Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Defense News
October 6, 2008 Interview
By Gina Cavallero
In the 18 months Gen. George Casey has been U.S. Army chief of staff, he has placed “balancing the force” at the top of his to-do list, forging a three-year plan to keep the Army from being stretched beyond repair.
Casey, who foresees his service embroiled in at least another decade of persistent conflict, said the Army must change its self-perception as a garrison force that lives to train.
Casey said former Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, tackled the Army’s intellectual model, while Shinseki’s successor, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, began changing the Army organization. Casey sees his job as taking on changes in the institutional Army.
Casey said meeting the goals of the Army Force Generation (ARFORGEN) model will take until 2011: “We’re starting to understand the fundamental challenge before us. The more you get into it, the more you realize the scope of change it will take us every bit of three years to do.”
Q. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said during a recent Senate hearing that he could have three more brigade combat teams ready for Afghanistan rotations by spring or summer. Where will those troops come from?
A. We don’t control demand, but I think we are at a point now, especially for the next couple of years, where we have to take a hard look at whether the tactical benefit of an additional brigade or two or three is worth the stress that it’s going to put on the force. That’s where we are. Those are the kinds of discussions that the chiefs need to have and that we will have.
Q. Do you mean the possibility of diverting brigades from Iraq to Afghanistan?
A. If we continue doing what we’re doing now, where a brigade [that] is earmarked for Iraq is told, “You’re not going to Iraq, you’re going to Afghanistan,” that’s sustainable; we can continue to do that. The question is, and we don’t know the answer: what is [Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of forces in Iraq] going to be able to do in Iraq. You’d have to take them out of Iraq or take them out of the force which is already stretched, and that would be a challenge. My preference would be that they be redirected from an Iraq rotation.
Q. How does the 180-day reset test pilot that started in December relate to the ARFORGEN model?
A. [Early on] I recognized that we’re going to have to adapt our institutions and support systems if we were effectively going to implement the ARFORGEN model, because that puts us on a rotational footing to sustain expeditionary operations. One thing I believed we had to do was systematically look at the reset model because all of our personnel, equipping and training systems weren’t designed to support a rapid return to readiness coming off of 12- to 15-month deployments.
I looked at what the Navy does. When they come back, they go into dry dock for about six months. I started thinking to myself that’s about what we need to do, and we had to find a way to slow the train down a little bit because a lot this stuff we do to ourselves. We can be so frenetic, we just charge, charge, charge.
We need to adapt our support systems so that at the end of a six-month period, the unit is manned, trained and organized so they can begin training for whatever’s next. And I’m using this as a forcing function to cause us to move away from the systems we’ve had for 50 years that supported a garrison Army that lived to train. It doesn’t support an expeditionary Army that’s on a rotational cycle.
Q. How does the test-pilot address those changes that need to come about? How is it different for soldiers?
A. First, there are no external training requirements. The first thing I got back from the Army staff was all these training requirements the unit had to accomplish. Stop it. We’re adding to these units’ burden, and what we’re trying to do is take some of that burden off of them. There’s also no off-post or off-location tasking. We had guys from the 10th Mountain Division going out to Yuma to drive [Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles] for testing right after they got back.
The other thing we can do is get property accountability re-established and re-organized and then send NCOs to school. [Training and Doctrine Command] has done a wonderful job of getting all but a handful of the very technical military occupational specialties [MOSs] into programs of instruction within the 180-day window, and they’ve also developed mobile training teams for the larger MOSs that will go to the base and to ANCOC and BNCOC right on the base so someone doesn’t have to come back from being gone for 15 months and pack up and ship off someplace else to go to school.
We’ve got 13 brigades in it now, nine are active, a couple are National Guard and a couple are Reserve. For them it’s a one-year model.
Q. Is this part of the life-cycle manning process?
A. It’s part of it, but it’s not related. If you think of this in terms of the life cycle of a rotational model, what this does is — we’re not meeting our readiness goals for the next-to-deploy forces right now because the people aren’t in the right places. What this does is it brings them out of their six-month reset in a ready phase. They’re manned and equipped and can do something, if they had to.
Q. With such a rotational life-cycle model, does that mean the unit manning process has been stopped?
A. We didn’t stop it, but what we did was well-intentioned. We published the three-year life cycle to support the objective ARFORGEN model. Unfortunately, we’re not going to be able to implement that until the end of 2011, when we finish our growth and have all the new units on board.
What was happening was we weren’t able to deliver on what we were doing. Life cycle is still a major part of this expeditionary force we’re trying to build. The reality of it is if you have a 15-month dwell, your life cycle is 27 months and you run the life cycle from halfway through the six-month reset model on the beginning to halfway through the six-month reset model at the end.
So you have about 90 days to build the team, you go into your nine months of training, you do your year deployment and then you have 90 days on the other end. That’s the life cycle.
We came across this as we were implementing the pilot reset model because one of the units we picked was one of the Alaska units that was on life cycle. We got all disconnected on the personnel part because they had these promises of a three-year life cycle and we couldn’t deliver it.
