O Brasil está preparado para uma eventual Guerra?

[Moccelin]

Sinceramente o q seria um MRE não partidarizado? Seria um alinhado com as políticas liberais dos EUA e Européia como no governo anterior? Isso não é partidarização? Ideologia? Acho isso estranho, o governo atual matizaria demais as Instituições do Estado com ideologia, o anterior não... Aliás, existe diplomacia não ideológica? Engraçado q todo o mundo elogia a atuação do Brasil nesse quesito, aliás o Chefe de nosso executivo foi premiado na Grâ-Bretanha por seu mérito em prol da estabilidade continental. As críticas ácidas só vejo em nossa mídia panfletária (PIG)...

Mais engraçado ainda é alguém achar a Colômbia é o país do "bem" da região. São tão FDP's quanto o Chávez, se dobraram ante aos INTERESSES DOS EUA de instalarem 7 base militares no país + o uso de 7 aeroportos civis, q muito pouco tem haver com narcotráfico/guerrilha e acham isso "normal"... Enfim, se as ameaças são reais, e temos q nos preparar para guerra, é contra esses dois extremos q vão de nossas fronteiras do norte de RR a Benjamim Constant no Amazonas... Os EUA nos cercando pelas duas Amazônias (já tem várias bases no Golfo da Guiné), ÚNICO país no mundo q pode dissuadir nossa ascenção como potência militar e tem q acha q a principal ameaça é o Chávez...

Enlil, é ÓBVIO que o MRE vai ser um reflexo do governo em voga, só que o problema é que as decisões estão sendo partidárias no sentido de defender uma ideologia e não o Brasil, sacou? Tipo, nada contra ele nadar a favor da correnteza do momento, o problema é quando ele se preocupa mais com a ideologia do que com os interesses da nação a qual serve. E é o que está acontecendo, tratar esses loucos que nos cercam, que nacionalizam nossas empresas, que querem mudar contratos no meio da vigência (e os contratos não eram absurdos), que ameaçam países vizinhos bem ao estilo Iraniano, que querem causar desestabilidade no continente... Pô, isso é péssimo pro país, não estou falando em proteger a Colômbia que é boazinha não, é aquela, foda-se a Colômbia (com o perdão do termo), o que eu quero é que continue reinando a paz aqui no cone Sul pra continuarmos a ter um mercado pra quem vender e manter nossa posição de liderança. E é assim que funciona as relações entre os Estados, "farinha pouca meu pirão primeiro", aí, defendido esse detalhe podemos pensar no nosso modo bonzinho de agir, defendido nossos contratos, aí sim podemos fazer empréstimos para o Paraguay, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colômbia, levar empregos pra lá por meio das nossas multinacionais, e por aí vai.

Só que o que está ocorrendo? Primeiro a ideologia, depois o país... Inverteram as coisas.

[Enlil]

Pois é justamente aí q discordo. Sei porque tu está falando isso: Bolívia, Paraguai e Equador. Não vamos entrar nesse mérito. Já foi discutido ad infinitum no DB. Quer lesa pátria maior do q o governo anterior: q fez um política externa q reproduzia nossa clássica vassalagem política e econômica em relação aos EUA e países liberais da Europa? Q sucateou e dou o patrimônio público para corporações nacionais e estrangeirtas em um processo fraudulento, subfaturado e direcionado? Q sucateou nossas Forças Armadas? Q não investiu um centavo em nossos programas estratégicos de tecnologia, q só não acabaram porque os militares mataram no peito a manutenção das pesquisas? Por gentileza, não vamos entrar nesse mérito, simplesmente não posso acreditar q alguém ache q este governo não defende os interesses nacionais. Q alguém q ache q esmolas para o vizinhos "ferem" o interesse nacional. Um governo reconhecido internacionalmente como o grande catalisador do q ainda há de integração regional no continente, justamente o q o anterior quase destruiu para nos deixar na área de serviço das grandes potências independentes, se dependesse deles estaríamos na ALCA hoje... Enfim, de qualquer ponto de vista, MAIOR LESA PÁTRIA do q o Governo de FHC não há... Mas parece q muita gente ignora esse fato. E corremos sério risco de q a maioria do planejamento de reequipamento e investimento em tecnologia em nossas FA's seja cancelado ou congelado a partir de 2011...

[Ganesh]

Preparados ou não (creio que não), o que o Governo deve fazer desde já é pôr em movimento esse quase fictício e inexequível Plano Estratégico de Defesa para que seja de uma vez por todas substituído esse arsenal militar arcaico que temos. Até a Venezuela nos ultrapassará daqui a uns tempos...francamente!

[marcelo l.]

Fiquei até pensando se os americanos não estão se prepararando erroneamento para os conflitos que virão.

The House Appropriations Committee awarded the army transformation a billion dollars. But at the same time, they kept the new air force fighter program, the F-22, alive. Do you think that it was a good idea to continue funding the F-22?
At present, the F-22 is far and away the most wasteful system we're funding. It is a legacy system. If you look at the things we're doing, like Kosovo for instance, the F-22 would have made zero contribution. It wouldn't have improved our effort in any regard. It's essentially meant to be used in dogfights, and nobody is coming up to dogfight us. No air force is preparing for that. The airframes we already have, such as the F-15 and the F-14, are vastly superior to anything out there that's being built or has been built. The F-22 is a shameful, disgraceful boondoggle and it revolts me.

The army traditionally claims less for itself than the other services. But is the army hanging onto legacy systems that it shouldn't keep?

Oh yes, indeed. Now, I do see the army at present as underfunded. But that being said, the army, because of institutional inertia and horse-trading within the organization, is still buying the Crusader, the heavy howitzer system. They are supposedly going to reduce its weight from 100 tons for the pair of vehicles down to perhaps 70-odd tons. That's still vastly too heavy.

At the end of the day, we're paying the penalty for the excesses of the Cold War. During the Cold War, the army was faced with fighting the Soviet hordes in Europe. The equipment was pre-positioned. The army didn't have to worry about weight when shipping the stuff over there. It was in climatized warehouses in Germany. The army didn't have to worry about fuel. There was plenty in western Europe. The army didn't have to worry about weight on bridges and roads. West Germany and western Europe in general had a tremendously sound road network. The troops would just theoretically fly in across the Atlantic, fall in on the equipment, and roll out to fight.

Well we still have that mentality. But the army has to be able to get there. Today, we need expeditionary forces in all of the services, and the army is belatedly waking up to that. But no matter how theoretically effective it may be, an army that cannot get to the war or conflict is useless to the American people.

Talk about Task Force Hawk, the army Apache helicopter mission in Kosovo.

Task Force Hawk has certainly been bisected and dissected endlessly. But the basic lesson is the army could not get even helicopters to the conflict zone in time. There were some factors that usually aren't discussed. The Italians didn't want us coming through Italian territory and basing out of there. There were problems on the ground with the French in Pristina, in Albania. But all that said, we found that the army's attack helicopters, the premiere weapons system, couldn't get there, couldn't be sustained, and couldn't protect itself and, oh, by the way, the aviators weren't properly trained for that kind of fight. It was a sad day for the army.

Andy Krepinevich from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments says that the medium force is, for the most part, a short- term response--that they'll solve the Task Force Hawk problem, and that's primarily what they're designed for.

I have tremendous respect for Andy Krepinevich, and I think he's right, in the sense that it's not a permanent solution. But I see it as a critical transition to the force of the future. The medium-weight brigades that General Shinseki is trying so hard to convince Congress, the army, and the administration to build are essential for the present, just so the army can get there.

But they're not going to be a static organization. The medium brigades, while they'll be immediately useful, will also be test beds, in the sense that they will teach us what we really need, what we really can do and where the gaps are. If the money's there, they'll drive research and development for better systems. The problem today is that the U.S. Army's heavy divisions are easily the most lethal ground force organizations on the planet. But they can't get there in time.

And when they do get there, they need tremendous support in terms of fuel, spare parts, and ammunition. The medium brigades will get there faster, although still not quite as fast as we'd like, but it'll get there faster, use less fuel, less moving parts, and require less support troops. So the footprint, as you say in the military, will be much smaller. Yet the medium brigade will not be as lethal as a heavy division. It will not have the protective armor of a heavy division, true. But it's an interim step as we develop true twenty-first century systems that will be lighter, and yet through innovative technologies, will have equivalent or better armor protection than today's Abrams tanks. They will have greater lethality than today's artillery or armor systems with lower calipers or innovative sorts of guns. . . . So I really see this very much in Silicon Valley terms. It's not going to hold still. You're not going to build the computer and have it be the perfect model that sits on the shelf and satisfies everybody for a generation.

The medium brigades, as all military organizations will have to do in today's environment, will evolve and continue to evolve. It will be a self-correcting system, where we'll learn from our mistakes. And that's how a military gets better. You will never design a perfect military organization in a lab or with smart people sitting together in a room. You do the best you can. You design it, you build it, and then you let the troops break it.

What about this whole wheels-tracks debate? There's a focus on equipment, maybe an excessive focus on equipment. Some people argue that that's because there really is no overall vision or doctrine to support it. . . .

The debate about wheeled vehicles versus track vehicles would be useful if it were honest. But the voices I hear insisting that we must have track vehicles are simply contractors and their paid spokesmen trying to sell systems. I've been to many countries and watched a number of conflicts or their residue, and I've served in the military. I've served in heavy divisions. And I can tell you that if I had to make the choice today, I would go with a preponderance of wheeled vehicles in those medium brigades. You might be able to make a case for some tracks, but if it were an either-or, it would be wheels for me.

Why?

For a variety of reasons. One, they're faster. Two, they don't break down as much. They don't require as many replacement parts. Three, they consume less fuel. Look at what the Russians did in the closing phases of the Kosovo conflict, when they did their dash from Bosnia through Serbia down to the Pristina airfield. We, the U.S. Army, could not have done that. Track vehicles could not have done that. They don't go fast enough. They break down, and it takes longer to fix them.

I think track vehicles certainly have their place. And nobody's talking about getting rid of the heavy force. General Shinseki is talking about a balanced force, with the heavy forces in reserve for when we need them, if we have to do Desert Storm Part XII. The medium forces should be the workhorses for the kind of actions in which we are increasingly and frequently involved today. And we still need some light forces, because they get there very fast and can do some things.

But we're looking at a force that's just balanced across the spectrum. So the debate of tracked versus wheels? We've got tracks in the heavy divisions and we're going to have them for the indefinite future. Right now we need a lighter, quicker, more mechanically robust force that can get there and do something. And I have found the debate simply disingenuous based upon greed, not national security interests.

Do you have the same conclusion about calling it a peacekeeping force?

It is absolute and utter nonsense to insist that, because we're going to a preponderance of wheeled vehicles in the medium brigades, it is only a peacekeeping force. It is dishonest, and really it angers me as a citizen, as well as a former soldier. Certainly the Russian military is very oriented to war fighting and always had a heavy proportion of wheeled vehicles. And they have been the most robust and effective in the Russian motorized or mechanized infantry arsenals--a force that can get there and move fast and outshoot the enemy is going to be very lethal.

In the Gulf War, U.S. Marine Corps wheeled vehicles were killing Iraqi T-72 tanks. Now the people that sell us the heavy armor and heavy guns would have told you that was impossible. But the Marines did it. And again, you cannot look at only today's technology and look backward and say, "This is the history of wheels or tracks." You've got to look forward and see what's the potential of tracked or wheeled. We may learn eventually that, in fact, in a medium-weight division you will want one tracked brigade, or two wheeled brigades. Or in a brigade you may want a tracked battalion and two or three wheeled battalions.

I don't think you want to break it down to that point. But we have to try it and experiment in the field. It's a rather long-winded answer, but the debate has not been honest. A wheeled force does not automatically mean a peacekeeping force. Tell that to the Marines.

What about the notion of continuing today's force around the M-1 tank?

The M-1 is the best tank in the world, if you can get it to the war in time, if you have a Saddam Hussein who'll give you seven months to move your forces in. If the Mexicans ever cross the Rio Grande, Fort Hood is ready for them. It's a great tank. It's lethal. But clearly, velocity matters.

In military operations today, in the kind of things we're doing, speed matters. Nobody is talking about getting rid of the M-1. But we are talking about reducing the numbers somewhat, so that we have some forces that can actually get to the conflict in time to make a difference. All these charlatans, whether they're on Capitol Hill or they're the contractors' flacks or just the people who grew up in the armored community and love their tanks--some are true believers. Many are charlatans who don't understand or refuse to understand the fact that we've got to move this force forward. What the army has is an industrial age force. It's a fine industrial age force, but nonetheless, it's a twentieth-century army. We need to start building a twenty-first century army, and we are running late. General Shinseki's vision convinces me, and I'm hard to convince.

There's a criticism that there is a lack of vision, that it lacks a doctrinal underpinning. Unless you know the road along which you're going, and where you intend to go, are you starting too soon by just fiddling with equipment?

There's certainly a place for doctrine. But doctrine has to arise out of practical field experimentation and out of the world around us. I see much of our doctrine being used as a justification for yesterday's way of doing business. I think General Shinseki has a legitimate vision, and it is based upon the world reality. Not the war the army wants to fight, but the conflicts and wars with which we are actually faced. So you can't write the doctrine first and design tables or organization equipment and predict accurately we need this, this, and this. Those are five-year plans, ten-year plans. They don't work. They never did, never will. Get the force in the field. See what it can and cannot do. We cannot anticipate accurately.

It's just impossible to anticipate what the real problems and gaps and pitfalls and vulnerabilities will be. Field experimentation is the only practical way. And by the way, conflicts will tell us a lot about the force itself, too. So first get them out there. Then write the doctrine. See if it works. If it doesn't, adjust it, fine-tune it. But for God's sake, don't put American creativity in a doctrinal straightjacket unless you want to end up as the Marxist-Leninists did.

It's interesting you should say that. In last year's testimony in front of the Senate, Senator Lieberman said to General Shinseki, "So what you're saying here is a notion like blitzkrieg." And Shinseki replied, "I have a lot of other things on my plate that World War II German generals never had to worry about. I've got Haiti, Bosnia, Somalia. In other words, basically, I can't worry about a single doctrine in a single theater."

Shinseki has the great misfortune of being a man of great integrity in a town that doesn't value it very much. I don't know General Shinseki personally, but I'm always impressed when he goes to the Hill and tells the truth, which breaks a long-standing Army tradition of obfuscating, if not lying outright.

The blitzkrieg. Let's remember that the German Army fought the blitzkrieg with very few tanks, and with an army that was primary horse-drawn. At the same time the blitzkrieg was raging across Europe, the proudest division in the U.S. Army, the one you really wanted to belong to if you were an up-and-coming officer, was the First Horse Cavalry Division. In fact, were it not for World War II, instead of the Interstate Highway system we would have had the Interstate Bridal Path. Senator Leiberman is a wonderful man. I really think he's another man of great integrity, but he's not a military guy. And Shinseki just tells the truth.

General Shinseki has told us is that he really doesn't want this transformation to be identified with him. But it seems that it's almost a paradoxical situation that he's in. If he wants it to happen, he has to lead with his chin. At the same time, he knows that the lifetime of this change will be much longer than four years. . . .

My sense is that General Shinseki is a soldier we would all like to be--a genuine selfless man. It's amazing that he ever got four stars. That being said, of course a medium-weight force will be associated with him, as Normandy is associated with Eisenhower. And it also will be associated with him because he's very much a lone crusader. Now he's been garnering some support. But the institutional army is an extraordinarily conservative and often myopic organization that clings desperately to the past. And General Shinseki has had the courage, in the face of tremendous internal and external opposition from multiple sides to say, "This is right. This is what we need to do. Let's get moving."

