Demise of FCS and Future of US Army

[sgtgunn]

I just read an interesting Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments paper on the cancelation of the US Army's FCS program and what that might mean for the US Army going forward. One point that was made in the paper was that in the forseeable future, the greatest threats the US Army was likely to face would continue to be primarily asymetric threats from non-state or individual actors rather than large conventional ground forces of the type the FCS was designed to defeat. Even the handful of nations that can field large conventional forces and are potentialy US adversaries (North Korea, Iran) are likely to resort to asymmetric tactics rather than fight a Gulf War 1 or opening stages of OIF conflict, as the current US Army forces would presumably be sufficient to wipe the floor with them.

So my question is what direction should the US Army's force structure (and moderinization) go? History has shown us that forces designed and trainined to primarily fight large scale conventional conflicts are often ill suited to fight asymmetric or counter-insurgency conflicts. At the same time, equipment and training for those sorts of fights are often little use in any potential conventional fight (MRAPs being a glaring example). Can the US Army afford to field a "two-tier" force with some units trainined and equipped to continue to fight the likely counter-insuregncy or asymmetric conflicts that are likely to be so common in the future, while also maintaining a conventional fight capable heavy force? Do we buy MRAPs or MBTs & IFVs? Does it make sense to continue to purchase extremely expensive weapon systems that we can't even be sure are relevant to likely future conflicts - or can we afford not to?

The Army's Force structure is changing shifting lighter infantry BCTs to the NG, while concentrating heavy BCT in the active army. This is going to shift more of the burden of counter insurgency type operations to the NG while leaving the active army as the primary force for heavy conventional fights. In my mind this is backwards. IMO Long drawn out unconventional fights are better dealt with by full-time proffesional forces who have the time to be able to train to meet the specific requirements of the situation. Also it is politically easier to use such forces in potentionally drawn out and unpopular fights. Putting more heavy, conventional capability into the NG puts the NG back into its tradtional role of a National Reserve only to be used in cases of serious national emergencies - which any major conventional ground fight is most likely to be - the kind of fight where there are clear obvious objectives, victories, etc. which make using reserve forces more politically feasible.

Any insights?

Thanks,

Adrian

 

[swerve]

...

The Army's Force structure is changing shifting lighter infantry BCTs to the NG, while concentrating heavy BCT in the active army. This is going to shift more of the burden of counter insurgency type operations to the NG while leaving the active army as the primary force for heavy conventional fights. In my mind this is backwards. IMO Long drawn out unconventional fights are better dealt with by full-time proffesional forces who have the time to be able to train to meet the specific requirements of the situation. Also it is politically easier to use such forces in potentionally drawn out and unpopular fights. Putting more heavy, conventional capability into the NG puts the NG back into its tradtional role of a National Reserve only to be used in cases of serious national emergencies - which any major conventional ground fight is most likely to be - the kind of fight where there are clear obvious objectives, victories, etc. which make using reserve forces more politically feasible.

Any insights?

Thanks,

Adrian

If you're correct that this is the way the US army is going, then I agree with you that it's the wrong way round, for exactly the reasons you give.

 

[Gremlin29]

I think the problem of choice is that it takes so much time to develop and field systems for conventional war that you risk losing that capability by concentrating too much, on LIC. If the need arises for heavy armor divisions and you don't have them, your not going to have them for years. The level of training and sophistication of equipment precludes the rapid military buildup that we would associate with WW2. The Ford plants for example, simply aren't going to ever be able to tool up to produce M1's. We have talked about LIC for many many years and yet very little progress has been made in terms of training and equipment at the troop/unit level as evidenced in Iraq. I think the problem is primarily political on both the civilian and military side.

