both drivers and tank commanders). Thus, they did not have to see each other physically in order to keep unit coherence, which meant that they could disperse more. The tank commander only had to give drivers a way point on which to guide, and the drivers did the rest (the driver steers between way points, which are provided automatically from the vehicle commander's screen). Consequently, the commander didn't have to spend as much of his time on navigation as before, which meant he could spend more time fighting the tank. (In Desert Storm only commanders had GPS, and the rest of the unit had to guide on his tank. Moreover, since his GPS was handheld, the vehicle commander constantly had to give course corrections to the driver.)
Before IVIS, all a tank crew knew was what they saw or were told by voice over the radio. They would peak to attention when the tank commander barked out a battle command, then they faded back to an awareness simply of what was available to their immediate senses. Now that the picture of what all the pieces of their unit were doing was available to them, the tank crew were much more able to anticipate platoon tactics and to engage in tactical tasks without being told. Independent action. Their heads were in the situation all the time. Even if another tank in the platoon became a casualty, they were able to continue the mission without missing a beat.
Imagine the power of quality soldiers, in highly trained units, all of whom have a continuing sense of the situation and the direction needed to defeat the enemy. It is the power of information. Further war-fighting experiments at Fort Knox in March 1993, then with battalion tank forces at the NTC in April 1994 by then-Major General Larry Jordan, confirmed the vision.
Some time after that, Franks visited TRADOC's dismounted Battle Lab at Fort Benning, where Major General Jerry White was conducting experiments in advanced night-vision equipment.
The working hypothesis: With an ability to see better, troops can disperse more and, with even fewer soldiers, inflict more damage on the enemy.
Later, troops at the Battle Lab were equipped with a communications link that let them all talk with each other on a common radio net. Soldiers don't like to be out of touch with the others in their team, but they don't need physical contact, as long as they can talk to one another. If they can do that, and if they can see the enemy at ranges greater than those at which the enemy can see them, they will take it from there.
Dispersion: Fewer soldiers in a given battlespace wielding the same lethality against the enemy. That means you don't have to protect so much of your own force.
Power of information: All your troops know what is going on.
But what then? What happens to the hierarchical military command structure? Does it remain the same? Do units remain the same size? Do they need to be as big? Can you expand the leader-to-led ratio while you disperse units, keep them informed, and place fewer troops in a given battlespace? What happens when you horizontally integrate all members of the combined-arms team (tanks, infantry, artillery, engineers, aviation, etc.) the same way you wired that tank platoon? Do you increase the tempo of your operation? Can you bring more lethal fires on the enemy?
By the spring of 1994, results from the Army's Louisiana Maneuvers and TRADOC's Battle Labs, both in TRADOC and at JRTC and the NTC, led to the decision to field an experimental force to explore further issues concerning changes in doctrine and technology investments. Army Chief General Sullivan directed that an experimental unit named Force XXI be established at Fort Hood, Texas, with a goal of a full-brigade war-fighting experiment at the NTC in 1997. The Army had come a long way toward the future since 1991.
As the Army forges into that future, it faces a multitude of questions of ever-growing complexity — but it knows how to go about solving them. Fred Franks retired from TRADOC in 1994, but today TRADOC continues to experiment, continues to work on the answers. At TRADOC's Battle Labs, Fort Hood, Fort Knox, the NTC, and JRTC — everywhere, activity flows. The rebirth of the Army is not a one-time thing. Thanks to Fred Franks and his colleagues, the generations before and the generations that will follow, the Army is a living, breathing organism. It has seen the twenty-first century — and it welcomes it.
Fred Franks has the last word…
On 5 May 1970, the day I was wounded near Snoul, Cambodia, I could never have predicted the course the next twenty-five years would take — years that ended at a retirement ceremony at Fort Myer, Virginia, after I had completed thirty-five and a half years in the Army.
There is no mystery to what we do as soldiers and as an Army. When called to do so, we fight and win our nation's wars as part of a joint team. We spend a lifetime getting ready to do that. I was no different.
I make no apologies about my pride in our nation, our Army, and our soldiers. From that day in July 1955, when I proudly put on the fatigue shirt with 'U.S. Army' over the pocket and took my place in the line with my West Point classmates, I was excited every day to be an American soldier. I loved the Army. I loved soldiering. I loved the cause we served. It is a profession as much about the heart as the mind. There is much passion in what soldiers do. What matters most is the cause we have been privileged to serve and those we've been privileged to serve with.
Someone asked me a few years ago why I wanted to be a soldier. I thought a few seconds before answering. Then I said, 'If you like what our country stands for and are willing to fight to protect those ideals, you ought to be a soldier.
'If the sound of the national anthem and the sight of our flag stir something inside you, then you ought to be a soldier.
'If you want to be around a lot of other people who feel the same way about all that as you do, you ought to be a soldier.
'If you like a challenge, are not afraid of hard work, and think you are tough enough to meet the standards on the battlefield, you ought to be a soldier.
'If you and your family are strong enough to endure the many separations, often on a moment's notice, and can live that kind of life, then you ought to be a soldier.
'If the thought that at the end of your life you can say — or have said about you — that you served your country, if that appeals to you and you need no other reward than that, then you ought to be a soldier.'
I think of the selfless and total commitment of our men and women and their families. The soldier in Captain Dana Pittard's tank company, who said, 'We're family.' The troopers of the 1st Squadron, 3rd Cavalry, who in 1975 accepted an amputee Lieutenant Colonel as their commander and who made me feel whole again as a soldier three years out of the amputee ward. The members of the great Blackhorse fist in the Fulda Gap in the early 1980s that we had ready and cocked for the Warsaw Pact.
They are the JAYHAWKS, Blackhorse, Brave Rifles, and Iron Soldiers. They give all they have. Sometimes their lives. They speak in whispered tones, or not at all, about what they have done. They are the best we have in America. I can see their faces and remember their names. They look like America. They are America. Some of them are Cooper, Wiggins, Hallings, Johndrow, Vinson, Hawthorne, Johnson, Bolan, Burkett, Linberg, McVey, Cotton, Williams, Murphy, Butler, Wilson, Woodall, and Paez.
They are my generation of Vietnam veterans and fellow amputees, for whom there were no yellow ribbons or parades, but who did what our country asked and did it so well and at great personal sacrifice. They are our Desert Storm generation, who also did what our country asked and did it so well and at great personal sacrifice. They are America's army. Who would not be proud to serve in the ranks of such Americans and to be called to lead them in battle? 'No mission too difficult, no sacrifice too great, duty first,' they say in the Big Red One. 'Allons' — 'let's go' — they say in the Blackhorse. 'JAYHAWK' in VII Corps. Iron Soldiers, Spearhead, First Team, Always Ready, Brave Rifles. Values such as selfless service, heroism, sacrifice, honor. Values given real meaning by soldiers' actions in service to our nation on battlefields and at duty posts the world over.
The toughest value has been duty. It demands more and gives less than any value I know. In the mind-numbing cold of a Grafenwohr, Germany, tank range in the pitch blackness, in the lonely outpost of a border OP staring into a dark void across the Iron Curtain, in the daily battles in the jungle while far away, others decide their worth and where they will lead, in the loneliness of a decision to send your soldiers into an all-night