The Ninth Division offers a sobering lesson in the power of the army branch units. The heavy armor guys basically killed an experiment at Fort Lewis in the 1980s for a rapidly deployable unit looking towards the future. Where will General Shinseki find the resistance to what he wants to do?

General Shinseki has several advantages today over those who tried to build the Ninth Division as a quickly deployable force. The Cold War is over. You can't argue that we need those heavy divisions to fight the Russian hordes on the plains of Germany. That being said, the institutional army, those who have their careers invested in heavy metal, will certainly fight him tooth and nail. But I think there's just a growing awareness, certainly in the middle ranks of the army where Shinseki has a lot of admirers, that the heavy divisions are eventually going to wither away.

We will need heavy divisions for the immediate future. But clearly the goal has to be medium-weight divisions--perhaps in 15 to 25 years. Through judicious investments in our research and development and wise purchases, you will get medium-weight divisions that will have the hitting power and the survivability of today's heavy divisions. The country that spawned Silicon Valley and put man on the moon can certainly design a lighter weight tank that can do the job of the behemoths of the twentieth century. What we lack is simply the institutional commitment, both within the army and on Capitol Hill, and certainly within the Department of Defense overall, to spend the money on R&D.

At a time like this, when technology is evolving so swiftly, as the world environment is evolving so swiftly, you should be pouring money into R&D, not buying legacy systems like the F-22 or the Crusader. But R&D budgets have actually been going down. And that really alarms me. The train wreck is down the road, where we haven't invested wisely, where we haven't invested in people, for that matter. We just keep clinging to the past.

We talked to General Paul Funk (retired), who serves on the Army Science Board. He said that, to his knowledge, General Shinseki was the first general to come out and actually talk to the study group on the Future Combat System. Is it unusual to find someone who's looking towards the development of the FCS like that?

The army in the 1990's went into shock, into virtual paralysis, when the Cold War ended. . . . We had a series of very well meaning, but frankly weak chiefs of staff, men who were trying to hold the past together, instead of jettisoning the deadwood and moving onto the future. And they were panicked by the army getting smaller.

And the response, instead of trying to be innovative, was to circle the wagons, to batten down the hatches, to pile on the clichés. General Shinseki profited by watching their errors. But at the end of the day, I think he's just a man of vision--not always supremely articulate about that vision--but he's got it. And he's very Reaganesque in that sense. He sees it even if he can't always tell you what it is, but you sense it from him. And also he's got backbone, he's got spine. So I was actually initially skeptical of General Shinseki, because he was the institutional choice and I didn't know him. But he is a blessing for the army, and I think for America.

What's ironic is that, when General Shinseki was first nominated, he was not seen as the transformer that he has now become.

General Shinseki, when he actually took the chair of chief of staff of the army, was a horrible surprise to mediocrities in uniform everywhere. People really didn't think he would be a revolutionary, and he is an innovator. He clearly bided his time, and kept his views to himself until the mantel fell upon him. And since then he has displayed vision and courage. We are truly so fortunate.

The general officer and admiral corps today who are our flag officers are perhaps the most mediocre in the past century. There are certainly some good ones. But we have really promoted organization men, people that don't know much out of their sandbox. When you talk to them, these are dull and often dull-witted people. And here comes Shinseki against all odds. What a treat.

Does Cold War thinking still dominate the military and, more particularly, the army?

Cold War thinking is not nearly so pervasive as it was even five years ago. The dinosaurs are going, but they're clinging to their jobs with the best spirit of Tyrannosaurus Rex. It's going to take a generational change. But that change has begun. We're in for another five-to-maybe-eight really rocky years until we get rid of the last twentieth-century thinkers. But the process has begun, and it is inexorable. You can only resist the thrust and the flow of history for so long.

Where this Cold War heavy metal mentality lingers most profoundly is in the armored community. I mean, this is their life. And it's sad to me that, instead of getting on board with lighter vehicles and a medium-weight force with the spirit of the cavalry, which is what the medium-weight force is . . . when faced with the chance to do it, to get there fastest with the mostest, we're clinging to these old twentieth-century behemoths. So I see the medium-weight force as innovative, certainly, in terms of what we have today. But it really is a return to the great traditions of the cavalry of getting there fast, hitting hard, doing the job, and being gone before the enemy knows what hit them.

Talk about the nature of the war that we're going to see. We've gone to JRTC, the Joint Readiness Training Center, at Fort Polk in Louisiana, and to NTC, the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California. Those are two very different kinds of preparations. They both use force on force, but there's a difference in the nature of those two scenarios for war fighting. Can you talk about that?

NTC is still preparing for the big war that may come, that was statistical in the frequency. The JRTC is preparing for the stuff we are definitely doing today and are unquestionably going to have to do tomorrow. That does not invalidate a National Training Center. The things that we do out in the Mojave Desert we must continue to do on some level, because we may have to go back to the Gulf or elsewhere. But statistically it's a no-brainer. Most of our conflicts and some of the smaller wars that we may face in the future, are going to be more Balkans and less Saddam Hussein. So you've got to do both. It's really not an either-or.

Hopefully the day will come when a future iteration of the medium-weight force will be able to go out to the National Training Center and destroy the opposition force. For now, of course, it can't. But that's the goal. We've got to move toward developing a medium-weight force that can do beat all others as well. I personally see a twenty-first century that's really split between marvelous success stories for states such as our own, America, and non-competitive loser states, regions, and peoples.

And when you're betting about the future, you've always got to be a bit cautious. But I'm as confident as one can be betting that we are going to see a lot more Sierra Leones, East Timors, Kosovos, Bosnias, Kashmirs, Chechnyas, and Colombias. That doesn't mean we're going to get involved in any or even most or a plurality of them. But inevitably for national interests, or because the genocide is so horrific we cannot stay out, we're going to get involved in some. It's not just the army, but our nation that needs these medium-weight forces.

The Marines do a terrific job. They're a small elite force. They're a bargain for the taxpayer. There are not enough of them. This medium-weight force is not a threat to the Marines. It doesn't even compete with the Marines. The army forces will always be heavier than the Marines, have more logistics, more tail. But the Marines and the army have to work together. We need to learn from what the Marines have done with medium-weight or quasi-medium-weight forces. At the same time, they have to be willing to work with us in good spirit, and not circle their own wagons and feel threatened.

The fact is our ground forces today, Marines and army, are very, very small numerically, and in terms of capability for our global responsibilities. Given the tremendous and potential requirements we face around the world, we have a miniature ground force military.

When we went to JRTC, the Eighty-second was just returning for its rotation. They tried to take the mock urban facility and had a really, really hard time with it until they got their tanks there. And their tanks were about six hours late, because they got caught in a minefield.

But it's an example of backward thinking to say that we have always needed tanks to do this, therefore we always will need tanks to do it. Okay, we need tanks today. But what can we get or build or design or buy for tomorrow that will reduce or obviate the need for tanks? I just hate the military's tendency to do a linear extrapolation. This worked in the past, it's working now, therefore it will always work. Well, that's what the French Army thought before the blitzkrieg ran all over them.

We've got to really stop clinging to this romanticized version of the past and start looking toward the future. Okay, the Eighty-second and NTC couldn't take the urban facility without tanks. All right. Tanks won't always be able to get there. What else can we design for or buy for the Eighty-second that will help them do it? Don't give me yesterday's solutions. Tell me what we're going to do tomorrow.

When you talk to a lot of retired military people, they say that the force is being stressed. They say that we're involved in so many small-scale contingency operations, peacekeeping operations, that we're downgrading the fighting ability of the force, and that we should just get out.

When I went through Officer Candidate School, one of the things the tactical officers, the black hats, were fondest of saying to us was, "Stop whining, candidate." It's always been an army tradition that you don't whine, you don't make excuses. And I hear active duty generals or retirees whining about having to do so much or about the quality of today's recruits, which by the way, is revolting nonsense. We may have the most talented generation coming up in history. But they're whining about having to do the things the country pays them to do. It's a very complex world out there. America has a wide range of interests. Some are vital, and some are not so vital, but are interests nonetheless. There are some humanitarian interests. Stop making excuses. Do what you need to do for our country, or else stop taking the taxpayer's money. We pride ourselves in the army on a can-do attitude. Always did.

At this point, it's a can't-do attitude. No matter what the president asks us to do, it's always too hard to do. We need this, this and this. And the army has lost its credibility, as the Department of Defense has overall, by always crying wolf. They say it's going to take 10,000 casualties, we need 10 divisions, blah, blah, blah. Then the president says, "Do it," and it turns out we did it with no casualties, and maybe did a half-baked job of it, but it wasn't as dire. The sky didn't fall.

And so the military has to begin with being honest with the president and with Capitol Hill. If you are honest and you tell them, "Well, we can do this, but this is what it will take," then you'll get it a lot more quickly, honestly. Then you'll have a lot more credibility when the bad one comes along that you really can't do and you're trying to explain it. But we've been such cowardly naysayers hoarding our parade ground military. I'm reminded of Lincoln's request for McClellan, where he said, "Dear General McClellan, if you're not going to use the army, may I borrow it for a while?" I think President Clinton's been wrong about many, many things. But frankly the Pentagon's been wrong about more. And they won't admit it. Stop whining, guys. Do what America pays you to do.

Last year there was a firestorm of controversy over the fact that two army units were downgraded, and given a C-4, the not-ready-for-war rating. There was talk of a readiness crisis. What about the readiness crisis?

There's been a readiness crisis in the military, and especially in the army, since the mid-1990s. The former army chief of staff, for whatever reason, went to the Hill and lied about readiness. I think what we've seen in the 1990s is a politicization of the service chiefs and the Joint Chiefs overall. The administration's done a good job of picking primarily weak men, which is why Shinseki's such a great surprise. But everybody in the army knew. The people down in the motor pools, at the training ranges, in the battalions and brigades and divisions knew there were shortages of ammunition, of spare parts, or training funds. And yet again and again, the chief and the deputies went to the Hill and said, "Well, everything's pretty good, we could use a little more of this, but we're doing fine, sir." It wasn't true.

And by the way, the great penalty was that junior officers lost trust in their leadership. They knew it wasn't true. Lies were being told. And then a few years ago, the administration gave chiefs permission to tell the truth, and they went to the Hill and said we have a readiness crisis. John McCain and others castigated them because the readiness crisis had been obvious to everybody, except these men who were saying it didn't exist, and now suddenly it did exist.

We do have a readiness crisis. Money has been misspent. We buy F-22s instead of taking care of the troops, buying spare parts, fuel, and training. And good training is what saves you, not the F-22. Yet we are still ready enough for most contingencies for now. But our readiness declines daily. And we're not as ready as we could be. It doesn't mean we can't do the job.

It means there are greater risks. It means that you have a greater risk of not being able to do the mission in a timely manner, of taking more casualties. There's this lust to buy twentieth-century legacy systems, gold-plated aircraft, artillery systems, ships that we absolutely do not need. That will cause casualties. And it's also stealing from the American taxpayer; there's no other word for it.

At the same time, there are Marines rummaging for free clothing on Saturdays and there are guys claiming that they have spare parts problems and units being stressed. Is there a trade-off on what we can do?

Increasingly, our national defense is a business, and its business is not primarily defense. There has always been corruption from the Revolutionary War forward in the US military. God knows, at the beginning of the Civil War, we were buying exploding cannons. Brooks Brothers sold the army 30,000 overcoats that gave rise to the term "shoddy," and they had to be discarded. So it's always been there.

But at this point there's so much lobbying power--PAC contributions, and revolving doors of generals and admirals getting out and getting these tremendously lucrative defense industry do-nothing jobs, which encouraged them to keep their mouth shut on active duty about whether or not we really need this system. The corruption at this point is horrendous. And it's not just the defense-industrial complex about which President Eisenhower warned. It's a defense-industrial-congressional complex. Congress buys ships even the navy doesn't want, and buys aircraft the air force doesn't want. It's really sad and really corrupt and it's a disservice to this nation.

But you have to accept the fact that in a market economy, there's always going to be some wastage. There's going to be some corruption. And frankly, the military won't always make good decisions. But we have come to a point where budget dollars are constrained, and we are wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on yesterday's aircraft, on utterly unnecessary ships, on artillery systems that are not deployable. We should be buying some new, essential things, like upgraded F-15s and F-14s--just enough to get us through to a true next-generation aircraft. And frankly, the JSX fighter might be it.

But we need to be just upgrading enough in the army to enable us to buy experimental systems and move to a medium-weight force. God knows the navy shamefully killed the arsenal ship because it wasn't glamorous. But boy, it had hitting power. Recently the air force disingenuously warned that, even if General Shinseki gets his medium-weight divisions, the air force doesn't have the airlift to fly them there, implying that the medium-weight divisions are a waste of time. My answer to the air force is, "Stop buying F-22s. Buy more airlift capability." It's just become really disgraceful and shameful, not simply because I'm a former army officer. I've criticized them powerfully. But really, they're trying to be relatively honest in all this.

And the price for honesty is that you lose budget dollars. The air force at this point in history is patently dishonest about what this country needs. We can beat the Russians, God knows. We can beat the Chinese. We sure could have beat the Serbs. We could go to Sierra Leone and a couple battalions of Rangers and a Special Forces contingent with some helicopters could rip apart the rough rebels. But we can't beat Lockheed Martin.

Is this a trade off between boys and girls and toys?

Certainly. When we have soldiers on food stamps . . . I just came back from Fort Leavenworth and was served in a restaurant by a moonlighting soldier trying to make ends meet. Certainly no soldier expects to be paid lavishly. But it would be nice if they could feed their families. When we signed up for a married military, we should have planned for this. The medical system for active duty and for retirees is certainly in disarray. People want to take away the commissaries, because here in the United States, the major food chains don't like the fact that military people are buying on base. The commissary is essential for junior enlisted personnel to buy the foodstuffs at slightly reduced rates. Others would like to take away the PXs. It's just shameful.

We want these young men and women to die for us if necessary, and then we expect them to live on food stamps? At the same time, we're going to spend $350 billion or $60 billion on new aircraft we don't need, we're going to buy more vessels we don't need. If that's not a national disgrace, what is?

Air power is thought of as a silver bullet. . . . Yet it is said that the army has the special responsibility to win the nation's wars.

When air force officers, active duty or retired, say we don't need ground forces, they're lying. They know better. They're fighting for budget share. It's that simple. We need the air force. We need the navy. We need the marines. And we need the army. They exist because they do different things.

The army does a few things for you. One, is it's ultimately the war fighter, the big force that goes and wins the big wars. The army is also the primary special operations force--the Green Berets, the Rangers--although other services certainly make their contributions. The army provides the raw manpower for the onerous missions, the janitorial work of foreign policy, the Kosovos, the Bosnias, etc. The army does a lot for you. In many ways, it's the least glamorous service, but it is ultimately the workhorse.

As far as silver bullets go, I love air power. As someone who's served in infantry and armored units, I want a lot of air power and I want it on time. But air power alone cannot do it all any more than the army alone could do it all. And in Kosovo we really saw the limits of air power. After all the ballyhoo, they couldn't even find the tanks, let alone kill them. They certainly couldn't stop massacres down in wooded ravines. You can't do police work or close-in combat from 15,000 feet. You can't stop genocide from 15,000 feet. You can't do urban warfare from 1,000 feet or even 500 feet, although once in a while a helicopter will help you out.

There are still many missions; in fact they're increasing. When you to do them right, you still need boots on the ground. Peacekeeping, peacemaking, and even war. So whenever you hear anybody in any uniform saying we don't need that other service, they're lying to you. They know better. They're fighting for dollars. You know they're dialing for dollars. They're not building a national defense.

