Email this page to friends RSS feed About the Author 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." Special Feature: "Discharged and Dishonored" This special report looks at the plight of our nation's veterans, and their battle to claim their benefits. Full Joe Galloway Bio Joe Galloway Archives Special Report: Read Joe Galloway's new column for Knight Ridder Newspapers on Echo Company. Sound Off! -- Have an opinion about this article? Visit the Joe Galloway discussion forum. Military Opinions Index Your Two Cents Submit your stories, news items, or a benefits update -- and help Military.com bring the best, most important stories to your fellow servicemembers, veterans, and family members. Contribute here

WASHINGTON - The secretary of defense late last year pronounced, famously, that "you have to go to war with the Army you have -- not the Army you want."

The Army we sent to war in Iraq is being changed both by the war and by a Pentagon leadership hell-bent on fixing something that may not have been all that broken before they went to work on it.

The buzz words "transformation" and "the Objective Army" are driving radical and rapid change -- perhaps too rapid -- without a great deal of serious thought about anything but the war in Iraq, the war on terrorism and a perceived future threat of small brushfire wars.

It has been said that armies and generals are always preparing to fight their last war. In this case they seem to be preparing to fight the war they are currently fighting, with little reference to what we may face a decade or two in the future.

The engine driving this change is criticism that -- with its heavy Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles and heavy artillery -- the Army is equipped and arrayed to fight the Soviet army in the Fulda Gap and on the plains of Germany long after the Cold War ended and that threat evaporated.

One major goal of Army transformation, according to new research and a book from the RAND Corp., is to have the capability of deploying a combat brigade with its equipment anywhere in the world in 96 hours.

Toward that end the Army's current 33 brigades are being turned into 43 "units of maneuver," formerly known as "modular brigades," as in plug-and-play modular. This is to be accomplished with no permanent increase in the 485,000 soldiers who serve in the active duty Army.

Meanwhile, the old top-heavy division structure that controlled, supplied and supported the brigades it owned will shrivel to little more than headquarters outfits, with each brigade owning its own integral supply and support units.

The RAND study and the book of essays, titled "The Army and the New National Security Strategy," quite rightly asks, in so many words: What's the hurry? Most wars, even the smaller ones, seem to take a good amount of time to get going.

The research was conducted in the RAND Arroyo Center, the Army's federally funded research center.

Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. Central Command boss at the time, began quietly moving equipment and stockpiles into Kuwait and building a new war headquarters in Qatar a year before the invasion of Iraq. One of his predecessors, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, had six months to assemble a force of 550,000 Americans before his 100-hour war took Kuwait back from Iraq in 1991.

Then there is the overriding question of precisely who this lighter, more agile Army will be prepared to fight when it gets there in 96 hours? The only new armored vehicle fielded in 20 years is the Stryker light armored Infantry vehicle, with its rubber tires. It may be built for speeds of 50 mph, but can it outrun a 120mm tank round?

These preparations are turning the entire Army into a force that can move quickly to fight small wars against poorly trained, poorly equipped armies with little or no air power.

What if America is forced in another decade or two to face off against a Russia revitalized by oil wealth and reaching out to grab back the old Soviet empire in Eastern Europe? Or a China turning outward and expansionist by virtue of its burgeoning military and economic power and its thirst for influence, oil and power?

The RAND study says, "It is difficult to see how the desired light, readily deployable units will have the flexibility demanded of a full-spectrum force. Afghanistan proved the worth of light forces configured as they currently are, and Iraq has shown the need for heavy armor."

In other words maybe what we need is a good mixture: light outfits like the airborne and air-mobile Infantry, something in between like the Stryker brigades and some very heavy and very deadly divisions that may arrive a little more slowly, but arrive with all the tanks you need when you need them.

Something not all that vastly different from the Army Rumsfeld inherited in 2001 when he came back to the Pentagon for his second tour of duty as the boss.

Email this page to friendsRSS feed