The Future of U.S. Warfare
For the past two weeks, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, has been defending the Pentagon's budget proposal and the recommendations of the Quadrennial Defense Review, or QDR, a periodic look at the threats America faces and how the military should meet those challenges. After finishing his congressional testimony, Schoomaker sat down with U.S. News to discuss the defense review and the war in Iraq. Excerpts:
The QDR calls for an expansion of the Special Forces, where you spent much of your career. How fast can the Army expand the Special Forces?
It will take time. Special Forces take a long time to grow. You can't mass-produce Special Forces, and you cannot create them after you have an emergency. You have to invest in them ahead of time. In the end, we will move an additional 14,000 soldiers in. That is a big investment.
Critics said the defense review should have pulled the plug on expensive new programs designed for conventional wars, like the Future Combat System, and used the money to address irregular threats.
I will tell you point blank the Future Combat System equipped brigade will be far more capable in the environment that we are now in than the heavy brigade it replaces. The FCS brigade will be 900 soldiers smaller than a heavy brigade, but it will have twice as many infantrymen. For instance, go to western Iraq--this kind of organization not only has the mobility, not only has the long-range precision, but it has the ability to surveil that area 24-7.
FCS brigades will be the right force to fight both conventional and irregular wars?
Talk to anyone in Iraq, they think the [armored] Stryker brigade is the cat's meow. Well, the Future Combat System is going to be the Stryker brigade on steroids.
When I rode in the Strykers in December, two patrols I was with got hit by roadside bombs. The Strykers weren't damaged and the soldiers didn't blink--they just went after the triggerman.
Exactly. Think about that with increased lethality and increased survivability.
Do you think the Army was ready for the counterinsurgency fight in Iraq?
Our army was best prepared to fight a conventional adversary. We had done less preparation for counterinsurgency. What we are doing today, in terms of counterinsurgency operations, is capturing as rapidly as we can the lessons learned, trying to fold them back in and reinvigorate our doctrine. The best thing I can tell you is we are learning from our youngsters. Where our experience base is today is in the young noncommissioned officers and junior officers.
What are your company commanders and platoon sergeants telling you?
[That] not everything is a kinetic fight. Sometimes the most powerful tools in your kit bag are not shooting at all. Fundamentally, counterinsurgency is not a military deal. Fundamentally, it is political, economic, informational. It's about separating the support of the people away from the insurgents. You do that not by disrupting people's lives but by enabling their welfare. The junior officers and the junior noncommissioned officers are very, very attuned to this.
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