We went up to West Point and interviewed Fred Kagan, who's coming out with a book called While America Sleeps. The bottom line in terms of national security strategy is that if you get rid of the two major theater war policy, you're courting disaster. . . . How should we approach the 2MTW policy?

Many of the arguments about one major theater of war versus two, and what we really need, become medieval theological arguments. I have read them so I know what I'm saying, both the medieval arguments and the contemporary ones. Some things are fundamental. We need a strong, robust, somewhat redundant defense. I've worked within the system. The way we split things out in the 1990s, we have never had a 2MTW capability. We simply couldn't have done it. It was all smoke and mirrors. We had, at best, a reasonable 1MTW capability. That's just reality.

My personal feeling is our forces, including the air force, are too small today. We need somewhat larger defense budgets. And yet I am loathe to increase them today, because you're giving Scotch to an alcoholic. You're throwing money at somebody you know who just maxes out their credit cards. The military services need to return to some notion of austerity, which is our tradition. Austere forces. That being said, they also do need more resources to slightly increase the size of the army and the Marine Corps. The air force, rather than the high tech gold-plated aircraft it's buying for many of our conflicts, needs more lower-tech aircraft. They certainly need more transport aircraft to do the job. But the A-10 for instance, the tank killer aircraft that they hate, is slow, and it's ugly. But boy, in Kosovo, had it been permitted to do its job, that would have been perfect. It's not about dogfighting anymore.

So I wish people would stop arguing about acronyms, 2MTW or anything else, and go back to fundamentals and look at what this country really needs. We need infantrymen. We need transport aircraft. We need military police. We need vehicles that can get there and roll fast when they do get there. We need a navy that can protect the sea lanes . . . but that can transport things safely and project power ashore. Our navy's requirements today are closer to those of gunboats on the Yangtze River in China in the1920s than the battle of Midway. So overall, we're often arguing about the wrong things and, by the way, arguing about them dishonesty. It's time to go back to fundamentals. First, throttle back the services. No more gold-plated twentieth-century legacy systems. And then let's judiciously increase budgets so that we can build the twenty-first century force.

Invest in transformation?

Yes. The basic rule is to fund the future, not the past. Fund transformation. Don't fund the latest slight improvement to the traditional way of doing business.

What do you say to the criticism of the medium brigades that it ignores the realities of an asymmetric theater, and denies the idea that airfield supports are going to be the canyons of the future? . . .

Again, these are arguments being made by people who have vested interests or who have never served and simply do not know. Certainly you need an airfield or a port to get ground forces there in sufficient numbers or sufficient weight to do much of anything. But a medium-weight force would be easier to fly into an adjoining nation. A wheeled force can drive there without consuming a world of fuel, without breaking down along the way.

The mobility of the wheeled force is both strategic in terms of less airlift required, and less sealift. But it's also operational in terms of being able to get across a border very fast or across a country or contested region very fast, and tactical in terms of how fast it can move around a battlefield. And the real key to mobility isn't just speed, although the wheeled vehicles have that. It's how much fuel consumption is required.

So I'm just saddened by what I see as a partisan, often naive, often dishonest debate. The medium-weight force is clearly the force of the future. . . . It can get there, it can go fast and it requires a far less logistics train. It's easier to sustain. Again, it's a cavalry-type force, and clearly the Indians are out there. That's politically incorrect. But we're dealing with cavalry and Indians again, and the cavalry is what we need. Why can't we simply be honest? Well, the answer is simple. Money.

It almost seems like you're saying . . . that it's the force that takes into account a denial of airfields and being able to gain access to theaters. . .

It's the force that makes it easier to work around denied airfields and ports.

. . . Sometimes we will face airfield denial or port denial, but so far it hasn't been a major problem for us. A medium-weight force can go into another country, and drive across the border very, very quickly. A medium-weight force by the way, is much lighter and easier to offload than a heavy-weight force. It doesn't require the weight of port facilities to offload it. If we designed the right kind of ships, you can roll it over the beach much more easily than a tracked force. You can make wheeled vehicles armored, yet still light enough to swim in low surf. You can't do that with heavy tanks. So the medium-weight force makes sense in virtually every respect.

Can it do everything? Certainly not. But neither can any aircraft. Neither can light or heavy forces. The medium-weight force is necessary for our strategic environment, hands down. It's necessary. And I feel we can argue that with anybody who is willing to argue honestly and not just use demagoguery.



When we were with General Scales and General Shinseki at Gettysburg, General Scales pointed out that no commander during the Civil War appreciated the technological revolution that had happened that made their operating doctrine outdated. They didn't realize that they were fighting the last war, at a huge loss of life.

. . . In hindsight, it's always easy to see the mistakes of yesterday's generals. And some of the criticism is justified. Certainly the western front in World War I was inexcusable. Those generals should have seen the lessons of the American Civil War half a century before. Yet you must be able to see some things, learn some things, and some things are patently obvious. And it's obvious that technology helps us. It doesn't solve all of the world's security problems. So I would fault today's generals and admirals for clinging passionately to a path they understand and they knew throughout their successful careers. But we need to start looking forward and not backward with longing.

General Shinseki sent a book, America's First Battles, up to Congress to try to say you need to prepare. We have had a terrible history of preparing for the first battle. Is the problem that he's trying to change a peacetime army? Is it simply a nearly impossible task?

Desert Storm was one of the worst things that ever happened to the U.S. Army. It was the last great twentieth-century war. The army performed superbly and convinced itself that it had all the answers. So we're still dealing with the legacy of success in Desert Storm, as well as the Cold War. Certainly in America's first battles, we traditionally have done rather poorly. Sometimes there were excuses, like starved armies. Today that's not an excuse We have huge military budgets, in historical terms. So if we fail in a first battle, you can blame the generals and admirals who failed to call it right and call it honestly. And you can blame Congress, because ultimately Congress determines the shape of the force. So I think General Shinseki is absolutely trying to do the right thing.

The other problem we face is that it's not only the first battle of the next war. We are in an age of conflict after conflict, intervention after intervention. And they're not going to stop. If you study the history of the nineteenth-century army fighting the Indians of the Southwest and the Northwest, read the War Department records in Washington. And every one of those was the last one. In other words, there would be no more Bosnias, no more Kosovos. They're all the last one.

The bad news is we are in for a nearly endless stream of these. The world is broken and desperate trying to right itself, to find a new balance after the dissolution of great bloc systems, great empires and dictatorships. It's going to be decades or longer before these conflicts all play out. So while preparing for the first battle of the big war, we've got to be able to do a wider variety than ever of lesser, but often dangerous, and sometimes bloody things as well. We are not only are not fully prepared for the next big one; we're not well prepared for many of the little ones.

Some people say the army is too top-heavy.

I'm not convinced by the argument that we have too many generals. I'm certainly easily convinced by the argument that we have mediocre generals and admirals. I'm familiar with the pundits and demigods who hold up the Wehrmacht, the German Army of World War II, and say, "Well, you had a sergeant leading 30 or 40 men. You didn't need these officers. They didn't have this many generals."

First of all, the German Army in World War II lost the war. Secondly, the nature of things has changed. The military force of today, like it or not, is infinitely more complex than the primitive armies of World War II. We have a much more sophisticated force technology, more complex in other respects as well from communications to intelligence. You do need a much greater tail. The other argument you'll hear is the logistics tail is too great, so let's just cut the tail. That's foolish. That's an armchair general's argument. The way you reduce the tail is by changing the combat force. If you arbitrarily cut tail, it means you can't support the combat force you've built.

So you've got to take an over-arching view of things. Could you do with fewer generals? Yes, probably somewhat fewer, if they were better. But these little arguments about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin just miss the boat. We need a quality, thinking army that can do pushups and shove in the bayonet as well. What we have, sadly, is a mediocre Department of Defense overall--from Secretary Cohen on down.

Can the transformation take place without really restructuring the army? . . .

There are always plenty of people in Washington and defense pundits willing to say you can't do this, you can't do that, you must buy this. If people are in love with the division, the way to deal with it is the way General Shinseki's dealing with it. Keep the division name, change the brigades. Change the army that way and let the brigade drive the division into its dotage.

Oftentimes people become so enamored of the name or the flag or the rank. But as long as let you let them keep the title, you can change the substance.

And I think that's what General Shinseki is doing brilliantly. Is the current division the structure for the future? Of course it's not. But why wage a quixotic tilt against windmills, a fight against division, when you can let the old boys have their division. Change its substance, change its guts. And make it go away more effectively that way.

Do you think that's what happening in the latest announcement about the brigades is that they're not pure units--they are combined now and being called combat teams?

General Shinseki, in my outsider's reading, is not only a good strategist, he's a brilliant tactician. He's letting the old boys have some of their toys and their ranks, their titles, their flags, but he is building the force of the future without telling them.

We've had a lot of defense reviews over national defense. We're going to have another one next year in 2001. What have they accomplished so far?

All these quadrennial reviews and national defense panels serve a very important function in Washington. They keep defense intellectuals off the welfare rolls. They don't do much else. First of all, I've dealt with some of them. Committees don't think innovatively. What you get time and again is dumbed-down insights, the consensus view. I'll trade you this for that. None of these studies are brave or bold or incisive or worth very much. The way you get innovation, frankly, is one or at most a handful of determined visionaries fight for something they believe in. Think tanks will not change the world, and they surely will not change the army.

What do you think about a proposal to change the army into smaller units?

Colonel Doug MacGregor's book, Breaking the Phalanx, was a brilliant attempt to innovate. Did MacGregor get it all right? Absolutely not. I think he's wrong about a lot of the details. But he had the basic vision. He had the substance. And he articulated it, and he wasn't the first. Others have said it. He just said it better and in book form. He articulated where we need to go, towards smaller, more mobile, more balanced forces. It's clearly the wave of the future to anyone who's served, who's been out there, and is thinking about these issues honestly and isn't in the pay of a defense contractor. Doug MacGregor was a hero. He didn't have all the answers, but boy, he fired up the right questions.

Do you think that the medium brigades are following that line, or are they departing from that line?

The medium brigades are indeed following the general thrust of Breaking the Phalanx. But no book, no initial blueprint for our organization will get it exactly right. We don't know how these medium brigades will ultimately look. In ten years they might not be called brigades at all. They might look radically different. That's the great thing about the medium brigades. First of all, we're starting to change. We're experimenting, we're trying. And at the same time they will be usable. You can use them in these contingencies. And we will learn a lot from the contingencies.

One of the problems with pundits is that they're very impatient. Now, the M-1 tank is still the greatest tank in the world. You remember in the late 1970s and early 1980s, everybody was saying, "Oh, it's a lemon. It's gold-plated, it's a turkey." These are complex systems, and certainly complex organizations like the medium brigade need time to develop. They won't get it right the first time. Let them experiment. Don't grab a headline by saying it's a failure because it went out to NTC and didn't beat the opposition forces. You've got to let them be defeated by the opposition forces a dozen times. Then, if the thirteenth time they hammer the opposition forces and rip it apart, you've got your money's worth. It just takes time. Let people experiment, as long as the experiments are obviously being done in a spirit of honesty. Don't expect perfection the first time. You won't get it. We cannot foresee the future well enough to say that the medium brigade's the ultimate answer. The medium brigade poses the right questions.

The war games of the Army War College at Carlyle were actually looking at a scenario in 2015 in which the medium brigades played a larger role. Do you have any views on that?

I have played in a lot of strategic operational and tactical war games over the years. My general experience is the higher the level, the less useful they are. And war games at the Carlyle level are about as useful as a raccoon tail on a Mercedes. . . . The problem with strategic level war games is they have such visibility. So many people are watching that they're never fully honest. They certainly do serve a purpose. They raise some good questions. They sometimes lead to an epiphany here and there. But we would need to conduct them in a no-holds barred spirit of honest brutality in order to get real mileage out of them.

What about the army's attempt to reach out to Hollywood to develop ideas about training films and the Future Combat System?

The current initiatives to reach out to Hollywood leave me skeptical. I think it's important to reach out, but I'm not sure the army has the sophistication to reach out intelligently and incisively. Recruiting some has-beens who are between projects for the next half-dozen years and imagining that they're going to you know tell you the shape of the future is probably pretty foolish.

The sad thing is that the real expertise, the knowledge, the insight about the future is in uniform. But I have found personally in my experiences that the generals and admirals don't want to hear good ideas from the experienced people beneath them. They cannot abide good ideas from their subordinates. So reach out to some screenwriter who has never served a day in uniform, who hasn't a clue, or some campus intellectual who's just looking for a grant and was just too good to tie on a combat boot, and they'll hang on every word.

You've got colonels and majors and even captains out there who have seen the future and they're fighting for it. Our military is a tin pot aristocracy. It's really, really sad. I personally had to leave the military to have my voice heard. The moment I took my uniform off, I had credibility. That's absolutely backward. I should have had more credibility when I was in uniform. The military needs to learn to exploit and respect the talent it has in the ranks before it reaches out to people who were never in a fistfight and have only seen them on screen.

Why do you think Shinseki will be successful in what he's trying to do?

I'm not convinced General Shinseki will be successful. I hope he will be successful. But the institutional resistance within the army, the contractors, the partisans on Capitol Hill who speak patriotism but are worried about PAC money, they're all stacked against him. He's fighting a courageous fight in the true American grain. I hope he wins. But at best I'd give him even odds. And I'd only give him even odds because the future is pressing us toward the vision and the reality General Shinseki has articulated.

What is the price of not changing it?

The price of not changing is we're less ready and take more casualties. And make no mistake--you can't wage casualty-free wars forever. Kosovo was a failure in many real terms. We will ultimately take casualties. It's not going to be a debacle that destroys America. What it will be is debacle on a lesser scale that kills a lot of those fine young men and women who are currently on food stamps while serving their country.

[marcelo l.]

Why did you send copies of the book America's First Battles to the House and the Senate?
It's a perspective of what our nation, and primarily our army, has seen over our history. And it is an army that oftentimes went into those first battles less prepared than they could have been, and certainly than they should have been. It was background as I went to testify on why transformation was important to this army at this period of time. I wanted to at least share that perspective, so that this discussion didn't start nowhere and end nowhere, but had a foundation.

What was the experience you were trying to convey to them?

It's less than stellar. The first battles of all of the wars we have fought have seen tremendous price and human loss because of our lack of preparedness for that war. This it the fiftieth anniversary of the Korean War and we are about to celebrate events like Task Force Smith--valorous fighting by great young Americans. Unfortunately, they were not as prepared as we should have been for that conflict. And it's about not repeating the Task Force Smith experience. We're better than that, and that's a matter of being able to generate the support that we need for this transformation.

At the U.S. Army armor conference, you said that if we took lessons from Desert Storm, our enemies did, too. What do you mean by that?

If you go back and look at the events that led up to that very decisive victory that the our army and our allies won in Desert Storm, the precursor events that led up to that victory pointed out some operational shortcomings. And that is when Saddam began his move south and overran Kuwait City, and was moving very quickly towards the border with Saudi Arabia. South of that border lay the airfields and the ports that we would have needed to get into with our heavy forces. It looked like he was on a time line that we were not going to be able to match.

Our response was to take a brigade of light infantry, our airborne infantry, the great Eighty-second Airborne Division, airlifted them quickly and put the in the desert to block. And they dug in with not much in the way of lethality of anti-tank capability or artillery. But they went into the desert to take on that movement that was coming south. It's not a battle that we would have designed. Heavy mechanized forces were coming up against light infantry, and frankly, we held our breath.