When we get the personnel systems lined up to support it, the intent is we’re able to deploy these units without stop-loss because everybody’s on a cycle.
Q. What drove the need to put the implementation of unit manning on hold until 2011?
A. The driver was getting us on the ARFORGEN model, and it’s a huge change because to put ourselves on this rotation readiness cycle, we have to change how we do people, how we do training, how we do education, how we equip, how we report. It’s a major change, but I think it’s exactly what we need. We see the future as one of persistent conflict. We’re going to be involved or engaged, maybe not like we are in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there is going to be a lot of stuff like that around the world, so we need to have a stream of folks trained, equipped and prepared to go out and do these things, active, Guard and Reserve.
Q. You have strong recruiting and retention numbers. Do you think you’ll arrive at 547,000 early?
A. We may, but you know we accelerated it by two years already to 2010, and we’re going to meet it by 2010 right now. If we make it earlier than that, it might be a month or some months early; we’re not going to make it a year early. We purposely brought those people in by 2010, and we won’t finish building the units until 2011.
Q. Could you go larger?
A. That’s the $64,000 question. What I’ve asked the staff to do is design me the best Army you can build with 1.1 million [people], and that’s with active, Guard and Reserve. Assume this level of access to the Guard and Reserve, and tell me where the holes are and let me decide whether we need to be bigger or not. We’re doing some of that work because I’m sure that question is going to be asked by the new administration, and we need an answer.
But the last thing I want to do is build a big force that we can’t afford to man, train, equip and sustain at the levels we need. I came into a hollow Army; I don’t want to go out from a hollow Army.
The other question is, big enough to do what? What do you want us to do? Rotation schedules depend on demand.
Q. Do you have any early studies to tell you a bigger number is what you want?
A. There are lots of studies going on to see not only how big should the Army be, but how big should the armed forces of the United States be. If the new president came in and said, “Gen. Casey, assuming an era of persistent conflict, what number would you like to have total. Do you have a number?” — I’d tell them.
Q. Is this something you’ve been asked to do by the candidates or Congress?
A. No. It’s stuff we have to do. That’s my job, to say, “Hey, this is what you want me to do, and this is what we need to do it.”
By Gina Cavallero in Washington.
Service profile
2009 budget request: $51.8 billion, up $5.5 billion from 2008.
Troops: Active-duty, 538,128; Reserve, 189,000; National Guard, 350,000, as of July 31.
Major procurements: Future Combat Systems, Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, Joint Tactical Radio System, and many repairs and upgrades to vehicles and aircraft returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Source: U.S. Army 2008 Posture Statement
October 6, 2008 Interview
By Gina Cavallero
In the 18 months Gen. George Casey has been U.S. Army chief of staff, he has placed “balancing the force” at the top of his to-do list, forging a three-year plan to keep the Army from being stretched beyond repair.
Casey, who foresees his service embroiled in at least another decade of persistent conflict, said the Army must change its self-perception as a garrison force that lives to train.
Casey said former Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, tackled the Army’s intellectual model, while Shinseki’s successor, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, began changing the Army organization. Casey sees his job as taking on changes in the institutional Army.
Casey said meeting the goals of the Army Force Generation (ARFORGEN) model will take until 2011: “We’re starting to understand the fundamental challenge before us. The more you get into it, the more you realize the scope of change it will take us every bit of three years to do.”
Q. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said during a recent Senate hearing that he could have three more brigade combat teams ready for Afghanistan rotations by spring or summer. Where will those troops come from?
A. We don’t control demand, but I think we are at a point now, especially for the next couple of years, where we have to take a hard look at whether the tactical benefit of an additional brigade or two or three is worth the stress that it’s going to put on the force. That’s where we are. Those are the kinds of discussions that the chiefs need to have and that we will have.
Q. Do you mean the possibility of diverting brigades from Iraq to Afghanistan?
A. If we continue doing what we’re doing now, where a brigade [that] is earmarked for Iraq is told, “You’re not going to Iraq, you’re going to Afghanistan,” that’s sustainable; we can continue to do that. The question is, and we don’t know the answer: what is [Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of forces in Iraq] going to be able to do in Iraq. You’d have to take them out of Iraq or take them out of the force which is already stretched, and that would be a challenge. My preference would be that they be redirected from an Iraq rotation.
Q. How does the 180-day reset test pilot that started in December relate to the ARFORGEN model?
A. [Early on] I recognized that we’re going to have to adapt our institutions and support systems if we were effectively going to implement the ARFORGEN model, because that puts us on a rotational footing to sustain expeditionary operations. One thing I believed we had to do was systematically look at the reset model because all of our personnel, equipping and training systems weren’t designed to support a rapid return to readiness coming off of 12- to 15-month deployments.
I looked at what the Navy does. When they come back, they go into dry dock for about six months. I started thinking to myself that’s about what we need to do, and we had to find a way to slow the train down a little bit because a lot this stuff we do to ourselves. We can be so frenetic, we just charge, charge, charge.
