The Army is sometimes charged with being slow to exit the Cold War mindset. Nothing could be further from the truth. A look at the recent history of some U.S. Army divisions demonstrates nothing so much as a learning institution, showing flexibility to respond to diverse missions and forward-looking adaptability to lessons learned from the first Gulf War and other operations.
The 10th Mountain Division that fought so courageously at those high altitudes defeating Al Qaeda began the 1990s providing individual replacements for units in Desert Storm. In the summer of 1992 they were helping citizens in south Florida recover from Hurricane Andrew. That same year they were deployed to Somalia to conduct a humanitarian mission that turned into a combat mission. They next flew off the decks of aircraft carriers to land in Haiti in 1994, a change en route when the mission went from forced entry and combat to peacekeeping and humanitarian duties. Afterward, the 10th Mountain went to the Balkans twice for peacekeeping missions in the late 1990s and to the Sinai as part of that continuing mission. When Major General Hagenbeck got a call in the fall of 2001 from the Commander of Forces Command to be prepared to send a force to Afghanistan, elements of his division were in the Balkans and on another deployment. Yet, those who were available were trained and ready, and they and the division command element went from Fort Drum, New York, to Afghanistan where they accomplished their mission with great skill and courage.
1st Armored Division, Old Ironsides, was formed in July 1940 and for most of its history performed its duty as an Armored Division, right up through its magnificent performance in VII Corps in Desert Storm, where it smashed through Iraqi Republican Guard armored units. In December 1995, it deployed overland from its German bases to Bosnia in Task Force Eagle, for a peace enforcement mission. For that mission the division, reinforced with other units increasing its strength close to 25,000 troops, had some of the same leaders and noncommissioned officers who had fought just four years earlier in the Iraq deserts. Demonstrating versatility in both mission change and in assimilating new units, they rapidly made the adjustment from tank fighting in deserts, to crossing the Sava River in the dead of winter to enforce the Dayton peace accords in Bosnia. Following that deployment the division went to the Balkans three more times, twice to Bosnia, and once to Kosovo, all the while honing its proficiency to fight as an armored division. In 2003 it was alerted to deploy from its base in Germany to go to Iraq to be part of the warfighting maneuver. Upon arrival they replaced the 3d Infantry Division in and around Baghdad to conduct nation building and security operations a difficult mission to which again they skillfully adapted.
The 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) fought in Desert Storm, making air assaults to cut off Iraqi lines of retreat from the Kuwaiti theater. It took them two months to deploy from Fort Campbell. Following Desert Storm, the U.S. Army made an investment in a strategic mobility program that ensured next time deployment would be different. At installations around the country, the Army invested in trains, flat cars and locomotives, shipping containers enhanced with information technology so that each container and its contents could be continually tracked, barges, and staging buildings at airfields. They hired deployment experts for each brigade-sized unit, and conducted training in new deployment methods. The U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force invested in more capable ships and aircraft to deploy Army forces. The Army invested heavily in prepositioned stocks, placing almost everything needed, including major items like tanks and ammunition, in forward areas. They acquired fast-moving Army ships to move that equipment
During the three-week attack to Baghdad, the 101st gave V Corps Commander, LTG Scott Wallace deep reach with their air assault and attack helicopter capability. The division, which had also deployed forces earlier to Afghanistan, also gave V Corps needed versatility during the attack. They showed the enormous versatility of American infantry. Whether it was air assault, fighting Iraqi fedayeen at close quarters in cities and towns, protecting supply lines, attacks on Iraqi Army units, or deep attacks by Apache helicopters, soldiers and leaders of the 101st accomplished their missions. After the capture of Baghdad they moved north to Mosul and rapidly switched operations in an innovative and creative approach to nation building and peace operations.
Finally, it is worth noting the increased versatility shown in this decade by division headquarters. They have served a wide range of command duties directing a wide variety of force packages, from the Balkans to Iraq and Afghanistan. The range of successful missions show the continual Army vision to gain more rapid deployability, while at the same time having the versatility to be able to tailor organizations quickly for what the U.S. Army calls full spectrum operations. It also demonstrates the versatility and adaptability in leaders and soldiers as they make the necessary adjustments to adapt standard organizations to be successful, regardless of the mission, place, or conditions. Learning and adapting from these operations, the U.S. Army continues to provide land power capabilities to Combatant Commanders and the Joint team by making units, including headquarters elements, more 'modular' or capable of being tailored and rapidly deployed.
IDEAS, EXPERIMENTS, AND CONTINUITY
Ideas. To get to the future with organizations and equipment you have to begin with ideas then experiment while also drawing conclusions from operational experience.
How the Army thinks about the future is to lead with ideas. Earlier on in these pages, we described so-called 'warning lights' used at TRADOC that were key indicators of when and in what direction to revise key warfighting ideas. They were: threats and unknown dangers, national military strategy, history and lessons learned from it, the changing nature of warfare, and technology. You are always watching those and scanning the horizons for change. Sometimes all those lights are lit and you need to revise your ideas and change your warfighting methods and how you train and equip soldiers, organize units, and develop leaders. So it was that all through those years of its previous post 1970s rebirth the Army revised its basic set of warfighting ideas to lead change.
The U.S. Army records those ideas in what it calls its capstone doctrine, FM 100-5 and now FM 3.0. The successful rebirth of the Army from the 1970s started with ideas laid out in the 1976 edition of FM 100-5. That book was continuously revised. Following Desert Storm all those indicators were lit again and the Army responded in a new edition of FM 100-5 in June 1993. The manual focused on a set of ideas that described how the Army should think about operations in the post-Cold War world and in an increasingly interdependent joint military team of all services.
Thus, even though a campaign in Afghanistan was not predicted, in its 1993 edition of FM 100-5, Operations, the Army had recognized the need to break away from the linear battlefield of the Cold War and laid the groundwork for how to think about devising future campaigns:
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Those thoughts were a marker in 1993 for new conditions as the Army thought they might appear. As those strategic conditions became more clear and national strategy changed, military doctrine would be revised to deal with them. So, there was revision in Army doctrine published in June 2001, called FM 3.0—a set of ideas about Army forces operating as part of the joint military team in the early twenty-first century in what is termed a 'contemporary operating environment' and full spectrum operations. It also in ways was a continuum, informing battle commanders that they must create an operational framework to fit the particular situations and missions they were given, just as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Experiments. How you think about the future also involves using an experimental method, which can inform the Army about what ideas to change and which to retain. Technology investments tied to those ideas in what the Army calls concept-based requirements will provide that continuing battlefield edge for soldiers. Experiments can also sharply cut development time if they are done in a collaborative way.