For reasons still unexplained, Saddam stopped for six months and then, of course, everything else is history. But our condition ten years ago has not been corrected today. If we had the same situation and had a breakaway threat and had to respond, our move would be with the light infantry and primarily the Eighty-second Airborne Division again. That would be our strategic response. Then we'd wait for the heavy divisions to arrive, which would be a number of weeks. We need to correct that. That's an operational shortfall. I personally feel a moral obligation to those soldiers that we would first have something to go in right behind them to give them the kinds of capabilities that that brigade of the Eighty-second did not have ten years ago. They didn't have technical mobility. They didn't have weapons platforms and they did not have an assault gun capability. And frankly, this is something we have to take care of.

What would you say then was the biggest lesson that enemies watching took away from the Gulf War?

That when they commit to battle, they should not take a six-month pause. They should follow up their early victories with sustained momentum, because the pause is what gave us the opportunity to structure the outcome of that war.

You had an intense statement on transformation within days of your appointment as chief of staff in June 1999. What prompted you to want such a big program?

Transformation is only a word. If you want it to lead to something, there's a foundation that only comes with 30-plus years in this profession. And it's being around to see what worked and what didn't work--being around to listen to young soldiers talk about how things could be better or what their concerns are. It comes with spending 15 months as a deployed operational commander in places like Bosnia. It's reading the lessons of Desert Storm, not the headlines of Desert Storm. The lessons of Desert Storm tell you about the incident I just described to you. And in order to make transformation a vision for something that has real potential for achievement, you have to begin with those foundations that tell you where you want to end up once you begin this process.

What's the outcome if things stay on the same course?

It's how not to continue preparing for the last war. And frankly, the magnificent army that fought in Desert Storm is a great army, and it still is a magnificent army today. But it was one we designed for the Cold War, and the Cold War has been over for ten years now. As we look forward to the next century, we've seen a bit of what that next century is going to look like, and the kinds of deployments we've had in the last ten years. And yes, it is Desert Storm. But it's also Somalia and Haiti and Panama, Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor.

Look at the condition of the army and our ability to move quickly to these hot spots. We need to have sufficient capability on the ground to deter and to hold crises where they are, with the intent of then returning to stability. That takes a kind of agility and flexibility and versatility that we need in the force. It's looking for solutions to these kinds of problems that have given us a bit more focus on what to accomplish in transformation. It is not just the low-end business, but it's also being able to fight those wars as we did in Desert Storm. We need an army with versatility and agility to be able to do all of those missions on the spectrum. And today we are a bit focused on our capabilities. The heavy divisions to do the war fighting, the light divisions to do lots of things, but are a bit more challenged in the high-intensity war fighting. We have not looked after their lethality or their survivability quite as we have done for the heavy force.

What did you mean when . . . you said that our intellectual doctrine hasn't quite kept pace in dealing with small actors on the one hand, and the high end on the other?

This does tie to that. If you look at the elements of power any nation employs, we would agree there are about four of them: political power for sure; economic power; information; and military power. . . . Look in the headlines for the kinds of things that are happening, whether it's the relations between India and Pakistan, China and Taiwan, the Koreas, or southwest Asia. You can see all of those elements of power being employed in a variety of ways, whether they're economic sanctions or political initiatives being used to leverage behavior and stability from the protagonists. If you look at the use of the military as one of those elements, you'll see us in places like Bosnia and Kosovo. And so you see a requirement for those capabilities. If you read the articles in the newspaper closely, you'll also see the emergence of some things that I would call "complicators," for lack of a better term.

I'm talking about organized crime. I'm talking about narcotrafficking. I'm talking about terrorism, and maybe the fourth piece is the one that I would lump as weapons of mass destruction. All four of those actors seem to be gaining a kind of nexus where organized crime is generating dollars through narcotrafficking, the use of terrorist actors and the employment of weapons of mass destruction. If they come together, they provide a significant capability that we doctrinally don't have a way of describing, intellectually, how we would deal with it today.

For the military element, we talk about missions. We talk about war fighting. We talk about peacekeeping. But these complicators provide us what I would describe as a low-end actor with very high-end capabilities. If they were to employ weapons of mass destruction, how do we deal with them? As a military force, this doesn't necessarily fall into our description of missions. There is a good opportunity for us to do some intellectual work here that will help answer some of these questions for us.

When you testified this year to the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee, Senator Lieberman asked you if you can articulate a vision similar to the German general who created the blitzkrieg doctrine. You said that you have a lot more things to worry about than the German general did . . . like Haiti, Bosnia, and Somalia. . . . What you were trying to convey to Senator Lieberman?

It's the challenge of being in an army that has global recognition for significant capabilities, for doing good work in a variety of mission profiles and then being called upon to do it. It's an army of ten active component divisions. There are six National Guard heavy divisions, two more National Guard divisions that have specialized missions, and then a host of other units that deploy early out of the army reserve. The reserve, the guard and the active component come together with their very special skills to put together forces that we can deploy rather quickly.

The missions that we're asked to perform run from humanitarian assistance, fire-fighting, and non-combatant evacuation from the most remote corners of the world. When American representatives are there at the behest of our government and when the affairs of those countries start to unravel, our responsibility is to get them safely out on very short notice. It is about peacekeeping. It is also about the high-end business. That's the business of war fighting, and dealing in an environment where violence is very much a part of that environment.

The challenge is to understand how to organize your limited forces to do all of those things. You can't fall into the trap of organizing yourselves for specific missions, and then not being able to perform other missions when the conditions change very quickly--as they can in places like Kosovo--in 20 minutes. You find yourself having to go very quickly intellectually and physically from what was a peacekeeping mission into war fighting. And how have you prepared your youngsters, both intellectually, from a point of being trained and prepared, and with equipment, to be able to very quickly prevail in that more intense higher mission requirement?

This is about versatility. If you were to design forces, you would want to design them for the high-end business of war fighting. When the conditions change and put you into this very intense war fight, your units would prevail. But then you have the requirement to train those same forces to be able to adjust, and to perform some of the lower-end missions.

You also said . . . that the biggest threat to us is being predictable, such as having to go through an airport or a port, and having a big logistics tail behind you. You said, "If I were the enemy, that's where I'd come after us." How would a transformed force try to deal with that?

All of us who have grown up with this profession understood that we could take on our adversaries in a number of ways. We could meet them at the front line where all of this combat capability is arrayed the way he wanted it-- all of his guns looking at us, all of his artillery pieces prepared to engage us. Or we could take our adversaries on a bit differently and reduce his capability for sustaining a war fight--take away his soft targets, his command and control. Take away his artillery, and his logistical support, and within 24 hours his ability to continue the fight would have been seriously degraded.

If you look at it on the larger scale, our ability to get into areas of crisis today is very much determined by where we can get our strategic lift in, whether it's airlift or sealift. And it's ports and large airfields. For the asymmetric actor out there, who has limited opportunity to influence our fight, we provide the kind of predictability they're looking for. So if we can find a way to get our forces quickly into theater without having to go predictably through the ports or through the airfields as we have in the past, we have begun to change the equation and the calculus of the battlefield. We're then able to reduce our vulnerability and deny predictability in our operations. Then they must face us when we are deployed and ready to do combat.

. . . Are you just focusing on speed? Is that a vulnerability of the new transformation? Or does it take into account being denied theater access through airfields and ports?

Transformation is more than just one piece of the spectrum here. It's not just about platforms. When you look at our lift requirements today, the heavy divisions' requirement for strategic lift is eighty to ninety percent in our logistical tail. It's not in the weapons platforms. Those weapons platforms count for maybe twenty percent of our lift. The rest of it is in our logistical tails.

So as we talk about transformation, we intend to get into the design of our units. It is about looking for a common chassis design. It is about looking for smaller caliber ammunition. It is about fuel efficiency. It is about micro-technology. As we reduce the size of our platforms, we also reduce the size of this rather significant logistical footprint, and that gives us the kind of agility that will put us in places that are least expected. We can reduce our predictability and get in there faster. And then when we have to change directions and go on another mission, we will also have the agility to be able to do that.

By bringing together these various principles and designs, eight to ten years down the road the force will have the characteristics that the future force will need. It is about responsiveness. It is about deployability. It is about agility, versatility and lethality--better than we have today, and survivability much better than we have today. It's a far more sustainable force than we have today.

When you were a commander in Bosnia, you saw things that we could not do, or that we would rather have done differently. Are those things that could be taken care of by a transformed force--in the way that you're thinking?

We discovered that most of our heavy equipment, in a country that was wrestling to reestablish itself economically, tore their roads up so badly that commerce could not get through. And then we had to come back in and repair those roads. And a many-ton combat vehicle is going to leave an imprint on the ground. If the weather goes bad and the ground gets soft, that imprint is far, far more significant, to the point where commerce was seriously impacted.

You probably know that, in time, we put most of that equipment on a ready status inside our installations in Bosnia, and really went to patrolling with much lighter wheeled vehicles. Our Humvees are fine for driving the roads, but when you go to a hot situation you would revert back to those heavier pieces of equipment. I think we need something to do both, and it's not just in Bosnia. A majority of the places that we've deployed to in the last ten years are encumbered, or at least our missions are encumbered by the heavy platforms. So thinking about how would we do this differently drives some of the designs we're looking at in transformation.

Is the two major theaters war scenario (2MTW ) getting in the way?

The two major theaters of war scenario is really a sizing function. It tells us how many formations we need to be able to respond to the demands of the regional commanders in chief who have to fight those wars for us. It's a reasonable scenario, because it stresses us in our planning to go one direction and then, with a brief 45-day period to go in another direction. It would stress any institution.

There is some talk that 2MTW may be passé. Perhaps. Those discussions are part of strategic decision-making. But for the time being, the 2MTW scenario is the one that I have been asked to plan for. It makes sense. I can execute it today with the forces that the army provides. The first one is a moderate risk, the second MTW is at high risk. And I think all of us who sit on the Joint Chiefs of Staff would come to the same conclusion. Whether it's two major theaters of wars or a single major theater of war with multiple complex contingencies. I guess it would come down to definitions. . . And what do we specifically mean by a complex contingency? Is it a Bosnia or a Kosovo? Is it a Somalia or is it a Desert Storm? We need those defined, because those are the descriptions that will decide how much capability is sufficient.

One requirement of our scenarios that has not been quite understood today is the element of time.

In what way?

Time as a factor isn't really addressed in either the two major theaters of war scenario or one-plus scenario. Time on the front end has the sense of urgency. It's getting there with the right sufficient capability to be able to be decisive quickly. The standing military force is about the only capability you can rely on. Time on the back end of an operation has a different quality, and it has to do with the longevity that goes with these deployments. We have been in Kosovo now a year. We're coming up on five years in Bosnia. The Sinai Desert is 18 years, and Korea is 40. Each mission begins to strip away inventory and capability. So when you arrive at the point in time where you're now talking about however many major theaters of war you're going to try to provide forces for, that inventory has now been spread-eagled on a variety of missions. We need to address what that element of time does to us on missions.

You've said there's an innate tension between those having to deploy in the Sinai or in Kosovo or in Korea or in peacekeeping operations, and maintaining the readiness for 2MTW.

The tension is there because there are really two demands here. One is today's demand, and the demand for any commander in the field meeting today's requirements. . . . If it's training, it's the military contact. If it's units deploying for training, it's sending out small mobile training teams to help the professional armies that we work with. Always in the background is the long-term requirement of being ready to fight that major theater of war, should that crisis develop. So you have this dual focus. You're always being ready to do the major theater of war requirement, but you're dealing with today's challenges. And commanders live in both rooms.

A year ago we had North Korean fishing boats bumping into South Korean naval vessels. The discussion between the commander in Korea and myself was being sure that we were watching the same situation closely, and that if things went badly, we were prepared to respond with those four fighting forces. When those boats are not bumping into each other, or Saddam isn't rattling his saber, then the discussions between the chief of any service and that commander still occur, but they have a different flavor. It's about today's requirements, it's about mobile training teams and it's about training exercises between units. What can we do better, and how much more capability should we provide?

We need to do both things--look after today's needs, and always have that capability to respond on a very, very short time line in case we go to crisis, Those two are in tension, and require a C-1 military readiness rating. A fully ready army does both well. But they do compete, and today, frankly we are not at that full C-1 capability. Historically we have been, and so we know how to operate at that level. We are challenged at our rate of about a C-2 army, which is an army with some deficiencies, to insure that we have the capabilities properly balanced for both requirements. We need to be a C-1 army.

Last year, General Campbell rated the Tenth Mountain Division as C-4: not ready. Is there a readiness crisis? Was the firestorm over that division and the other unit a real crisis?

The firestorm occurred in Washington. It didn't occur in that unit and it did not occur inside the army. Certainly I think General Campbell will share with you that he felt that he made his assessment, and that his report of C-4 was intended to get the attention of the army. He could not meet the timelines I just described to you, given the current condition of his force. As a result, we addressed his shortfalls to give that capability back to him. It had to do primarily with being able to get quickly out of Bosnia back to home station; getting his unit then trained for a war fight; then deploying on the timelines that he had been asked to meet that war fighting requirement some commander in chief out there expected of him. And when he did his analysis and could not meet it, he raised his hand and said, "I've got a problem." The great virtue in all of this is that you've got a superb young commander, and I think you'll find him to be exactly someone who had the confidence to make that tough call. No one does that willingly, but he did and got our attention and we took care of it.

The Apache helicopter mission in Kosovo (Task Force Hawk) was an embarrassment. The army appeared to be slow to the punch. What was the lesson that you took away from the Task Force Hawk experience?

Just as I've cautioned us not to study the wrong lessons out of Desert Storm, we need to be sure that we take the right lessons out of Task Force Hawk. And there are some very good lessons in terms of how we prepare aviation units and how we have looked after their equipment. And frankly, I think embarrassment is an unfortunate word. I certainly would not subscribe to that. There are those who have described this as not a good moment for the army, but I think most of that has played out in the media, and not in the professional discussions.

What you had was a commander in chief in Europe who decided that he needed this capability in-country. The flow of equipment and personnel to meet the mission Task Force Hawk was more than just a number of helicopters. It ended up being a very significant heavy force of about 5,000 people to include tanks, artillery pieces, and engineering equipment. The flow into the airfield there in Tirana, in Albania, was complicated because it was also the center of a large humanitarian effort to care for refugees that were crossing the Albanian border. They had to balance both missions. You had a real world life-saving mission, and a real world military requirement. And of the capability in that airfield, eighty percent was given to taking care of the Albanian refugees, and twenty percent was given to the arrival of Task Force Hawk.

With the arrival of heavy equipment to that part of Albania, there were no roads that we could drive on, and the early-arriving units literally had to build an installation in which to then deploy those helicopters. Everything was under mud. It wasn't unusual to see soldiers up to their thighs and hips wading around setting up that station. So the early-arriving engineers brought in rock to lay a foundation to bring in the heavier equipment, tanks, artillery pieces, and infantry vehicles, in order to give that mission some capability. That was very much tied to on a time line that the regional commander in chief wanted. His time line was satisfied. And the fact that twenty percent of the flow into that airfield was allocated to Task Force Hawk suggested that he was comfortable that that was an appropriate time line.

He will also tell you it was not until Task Force Hawk arrived that the Albanian government felt comfortable about moving to the border themselves. And when that happened, you had a collision between ground forces in Albania and the lineup of Serbia forces at Kosovo. When that happened, we began to have tactical targets that the air force and our other weapons systems could now identify and begin targeting.

