The Army’s Dilemma

G iven its performance in Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Army’s stock should be at an all-time high. It carried out a bold plan that was both operationally and logistically challenging against a larger if unmotivated force. It routed the Iraqi army and adapted well to the unexpected attacks by the fedayeen. It also fought well in the cities, often a killing field for attackers. It took few casualties, just over 100 dead before the declared end of hostilities. More impressively, it reversed the historical ratio of battle to non-battle injuries. Typically, the latter outnumber the former significantly, but in Iraq non-battle deaths were about one-third of those caused by combat. Few non-battle injuries are widely seen as a characteristic of a well-trained and disciplined force. By any measure, the Army performed superbly. Additionally, the Army has embarked on what is arguably the most dramatic and radical “transformation” of any of the services. The current Army plan calls for a dramatic shift away from heavy armor to a family of 16to 20-ton fighting vehicles that will rely heavily on a networked system of information and situational awareness for battlefield success as opposed to heavy armor plate. The Army’s rapid deployment goals are truly daunting (a brigade-sized force “anywhere in the world” in 96 hours, followed by the rest of a division by 120 hours). These ambitious goals are taxing all aspects of the Army’s combat and support organizations to streamline to an unprecedented degree to even come close to meeting those timelines. How is it, then, that according to many reports the Army is perceived by senior defense policymakers as unimaginative, obstructionist, and wedded to concepts of warfare that are increasingly irrelevant to the current geopolitical environment? The Army’s diminished status reflects in the filling of high-level joint billets by officers from the other services, including the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, which had been held by an Army offi-