Joseph L. Galloway
is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and a nationally syndicated columnist.
One of America's preeminent war correspondents,
with more than four decades as a reporter
and writer, he recently concluded an assignment
as a special consultant to Gen. Colin Powell
at the State Department.
Galloway, a native of Refugio, Texas, spent
22 years as a foreign and war correspondent
and bureau chief for United Press International,
and nearly 20 years as a senior editor and
senior writer for U.S. News & World Report
magazine. His overseas postings include tours
in Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Singapore
and three years as UPI bureau chief in Moscow
in the former Soviet Union. During the course
of 15 years of foreign postings Galloway served
four tours as a war correspondent in Vietnam
and also covered the 1971 India-Pakistan War
and half a dozen other combat operations.
In 1990-1991 Galloway covered Desert Shield/Desert
Storm, riding with the 24th Infantry Division
(Mech) in the assault into Iraq. General H.
Norman Schwarzkopf has called Galloway "The
finest combat correspondent of our generation
-- a soldier's reporter and a soldier's friend."
Joseph L. Galloway, Knight Ridder, interviewed Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, Army Chief of Staff, on Thursday, January 15, 2004, in his office in the Pentagon.
Schoomaker: Things are going well, but it is very fast. As Gen. Dick Cody says, when you tune a truck you turn off the engine before you go to work but when you operate on a heart it is still running. In this case, we're not turning off the engine while we make the fixes. I'm very encouraged. We are getting a lot of support. Our soldiers are doing well. The only problem is there are not enough hours in the day, nor days in the week.
Joseph L. Galloway, Knight Ridder: Tell me what the effects of the lessons learned in Afghanistan and Iraq have been on Army Transformation?
Schoomaker : We are doing everything, with teams from TRADOC (Army Training and Doctrine Command) and the Army staff. We are all over it and truly we are into it -- working it while it is happening, learning as we go, changing our equipment. The interesting thing about it is Iraq and Afghanistan, even within Iraq itself, there are different challenges based on where you are. Maj. Gen. Dave Petraeus (101st Division in Mosul, northern Iraq) is doing a great job in the north, with the demographics he has up there. But that differs from what Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno (4th Infantry Division, Tikrit area) is doing. Maj. Gen. Chuck Swannack (82nd Airborne) has a different challenge in the west. And Brig. Gen. Marty Dempsey in the 1st Armor Division has Baghdad and he deals with entirely different conditions. And we are working with Coalition Forces, the British in particular, and the Poles
I think we are learning a lot, but at same time we are learning that we can't forget there are other challenges out there that the Army has to be prepared to face. So right up front I will tell you that we are very mindful that you can't apply all of the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan to the responsibilities that the Army has to defend the nation and be part of the joint team. There are other constructs.
I am quite encouraged about the people; their curiosity is up; the more we learn, the more we search for more answers. You may have seen what we are doing with the Rapid Fielding Initiative: we are equipping now the three National Guard brigades that are going over. They are getting the very best equipment. Top of the line stuff. We have worked the armored vest, maximized production, increased from one to six vendors. This month we have finally provided enough body armor for every soldier in Iraq.
On the question of up-armored humvees, we are approaching that from multiple avenues. We have ramped up production, going from producing 80 up-armored humvees a month to 120.
We are spending over a billion dollars this year to better equip our soldiers. This is a big investment in soldiers. Our central focus is on the soldier.
Knight Ridder: We are interested in the mix of the force; how you are taking these Guard artillery brigades and retraining them to be MPs (Military Police) and sending them to Iraq.
Schoomaker : Within the force that fought the Iraq war, we dismounted all kinds of folks---artillery, air defense, you name it---they picked up their rifles and learned to patrol as Infantry. It's amazing the adaptability of our soldiers. We have taken a look at that and at what the future looks like, particularly the Reserve components. The difficulty we have in the Reserve components today is that they are way over-structured; in other words they have much more structure in their units than they have people.
The National Guard has 305,000 soldiers but it has structure for many more than that. That's traditionally been the way. In the active Army we have what we call the TTS account -- people in transit, people in school, people in the hospital. They do not count against the readiness of their units. So the operating force is that much less than the total strength of the Army. The Army National Guard doesn't have that system. They have too many spaces for the faces they have.
One of the things we have way too much of is artillery outfits. So what we are doing won't mean we are taking a risk by reducing our artillery force; we have adequate artillery. We saw an opportunity there to take the artillery down by 36 battalions and we are going to convert them into engineers, Military Police, civil affairs units. Yes, a permanent conversion. This is being worked by the chief of the National Guard, the chief of the Army Guard, and the chief of Army Reserves.