Up until this point, most of our targeting was against bridges and buildings. They were important targets, strategic targets, but they're not tactical. In the business of war fighting, it's destroying those targets that bring about the effect that we're looking for.

How would you respond to the statement that the air force won the war in Kosovo?

I don't think any one of the chiefs would argue that their service has the capability to win the war single-handedly. I take my hat off to the great pilots that flew those missions. They were tough. The affairs in Kosovo would have gone far differently had we not had a complement of air and ground capability. However, the air campaign resulted in an agreement that, ten months later, still has significant ground force presence in Kosovo. And the mission goes on. So it's not about winning or losing. We all contribute to those missions.

You talked in a congressional hearing about the country having a narrow window to make the transformation like this. You call it "the most significant effort to change the army in this century." Why is it so important, and why is there so little time?

It has to do with the tenure of leadership, and I think that's true for any enterprise, whether it's business or military. In my case, the appointment is for four years. As I've looked back at the tenures of other chiefs, generally the good ideas that found their way into implementation are the ones that were begun early. There are other opportunities where chiefs attempted something in their last two years of tenure, and generally those initiatives did not survive the departure of the chief. I just believe that I've got to get the momentum early. That's important to transformation, and my contribution to wherever transformation ends up happening is providing that momentum so that future chiefs can build on it.

How much time do you think you have?

About another year. I'm a year into this now. Frankly I'm pleased at the momentum we've gotten. But this second year is going to require a lot more progress, so that in the last two years we can begin to shape and define where transformation, so it will go as we hand it off to the next chief. But generally it's the first two years that'll make a difference.

And why don't you want this transformation identified with you? You're very careful about that.

It's important in any organization that if visions have any reality at all, it's because the organization believes that the vision is right and that they share in it. Otherwise it becomes the good idea of one person, and that even more importantly contributes to the sense that it will not survive the departure of that individual.

So this is the army's vision. And it's my responsibility is to give it momentum, to educate and to inform, and to get a buy-in from the rank-and-file and from the very top. One of my senior generals said that every last driver and soldier in a tank turret and truck should understand it and believe that's what needs to be done.

What's the dilemma that we face with our heavy and light forces?

The heavy force is a magnificent war fighting force. It is not versatile or agile enough to meet all the missions that we're asked to perform today, or that I see that we'll be asked to perform in the next 25 years. The light force is the best light infantry in the world. We can get them to all the places that we're asked to go. But if it goes hot, they lack the lethality and the survivability that our heavy forces have, and frankly we need to do something about that. So it's bringing heavy force capability with light-force deployability, and giving the light force the staying power that they currently don't have, yet not sacrificing their speed in getting to places.

What are the medium brigades? What does the interim force buy us?

The interim force buys us the ability to close the gap that I described in the situation with the Eighty-second Airborne Division in Desert Storm. The light force is getting there quickly and then waiting for weeks until the first heavy divisions arrive. These light brigades are a bridge between light force capability and those heavy divisions. It provides tactical mobility. . . .

During the congressional hearings, you used the phrase "holding our breath" in Desert Storm. Succinctly, just what happened in that situation with the Eighty-second Airborne? What was the reaction for commanders like yourself who were looking on?

The situation in Desert Storm was a quick break away by Saddam's forces headed south to the Saudi border. We knew that if those forces overran the ports and the airfields, we would not be able to get in quite as easily with our heavy forces that would come by air or by sea. In order to deny Saddam that kind of early success, we lifted a brigade of the Eighty-second in, put them in the desert, and had them dig in to wait for the arrival of Saddam's forces. It was not a fight we would have designed--heavy mechanized enemy forces against our magnificent light infantry. And frankly, we held our breath. Frankly, to this day, we are not quite sure why he stopped. But he did stop, and the six months that he chose to do nothing allowed us to get the heavy force in.

It is a situation that we have not rectified in the last ten years. If that same situation were to occur today someplace else in the world, our reactions would be the same. The light infantry component would go in first, awaiting the arrival of heavy forces and these interim brigades are intended to bridge the gap in the interim between our light and our heavy forces. It's an operational shortfall we've had for 10 years, and frankly, this chief feels that there is a moral obligation to do something about it.

If we can do this in the interim, this gives us time to spend on the science and technology and research and development efforts; they can be the quality that we need to spend. Invested dollars will give us future technologies for an objective force eight to ten years down the road.

You said you had a moral obligation to build this force. Yet you've got critics who are saying that we're making ourselves vulnerable by going into wheeled vehicles, that they can't go toe to toe with heavy armor, that they can't go places that tracks can go. What is this focus on equipment?

If you read the three-page army vision statement, there is one sentence in there that contrasts wheels and tracks. We say when technology prevails, we are prepared to go in one direction. It may be unfortunate that it was put in the vision, but it was primarily intended to get the attention of the army. If you look at us, what better symbol is there for our heavy and light forces than tracks and wheels? The commitment is to create a force with capability that matches or merges both our heavy and our light capabilities today--war fighting like our heavy divisions, and surviving and moving like our light divisions--getting to places we need to get to.

So the question was raised about wheels versus track. The answer is immaterial. We are interested in the best of the capabilities, whether it's wheels or tracks or both. And I think it's a legitimate question that we address as we look for the long term, as technologies become investigative. For those future objective vehicles, it may be wheels; it may be tracks; it may be neither But I think it's a legitimate discussion to have.

The interim force is where you've heard the wheels and track discussions resonate most loudly, and frankly, none of us cares. If the solution is wheels, fine. If it's tracks or a mixture of both, that's fine as well. Just for the interim, we would like the very best capability we can get off the shelf, to very quickly get that operational shortfall addressed.

. . . This subject of wheeled vehicles is their sticking point for the House Armed Services Committee. It seems to matter to some folks, and especially to some folks on the Hill. Why is that?

. . . I don't know what the answer is. I've asked the question and I'd like the debate to occur. Some who have already decided what the answer is are certainly making their arguments. I just need to be sure that, as we go down this road, that we maintain as much flexibility or as much openness so that we get to the right answers. I can tell you about today's condition. Twenty years ago, we did a track versus wheel study, and at that time, at about 24 tons you had to go to tracks as a solution, because cross-country navigation required track vehicles. If we look back over the last 20 years, what we'll also understand is that wheel technology has come a long way, primarily because of our own recreational habits--four-wheel drive vehicles, all-terrain vehicles, tires that run flat. I'm not sure that the same kind of energy has gone into track technology. And my raising the issue of wheels and tracks was to insure that those who are proponents for tracks would also get into the intellectual investigation of whether or not today's track technology is good enough.

Perhaps the concern that's being reflected by some members about wheels is because someone has convinced them that the army has already predetermined that wheels is the answer. And frankly that answer is left for the next chief to decide. That answer will come with the technology investigations that we hope to have returned to us in the next three to four years. That will help answer this final issue.

How does an army change from the ground up?

There are three vectors in this effort. Transformation looks at a legacy force that we have to maintain and keep war fighting ready today. The second vector is the objective force that will involve sincere technology, research and development and experimentation, wheels versus track. These are all appropriate questions that should be left to that vector, where science, technology, research and development are designed to take care of experimental questions. The third vector, which is where much of this discussion has become resident, is the interim force. And as I have described earlier, the interim force is designed to fix a current operational shortfall. We know what it is. It is the lack of staying power in our light infantry, and the need to bridge between the insertion of light infantry and the arrival of heavy divisions today.

I am not sure what we gain out of experimentation. We had our experiment in the desert ten years ago, and we didn't like it. This is an operational shortfall that must be addressed. And the requirement to conduct a side-by-side test of comparable organizations, first of all, is going to place a requirement that will involve time. It'll take us probably a year to stand up this kind of an experiment, and it may be most of another year before we get the results.

I talked about momentum earlier, and I find this a significant challenge to the army's ability to develop momentum here in this very early and critical period in such a way that transformation will carry on beyond my tenure. Experimentation for the interim force is probably less helpful. The comparison between an interim brigade and the lack of capabilities in the light brigade is the comparison we're looking for. It is not the interim brigade compared to some other mechanized capability.

We interviewed Ralph Peters, the retired army officer and author, who is very supportive of your efforts. He said basically that what you do is test your unit, and your doctrine will follow. . . . Is that what's going to happen?

We will do that with these formations. There is still a lot of learning that goes on. We've begun some of that in computerized force on force modeling. We have an idea about the organization, and as we create the units that will have resident in it the kinds of off the shelf equipment we're looking for. We will take them and work them in the desert and learn from those experiences.

But frankly there's an even more important piece here. As you take these units and exercise them in these training environments, you're growing today's leaders who are going to be commanding divisions ten years from now. When the objective force arrives, it'll arrive with platforms. What we also need are leaders who are prepared to organize, command and fight those formations. And they will not appear unless you include that kind of training ground as part of this development. That's where these interim brigades provide us the opportunity to create today's brigade and battalion and company commanders who are going to be more senior in their future objective formation.

You mentioned the computer model. We were at the Army War College a month ago when that was going on. What were the lessons that you learned?

The computer modeling I'm talking about was done inside TRADOC (army training and doctrine command). What we did was experiment with different kinds of formations. For example, in the new interim brigade, you'll find what is called a Reconnaissance Surveillance Unit. It does not exist inside our brigades today. It's a new organization that we're creating.

That modeling was done with captains, former company commanders playing company commander roles who are instructors in the TRADOC institutions. But they fell back in on this modeling effort and played the roles of company commanders, former battalion commanders. Now instructors came to play the roles of battalion commanders and so forth. And so we created units with experienced personnel and created a war game. We used a variety of organizations and capabilities based on equipment that we knew was on the shelf today. And we began to design this interim brigade combat team. And that's what you'll see if you were to go up to Fort Lewis today and investigate the first of our interim brigades, the Third Brigade, Second Infantry Division.

The lessons that we learned out of that modeling experiment suggested that inside these brigades, you had certain capabilities that must be resident. Not just the ability to fight, but the ability to see and understand our surroundings, so that before you venture into that fight, you have a pretty good understanding how to shape it and what the outcomes will be.

In the early 1980s, there was another experiment out at Fort Lewis, with the Ninth Infantry Division. Was that an experiment that many people thought was ahead of its time?

As I recall going back to the Ninth Infantry Division's high-tech experiment, the big challenge there was getting momentum. The initiatives contained in the Ninth Infantry Division's experiment were good ones. We see many of those good ideas showing up in the force, even today, 20 years later, which suggests that there was nothing wrong with that experiment. It just didn't get enough momentum.

We are off to an excellent start with this transformation. . . . There is a very good chance that we will develop the kind of momentum we need, both in support from Congress, support from OSD (the Office of the Secretary of Defense) as we continue to find funding and build momentum. But an early start--an early momentum--is essential.

[marcelo l.]

What is your background?

I am an armor officer. I grew up as a part of the team that helped to field M-1s and M-60-A3s to the army back in 1980s. It's still a magnificent tank, and we designed it for the Cold War and central Europe. It continues to excel today. It is a great tank. To all the places that we can take it, it continues to be the difference in capabilities. But frankly all the places we're asked to go are challenged to accommodate that tank--bridges, roads, the support system in terms of fuel, distribution, the ability to distribute parts.

So it's important that we make this a reasonable decision for those who have fought with the M-1 tank and those great armor soldiers out there. That is still a great tank. And any institution that is going to undertake significant change is challenged. An army that fought and won a war decisively finds it even more difficult to undergo change. But this is the right step in order to prepare ourselves for future conflict and not saddle ourselves with preparing for the last war.

What is this new future combat system that you're working towards? Why do you think it's vital to the brigade combat teams and to the future course?

What we have to do is go and look at new technologies to enable us to design platforms in a different way, and I've begun doing that. I've gone to the army's research lab. I have been to some of the labs of our industrial partners. And I must tell you, I am encouraged by what I see out there. They go far beyond where I thought we were. And I think there's a real good opportunity that, in about three years, we will get the kinds of answers to our questions that will make design of this future combat system a reality.

There's a camp that says we can build it right now. . . . And we have another group that says you're talking a fantasy. You're not five years away, you're not ten years away. What is the reality?

The reality is that I think all of us need to hear both sides. There is a need to educate. . . . I can tell you that the technologies that I'm looking for are already being worked on. They're not mature enough. I have seen the makings of a microturbine the size of your thumbnail. Is it good enough? No, it's not good enough. Is there a great potential here? Absolutely. That will give us a capability to power in a way we don't do today. Fuel efficiency; low observable technology; the capability to handle lethality at smaller calibers than we do today on our heavy weapons systems; all of this is going on. That research is underway and I've seen it. So for those who say that this is beyond the realm of the possible, we need to educate. We need to share.

These are good folks. They have invested a good bit of time in our profession, and I think if they see what I've seen, they'll be very pleasantly surprised. To those who say that the solutions are here today, I'd like to see them. I have asked the question, and that's what I hope to get answers on.

How important are science and technology, research and development to you? We interviewed General Paul Funk (retired). He says he thinks you're the only chief who ever came to an Army Science Board meeting when their summer study was hot off the presses.

Twenty years ago when I worked on the tank team and we were fielding new equipment, I had the opportunity to be exposed to the great capability and the great potential and the great patriots that we have serving in our labs-- primarily civilian scientists. And it was an insight that's never left me. There is tremendous potential in this country in science and technology. And frankly, we need to do more to harness it.

Our advantage has always been to overmatch, and it is in those laboratories that overmatch becomes a reality. . . . My challenge is to find enough money to be able to stimulate the thinking and the investigation that gives us not just answers in 2003, 2004, but good answers and many of them, so that we can have the best of our choices as we put them together for the future combat systems.

We're going down to the Institute for Creative Technology in Marina del Rey, California. We're going to be sitting in on a session on future combat systems. . . . It seems like a rather strange alliance of the army and Hollywood. Where did that come from?

There are lots of strange alliances. . . . In Hollywood, there are capabilities with information technology that we tend to think are entertainment. In fact, it's information technology, whether it's in entertainment or in my profession. It's important because it deals with the human dimension. It's dealing with people who have to understand what they are about and then make decisions and carry through. I think there's much to be learned out of out of Hollywood.

What do you say to a critic who says that all that General Shinseki is doing with his medium brigades is building a peacekeeping force?

If you were to go back to my explanation of how the interim brigades bridge between the early-arriving light infantry forces and the arrival of the heavy divisions weeks later, you'll understand that they're intended to have a war fighting responsibility. And they provide tactical mobility to that initial infantry element on the ground, so you could pick them up and move them to another battle position on the battlefield. Otherwise they stay where they are. It gives them mounted weapons platforms and it gives them assault guns. These are capabilities they don't have today, and are important if we're going to add to their lethality and their survivability.

That's not the only capability we want to have in the interim brigades. We also want them to perform peacekeeping missions as well. We would see them get to a crisis very quickly and have combat capability on the ground that outmatches any one else's. If we're able to get them there early, we're able to stabilize the situation and not have to go to war fighting. Just the fact that you've got early deploying combat capability allows you then to shape the outcome of a crisis.

And if they're going to be there for a while, then you need more than just one or two or three brigades. If you're going to rotate these units in over a period of time, you're really talking about five brigades. We have been in Bosnia now for five years, going on six. And if you're going to have a long-term rotation policy as we do now--six months per unit--you'll need more than just three interim brigades. You'll need something on the order of five, as a minimum. So for both our small-scale contingencies and the war fighting requirements, these interim brigades will be able to provide that capability.

What about the critics who say the transformation that is underway is a very short-term answer to the deficiencies of Task Force Hawk?

No effort to transform ever ignores any of those experiences where we lacked capability that we would have liked to have. Although Task Force Hawk is part of it, it is not the only contributor here. As I've indicated, we have had an operational shortfall in the force that goes back ten years. And frankly we need to do something about it, and the interim brigades are intended to correct that shortfall.

