Major overhaul eyed for Army

A U.S. Army that for decades has fought in brigades and battalions is taking on new-age terms such as “units of action” and “modules.”

The new terminology is the brainchild of Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the once-retired former “snake-eating” commando who was reactivated last summer by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to remake the Army, from tail to tooth.

Mr. Rumsfeld could not get the Army he wanted out of the last leadership team. Now, the task has fallen to his handpicked Army chief of staff to turn the 480,000-soldier force into a quicker, more flexible juggernaut.

Gen. Schoomaker, after a series of meetings with Mr. Rumsfeld, his staff and officers in the field, already has come up with a general plan to mix and match his 10 active divisions, according to confidential Army documents obtained by The Washington Times.

The first battlefield laboratory is the vaunted 3rd Infantry Division, based in Georgia. Gen. Schoomaker is remixing and adding to the basic building block of most divisions: three brigades of about 6,000 soldiers, armed with 60-ton Abrams M-1A tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Apache attack helicopters.

All the people and systems will stay, the documents show. But they will be broken up into “brigade-like maneuver units of action with assigned support and service support elements to provide … combatant commanders more deployable/flexible forces for employment.”

Each “unit of action” will be outfitted with support units — such as military police — that today are added at the last moment before deploying to war. The idea of backfitting from the start is to cut down on the time it takes to “round out” a deploying division.

The documents state that the 3rd Infantry’s reorganization should be in place by the time it might be needed again in Iraq in 2005. The division led the Army’s drive from Kuwait to Baghdad in Operation Iraqi Freedom and then returned home to Georgia.

“Third Infantry Division reorganization into five maneuver UAs [units of action], combat ready, trained and prepared to execute the OIF 3 [Operation Iraqi Freedom] rotation, or any other mission assigned,” the Army papers said.

Gen. Schoomaker appreciates speed, deception and agility. His previous command was U.S. Special Operations Command, whose covert warriors specialize in the kind of unconventional warfare needed to win the war on terrorism.

Gen. Schoomaker told the House Armed Services Committee last week that, “We are in very serious moods right now, looking at modulizing the Army, standardizing it, developing an Army that’s more lethal, more agile, more capable of meeting the current and future operating environment tasks.”

In all, Gen. Schoomaker is taking the 10-division Army from 33 to 48 combat brigades.

Another window into Gen. Schoomaker’s thinking is his series of talks to officers in the field. The general seems to spend more time at military schools, training centers and combat units than he does in his “E-Ring” office at the Pentagon. The Times obtained an officer’s notes from one such session.

Gen. Schoomaker’s spokesman declined to comment. “I won’t comment on the validity of e-mails or conversations that may have occurred between any Army senior leader in a conference or meeting,” Lt. Col. Michael J. Negard said.

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