Army transformation: the human condition of soldiering

Military Review, May-June, 2004 by Robert G. Delaney

IN THE LATE 1990s, the Chief of Staff of the Army (CSA) announced that Fort Lewis, Washington, would be the site of the Army's initial effort at Transformation. The Transformation challenge was to change personnel procedures, equipment, mission analysis, and leader training to transform the "culture of the unit" from that of a heavy force to one that reflected a common warrior culture.

The term "work in progress" is frequently used to describe Army Transformation, but what did this actually mean to the soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 23d Infantry Regiment (the Tomahawks), under the command of Lieutenant Colonel John Nickolson, Jr.? The 1-23d was one of the initial units to undergo Transformation.

The first interim brigade combat team (IBCT) had no doctrine, no table of organization and equipment, and no established tactics, techniques, and procedures. All it had was the Army Vision, the CSA's oral directive, the draft IBCT operations and organizational (O/O) concept paper, and a stack of PowerPoint slides that described the IBCT. Deputy Commanding General for Transformation Major General James Dubik told Tomahawk leaders not to wait for the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command to write the doctrine, but to begin Transformation at once.

The climate within the 1-23d encouraged critical thinking and dialogue at all levels of the organization. Soldiers and leaders accepted that their ideas would be challenged. No one, no matter what rank, held a monopoly on truth. Many ideas were intuitively accepted and implemented. An excellent example of creative, innovative thinking occurred when armor crewmen joined combined arms companies. They developed modified armor qualification tables that employed the medium gun system (MGS) in close and urban engagements. They also developed an armor crew competition and an MGS creed.

The leaders of the 1-23d had been characterized as Ranger-centric, implying that the battalion was trying to mold itself into a Ranger battalion. This perception revealed a misunderstanding of Transformation on many levels and a failure to understand the combination of cultures occurring within every IBCT battalion during Transformation. In the 1-23d's case, a mechanized infantry unit became a combined arms unit that moved mounted and dismounted. Success required combining the best of all cultures-heavy, light, and special operations.

The Tomahawks used Ranger school and 75th Ranger Regimental standards to accomplish Transformation as quickly as possible, but this was not as simple as just having the leaders of the 1-23d announce that the unit would adopt Ranger standards. Soldiers who lived by the standards and understood their application had to be seeded throughout the unit. Unit leaders had to tie Ranger standards to Army standards, to the Tomahawks' heritage and battlefield record, and to acceptance by noncommissioned officers (NCOs), many of whom had never served in the Rangers. Taking these actions put the 1-23d on the Transformation azimuth intended for the entire Army and on course to adopt a warrior ethos for all soldiers.

Training

In April 2000, the 1-23d began training for 14 months without pause. The unit performed only 1 week of Red Cycle duties (postwide commitments).

The training followed the Army's eight-step training model:

1. Plan the training.

2. Train and certify the leaders.

3. Recon the site.

4. Issue the plan.

5. Rehearse.

6. Execute.

7. Conduct the after-action review.

8. Retrain.

The initial focus was on step 2-train and certify leaders-to ensure that one standard of training was common throughout the entire unit, regardless of the task being trained. Four areas of individual and small unit collective tasks that step 2 affected were Squad React to Contact/Squad Attack, Close Quarters Marksmanship (CQM), Close Quarters Combat (CQC), and the pre-Ranger program.

In January 2000, the Army trained and certified battalion leaders during a leadership professional development (LPD) session. The soldiers who attended formed nine-man infantry squads from their respective companies. CQM and CQC seemed extremely foreign to most of the unit, but CQM and CQC took top priority because fighting would be in close, restrictive terrain and built-up areas. Using Ranger Regimental Training Circular 350-1-2, Close Quarters Combat Program of Instruction, as a reference, battalion leaders became certified on CQM and CQC fundamentals. (1)

In Company A, only two soldiers had graduated from Ranger training. The ratio of Ranger-qualified personnel in the companies throughout the battalion was similar. Fostering a warrior culture in the 1-23d was a huge task.

To increase the number of Rangers in the battalion, pre-Ranger courses were run internally to evaluate candidates and to teach them the skills they would need to complete Ranger school. But battalion leaders encountered a problem: only junior soldiers volunteered for Ranger training. No squad or team leaders volunteered. Of the 27 squad leader positions, 18 were coded for Ranger-qualified personnel. Because of the lack of volunteers, Nicholson realized that the battalion needed to make a culture shift.