The notion is to bring that structure down in numbers, reorganize that structure and then fill it with trained people. Then give them an account where they can send people to school without it counting against readiness.
If you look at the whole Army, the reality is that the Army Guard, under Title 32, has the responsibility to respond to their governors in times of emergency. In most cases they need the same kind of people we need in Iraq today: medical, transport, MP's. The old system made sense in World War II or during the Cold War where you stood by for total mobilization for all-out war.
Today we are talking of becoming much more joint and expeditionary in the active Army. The Secretary of Defense (Donald H. Rumsfeld) has asked us to take a look at the first 15 to 30 days of any mobilization seeking ways to reduce our dependence on the Reserve components.
We want to build active Army and Reserve component units that look alike and we want to build modularity into the force. That's exactly how we are operating in Iraq today. The Marines when they go in this time will have an Army brigade of 1st Infantry Division attached to them. Instead of having to use a whole division together we want to be able to use a brigade from any division with any other division, or on its own.
When you mobilize it seems to us that it is best not to pull everything and everyone out of one place. For instance, Fort Hood in Texas has two Army divisions. But the slowest way to mobilize two divisions is to pull them all out of Fort Hood. They have only one airfield, only one rail line, only two ports down there. But if you have interchangeable brigades from six or eight different places, using all those rail lines and ports and airfields you now can generate much more combat power much more quickly. And if they are standardized to the point where you can plug and play like Legos then it makes sense.
Knight Ridder: What do you have to do to achieve that 15 to 30 days without using Reserve or Guard components?
Schoomaker: He (Rumsfeld) didn't say we had to do it totally without them - but that we should minimize their use in that first period. The preponderance of our civil affairs units is still in the reserve components, even though we are bringing more of them into the active Army. Then there is port opening capability: the people who open the ports and handle the loading and unloading of ships. We are pulling some of that into the active force.
What we are doing is pulling the structure, not the people, into the active Army. We will convert people on active duty to do those jobs. (Without affecting the Army end strength?) That's right. There are several ways we are doing this. The Secretary of Defense asked us to look at a whole slew of initiatives, things like converting military positions to civilian jobs. We've already done about 5,000 of those in the active force and we are now looking at doing another 5,000.
Then there is stabilizing the force, not moving soldiers or units as much. Right now we have about 63,000 people in the active Army who are in motion---two-thirds of them are people just coming into the Army and doing their entry training and schools. There are a number who are leaving the Army, retiring, what have you. The other 30 to 40 percent we are just moving around. If we can stabilize the force it means families can stay in one place longer; that means soldiers' spouses can work; that means their children can stay in same schools. Then soldiers are more comfortable with rotating on deployments.
By reducing all that movement we think we can harvest some of these people. Let's say we can get 10,000 people out of that account just by stabilizing the force. There are other initiatives such as Global Force Re-posturing. If we can reduce some of overhead in Europe and Korea, requiring fewer installation people, less layering of headquarters, then we can get some more people freed up.
There are other pieces to this like stop-movement, stop-loss. We have overages authorized in the current emergency and that gives us some headroom. At present the Army is running 11,000 soldiers above the statutory limit (of 480,000 active duty troops). That may grow a bit because we are stabilizing the people in Iraq.
Until we correct the force imbalance and correct the structural problems in the reserve components, it seems to me it is really not prudent to add a bunch of people to the Army, which is extremely expensive. Once we inform ourselves and know how we are set, we may very well come back and say we need more end strength (a larger Army in terms of numbers). This is the analysis and discussion that is going on right now. But I am here to tell you I have tremendous support out of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and this is kind of exciting.
We have 1.2 million people in this Army, the total Army (active, Reserves, National Guard). We need to be able to use more of what we are paying for, and the answer is in the balance of structure. We may come to the point after we have got ourselves totally figured out that the Army needs to be bigger. My sense is that we are going to be able to pay for a lot of this within our own program.
The big problem is that whatever we bring in we are going to have to pay for over the long run, and people are very expensive. Two divisions, just the manpower, would cost us $6 billion to $7 billion a year. When we come out of the current emergency, and we don't have the kind of motion and funding help we are getting right now, and we start getting the pressure to unwind and bring it down, we can't eat $6 billion or $7 billion a year without affecting training, ammunition, people and flying hours. Then you go back to the bad old days. It would be imprudent to buy in to that kind of expensive solution, increasing the Army end strength, and that is the whole issue.
Knight Ridder: Vice President Cheney speaking in Los Angeles this week, said that we are about to undergo the greatest military transformation since World War II. He talked about changing bases in Europe and bringing divisions there back home. Is there anything afoot to further reduce Army end-strength, to stand down any of the divisions returning from Europe?
