Army Shifts Strategies on Vehicles Source: The Washington Post November 16, 2000
After decades of reliance on tanks, the Army plans to
equip its newest armored units with lighter vehicles that move on
wheels, a radical departure that reflects the Army's changing missions
and has generated intense controversy inside the service, senior
military and civilian officials said yesterday.
THE DECISION may be announced as early as Friday,
following notification of congressional leaders and final clearance by
top Defense Department officials. The "Medium Armored Vehicles" will
go to a model brigade formed earlier this year as the centerpiece of
the Army's effort to leave the Cold War behind and transform itself
into a force than can rush to trouble spots within days rather than
weeks or months.
The embrace of wheeled vehicles comes after more than a
year of contentious deliberations on the Army's future and involves
much more than just a new piece of equipment. It will require changes
in the way the Army trains, deploys and fights. Rather than preparing
primarily for an all-out land war, as it did during the Cold War, the
Army is reshaping itself to engage in numerous smaller conflicts,
peacekeeping missions and humanitarian relief assignments.
Supporters in the Army leadership describe the choice of
a wheeled armored vehicle as a historic step comparable to the advent
of the battleship and the machine gun, which revolutionized warfare in
their time. Critics, who abound in the Army, especially in tank units,
contend that soldiers' lives will be in danger without the firepower
and protection provided by heavy tanks.
At an Army meeting last month, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki,
the service's chief of staff, bluntly called for an end to the
dissension. "If you chose not to get on board, that's okay, but then
get out of the way," he said.
The selection reverses a half-century trend in which the
Army, since adopting the tank between the two world wars, has bought
ever bigger and heavier armored vehicles. Today's M-1A2 Abrams tank is
considered almost unbeatable in open terrain - such as the plains of
central Germany for which it was designed - but at 70 tons is so heavy
that it cannot be transported quickly to most parts of the world and
cannot cross small bridges or maneuver on narrow roads in places such
as Kosovo.
Although the old Army, built around heavy-tank
formations, proved its value in the Gulf War, "over the last 10 years
the change in the strategic environment has required us to flex to
meet additional demands," Shinseki said last month.
NEW STANDARDS
The Army's requirements for the new vehicles set the
maximum weight at 19 tons to ensure that they can be carried by the
Air Force's smallest and most common transport plane, the C-130. In
the inevitable trade-off, the Army gave up some of the protection
provided by heavy armor plating and the all-terrain capabilities of
tank treads.
The new vehicles will come in a dozen variations,
including an infantry carrier, a tank-like mobile gun system, a
reconnaissance vehicle and a computer-laden mobile headquarters. By
using a common chassis for all those variants, the Army hopes to trim
the tons of logistical support and crowds of mechanics now required to
keep mechanized units running.
The Army's new "medium-weight brigade" is being designed
around just three basic types of vehicles - the wheeled armored
vehicle, the Jeep-like Humvee and a military truck - compared with
about a dozen in the service's current armored units.
More than 300 of the wheeled armored vehicles will be
bought for the new combat brigade that was created over the past year
at Fort Lewis, Wash. That brigade is supposed be declared
operational - that is, ready to take on a real-world mission - in a
little over a year.
Ultimately, five more similarly-equipped brigades are to
follow, for a total purchase by the Army of roughly 3,000 vehicles at
a cost of about $2.5 million each, or about $7.5 billion altogether, a
Pentagon official said.
QUICK DEPLOYMENT
The new units are designed to be able to move anywhere
in the world in 96 hours. That's a far cry from the agonizingly slow
movement of "Task Force Hawk," a unit of Army helicopters and missile
batteries that was sent to Albania during last year's Kosovo campaign
but that never actually engaged in combat. Another incident that
helped spur the formation of the new, medium-weight unit was a
firefight in
Mogadishu, Somalia, in October 1993 in which 18 U.S. troops were
killed, some as they awaited a rescue mission that was delayed because
the Army did not have any armored vehicles in the area.
The Army does not plan to do away with its monster main
battle tanks just yet, but will keep them ready for conflicts with a
major adversary, such as Iraq, whose heavy tanks could outgun the
medium-weight brigades.
Starting in about 2010, the Army hopes to start fielding
high-tech weaponry that has yet to be invented. It wants something as
light as the wheeled vehicles but as durable and powerful as today's
tanks. The Army's future vehicles are likely to be armored with
ceramics rather than metal and may be armed with some sort of electric
gun rather than a conventional cannon. But the battlefield tactics for
this futuristic Army will be developed by the medium-weight brigades
equipped with the newly selected wheeled vehicles.
SUPPORT GROWS, SLOWLY
Congressional reaction to the new vehicle appears to be
generally supportive. "I don't see any problems," said Rep. Ike
Skelton (D-Mo.), the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services
Committee. Even so, there is some nervousness at the Pentagon about
how Capitol Hill will react, in part because of the influence of
companies that make tanks and other tracked vehicles.
In addition, the Marine Corps has watched with some
concern over the past year as the Army has become more like the Corps,
creating lighter, expeditionary units. Officially, the Marines have
been supportive of the Army's transformation plan. But in private
conversations, Marine officers sometimes make comments such as, "We
don't need two Marine Corps."
Another wild card is the presidential election. Texas
Gov. George W. Bush vowed on the campaign trail to push the military
to adapt to the post-Cold War world much faster than it has over the
past decade. Richard Armitage, one of Bush's defense advisers,
indicated in an interview yesterday that if the Republican candidate
becomes president, he might want to review the Army's new direction.
While "Bush has made transformation a major element of
his defense program," Armitage said, American history also makes it
clear that "militaries should not be in charge of their own
transformations."
© 2000 The Washington Post Company
by Thomas E. Ricks and Roberto Suro