Unity of Effort across Service lines demands that regional unified command structures direct warfight-ing operations from a unified, “all arms” perspective.19 The Goldwater-Nichols Act, like the Articles of Con-federation, was a profound improvement over the ad hoc arrangements of the past, but like the Articles of Confederation, the legislation failed to endow the new unified order it created with the authority required to unify its parts.20
Today, the multitude of single-Service operational, two, three, and four star headquarters that proliferate inside the regional unified commands militate against unity of effort in ways that also overlap with the de-structive inter-Service fight for shrinking defense dol-lars. They too will eventually be transformed and con-solidated into single-integrated command structures capable of commanding and employing whatever modular capability-based forces—ISR, strike, maneu-ver, or sustainment—the Services send to them. If the
strategic vision fails to produce this outcome, fiscal re-ality eventually will. The anticipated reduction in the number of unified commands will simply accelerate this process.
Building the integrated, joint C2 inside the regional unified commands will take time, but the coming in-terwar period is the right time to experiment, test, and evaluate the potential alternatives. The Army is ide-ally positioned to lead this process. As a first step, the Army can stand up two “Joint Force Land Component Commands” (JFLCC), one oriented to the East or the Pacific and, the other oriented to the West or North Africa and the Middle East. (See Figure 7-4.)
Figure 7-4. Proposed Joint Force Land Component.
With the expansion of strike and ISR assets, the JFLCC Commander must have deputies from the Navy and the Air Force, together with staffs commit-ted to employ the full complement of air, ground, elec-tronic, and information operations capabilities. Sensor
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systems that detect, locate, track, and target vehicles and groups of people moving within a large area of the earth’s surface provide unprecedented capabili-ties. A deputy for maneuver, an Army major general, is included in the JFLCC, making the deployment of division headquarters unnecessary.
This is not to suggest that in the future U.S. Forces will always know everything all the time. On the con-trary, perfect situational awareness is an illusion. But it does suggest that the integration of maneuver and strike capabilities through the integration of Army, Air Force, and Navy capabilities is the path to decisively exploit what U.S. Forces will know. Thus, “all arms”
warfare requires a force design with fewer echelons of C2 and a faster decision cycle that employs joint/inte-grated sensors that reside primarily in the aerospace and naval forces with maneuver elements land.21
The contemporary Army leadership should take note of conclusions reached decades ago by a genera-tion of senior officers who fought the world’s last Great War. In November 1944, General Courtney Hodges, Commander of First Army, was asked to testify before the Joint Chiefs of Staffs Special Committee for the Re-organization of National Defense. Hodges’s testimony emphasized the following points:
That there was no necessity for separating the ground and air forces, but that it was imperative in future years especially at the War College and at Leavenworth, the officer be thoroughly trained in both ground and air operations so that logically by this system an air force officer could command a corps or an army.22
Hodges’s comments highlight a critical issue for today’s Army: The deficit the Army’s senior lead-ership should worry most about is intellectual, not
fiscal. Joint operational concepts in the sense of inte-grating maneuver and strike on the operational and tactical levels must be developed in ways that utilize basic, learned principles, but are still flexible enough to permit the maximum number of approaches to unforeseen operational challenges. Contingency war is warfare with unexpected parameters, waged with insufficient time to prepare, and fought in a place where the political and military leadership did not an-ticipate fighting. If the Army is to posit future conflict scenarios successfully, and then to infer from them the need for capabilities that may not yet exist inside a force with an adaptive force design, a small body of talented, professional officers is needed to study the range of operational and strategic problems and recommend solutions.
Eliminating the unneeded echelon of brigade com-mand will offer the opportunity to promote younger officers faster to flag rank. While this change would constitute an improvement, by itself, it would not be enough. For a new human capital strategy to have any meaning, it must institutionalize a selection sys-tem that values talent more than longevity of Service (C2I = Character, Competence, Intelligence). The of-ficers selected to perform these tasks must be chosen on the basis of demonstrated performance against ob-jective standards: examinations for entry to the Staff College, testing and evaluation at the training centers, and assessments during deployments. Simply select-ing those who have cultivated influence at the four-star level by serving as aide-de-camps or marrying the general’s daughter is not the answer. Developing officers with the courage and imagination to explore new ways of doing things is too important to ignore.
