Army sees faster, bigger brigades as key for future

By Frank Oliveri
Advertiser Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is transforming itself from an industrial-age Goliath built to fight on large battlefields into a nimbler, high-tech fighting force able to engage enemies with lightning speed.

"It will be powerful, agile and lethal and have the capability of bringing our young men and women home alive," said Maj. Gen. Robert Mixon, deputy director of the Army's Futures Center at Fort Monroe, Va.

The transformation will cost about $23 billion over the next seven years and will reorganize the Army around brigades rather than divisions. The new brigades will grow by hundreds of soldiers and will incorporate specialized skills — ranging from reconnaissance and surveillance to engineering and support — that once existed only at the division level. Under the current system, a division consists of three combat brigades.

In the new Army, 70-ton main battle tanks will become almost extinct. Instead, the Army brain trust envisions lithe, 20-ton armored vehicles that can be flown anywhere in the world within 96 hours and fight for up to seven days without support.

The prototype for that concept is the Stryker combat brigade. The brigade, currently testing its abilities in Iraq, is based on an eight-wheeled, 19-ton armored vehicle that comes in eight different versions. Some Strykers are equipped to fire anti-tank guided missiles. Some are used to evacuate wounded soldiers. Others are used to carry mortars, clear land mines, dig trenches and perform other duties.

The five Stryker brigades created so far have the mobility of light infantry, the firepower of some heavy units and can roll out the back of a C-130 aircraft, ready to fight in minutes.

Reorganizing the Army will bring risks. Army officials have little time and limited resources to execute their plan, which is under way even as some troops fight in Iraq and Afghanistan and others are being shifted in and out of the two countries.

"Our worldwide commitments, current organizations, systems and facilities are and will continue to be stressed," Gen. Peter Schoomaker, Army chief of staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb. 10. "These new security challenges, coupled with the current war on terrorism, require a different approach."

While the war in Iraq poses certain organizational challenges, it also will allow Army leaders to put their planned changes into effect more quickly. The changes will be tested on the 3rd Infantry Division, for example, when it redeploys its brigades to Iraq in the coming weeks and months.

"It is a compressed time line, but we believe we have the capability to do it," Mixon said.

Army leaders refer to their planned overhaul as "resetting" the force.

That effort ultimately will result in 48 new brigades. Each brigade will emphasize different capabilities — some will feature heavy armored vehicles, some will use Strykers, others will rely mostly on foot soldiers.

Abercrombie faults plan

In the short term, the Army will add 30,000 troops to form the new, larger brigades. That effort will cost $3.6 billion — part of the $38.5 billion the Army received in emergency funding from Congress last year.

In the longer term, after the emergency money has dried up and the war effort declines, Army officials plan to trim the force back to pre-war levels and fill the expanded brigades from within. To accomplish that, the Army will reduce its artillery and air defense forces, depending more on the Air Force and Navy. Other support units also will be reduced.

It's a challenging shell game that Congress will watch closely.

"I'm against the 30,000 growth," said Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawai'i, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Abercrombie also faulted the Army for using emergency funds to finance the additional troops, noting that congressional oversight of such spending is limited.

"This is not an emergency," he said. "We could see this coming, and it needs to be addressed on a multiyear basis."

One reason to reorganize the Army now, officials say, is to take advantage of the more than 200,000 combat-tested soldiers who are still enlisted.

Those soldiers "will be the mainstay of the force for years to come," Mixon said.

Another reason involves the Stryker brigades, which Pentagon officials say will train future Army leaders in how to use the new brigade design.

"We are looking at adaptive and agile leaders," said Col. Robert Brown, commander of the second Stryker brigade to be formed. "We are putting guys in a situation and watching them think. It comes down to the soldier as the centerpiece."

The first two Stryker brigades were created at Fort Lewis in Washington state. Brigades in other parts of the country, including Schofield Barracks, and Fort Polk, La., will convert to Strykers over the next several years.

Each brigade consists of 3,614 soldiers and up to 167 Stryker combat vehicles, a dozen 155 mm cannons and dozens of mortars. The brigades also have access to Air Force and Navy jet fighters and a host of support capabilities.

Brigades going high-tech

But what makes the brigades special are 428-soldier intelligence-gathering teams called RISTA — Reconnaissance, Intelligence, Surveillance and Target Acquisition — equipped with high-tech surveillance devices once considered too cumbersome for any Army element smaller than a division.

Each team uses three unmanned aerial drones and other long-range sensing devices to essentially scan every detail of a combat zone in an almost complete circle for miles around.

"They are your eyes and ears out there," Brown said. "It is what warriors always wanted."

The unit also has what Brown calls "human-intelligence" soldiers — "smart young men who know the right questions to ask" of captured enemy soldiers and civilians in a war zone. Those soldiers are trained in interrogation techniques and have immediate access to Central Intelligence Agency and other national intelligence databases.

Brown's technology also helps him to see the location of each vehicle in his own brigade and each enemy vehicle. He merely looks at a computer screen.

"I really think it is revolutionary," he said. "We see first. We understand first. We act first and we finish decisively."

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