Interesting points regarding the Guard/Reserve components. I see another problem spawned by the political process. First consider the command of both organizations. For the Guard you have the Guard Bureau, and then you have a Guard command for 52 states! Within each of those commands are sub commands (State Aviation for example). Most of these commands/units are parts of a whole that is dependent upon another state. A problem is, Guard units can not deploy without approval of that states governor. That's alot of politics going on. Never mind that the Army favors the Guard over the Reserves because of partial state funding, they get more bang for their buck.

In the mid 90's there was a major reorganization of the Guard and Reserve components. There were of course, folks on all sides of the fence that were against what was being done however through some quirk in who can do what and how this entire and major change was made without congressional approval or oversight simply because it wasn't required. When regular army division or major base closes, the personnel are simply reassigned to other units and locations. That's fine because AD folks move every 3 or 4 years anyway and since they are AD their job, career etc go with them. When a Guard or Reserve unit is deactivated, to be reactivated elsewhere those personnel often have to reclass in a new MOS or just hang up the towel. Not that many folks have the choice to follow a part time job that pays hundreds of dollars a month 500 miles away. You lose a combat capable organization and replace it with a new organization that can't even pass an internal ARTP because it's lacking MTOE and MOSQ'd soldiers. In other words, these units need to be more or less etched in stone because you can't just relocate them or the personnel.

Now more importantly, during the restructuring of the 90's the Reserves gave up 98% of the combat arms units/job which went to the Guard. The Reserve in turn absorbed support type units from the Guard. To me this is bass ackwards because AH-64's and M1's are useless for disaster relief. The types of units a governor "should" have avaialable to aid the citizens of it's state now belong to...the Reserves....which the governor can't control, activate or utilize. The Guard are supposed to be modern day Minutemen. I'm not convinced we will EVER see foreign armor rolling into Chicago so, why would the Guard need to be prepared for that. I think getting back to the Minuteman concept, you could incorporate those LIC forces into the Guard and let's face it, those types of units would be much more usefull for localized disaster relief or serious civil unrest. It would be much better to have LIC trained and equipped "locals" in these situations versus troops who were primarly trained to close and kill with a conventional enemy. Put the combat arms edge back on the Reserves, those soldiers are always deployable without regard to the political process, they even mobilize individual soldiers to fill shortages in critical skill MOS's. I like where the OP was going, I just think it needs to be Reserve component and not Guard.

 

[eckherl]

I actually think that it is a good idea due to lessons learned in Iraq, let the active units stay geared for a large scale conventional war posture and train additional reserve and NG units for small scale counter insurgency operations. For the type of training and equipment needed it would also be less costly and in most cases these units would not even have to leave their back yards. We have reached a point due to both possible scenarios conventional or small scale operations that we have no choice but to go to a 2 tier type force structure, the FCS program was a failure due to not being able to give smaller size force structures the punch needed to be able to handle both types of possible scenarios, some of the technology was there but not all of it that was needed regardless of what was advertised by some in DOD, the decision to shelve most of the FCS projects was all the proof that was needed that we were not even close of getting a FCS force structure established that we could place confidence in, too costly and unproven technology in some areas of the program.

 

[Gremlin29]

....FCS program was a failure due to not being able to give smaller size force structures the punch needed to be able to handle both types of possible scenarios, some of the technology was there but not all of it that was needed regardless of what was advertised by some in DOD, the decision to shelve most of the FCS projects was all the proof that was needed that we were not even close of getting a FCS force structure established that we could place confidence in, too costly and unproven technology in some areas of the program.

I was thinking the same thing but my reply was getting long winded so I removed my comments on FCS specifically. IMHO it was too much, too fast and the technology was not mature enough to field. FCS should have been a progressive integration process, but most of the systems weren't of any real value as isolated or stand alone components.

I doubt we will ever see the Guard/Reserve components change much of what they are doing now, but revamping them to handle LIC and act as the necessary supplement to a larger force makes total sense. The wall that will prevent this from happening is that as I said earlier, the Army gets too much bang for their buck with the Guard to ever let them restructure for less conventional war fighting capabilities and the lighter cheaper systems the lighter forces could/would use.