Schoomaker: There has been no such discussion. In one of my first talks with them when they asked me to come back and do this job, I asked if it was their intent to reduce the Army force. It is not. That is not to say that when we get through with all that is going on now, and things are different five years from now, that someone won't bring it up. But I have seen nothing like that so far. If anything, I think people have seen the importance of the Army; the importance of having an Army that can operate globally, with much more agility and flexibility than in the Cold War when we had a different enemy and mission. I can honestly tell you we have had no conversations about reducing the size of the Army.
We are talking about one of most significant transformations, especially of the Army. The Navy is, too, in a different way. Adm. Vern Clark is dealing in platforms; it is a more finite problem to put technology in a ship and reduce the crew from 500 to 200 or 100. Vern is looking at bringing down end strength because the money he puts into end strength comes out of acquisitions, and he has a ship-building problem. He is approaching it for different reasons.
This is absolutely fundamental to the good health of the Army and the better use of the taxpayers' dollars. I believe if we are successful not only will we be using the taxpayers' money more wisely but we will have an Army that is prepared to deal with a much broader range of missions that we are being asked to do. I think it will provide a sense of stability, better predictability for the people. It is less a matter of numbers of people than it is units that are available. We are trying to increase the number of brigades that are available to us. We will keep the division flags and increase the number of combat brigades available to us, both active and in the reserve components, so that we have a broader base to continue to rotate through commitments like Korea, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan.
You want to get out of the individual replacement system; you want to train them as a unit, rotate them as a unit, bring them home as a unit, retrain and reset them and get them ready to go again as a unit. It makes a lot of sense.
Knight Ridder: An idea has been floated that we need to create two divisions of peacekeepers or a constabulary force?
Schoomaker: There have been discussions of a constabulary force, or a peacekeeper force. We don't agree with this, and there hasn't been any great pressure for this. Most people agree that would take you in the wrong direction. More adaptive, more agile forces are the answer. Look at the capabilities and flexibilities of the American soldier being demonstrated today. We do see a need for more Infantry. Look at the Stryker Brigade; it contains some 1,100 Infantry. That gives us a capacity we really need.
Knight Ridder: The 101st Airborne Division has responsibility for northern Iraq and covers the borders with Syria and Iran. They have 18,000 soldiers to do that job. When they depart, they will be replaced by the Stryker Brigade, which is less than a third that size. How can they do the job?
Schoomaker: The Stryker Brigade won't have same footprint as the 101st AB. Gen. John Abizaid has said the Stryker Brigade will have a footprint that it can handle. We generating a lot of Iraqi forces, border forces, and we want to turn over more local and regional control to them. But rest assured, those border areas will be covered.
Knight Ridder: You have any fear that all these rotations to combat duty will end up breaking the Army?
Schoomaker: I don't have any fear that this will break the Army. We need to be making these adjustments and I don't think that we are going to break the Army. The strategic question is what kind of volunteer force do we need to man this Army? Not just structure but the force itself. What are the expectations of people who join the Army and how do we incentivize that. That's the question. I get a sense that we are getting a huge increase in the quality of our recruits today. At present 96 percent of recruits are high school graduates. Our lowest category of soldiers makes up something like .02 of a percent. We have a smarter force, much more motivated. These kids are doing it for the right reason and we think that is the right direction to go. What we need to do is make sure we are setting the right conditions for them; that we meet their expectations. That we take care of their families. And we need to make sure that they understand this is about service, nothing less. We made over 100 percent of our goal in recruiting and retention in 2003.
Knight Ridder: You had 16 initiatives you outlined when you became Chief of Staff. Can you report on the progress?
Schoomaker: I am amazed with what has been done in these five months. I am so encouraged by the energy I see. Of course, you are never satisfied. Every time you get some, you want more. The active component/reserve component rebalance; Force Stability' the Soldier Initiative; rethinking Army Aviation. All of these have produced very encouraging results. The good news is that all this motion we have as these guys come out of Iraq. They aren't the same as when they went in. The 3rd Infantry Division that came out of Iraq is a lot better outfit than the one that went in. They came back different because of their combat experience. The 101st, the 82nd are coming out of there with a whole different line drawn on the wall as far as what they know, what they have done, what they have experienced.
The silver lining in this cloud of how busy the Army is, is that it is in motion and in that motion we can do all kinds of stuff, positive stuff. People are finding out what real soldiering is all about, they are seeing the tiger. It really makes us a much tougher Army. I am very very proud of our soldiers, and I can't take any credit for it. What we are doing is taking that momentum and using it to our advantage and over time we will have the whole team moving in a positive direction. This is very useful to the nation. I am an optimist. I wouldn't have signed up for this if I didn't think we could succeed. I am proud to be back.
