From concept to combat

Soldiers Magazine, June, 2004 by Reginald P. Rogers

EVERY Soldier is a rifleman first. Every Soldier is a warrior," said SMA Kenneth O. Preston.

"The American Soldier is the centerpiece of the Army. As Army transformation moves from conception to combat, all the changes that are taking place, everything that is being planned and done, supports Soldiers," according to officials at U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command.

The Soldier

"We fully intend to make the Soldier's role on the battlefield easier for him," said BG Benjamin Freakley, commanding general of Fort Benning, Ga. "It's a tough task. It's never going to be easy, but we want to try to provide the Soldier with good situational awareness so that he'll know what's happening around him, where his fellow Soldiers are and where the enemy is."

The changes inherent in the Army's transformation go much deeper than new weapons systems, TRADOC officials said. These changes include the way the Army fights, its combat mindset, the way units are manned and organized, the way supplies

SFC Reginald Rogers is assigned to the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command are distributed, and the amount of firepower to be used during combat operations. Each of these factors in the Army's restructuring is an improvement, designed to achieve one goal: optimizing the Army's combat firepower.

Warrior Ethos

The changes start with the Soldier. Warrior Ethos is the renewed spirit of the fight, of teamwork and commitment that are taught to every Soldier, beginning with basic training or one-station unit training, and reaching as far forward as the troops deployed today in support of the global war on terrorism, TRADOC officials said.

"It's an entire change of thinking," Freakley said. "It starts with the fact that we're a nation at war that is sometimes surprised by peace, not a nation at peace that goes to war occasionally. So all Soldiers understand they will be deployed and will fight. They will serve their nation in this war on terrorism.

"We don't want Soldiers to think 'I hope my convoy doesn't get attacked.' We want them to think 'Lord, help anyone who tries to interfere with this convoy, because we'll destroy them,'" Freakley said. "We are Soldiers. We are warriors. The notions that 'I will always put the mission first, I will never accept defeat, I will never quit, and I will never leave behind a fallen comrade' are tenets that sustain the Soldier."

"We're awfully proud of our Soldiers," Freakley said. "We've had great Soldiers who've done a great job fighting this global war on terrorism. We just need to hone their thinking that they'll overcome any adversity directed toward them. Whether it be the enemy, bad weather or technological failure, it doesn't matter. With the American spirit, they will prevail."

Joint and Expeditionary Army Soldiers and teams motivated by warrior ethos subsequently form a joint and expeditionary Army with a campaign capability, TRADOC officials said.

"Most Soldiers understand intuitively what we're talking about," said Bob Simpson, deputy director for Task Force-Joint Expeditionary Army, at Fort Monroe, Va., "because every Soldier who has deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan understands what 'joint' means and how we fight jointly. He also understands the nature of 'expeditionary.'"

"A campaign capability is the ability to sustain the fight until victory is achieved, what the Army has done for America since the beginning of our nation," Simpson said. "Joint is about combining all the capabilities of all of the services in a purposeful way to ensure that we maximize each others' strengths and minimize our weaknesses."

An expeditionary force, Simpson said, is one that is prepared mentally and physically to go into uncertain conditions, to fight against enemies it is not necessarily prepared to engage.

"It's kind of the opposite of the Cold War, where we had forward-deployed forces. We would line up against an enemy--who looked much like we do--knowing exactly how he fought," Simpson said.

"'And now, our enemies don't look like us. They try not to look like us. And the Soldiers are going into unfamiliar new environments," he added.

Joint Interdependence

In future operations all services will operate as a joint force, leading to development of joint interdependency, TRADOC officials said. That's when each service relies on the firepower and assistance of the other in a mission to defeat a common enemy. Soldiers rely on airmen. Marines rely on sailors. Everybody relies on the Army to take and hold ground.

"At the Army level, I think the tough thing to explain is how all of this affects the Army and everything we're doing," Simpson said. "We've got an Army of a certain size. Within that army, we need a lot of capabilities. In some cases--if we can rely on another service for a particular capability--we can count on our own internal structure to fulfill a requirement perhaps it couldn't before."

Simpson said that proof of the military's conversion to "jointness" could be found in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"The Air Force broadly characterizes missions flown against ground targets into two categories," Simpson said. "Battlefield air interdiction, or 'close air support,' and strategic bombing, where they go out and destroy the big targets. In Operation Desert Storm, the Air Force flew about 80 percent of its missions against strategic bombing targets, and about 20 percent in close air support to ground troops. In Iraq, 80 percent of the air missions were in direct support of Soldiers on the ground."