Critics say you are just lightening the force, not changing it. They say that in order to really have radical transformation, you've got to attack the division structure, and unless you restructure it and get rid of divisions and make brigade combat teams, all you're doing is tinkering around the margins. How do you respond to that?

We are a force that has seen deployment across a variety of situations, from war fighting down to peacekeeping in Bosnia. We have a division headquarters in Bosnia. Despite the fact that there's only a brigade there, we have a division headquarters deployed and a division commander with staff. We will continue to look at how we are organized, and how we are structured. That's an appropriate question for some time down the road, when objective force formations have arrived. But until then, for the next eight to ten years if we went to war, we would go with formations we have; and we are organized as brigades, divisions and corps today.

All good institutions look at themselves over time, and challenge our own assumptions. We will continue to do that. Those who have decided that brigades are the way to go have really shorted themselves on a larger intellectual discussion about the versatility required in the force.

It does seem that you've actually begun to adopt some ideas of smaller self-contained units, in that the new brigades are combined arms teams. They're not pure units. You've introduced the reconnaissance and intelligence (RISTA) squadrons to them. Is this already the beginning of changing the old structure?

We talked about combined arms battalions years ago. And we started down an experimental path and then decided not to go any further. We think this is a good time to go and look at the lessons that were gained then, put them in place, carry this the next step forward, and create brigade combat teams that are in fact combined arms at the battalion level.

But is there a built-in resistance to combined arms, because you've got these pure units. They all have their histories. They all have their centers of power.

It is tough and these are what make change in any institution difficult. But it's important that we have people understand that branches won't go away, but that we have to organize for our primary responsibilities. And our primary responsibility is to war fight, and prepare and organize and equip our units and then train them so that they can function properly. In this host of missions that we're going to be asked for, conditions change very quickly. We'll have our branches, but we need to organize properly.

Nothing is free. By your estimate, the transformation is going to cost $70 billion over ten years.

I've heard several estimates, and I like the lower ones.

Let's just take $70 billion through 2014. Half will go to developing and preparing new weapons, but the next biggest chunk is upgrading the legacy systems. Why not take advantage of the strategic pause and cut back on legacy weapons? . . . Some people are saying that we can't pay for two forces, much less three forces at once. If the army isn't willing to cut the old to pay for the new, how serious is it about transformation?

If you look at what's happened in the restructuring of the force, I think you will find that the army has done exactly that. We understand that in the next eight to ten years, some predict that this is going to be a strategic pause. I'd like to have the same assurance. But if any of us are wrong, I do know who is going to have to meet that deployment requirement, and it's going to be an American solider. And I just want to understand that we have done right by him and her in the next eight to ten years. So we have taken the risk. We have focused our recapitalization efforts into a single corps--three division corps in which things like the M-1A2 tank and other modernization efforts will be focused. . . .

But for the rest of the force, we will sustain them in their war fighting capability pretty much as we know it today. About the only thing that may be inserted would be our digitization efforts. But for the most part we will freeze in place the rest of the force with the capabilities they have today. And we will turn the rest of our investments into science and technology for the future objective force. The future readiness of the force and the current readiness of the force is the responsibility of the chief--to insure that we got those requirements properly balanced. And I think that's about right.

Other critics say . . . that General Shinseki is sacrificing near-term war fighting capability for this long-term vision--that he's already sacrificed ten weapon systems.

It's tough never being right (laughs). I think you know that's an appropriate question to ask--and we are not in fact doing that. We are very much concerned about near-term readiness. We have taken risks, and we think, with this strategic pause, most agree that is something that we ought to consider. We've taken risks in concert with that and focused our modernization or our recapitalization efforts in a way that we've generated funding to take care of the science and technology investments that we believe are equally important.

We didn't get all the help that we wanted when we entered the budget discussions this past fall, but it's understandable. Transformation was launched by the army after a budget was submitted and before the second budget was being discussed. It's hard to change the budget process once you're mid-stride. And so we accepted where we were and did some reasonable adjustments. We made some tough decisions that allowed us to generate funds ourselves to begin to get momentum. And then we looked for the opportunity to discuss some help with Congress for the year 2001. Then we'll be able to go back to our counterparts in Defense to get support for the budget years 2002 to 2007, which is what we are doing right now. . . . We think a good bit of the discussions regarding funding and resources will be settled. But we're hopeful that momentum will continue to build. It looks good.

Senator Joe Lieberman said, "We're able to sort of make things happen this year, but next year push is going to come to shove." . . . Is it the simple fact that the army doesn't get its fair share?

These are tough decisions. I would say each of the services come with its best arguments for why it justifies its share of the budget. I will tell you that the balance between readiness and transformation places significant pressure on the army. There frankly is not enough money to do both, and to do it quickly. We don't want to come out with the wrong answers in the transformation process. And so the army is forced to be able to describe a requirement for more money, and I think that's appropriate.

If you look at where we are in terms of our defense budget, I think you would find that currently about 2.9 percent of our gross domestic product goes to defense. And historically, if you were to look back, I think you would find that investment significantly higher. There is a reasonable discussion to see whether a modest adjustment to that investment is appropriate. The American people ought to decide that. If you enjoy living in this country--which happens to be a lead nation--if you like the economy the way it is, does a strong defense and a strong military contribute to that? And if it does, is 2.9 percent the appropriate level of investment?

The House Defense Appropriations Committee report was interesting. On one hand, it gave the money that you asked for, but it also handed it out with almost a lecture to the army. It was almost a scolding, and it said basically, "We've taken a dim view of the slow and protracted way that the army procurement process has happened before." . . . What would you say to them?

I happen to agree with them regarding the length of time it takes us to acquire and field new equipment and new capabilities. You will see the eight to ten year period to the objective force is very much my concern. . . . And some of this is driven by a sense of urgency that I am trying to create in the force. If we can't get there in eight to ten years, then anything longer challenges our ability to remain relevant over time.

In terms of experimentation, when you're designing an objective force experimentation needs to be part of that process. We want the right answers. But all that is driven by how much you are able to invest early on to begin asking the questions and getting the right answers, creating the capabilities that answer the shortfalls that we see. That takes funding. And frankly, the army's funding accounts have been pretty tight over the last ten years. Hopefully we can begin to make the right arguments, the reasonable arguments that transformation is right for the army, and that this is the right direction to move to justify additional investments.

You have served your country for over 30 years. You were wounded three times in Vietnam, and remained in the service. Les Cotton says you're the finest person and the best officer he ever served with. What does it mean to you to be a soldier?

The reason I stayed on active duty at the time I did was because I had the utmost respect for the young American soldier I encountered in a place called Vietnam. And even though we came back to a country that wasn't quite sure that we did great work there, that young soldier did everything we asked of him and her and never complained. And I just thought that I could not serve in a better organization--that's why I stayed.

In my 35 years, I've always enjoyed since a great relationship with non-commissioned officers. Les Cotton was one of my very first. I was a young lieutenant in Vietnam when I encountered him. And in many ways, I grew up to be the officer that Les Cotton trained, and he and I have never forgotten it. But there is inside each and every one of our formations in the army a great relationship of human beings working very hard, handling difficult tasks that underscore the phrase "soldiering is an affair of the heart."

Today you spoke to these Army War College graduates. These are the people who are going to lead the force. . . . What are your hopes or fears for them?

I would like them to understand that the army is people, and our responsibilities for meeting our obligation to the nation in providing war fighting capability is a non-negotiable contract with the American people. When called to fight and win those wars for our nation, the army is about people--about readiness. This army has a requirement to transform itself in the years ahead to be ready for the kinds of missions that we see in this next century. As we talk about transformation, much of our discussion today has talked about platforms and equipment and what's right. . . . But I'd like those young leaders to remember that the centerpiece of our formation is the American soldier. It's not the tank, it's not the infantry fighting vehicle, it's not the attack helicopter. It is the American soldier who is the centerpiece of that formation. And all of our magnificent achievements as an army have been delivered by those young soldiers. Those leaders' responsibilities to our formations is to provide inspired leadership, the passionate service that creates in those youngsters a willingness to carry on with the very difficult tasks we ask of them.

In the army we do two things ever day. We train our soldiers and then we grow them into leaders, because frankly, we don't hire out. We grow our own leaders. It takes 15 years to produce a battalion commander doing the kinds of tough work our officers do to be ready for that kind of command. It takes 19 to 20 years to grow a brigade commander, and the command sergeant's major that accompanied them in those responsibilities. It is about leadership, training soldiers and growing the leaders for our future conflicts. I would say it's our stock in trade. It's developing leaderships for future conflicts.

When we were out at the Gettysburg battlefield with Major General Scales, the discussion was how both commanders in that historical time did not really reap the lessons of the past. . . . They didn't see . . . technological change, and they didn't see that they were letting men die unnecessarily because they weren't willing to change the way they thought about the way wars were fought. Do you see a lesson here in terms of the transformation for the army?

Absolutely. There is a great parallel here for us to understand the lessons of the past, but not be shackled by our experiences, and to look forward with as much clarity as we can to design future capabilities in new ways. And so as we talk about transformation, I think any unwillingness to go forward at this point would clearly place us as an army looking only backwards at the last victorious war that we fought.

The time is right. Our country is at peace, and we lead the world economically. There is potential here. There is a pause in world affairs where we can advantage ourselves to make some changes with minimal risk.

. . . Otherwise, we will go through transformation at some later date when the risk is much higher. And if our history of first battles is any suggestion, that may come on the eve of the next war. And that would be unfortunate.

What prompted you to push this army transformation at this time in history?

As I arrived at the position of chief of staff, I looked back, because I understood I was going to be the chief that would walk through the door of this century. I looked back historically to see what the last chief and the last secretary were thinking about a century ago. . . . I'm not sure that they saw that the First World War that was only 15 years away. All of their papers, all of their discussions and decisions in 1899 would not have reflected that they understood they were only 15 years away from a major global conflict.

And so I asked myself in the year 1999, "What do you see 15 or 20 years down the road?" We think we see better, but I'm not so sure. So the encouragement is while you have this opportunity in terms of peace and economic capability and the opportunity to transform this army, why not move up? Why not your align of your capabilities for future missions when you know that there is relative peace in the world now to get this done?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline ... nseki.html

[marcelo l.]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline ... kagan.html

Saiu traduzido pelo google chrome

Existe uma escolha que tem de ser feita entre paz e lutar contra a guerra?
Você tem que estar preparado para fazer as duas coisas. Se você não proceder a operações de manutenção da paz em alguns desses lugares, o conflito se espalhasse e amplia. Mais estados teriam se envolvido. Por exemplo, na Bósnia, que envolveria os países europeus.

Quando você fala sobre esses compromissos, você pode usar a frase "pseudo-engajamento".

Até agora, entrando na Somália , Bósnia , Kosovo e Haiti, que temos tentado fazer o argumento de que ia ser uma pequena, a participação limitada - de que estávamos indo para usar a menor força possível, e nós estávamos indo para obtê-los o mais rapidamente possível. Isso é colocar restrições sobre o que você estava indo para realizar, o que pode ou não servir o que você precisa fazer.

A escala de tempo é de gerações em conflito na Bósnia. Nosso envolvimento cinco anos não é susceptível de mudar a maré se retirar muito em breve. Eu também não estou certo de que os norte-americanos 5000 não são suficientes. Obviamente, nós retiramos da Somália muito cedo, e que degenerou em caos novamente. Está parecendo que saiu do Haiti, muito em breve. E isso também é olhar como ele está indo para baixo ciclo. Estamos começando a receber refugiados haitianos que vem através de barcos novamente.

Esse é o tipo de pseudo-engajamento que eu quero dizer - onde você faz apenas o suficiente para torná-lo impopular. Você faz apenas o suficiente para prejudicar a eficiência de combate da organização. Você faz apenas o suficiente para dar a todos os críticos de munições de noivado, mas você realmente não cumprir a missão.

Algumas pessoas dizem que se livrar da estratégia 2MTW , podemos obter essa força para baixo a quatro ou cinco divisões.

Eu realmente não acredito que exista tal coisa como uma estratégia MTW um. Pense no que você está dizendo que o presidente dos Estados Unidos se você é o chefe do pessoal do exército ou o comandante do teatro, que diz: "Eu preciso usar a nossa capacidade de MTW contra este inimigo por aqui." O que você está dizendo agora, "Sr. Presidente, você precisa entender que não temos capacidade de resposta em qualquer lugar do mundo, se nada de mal acontecer."

Não é que eu acho que perderia necessariamente que um grande teatro da guerra, eu acho que é improvável que iria mesmo. Está exigindo que o presidente dos Estados Unidos a assumir um risco enorme de não ser capaz de proteger as nossas alianças em torno do mundo, não ser capaz de cumprir com nossas obrigações, e não ser capaz de responder à agressão. E eu não vejo um presidente a tomar esse risco. Então eu diria que uma estratégia 2MTW é realmente o mínimo, e "One MTW estratégia" é realmente um "Não MTW estratégia."

The National Defense Panel disse que deveríamos 2MTW sucata. Mais recentemente, a Comissão Hart-Rudman 2MTW disse que está ficando no caminho, e que devemos livrar-se dele. Você não concorda com isso?

. . . A estratégia 2MTW, o engajamento agressivo, se concentra na manutenção de uma ordem mundial pacífica e evitando a criação de vácuos de poder em regiões importantes. Tornamos mais claro para os agressores em potencial que não só nos opomos a eles em espírito, mas que pode e vai opor-se-lhes com força, se tentar alguma coisa. Como meu pai gosta de dizer, a estratégia deve ser não apenas "Não estacione aqui", mas "Não pense mesmo de estacionar aqui." Nem pense em nos atacar. Nem pense em atacar os nossos aliados. Estaremos todos com você.

Se você fizer isso, você pode manter o actual período de paz e estabilidade por um longo tempo. As pessoas que estão dizendo, "Trash 2MTW estratégia", estão realmente dizendo, "Nós gostaríamos de chamar as forças armadas até um ponto mínimo... Que encontramos agradável, e nós vamos simplesmente esperar até que haja uma ameaça para fora ali. E então nós vamos responder a ele. " Isso é basicamente o que o NDP diz.

Mas os críticos como John Hillen 2MTW dizer que não é uma verdadeira estratégia - que impede a modernização, e isso nos impede de dar resposta às necessidades reais do exército.

Parece-me que um exército modernizado de cinco divisões é plenamente como incapaz de encontrar uma estratégia militar nacional como um exército de dez divisões não-modernizadas é. Você tem que equilibrar. É difícil para mim responder Hillen indiretamente. Peço-lhe: "Qual é a sua estratégia, John? Como estão indo para manter a paz? Como podemos chegar a uma proposta alternativa que vê a América como central para manter a paz ea estabilidade no mundo, que vê as forças armadas americanas como o árbitro decisivo que irá deter a agressão? "Come-se com uma estratégia que não envolve a capacidade de responder a dois grandes adversários, ao mesmo tempo, e eu vou assinar para ele.

Mas quando você olha para esses tipos de estratégias, todas elas começam por dizer que não deve ser o polícia do mundo, que não deve ser excessivamente envolvidos, que temos de escolher nossas lutas. E esse não é o ponto de que o nosso papel no mundo deveria ser. O nosso papel no mundo deve ser para ser o polícia do mundo - deve ser manter o conflito para baixo e impedir o conflito.