We need to adapt our support systems so that at the end of a six-month period, the unit is manned, trained and organized so they can begin training for whatever’s next. And I’m using this as a forcing function to cause us to move away from the systems we’ve had for 50 years that supported a garrison Army that lived to train. It doesn’t support an expeditionary Army that’s on a rotational cycle.
Q. How does the test-pilot address those changes that need to come about? How is it different for soldiers?
A. First, there are no external training requirements. The first thing I got back from the Army staff was all these training requirements the unit had to accomplish. Stop it. We’re adding to these units’ burden, and what we’re trying to do is take some of that burden off of them. There’s also no off-post or off-location tasking. We had guys from the 10th Mountain Division going out to Yuma to drive [Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles] for testing right after they got back.
The other thing we can do is get property accountability re-established and re-organized and then send NCOs to school. [Training and Doctrine Command] has done a wonderful job of getting all but a handful of the very technical military occupational specialties [MOSs] into programs of instruction within the 180-day window, and they’ve also developed mobile training teams for the larger MOSs that will go to the base and to ANCOC and BNCOC right on the base so someone doesn’t have to come back from being gone for 15 months and pack up and ship off someplace else to go to school.
We’ve got 13 brigades in it now, nine are active, a couple are National Guard and a couple are Reserve. For them it’s a one-year model.
Q. Is this part of the life-cycle manning process?
A. It’s part of it, but it’s not related. If you think of this in terms of the life cycle of a rotational model, what this does is — we’re not meeting our readiness goals for the next-to-deploy forces right now because the people aren’t in the right places. What this does is it brings them out of their six-month reset in a ready phase. They’re manned and equipped and can do something, if they had to.
Q. With such a rotational life-cycle model, does that mean the unit manning process has been stopped?
A. We didn’t stop it, but what we did was well-intentioned. We published the three-year life cycle to support the objective ARFORGEN model. Unfortunately, we’re not going to be able to implement that until the end of 2011, when we finish our growth and have all the new units on board.
What was happening was we weren’t able to deliver on what we were doing. Life cycle is still a major part of this expeditionary force we’re trying to build. The reality of it is if you have a 15-month dwell, your life cycle is 27 months and you run the life cycle from halfway through the six-month reset model on the beginning to halfway through the six-month reset model at the end.
So you have about 90 days to build the team, you go into your nine months of training, you do your year deployment and then you have 90 days on the other end. That’s the life cycle.
We came across this as we were implementing the pilot reset model because one of the units we picked was one of the Alaska units that was on life cycle. We got all disconnected on the personnel part because they had these promises of a three-year life cycle and we couldn’t deliver it.
When we get the personnel systems lined up to support it, the intent is we’re able to deploy these units without stop-loss because everybody’s on a cycle.
Q. What drove the need to put the implementation of unit manning on hold until 2011?
A. The driver was getting us on the ARFORGEN model, and it’s a huge change because to put ourselves on this rotation readiness cycle, we have to change how we do people, how we do training, how we do education, how we equip, how we report. It’s a major change, but I think it’s exactly what we need. We see the future as one of persistent conflict. We’re going to be involved or engaged, maybe not like we are in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there is going to be a lot of stuff like that around the world, so we need to have a stream of folks trained, equipped and prepared to go out and do these things, active, Guard and Reserve.
Q. You have strong recruiting and retention numbers. Do you think you’ll arrive at 547,000 early?
A. We may, but you know we accelerated it by two years already to 2010, and we’re going to meet it by 2010 right now. If we make it earlier than that, it might be a month or some months early; we’re not going to make it a year early. We purposely brought those people in by 2010, and we won’t finish building the units until 2011.
Q. Could you go larger?
A. That’s the $64,000 question. What I’ve asked the staff to do is design me the best Army you can build with 1.1 million [people], and that’s with active, Guard and Reserve. Assume this level of access to the Guard and Reserve, and tell me where the holes are and let me decide whether we need to be bigger or not. We’re doing some of that work because I’m sure that question is going to be asked by the new administration, and we need an answer.
But the last thing I want to do is build a big force that we can’t afford to man, train, equip and sustain at the levels we need. I came into a hollow Army; I don’t want to go out from a hollow Army.
The other question is, big enough to do what? What do you want us to do? Rotation schedules depend on demand.
Q. Do you have any early studies to tell you a bigger number is what you want?
A. There are lots of studies going on to see not only how big should the Army be, but how big should the armed forces of the United States be. If the new president came in and said, “Gen. Casey, assuming an era of persistent conflict, what number would you like to have total. Do you have a number?” — I’d tell them.
Q. Is this something you’ve been asked to do by the candidates or Congress?
A. No. It’s stuff we have to do. That’s my job, to say, “Hey, this is what you want me to do, and this is what we need to do it.”
By Gina Cavallero in Washington.
Service profile
2009 budget request: $51.8 billion, up $5.5 billion from 2008.
Troops: Active-duty, 538,128; Reserve, 189,000; National Guard, 350,000, as of July 31.
Major procurements: Future Combat Systems, Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, Joint Tactical Radio System, and many repairs and upgrades to vehicles and aircraft returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Source: U.S. Army 2008 Posture Statement