Observations about the character and talents of a
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ing officer must come from more than one source—his or her immediate superior.
Serving Army officers continue to express dissat-isfaction with an Army that lacks objective measures to discriminate between levels of performance, thus undermining leadership development. Graduates of Army schools are criticized for the inability to quickly develop creative solutions to complex problems in a time-constrained environment.23 Clearly, a better means for talent management is desperately needed in the Army.
To get the right leaders into the right positions of authority and responsibility, leaders at every level (squad leaders through four stars) must demonstrate performance against an objective standard. Standards for technical competence are rigorously enforced at sea in the U.S. Navy. Pilots who fail to master the re-quired skills are washed out of flight school. Similar standards must be established and enforced across the Army. Without concrete standards of performance and tests for competence, an environment conducive to initiative and independent action within a com-monly understood operational framework from low-est to highlow-est levels will simply not emerge. For ex-ample, once a captain has completed command, his or her file should be stamped “validated” and then set aside. At this point, the skills and knowledge required for further advancement will be fundamentally differ-ent and not simply an extension of the first 5 or 8 years of service.
A written examination required for admission to the General Staff College is essential. By publishing the list of required reading and study material, “vali-dated” captains would know precisely what areas would be tested and what skills they would need to
perform well. The top 25 percent of the officers tested would be admitted once the test results were com-piled. Every captain would be given three opportuni-ties over 3 years to take the examination and qualify for admission to the residence course.
CONCLUSIONS
Americans tend to forget that, long before we were an independent Nation-State, we were, first and fore-most, an Army. It was the professional core of that American Army, the Continental Army, that endured the years of hardship and despair, cooperated closely with the army and navy of France, and finally defeated the British army at Yorktown. In the end, the combina-tion of character, competence, and intelligence gave Americans victory at Yorktown and, with that victory, independence.
In fundamental terms, the Continental Army was an early vindication of Helmuth von Moltke’s age-less principle, “The most outstanding institution in every nation is the Army, for it alone makes possible the existence of all other institutions.”24 In this sense, the U.S. Army’s central role in American society as the guarantor of American liberty and the rule of law that supports it has changed little since Washington commanded America’s first Regular Army on the battlefield at Yorktown. The time for the reemergence of America’s “regulars” is upon us. Now is the time to deploy intellectually and professionally, both to restore the foundations of economic prosperity inside the United States and to create the basis for future un-assailable American military power.
Soldiers know what is required: ready, deployable Army forces-in-being, highly trained forces capable
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of decisive action on land within a joint warfighting framework. Bold new initiatives to create the Army forces described in this chapter can succeed, but incre-mental changes on the margins of the Cold War status quo court failure and will produce few real savings with no qualitative increase in the Army’s warfighting capability.
Unfortunately, the Army, grounded as it is in the past, is seldom adept at dealing with the future. Dur-ing the last interwar period, end-strength fell, and dollars dried up. New ideas and new organizations for combat were treated as disruptive. Officers who did not conform to the party line vanished. General of the Army George C. Marshall spent 6 years (1939-45) replacing the Army’s generals and recovering Army Forces from 20 years of professional neglect.
In 1996, Andrew Grove, former chairman of the board of Intel Corporation, described a strategic inflec-tion point as a point in time when the balance of forces shifts from the old structure, from the old ways of do-ing business and the old ways of competdo-ing, to the new, leading large organizational structures to adapt and thrive or simply decline and die.25 The Army has reached an historic strategic inflection point. How the Army’s senior leadership organizes, trains, and equips its forces to deal with strategic uncertainty now will determine whether the Army thrives to fulfill this mis-sion, or is marginalized and defunded.