994. That same year the 11th Armored Cavalry, which could not be supported within U.S. Army, Europe, troop strength, returned to the United States. To retain it in the force, the chief of staff approved replacing the 177th Armored Brigade at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California, with the armored cavalry regiment in October 1994. Reductions also required the inactivation of the 194th Armored Brigade at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in 1995, leaving the Regular Army without any separate combined arms brigades.
 
The reserve components also underwent turmoil caused by force reduction. In 1993 the National Guard lost two divisions, the 26th Infantry and the 50th Armored. Both had been experiencing recruitment problems over the past twenty-five years. At the same time, to maintain heavy forces in the National Guard, the 28th and 42d Infantry Divisions were reorganized as heavy divisions. The 42d, now
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an armored division, retained its traditional designation for historical and esprit de corps reasons. To strengthen the 28th Infantry Division, the 37th Infantry Brigade, Ohio National Guard, was reorganized as a brigade of that division, but a year later the brigade was transferred to the 38th Infantry Division. To make room for the unit in the 38th, the 76th Brigade, 38th Infantry Division, Indiana National Guard, was withdrawn from the division and reorganized as the 76th Infantry Brigade. The net result of these changes was that the National Guard fielded 8 divisions-1 light, 2 infantry, 2 armored, and 3 mechanized infantry divisions. At the same time, the Guard continued to field 20 separate combined arms brigades. Although these units provided the Army with the flexibility to tailor forces upon mobilization, planned reductions would leave only 14 enhanced and 2 theater defense brigades in the force by 1997 (with an armored cavalry regiment often counted as the National Guard's fifteenth "enhanced brigade").
 
Following the "Bottom-Up" review, an assessment of all military requirements by Secretary of Defense Les Aspin in 1993, the Army Reserve agreed to give up its combat arms units and focus on maintaining combat support and combat service support formations. Consequently, the Army inactivated the 157th, 187th, and 205th Infantry Brigades in 1994. To improve the readiness of the remaining reserve units prior to mobilization, the U.S. Army Forces Command developed the "exercise division," an organization designed to both conduct and assist the training of Army Reserve combat support and combat service support units. Through the use of simulations and simulators, the new organization also provided exercises to improve unit proficiency and command and staff training. In 1993 the 78th, 85th, and 91st Divisions (Training) were reorganized as exercise divisions. At the same time the 75th and 87th Maneuver Area Commands were discontinued and the 75th and 87th Infantry Divisions reactivated as the 75th and 87th Divisions (Exercise). In 1996 the functions of training divisions were expanded to include institutional as well as basic and advanced training under the Total Army Training Strategy. Although the functions of the training divisions were expanded, two unneeded training brigades and two surplus training divisions were eliminated, leaving the Army Reserve with the 80th, 84th, 95th, 98th, 100th, 104th, and 108th Divisions (Training). By the mid-1990s the Army Reserve had no combined arms units, but fielded five exercise and seven training divisions. In sum, as the Army moved toward the end of the century, the total force had been pared down to eighteen combat divisions (ten Regular Army and eight National Guard), with plans to reduce the number of National Guard independent combined arms brigades from twenty to sixteen. As noted above, the Army Reserve had five exercise and seven training divisions.
 
Although the number of divisions and separate brigades decreased rapidly in the 1990s, the story of the post-Cold War era encompassed more than just numbers of units. The divisions and separate brigades that remained in the force continued to be constructed from building blocks, a practice that provided the flexibility to tailor units for specific missions and for different regions of the world.
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Such methods also made it easier to introduce new technologies and new capabilities into the existing force organization.
 
Under the Force XXI program, the Army's current effort to guide the modernization of the Army into the early twenty-first century, Army leaders wanted even more flexible divisions rather than more specialized but rigid ones. In June 1996 General William W Hartzog, the commander of the U.S. Training and Doctrine Command, noted that the Army no longer could send only its light units, such as the 10th Mountain Division and the 82d Airborne Division, to every unconventional or low-intensity operation. Elements of the 82d Airborne Division had served in Panama (Operation JUST CAUSE) in 1989, in Southwest Asia (DESERT SHIELD/STORM) in 1990 and 1991, and in south Florida after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Elements of the 10th Mountain Division had also served in south Florida in 1992 and deployed to Somalia (Operation RESTORE HOPE) in 1992 and 1993 and to Haiti (Operation UPHOLD DEMOCRACY) in 1994. Henceforth, like the 1st Armored Division in Bosnia (Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR) in 1995 and 1996, all divisions in the force had to be prepared to undertake humanitarian and peacekeeping missions.
 
To meet the need for future contingencies and still provide forces for conventional operations, the Training and Doctrine Command began taking a new look at the Army's heavy division. Previously it had set the maneuver element mix for an armored division at five tank and four mechanized infantry battalions while reversing those numbers in the mechanized infantry division. Proposals in 1996 envisioned eliminating about 3,000 soldiers from organizational tables of the heavy division while increasing the maneuver element mix to five tank and five mechanized infantry battalions. The projected change would add about 300 dismounted infantrymen to each mechanized infantry unit, eliminate the antitank company of each infantry battalion, and move support functions from each infantry battalion to the division support battalions. The engineer brigade with three engineer battalions, which was tested in Southwest Asia and added to divisions shortly thereafter, was to lose one battalion, and one of the heavy division's two attack aviation battalions would also disappear. In the latter case, planners expected that new "Long Bow" Apache and Comanche helicopters would provide greater combat power to make up for the loss. Also, a newly improved, self-propelled 155-mm. howitzer, the Paladin, was to be fielded in three batteries of six weapons each, replacing the existing battalions, which had three batteries of eight pieces each of older weapons. The divisional target acquisition and multiple-launch rocket batteries were programmed to be combined in a single artillery battalion, giving the division greater flexibility in engaging close-up and distant targets. In addition, the maneuver brigades in the division were given increased scouting capability in the form of a reconnaissance troop. Finally, the key to this smaller but more deadly division was to be a digital communication system, or what was referred to as digitalization. Using new information technology, Army leaders wanted to provide engaged commanders with immediate data regarding available resources and the enemy they faced, enabling them to bring a wide vari-
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ety of forces to bear on the foe as quickly as possible and to sustain them until final victory. A test of the new division was scheduled for 1997.
 
Six years after the war in Southwest Asia, many questions regarding the Army's future force structure remain. The failure to implement the round-out concept during that conflict is only the first of many. How well did the Army's divisions and separate brigades perform in Southwest Asia against a confused and greatly weakened adversary? Has the Army cut too many divisions from the force too quickly; will it attain the right balance of divisions in the active and reserve forces; and how radically can the heavy and light divisions be redesigned to meet contingencies of the future within budgetary constraints that appear ever changing? How seriously has the elimination of the separate combined arms brigades hindered flexibility in designing the active force? A more basic question was also left unanswered. Is the division the best vehicle to organize the combat arms for the future or should it be the brigade, as some have argued? If history has shown us anything, it is that the future is always unpredictable and that the basic ingredient of success will continue to be a mind-set that allows the greatest speed and flexibility in adopting new technologies, new missions, and new constraints to the Army's ever-changing organizations for combat.
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page created 29 June 2001

 

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