O outro problema é que você não pode decidir o que seus interesses nacionais. Você não pode criar um painel presidencial e dizer: "Ok, me diga o que os nossos interesses nacionais", porque, quando um estudante americano é dilacerado por uma multidão em algum país aleatória, oh meu Deus. De repente você tem um novo interesse nacional. Quando algo realmente horrível vai para baixo e CNN vai e começa a informar massacres no país X ou Y país, eo povo americano começa a ficar animado sobre por que nós não estamos fazendo algo sobre ele, de repente você tem um novo interesse nacional.

Você não pode determinar quais são seus interesses. Seus interesses são o que são. E quase todas as discussões que tenho visto que falam de downsizing e mudar nossa estratégia pressupõe que todos nós podemos definir um conjunto de interesses nacionais e, em seguida, é isso. E isso não é apenas a forma como o mundo funciona. .. .

Estamos quase ter uma situação às avessas. Nós temos o governo democrata dizendo que temos de manter a despesa da defesa, eo candidato republicano dizendo que não podemos dar ao luxo de fazer isso. Por que não pular uma geração de armas? Onde você está?

Você precisa de dinheiro defesa mais dramaticamente do que alguém está mesmo disposta a falar neste momento. É um incremento que tem que ser medido em apercentage do PIB. Nós não estamos falando aproximadamente $ 10 bilhões ou US $ 20 bilhão aqui. Eu acho que nós estamos falando provavelmente mais da ordem de US $ 60 bilhões para US $ 100 bilhões por ano em um aumento do orçamento da defesa sobre o que é atualmente. Esse aumento seria trazê-la até que foi a média histórica durante a Guerra Fria, em termos de quatro para-e-um-quatro meio por cento do PIB. Isso não é uma percentagem quantidade escandalosa de sua riqueza nacional a ser gasto em manter o mundo seguro e não ter que lutar em guerras no futuro.

No que diz respeito porque nós não podemos ignorar uma geração de armas, bem, você pode ir para trás e olhar. Os britânicos tentaram isso e não funcionou. O problema é que não temos os sistemas existentes que são os sistemas de salto à frente. Temos que ir para construí-los. Você pode fazer uma de duas coisas. Você pode criá-los e não o campo deles - construir protótipos e estar pronto para o campo-los quando você está pronto para ir. Ou você pode apenas construir os protótipos, pode decidir que você gosta do jeito que está, e no campo toda a força dessa maneira. A segunda maneira é o caminho certo para ir. O problema é que você vai errar, com certeza. A história do desenvolvimento da tecnologia militar, diz-lhe que o primeiro da geração do salto à frente o sistema não vai ser aquele que vence a próxima guerra. Vai ser o único que perde a próxima guerra, se alguém realmente domínios em que a guerra

Por que você acha que os militares E.U. é insuficiente?

. . . Eu amo as estatísticas sobre o quanto gastamos em comparação com nossos concorrentes. Mais uma vez, que ignora o mais importante única coisa que estamos tentando transmitir. América não é apenas um outro estado. América é um estado com a capacidade eo interesse em manter a ordem mundial de paz em curso. França não tem isso. A Alemanha não tem isso. Rússia não tem isso. Só temos isso. E isso é realmente irrelevante quanto gastamos em relação a este, aquele ou o outro estado. A única coisa que importa é, que podemos ou não podemos realizar essa missão? Se não conseguirmos, então não estamos a gastar o suficiente. Se nós podemos, nós somos. É muito simples. . . .

Mas os militares só tem o seu orçamento maior aumento desde o fim da Guerra Fria.

Ele fez. Eu não olhei detalhadamente tremenda em que se trata. Meu entendimento é que muito do que era aumento salarial e abordar questões de qualidade de vida. Eu não estou ciente de que um monte de que estava se dirigindo a estrutura de força, ou de investigação e desenvolvimento, ou fielding as novas forças. E tudo isso só vai apoiar a tese de que, se você está pensando em termos de números que foram apenas passados, é impossível.

Você realmente tem que estar a falar de mais US $ 60 bilhões, mais US $ 100 bilhões. Claro, nós precisamos do aumento salarial. Há ainda os soldados que vivem no vale-refeição. Claro, precisamos melhorar a qualidade de vida. A qualidade de vida em uma série de postos do Exército é insuportável. Eu não posso imaginar como o povo americano pode pensar que é razoável esperar que as pessoas vivem dessa maneira. É claro que é um problema de recrutamento, e é claro que é um problema de retenção. Essas são questões críticas. Então você tem que fazer o que fizemos.

Para além disso, que o exército precisa ser maior. Precisamos ter muito, muito agressivo de pesquisa e desenvolvimento. Precisamos pensar sobre fielding marca novas forças, que não estão nas prateleiras do laboratório, não são fora-de-rodas veículos a plataforma, não são coisas que são ligeiramente fixo, mas completamente novos veículos blindados que tem as características certas. E isso não pode ser em 20 anos, mas em 10 ou 7 ou 5 anos, porque isso vai ser a primeira geração para isso. Nós precisamos ter uma outra geração após isso. Esse é o tipo de ciclo geracional que você tem que olhar se você estiver indo para transformar o exército.

Se você não tem o equipamento, tudo é apenas um experimento mental. Podemos escrever maravilhosa doutrina arbitrária e arbitrariamente procedimentos de treinamento maravilhoso. Mas se ninguém pode realmente ter uma unidade para o campo e executá-lo contra uma unidade equipada de forma semelhante, então não sei o que está indo para o trabalho e que não vai funcionar. Então você não pode ver o que a revolução nos assuntos militares é realmente vai trazer.

Existe uma crise de disponibilidade?

Eu não posso lhe dar uma resposta direta, pois não tenho acesso a todos os relatórios. Posso dizer-vos que, incidentalmente, parece haver uma crise de disponibilidade . Se você conversar com os soldados, se você ler o testemunho perante a comissão parlamentar, sobre a disponibilidade, não parece ser problema disponibilidade real no exército.

Aqui está o problema com prontidão. Você só sabe que quando você não está pronto quando os soldados começam a morrer. Para as pessoas para fazer a luz de prontidão a questão é realmente um pouco insensível, e ela realmente perde o ponto. É difícil dizer se você está pronto quando é tempo de paz. A unidade que fica bem real em tempo de paz e descobriu o jogo no NTC e descobri como ir lá e fazer o bem pode fazer muitíssimo em tempo de guerra. Você não saberá até que você tente, o que significa que você tem que tentar tão duro quanto você pode. Não fazê-lo está indo envolver soldados sendo mortos, que não precisam ser mortos.

O que você acha da brigada médio. . . e do General Shinseki esforços para mudar o exército?

Não há absolutamente nenhuma dúvida de que o exército tem de ser mais destacáveis. E não há dúvida que é uma coisa muito, muito urgente, por isso estou muito relutante em criticá-lo.

Tem havido muito foco na questão de equipamentos.

Tem de se concentrar sobre o equipamento, porque se você identificou o problema como destacamento, o destacamento é um equipamento limites. . . . General Shinseki realmente identificou que única coisa destacamento - - como o principal problema que ele vai resolver. Acho que há alguma coisa para isso.

Ela coloca uma série de outras questões de lado, como a transformação de uma força digital, o desenvolvimento de novas doutrinas de combate, o desenvolvimento de novas estruturas organizacionais para cuidar de tecnologia da informação. Tudo isso fica posta de lado em favor do debate sobre o destacamento. Eu desejo que nós poderíamos ter um conjunto coerente que realmente abordou todas estas questões ao mesmo tempo, e poderia chegar a boas respostas sobre eles. Mas se você está indo só para falar sobre o destacamento, então você tem que falar sobre o equipamento.

E sobre o M-1 e as questões que o rodeiam?

Em certo sentido, o M-1 é uma metáfora para trás pensando. É muito claro para mim que em 2020, e provavelmente logo em 2015, a guerra não vai ser combatido com tanques como o M-1s cobrando uns aos outros através do deserto aberto ou através das planícies europeias. Não é isso que vai ser. Cada vez mais, estamos vendo os campos de batalha que são dominados por munições guiadas com precisão. Assim, o tanque vai ter que mudar.

Mas você tem que perguntar: "Quais são as características fundamentais de um tanque, e nós ainda estamos indo ter que tê-los?" Suas características fundamentais são que é um sistema de armas com grande mobilidade, um alto grau de proteção, e um alto grau de poder de fogo - tudo em um único sistema. Você tem que olhar para isso, se você vai continuar a precisar de sistemas no campo de batalha que preencham esses requisitos. Não sei se há um reservatório ou um hovercraft ou um scooter do motor com mísseis. Mas você precisa ter algo que cumpre esse papel no campo de batalha.

Como chegar lá? Você só pode chegar lá por fielding sucessivas gerações de sistemas - de ver como eles trabalham com os outros sistemas de armamento da época - com a guerra como ela é no momento. Você simplesmente não pode prever com antecedência o que a guerra está indo olhar como. Você não pode saber. Portanto, se o seu prazo para a substituição do M-1 é de 20 ou 25 anos, posso quase assegurar-lhe agora que você vai ficar ultrapassado. Em um período revolucionário de mudança, se vai levar 25 anos para substituir um sistema, a guerra terá alteração imprevisível em que provisórias. Mas se esse é o tempo que o R & D e do ciclo de implantação vai ser, não há nenhuma maneira que você vai manter-se.

. . . Mas se você estiver indo para um futuro sistema, vá para ele. Por que temos que manter recapitalizar o legado da Guerra Fria as armas?

Se eu sou o presidente e os chefes de congressos e todos juntos, eu não faço isso. O que eu faço é um R & D agressivo programa. Você tem cinco anos. Dê-nos o melhor que você tem. Nós vamos começar a recapitalizar a força novamente. . .. Então, nós continuamos a R & D do programa. E outros cinco, dez anos para baixo da linha que recapitalizar-lo novamente. Continuamos fazendo a iteração. . . . Isso exigirá que você joga fora naftalina um monte de equipamentos que você nunca usa, porque é substituída pela próxima geração. Isso é um fato lamentável, mas essa é a maneira que as revoluções militares ocorrer.

Então, sim, se o prazo para substituir o M-1 é de 20 ou 25 anos, é melhor você atualizar o M-1, porque ele não vai fazê-lo por muito tempo. Mas eu diria que não há erro em ambos os sentidos aqui. Você deve ser mais rápida recapitalização. Isso iria poupar o trabalho de modernização desse legado sistema de armas.

Você mencionou a vida de um tanque, versus, onde o M-1 é hoje.

Nós temos atualizado o tiro, que nós promovemos a navegação e que nós promovemos uma série de outras coisas no M-1 do sistema. Mas em termos de suas características principais de desempenho - proteção blindado, arma de montagem, e raio de ação - é um ano de idade sistema 20.

Historicamente, no tanque já durou 20 anos como um sistema predominante. Agora, o M-1 durou, que é uma medida de quão longe à frente da concorrência era então. Não é que longe de mais. . . . Os alemães e os britânicos têm tanques que estão perto de ser tão bom. O tanque russo está fechado. São preocupantemente perto. Em outras palavras, a tecnologia do tanque parece estar se aproximando com as características de desempenho principal do M-1, como um tanque. Ele continua a ser visto quais as vantagens que temos com a nossa consciência situacional e de digitalização e todas essas coisas. Mas, como um sistema de armas, o M-1 principais características de desempenho que não são mais incomuns.

Você está olhando para sustentar que a sua principal força por mais 10, 15 ou talvez 20 anos. Você vai estar usando o B-52 - algo que é de 40 anos em termos de suas principais características de desempenho. The B-52 é muito bem contanto que ninguém está atirando nele. Mas ele não é mais capaz de realmente penetrar espaço aéreo impugnada. Ele não é mais capaz de realizar uma série de importantes missões de verdade, porque as suas características de desempenho não apenas de apoio que mais.

Então, qual é a sua recomendação para o M-1?

Minha recomendação é desenvolver e campo de um sucessor para ele tão rapidamente como nós podemos possivelmente. . . . É um maravilhoso sistema de armas hoje, e provavelmente continuará a ser um sistema maravilhoso de armas para os próximos cinco anos. Depois disso, é muito difícil dizer o que realmente vai ficar do mesmo no campo de batalha.

Em seu livro, você traçar um paralelo em que entre Grã-Bretanha em 1920 e hoje a América. Seu comentário sobre esta era, "Strong nada, fraco em toda parte."

Em 1919, a Inglaterra enfrentou três teatros. Os britânicos tinham de estar preparados para lutar contra grandes conflitos potenciais na Europa, Oriente Médio e Ásia. Eles não tiveram forças para fazer qualquer um daqueles muito bem, e eles certamente não teve forças para fazer todos os três deles.

Hoje, a América enfrenta obrigações de segurança na Europa, no Oriente Médio e na Ásia Oriental. Então eu acho que o paralelo é muito forte. Na Europa, se você realmente olhar para o tipo de forças são necessárias para manter a paz nos Balcãs - se que a situação deve começar a sério espiral fora de controle - você descobrirá que eles se somam a outro conflito regional de grande valor de cerca de da estrutura da força. Não que seja conflito de alta intensidade - há uma grande força blindada lá fora. Mas você precisa que esse tipo de força. . . para manter a paz na região. Se as coisas realmente começam a ir para o sul, que vai ser muito, muito pesada exigência pessoal.

No Médio Oriente, as ameaças estão lá. Eles permanecem. Iraque é muito fraco agora. Se abrirmos a torneira ainda mais e deixá-los vender todo o petróleo que eles querem vender, o Iraque será rapidamente começar a adquirir capital sério. Eu duvido fortemente que os iraquianos vão nos atacar antes que elas tenham fixado as suas forças. Eu não tenho certeza de como estamos preparados para atender até um morto no Iraque que está realmente acelerando para nós.

É difícil dizer como as coisas jogam para fora da Coréia. Diz-se que os norte-coreanos são tão fracas, que estão à beira do colapso interno, e são incapazes de conduzir a guerra. O fato de que eles estão à beira do colapso interno torna perigoso. Os bosques estão cheios de pessoas que estavam errados, pensando que os seus inimigos à beira do colapso foram também capazes de combater eficazmente a guerra. Achamos que estamos prontos para tomá-los. . . .

As estimativas mais pessimistas indicam que teremos um tempo muito difícil defender que realmente península com as forças que nós temos hoje. Então ela olha para mim como se nós também estão enfrentando pelo menos três teatros visível em que temos interesses vitais. Nós vamos ter que estar preparado para proteger os seus interesses. Nós provavelmente pode lidar com qualquer uma delas razoavelmente bem, embora dependa do teatro, e depois em suas suposições. Nós certamente não pode lidar com todos os três, e gostaríamos de ser duramente pressionado para lidar com dois.

Isso deixa de lado outros teatros, como o que os chineses podem optar por fazer em Taiwan ou em outro lugar. Qualquer questão sobre o subcontinente indiano. . . de repente poderia ir nuclear. Não é tudo mais razão para nós estarmos ativamente engajados em ver com que grande guerra não sair. América Latina, América do Sul, na África. . . Existem vários outros lugares, onde os interesses que nós nem sequer sabemos que temos de repente, pop up e pica a gente. Nós não temos nenhum reserva para isso. E por isso penso que não somos tão fracos em todos os lugares como os britânicos eram, mas estamos de nenhuma maneira forte em toda parte. E nós realmente não são adequados em termos de estrutura de força para cobrir todas as obrigações visível que eu acho que nós temos.

Então, em suma, estamos prontos?

