PREDICTING THE ‘WHETHER’


WE’RE NOT FOCUSED SOLELY ON THE CURRENT ADVERSARIES; WE’RE LOOKING AT TECHNOLOGICAL AND SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENTS WORLDWIDE, BECAUSE ONE OF THE KEY TRENDS, OF COURSE, IS THAT ACCESS TO TECHNOLOGY AND KNOWLEDGE IS BECOMING MORE AND MORE DIFFUSE.


COL Felix: As MG Hix mentioned, I run the chief ’s future study plan, which is called Unified Quest, and it really is about scouting the future through a series of seminars, symposia [and] war games. We typically have a major war game once a year, sometimes twice. Tat brings the community together. Our sister services come,


[and it’s]


interagency, multina-


tional in a big way. We expose them to various ideas that we’re thinking about— get this greenhouse of ideas going about future ways to operate.


the chief of staff of the Army. And then COL Cross—Chris Cross—runs the sci- ence and technology piece, which really spans the far and mid-term and bridges into, in some cases, the near term.


What would we look like in 2025? Physi- cally, we will probably look very similar to what we do today. Te challenge for the Army is to retain as much capacity as pos- sible. [Chief of Staff of the Army] GEN [Raymond T.] Odierno was interviewed by the Council on Foreign Relations and talked about the relative balance—the impacts of end strength in terms of how we manage the force or the challenges of the environment as we see it, with a force of 450,000 in the active force and 980,000 across the active, Guard and Reserve. And he said, “Do I think we can do it? Yes. Will there be risks? Yes. But we think we can do it.” (To read the entire Feb. 11 conversation, go to http://www.cfr.org/ united-states/amid-tighter-budgets- us-army-rebalancing-refocusing/ p32373.)


But then he talked about the impact of that next step down, from 450,000 to 420,000 and about 920,000 across all three—again, active, Guard and Reserve. And he said that reduction, which is about


142


60,000 across the entire Army, active and reserve, was a significant dropdown. And I think what’s important to realize is we did the reorganization and shap- ing of the Army to the program we call Army 2020 as we’ve come out of Iraq and are drawing down in Afghanistan. We’ve retained the vast majority of our combat power. We deliberately trimmed overhead, brigade headquarters, sustain- ment structure and those sorts of things.


And so, in general, the punch of the Army at 490,000, and a little over a million across


the active, Guard and


Reserve, is very similar to the Army that we’ve had for the last decade—a very substantial, very capable Army in terms of its combat power. A lot of churn, obvi- ously, within units as they draw down, but nonetheless, the resulting product in 2015 will be very significant in terms of its abilities to respond to crisis and, frankly, finish major theater conflicts if we happen to wind up in one.


As we come down below that level, we’re going to see real reductions in combat power—not marginal reductions, but real reductions, because we’re going to actually have to cut combat forces out of the Army.


It all starts with the environment. What do we think this operational environment will be in, say, 2030-35? And so in order to get there, we look at trends. (See Figure 1 on Page 140.) We do some strategic trends work; we monitor those trends with our TRADOC G-2. So we understand what it might look like in terms of that. We may not get it right, but at least we follow the trends. One of the trends we’re following this year is this idea of rapid urbanization. So in our war game this year, we will focus on a megacity in 2035. Tat will be the framework and the backdrop.


Te next piece of it is our strategy dur- ing that time period. How has it evolved? What are the vital interests of the United States with respect to the rest of the world, such that we will commit blood and trea- sure to something? And we have to make it plausible. So we bring in the intelli- gence community. We share our potential scenario with them because we can’t just be creating our own ideas. We have to say, in conjunction with the intel community, what’s plausible in that environment.


We set those conditions, and we build that environment. We allow our sister services to come in and participate with their emerging technologies and objectives so that we can achieve something as a joint team, the Army as a joint team fighting


Army AL&T Magazine


April–June 2014


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