when we’re back here at Fort Bragg and our other bases to have a “standard” duty day for our soldiers, so that they’re not working terribly long hours, though by most people’s standards, it is a pretty long day! From 6:30 in the morning to 5:00 o’clock at night as a standard, though we do try to give our soldiers weekends off when we can. Sometimes we cannot, because they are on exercises and deployments.
In addition, whenever a three-day weekend or holiday comes up, we normally give them a fourth day off. That gives our soldiers and their families an opportunity to go somewhere and do something away from the base. Obviously, the soldiers from the corps alert units are not doing that, but will be confined to the local areas surrounding their bases at Fort Bragg, Fort Campbell, Fort Stewart, and Fort Drum. But we try to manage that pace and OpTempo as best we can.
“Quality of Life” is an Army term, and we’re very concerned about the amount of separation our soldiers have from their families. On average, XVIII Airborne Corps soldiers will spend six to seven months a year gone from their families, either on deployment, on exercises, training, or away at school. We’re trying to mitigate that as best we can in the areas that we can control.
Tom Clancy: Along with the high OpTempos, there is the matter of force modernization. Obviously this is a huge challenge because of the money involved. Can you give us your insight on this?
General Keane: There are significant challenges in modernization to be sure, and the reasons for them are obvious: the downsizing of our budgets. The instruments of war with the precision that they have and the technology involved are extraordinarily expensive, though they do have a large payoff on the battlefield. For example, if I might digress for a moment, in my judgment, one of the most important weapons developments in the post-World War II era in terms of conventional warfare has to be precision guided munitions [PGMs]. When delivered from a suitable platform [aircraft, helicopter, ship, submarine, vehicle, etc.] PGMs have an enormous payoff for us. This is because their precision and lethality provides us with the ability to target and destroy only the portion of a target array that we are interested in.
For example, if I want to take out a
Contrast that with what we had to do in World War II, when we tried to reduce the industrial bases of Germany and Japan. We had to fly armada after armada of heavy bombers to do that, and we lost hundreds of crews in the process. Also, quite tragically, a large number of civilians lost their lives in those strikes. The PGMs we have today enable us to send a single crew on a mission that previously might have required dozens, with a very high assurance of achieving the desired mission results with a minimum of collateral damage.
Of course, PGMs and other technologies like that cost a lot of money, but at the same time they are truly saving lives, of our own military personnel, of non-combatants, and even of our enemies. We have no interest in taking unnecessary lives from our enemies. We just want to stop them from doing whatever it is that we’re opposed to. So technology costs money, and there is a lot of that involved when you’re talking about outfitting an entire corps or army. So we have to make the case for the technologies that we desire, and our people in Washington, D.C., are doing that.
We’re also bringing in the new Advanced Field Artillery System [AFATAS], which is going to increase our fire-control capabilities for artillery and air support. We’re also going to see a near-term improvement in our artillery capability with the introduction of the new M 109A6 Paladin 155mm self-propelled howitzer, and improved versions of the MLRS rockets and A-TACMS missiles. We’re also still modernizing our fleet of armor with the M1A2 variant of the Abrams main battle tank, and the coming — A3 version of the M? Bradley fighting vehicle. Finally, the new version of the Patriot surface-to-air missile system [known as the PAC-3] will provide the units of the corps with an advanced antitactical ballistic missile capability to the current fielded system.
These are all proven technologies with enhanced capabilities. We don’t really need to go out and discover or invent something new when we have something so proven and capable. What we have to do is improve to make certain that we have an overmatch with regards to our potential adversaries. Right now, as we look at it from our perspective, we really don’t have a near-peer competitor out there, and therefore we clearly have an overmatch with our potential enemies. The Army has decided to take some risks in modernization efforts for the near term, so we can hold onto our force structure and units, to try and build some quality of life for our soldiers, and to make certain that we’re maintaining readiness.
Readiness to us means that we’re training our soldiers, and maintaining our equipment up to standards [i.e., adequate supplies of repair parts]. Right now we’re doing very well with all of that, and our readiness reports are indicative of that. But obviously, any military organization has to keep its eyes on the future if it’s going to continue to evolve at the right pace. The challenge is to find the correct balance. The balance has to be among the mix of unit structures, the readiness of that army, the quality of life of its soldiers, and also the modernization of its equipment. The biggest modernization program in our future will be the RAH-66 Comanche helicopter, which will dramatically change how we do our business.
Tom Clancy: Can you review some other programs and give your comments?
General Keane: NAVISTAR Global Position System [GPS]. GPS has just been tremendous! We started using it out in the Gulf War back in 1991, and in that particular theater of operations with its lack of topographical features, GPS was a significant enhancement to our operations. So much so that now it is a way of life. If you go down into an infantry outfit today, while outwardly the soldier looks the same with a rifle, helmet, pack, etc., those soldiers are also moving around with night-vision goggles [the PVS-7B], a night aiming device for their weapons [the PAC-4C], a laser pointer to designate targets for PGMs, and perhaps a Portable Lightweight GPS Receiver [PLGR] to locate their position. As it stands today, GPS receivers are in all of our helicopters, in our entire combat vehicle fleet, and in the hands of our soldiers at all levels, whatever their function.
Javelin Antitank Missile. Javelin is a really great initiative, a true “brilliant” PGM which will be man-portable for our soldiers. We really wish that we had been able to field it sooner, everyone in the Army knows that, but it just was not possible. Clearly it’s going to replace the old M47 Dragon weapons system, and will give our foot soldiers the ability to destroy any tank on the battlefield. The key feature of the Javelin is the use of “fire-and-forget technology” and an imaging infrared seeker to lock on to the target before launch. It’s a “brilliant” weapon in the sense that if the operator finds a target, the missile will lock on to the thermal signature of
Command and Control Systems. To no one’s surprise, one of the technology explosions that’s taking place at the moment is in the world of digital communications and information. Our experimental force out at Fort Hood is on the “bow wave” of that technology. As we work our way through this revolution, there’s probably going to be an explosion of technology. Ultimately we’ll have soldiers as well as vehicles on the battlefield that will be able to “look” at a target or other item of interest. Their onboard camera/sensor system will feed that to a computer which will transmit information digitally back to command posts at various levels with everyone seeing the data/pictures “real-time.” These operations centers will be extraordinary examples of technology, with state-of-the-art visual/graphic displays and data-fusion technology being able to rapidly call down fire in just a matter of seconds.
This will finally mean that we’ll have a good idea of where the enemy is, as well as knowing the locations of our own troops. You know, in a general sense these are things that we have always known, but in a specific sense, we have not. That’s remarkable for an army that is somewhat nomadic and complicated in the sense that it contains tens of thousands of personnel, vehicles, and pieces of equipment.