Não, eu não acho que estamos prontos para lutar uma guerra que é susceptível de vir. Nós estamos prontos, se os iraquianos a atacar-nos como são. Nós podemos estar prontos para destruir os norte-coreanos se nos atacarem como são agora. Eu não entendo porque assumimos tão arrogante que nossos inimigos serão estúpido. É razoável acreditar que nem um desses estados vão nos atacar até que eles estão prontos para fazê-lo. Eu não acho que estamos prontos para enfrentar esse desafio.

E o argumento de que é feita: "Bem, se os iraquianos começam construindo, nós vamos começar a construir-se, também." Essa é a mais perigosa ilusão. O evento, que convence o planejamento estratégico para iniciar a construção está tão longe de qualquer coisa que você poderia levar a um público democrático liberal e dizer: "Agora, precisamos começar a construir." Isso nunca acontece dessa forma.

Qual é a perspectiva histórica que nós estamos presos nesta questão da estratégia militar e de planejamento?

Estamos claramente preso com a perspectiva histórica da Guerra Fria, e nós estamos tendo um tempo muito difícil livrarmo-nos do que isso. Isso significa que não podemos imaginar que alguém pode realmente ferir-nos, à excepção de um estado que se parece com a União Soviética. Assim, independentemente da 2MTW, 1MTW, ou o que quer, vamos aproveitar esta janela de oportunidade. Não há nenhum concorrente peer agora. Mas nós estamos esquecendo que, na grande varredura da história, houve períodos muito pequenos de tempo, quando nós não temos um concorrente de mesmo nível.

Estamos em uma situação inusitada. Nós não devemos sentar e esperar por um novo concorrente peer como a União Soviética a surgir, então saberemos o que fazer. Devemos mudar a nós mesmos, romper essa mentalidade da Guerra Fria que olha para as divisões de grande, o grandes tanques, e pergunta onde o inimigo está vindo em nossa direção. Não devemos ficar atolado nos detalhes do dia-a-dia das operações, dizendo: "Bem, a principal missão do dia é a luta contra o terrorismo, ou operações de manutenção da paz", ou quaisquer outras operações de guerra. Isso é tudo que temos a fazer agora.

A missão dos Estados Unidos as forças armadas é o que sempre foi: a dissuasão. Temos de impedir a agressão ao redor do mundo. Precisamos ter um conjunto de capacidades que possibilitam fazer isso. Não deve ser destinada a um concorrente peer, ou destinadas a cuidar para que não haja um concorrente de mesmo nível. Quando colocar isso para fora, as pessoas começam a falar sobre a hegemonia americana e, em seguida os russos tem todo chateado. Em seguida, os parlamentares começam a dizer: "Bem, por que deveríamos ser (naquela posição)?" . . . E a resposta é: "Porque, se nós somos hegemônicos, o mundo será pacífico, pois é isso que está em nossos interesses." Se outros estados são hegemônicos, o mundo não será pacífica, porque é do seu interesse rasgar coisas.

Porque você sente a necessidade de escrever seu livro Enquanto a América Sleeps ?

História não nos diz o que fazer, mas a história pode dar-lhe alguns insights muito poderoso para o presente. . . . Churchill chamou a década de 1920 "o ano dos gafanhotos comeram". Com isso, ele quis dizer que estava na hora, quando a Inglaterra perdeu a oportunidade. Se a Inglaterra tinha escolhido para gastar os recursos que eram necessários para manter as forças armadas que poderiam manter a paz, toda a tragédia dos anos 1930 e 1940 poderia ter sido evitado. Mas os custos caíram sobre a cabeça de Inglaterra, o império estava perdido, e milhões de pessoas foram mortas.

Tenho medo de que estamos vivendo por gafanhotos ano também. Eu tenho medo que este era restrito de recursos militares em um momento de prosperidade sem precedentes está indo olhar muito trágico quando olharmos para trás sobre ele. Eu estou esperando que nós podemos mudar o rumo da política americana em algum momento antes da próxima grande catástrofe acontece conosco. . . . Um capítulo do meu livro termina com Londres em chamas. Pela primeira vez, a Inglaterra realmente é submetido a uma determinada, poderoso ataque aéreo horrível. Eles sofrem acidentes horríveis, a indústria é interrompido, a moral é quase quebrada, e há imagens de Londres em chamas.

No mundo como ele é, antes da década, a probabilidade é que nossos inimigos serão capazes de desenvolver e campo de mísseis balísticos que podem atingir os Estados Unidos com armas nucleares e munições guiadas com precisão tanto as ogivas. Tenho medo de que a imunidade da pátria americana dos efeitos de nossas erros de cálculo pode ser longo. E assim eu tenho medo que possa haver um paralelo entre a cena do nosso livro com Londres em chamas. Tenho medo que a situação pode acontecer, se nós realmente permitir que as coisas saem do controle e não fazer boa preparação.

Qual a probabilidade de o livro chegar ao maior público americano?

Nós estamos esperando que ele seja iniciado um debate. Nós estamos esperando que as pessoas que discordam de nós vai sair e atirar em nós. Obviamente, gostaríamos de ter nossas recomendações implementadas. Acima de tudo, nós gostaríamos de renovar o debate no país sobre o que a nossa estratégia nacional - que tipo de forças armadas são adequadas, o que a nossa política externa deveria ser, o nosso lugar no mundo. Acima de tudo, somos perturbados que essas coisas parecem estar a ser decidido por padrão, com muito pouco interesse ou a entrada do público americano. Isso é muito, muito infeliz. Vai ser impossível fazer a coisa certa a menos que você pode o interesse do público americano, pelo menos, a ponto de fazê-los para apoiar o que deve ser apoiada.

. . . Um dos perigos em uma era de paz e um período entre-guerras - que este certamente é - é que o exército se fixam sobre as missões que ele está executando, e decide que esses são os ser-tudo e final de toda a sua missão, que é tudo o que tem que fazer. Tenho medo de que o exército tem feito isso, a ponto de identificar algumas operações de manutenção da paz, antiterrorismo, guerra cibernética, e uma variedade de outros assuntos na moda agora como sendo tudo o que temos de lidar.

É interessante que os britânicos fizeram a mesma coisa nos anos entre-guerras. Eles estavam realizando operações de manutenção da paz em todo o lugar, uma brigada aqui, uma brigada de lá, fazendo o policiamento, fazendo manutenção e assim por diante, e eles identificaram as missões como a sua O maior problema. E outras questões foram realmente postas de lado. Você tem uma força que não é suficiente - não é suficiente, não equipados, não treinou - para desempenhar essas missões bastante bem, e essas são as missões que ele está desempenhando.

. . . O perigo é que você pode se concentrar de forma tão restritiva sobre as missões que você perde de vista o fato de que essas são apenas as missões agora, porque as coisas são pacíficas. Mas se as coisas vão para baixo, você vai ter outras missões que são muito mais importantes em termos de prioridades nacionais que essas missões.

É perigoso e errado para sacrificar a sua capacidade de lutar contra um importante teatro de guerra em favor da sua capacidade de realizar operações de manutenção da paz, e é isso que estamos fazendo agora. Se perdemos uma missão de paz, as conseqüências do que são infinitamente menores do que as consequências da perda ou mesmo não indo bem em um grande teatro da guerra. Você tem que achar um equilíbrio entre a ameaça de que quase no horizonte -, mas que vai ser devastador se você não encontrá-la - ea ameaça que você está tratando atualmente - que é realmente relativamente pequeno em termos de conseqüências da derrota. Receio que o exército não tem esse equilíbrio.

O que está em jogo para o país sobre a transformação do exército?

É absolutamente crítico que nós temos esse direito de transformação, que fazemos o que precisamos fazer para obtê-lo direito - mesmo que isso signifique fielding sucessivas gerações de equipamentos e, em seguida, jogá-la fora. Temos um campo de sistema de defesa contra mísseis balísticos, a qualquer custo pode ser. Devemos fazer o que precisamos fazer para nos defender.

Esta transformação é extremamente importante para o país, eo custo será muito alto se ele falhar. Estamos passando por uma revolução nos assuntos militares, o que vai mudar fundamentalmente a guerra. Historicamente, tem havido uma série de revoluções em assuntos militares. Os países que se adaptaram melhor têm conseguido na guerra para vir. Os países que se adaptaram a pior falharam. O custo do fracasso é muito alto quando você está falando sobre guerra de grande escala. Ele é particularmente elevado quando você está falando sobre a guerra na qual é provável que as cidades americanas e os centros de população será orientada. O custo é muito, muito alto mesmo.

A conseqüência para começá-lo errado é ter cidades americanas estão sob ataque, ou com as forças americanas no campo, que não são capazes de responder aos seus inimigos de forma eficaz, ou perder vital aos interesses americanos ao redor do mundo. É absolutamente criticamente importante para resolver este problema, o que for preciso para fazer isso. As conseqüências de não fazê-lo são absolutamente medonho.

E a nossa estratégia militar nacional, tal como está agora?

Em termos do que está escrito abaixo, a nossa estratégia nacional norte-americana é principalmente muito bom. Você vai encontrar lá a exigência 2MTW para a estratégia militar nacional, além de manutenção da paz e outras coisas. Você vai encontrar documentos sobre o envolvimento e alargamento, a necessidade de continuar a moldar o ambiente internacional, a necessidade de deter a agressão e, e todas essas coisas. Eu acho que você vai encontrar uma sólida estratégia de documentos bastante para a América. Isso tem sido muito consistente desde a era Bush.

O problema é que quando você olha para como a política externa que implementa, e como o exército dos recursos, a política externa não é realmente fazer o que dizemos que vamos fazer. Nós não estamos realmente sendo totalmente engajados, realmente não dissuadir agressão tanto quanto deveríamos, não sendo tão voltada para o espírito como nós precisamos ser. Mas acima de tudo, você vai descobrir que as forças armadas não são apenas recursos para apoiar totalmente a estratégia militar nacional que já foi dado.

Há um monte de confusão estratégica. . . . As declarações de estratégia são tão claramente fora dos limites do que é possível dentro das limitações do orçamento atual. Os serviços são quase obrigados a definir uma estratégia que pode conseguir, e para resolver problemas que podem enfrentar. Eles simplesmente não têm os recursos para resolver os problemas que a estratégia nacional, diz que eles deveriam abordar, e que o bom senso diz que deve enfrentar. Não há uma disjunção entre a crítica da estratégia nominal e alocação de recursos. Isso é muito mais um problema do que a própria estratégia.

[Francoorp]

Pow cansei de ler em "americano"... vai dormir amanhàna eu vorta pra comentar, OH right!!

[marcelo l.]

Depende contra quem...

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htpeac ... 10818.aspx

18 agosto de 2011: Brasil está em guerra com traficantes de contrabando que está usando selva remota pistas de pouso para transportar cocaína e outros contrabandos para o país. Esta é, literalmente, de guerra. Por exemplo, no início deste mês, reconhecimento aéreo descobriu uma pista de pouso ilegais na na (Estado do Amazonas, que faz fronteira com Peru, Colômbia e Venezuela) a noroeste. Quatro aeronaves Super Tucano foram enviados, cada um armado com duas 227 kg (500 libras) bombas. Após os oito bombas foram lançadas na faixa de ar, dois helicópteros UH-60 foram enviados com a polícia, exército e pessoal ambientais, para verificar o site (para garantir que o tira do ar estava inutilizável e para procurar por qualquer evidência.).

O ataque aéreo foi parte da Operação Agatha, que envolve 3.000 soldados e 35 aviões varrendo a área de fronteira de outros sinais de atividade ilegal (incluindo mineração ilegal e registrando, bem como outras formas de contrabando.) Estado do Amazonas é muito the wild " oeste ". Em uma área de 1,5 milhão de quilômetros quadrados (606.000 milhas quadradas), existem apenas 3,5 milhões de pessoas. Grande parte da área é pouco povoada de selva e pastagens. A maioria das pessoas no Amazonas são índios, descendentes de tribos que viveram na região há milhares de anos. As gangues de drogas e outros criminosos que se deslocam em não são bem-vindos, mas os bandidos estão fortemente armados e acostumado a ter o seu caminho. É por isso que tantas tropas morar para esta operação, e por ataques aéreos estão sendo usados. O governo planeja enviar periodicamente as tropas de volta, para manter os bandidos em fuga, ou pelo menos na defensiva.

[Túlio]

O tópico pergunta: o Brasil está preparado para uma eventual Guerra?

Eu digo: NÃO!

Mas breve vai estar.

É só chegarem as maravilhosas TOTs Francesas sobre confecção e uso eficaz de BANDEIRAS BRANCAS...

[Clermont]

O tópico pergunta: o Brasil está preparado para uma eventual Guerra?

Eu digo: NÃO!

Mas breve vai estar.

É só chegarem as maravilhosas TOTs Francesas sobre confecção e uso eficaz de BANDEIRAS BRANCAS...

Lá atrás, em 2009, quando o tópico foi aberto, eu pensava que a única possibilidade de guerra era uma ruptura entre o Brasil, caso o PT fosse derrotado na eleição e a Venezuela, comandada por um Chavez vendendo saúde.

Agora, em 2011, o PT-PMDB são absolutos no Brasil; Hugo Chavez está perigosamente perto de ir cursar, presencialmente, História das Revoluções com o professor Ho Chi Minh.

Então, realmente, as hipóteses de guerra reduzem-se, ainda mais - o que, aliás, é uma feliz notícia.

Como disse Jauro, na prímeira página:

CINCO quesitos precisam ser respondidos senão é tempo perdido.

Que tipo de Guerra, ataque? Defesa?

Contra quem?

Aonde, em que lugar?

Quando ? Desde já? ou daqui a algum tempo?

Com que meios?

E sobre os meios e pessoal que temos, o que fariam nossos marinheiros, aviadores, a indústria brasileira, a indústria de defesa, a logística nacional , os meios que a nação vai colocar à disposição dos seus soldados de terra mar e ar, os políticos, a sociedade civil, grandes e pequenas empresa aéreas, empresas de transportes terrestres, de navegação civil, a mídia, os hospitais, os produtores rurais, o empresariado brasileiro vai se envolver ou vão formar quintas colunas com os políticos e a mídia?

Guerra, no meu modesto modo de entender não é feita só com exército e artilharia.

Embora os estados-maiores militares devam estar cheios de planos de contingência - para isso eles existem -, concretamente, as mais prováveis ameaças de uso da força militar (ao invés do nome pomposo, "guerra") são duas: combater grupos incursores armados (como o caso da recente entrada de paramilitares peruanos no Acre) e participação em eventuais contingentes de paz, que acabem evoluindo para forças de intervenção em conflitos internos (como foi com a Somália do episódio "Blackhawk Down").

Agora, de cabeça, não consigo visualizar nada mais, como ameaça concreta. Claro, tem as ameaças criminosas, mas elas não chegaram, ainda, ao nível do México, para exigir uma intervenção militar em grande escala.

[Túlio]

Tá, Clermont, qual o plano de contingência para uma Task-Force da OTAN com uns dez NAes mais uns subs e destróieres lançadores de Tomahawks, além da que postei?

[Clermont]

Tá, Clermont, qual o plano de contingência para uma Task-Force da OTAN com uns dez NAes mais uns subs e destróieres lançadores de Tomahawks, além da que postei?

Pra uma coisa dessas, eu fico pensando o que teria de ter ocorrido no Brasil.

Talvez, um "Careca do Subúrbio" da periferia de São Paulo ter dado um golpe de estado e se tornado "Ditador Perpétuo" da República Eugênica do Brasil Ariano.

E, logo depois, começar a botar todos os índios da Amazônia em "forninhos" microondas.

[Túlio]

Já vi que não dá para te zoar...

[P. K. Liulba]

Tópico:
O Brasil está preparado para uma eventual guerra?
Resposta:
Não.