Generals Sullivan, Franks and Army Transformation

Innovative Leaders in Action

 

John S. Brown

 

This is a preview chapter from Lariat Advance: Insights from the Cold War for the Twenty-First Century, which Army University Press plans to release digitally in June 2026. Brig. Gen. (Retired) and historian John Brown chronicles how General Gordon R. Sullivan thoughtfully applied lessons learned from history to effect changes to military policy and preparations. Sullivan's efforts were complimented and supported by the diligence of his colleague and friend Gen. Frederick M. Franks Jr. In this narrative, Brown employs memoir to demonstrate how Franks and Sullivan used innovative thinking to facilitate change as the US Army responded to exponential growth in technological capabilities. These two influential leaders drove actionable improvements in US Army doctrine, modernization, training, and leader development. Lariat Advance, edited by Col. (Retired) Greg Fontenot, Brig. Gen. (Retired) James "Pat" O'Neal, and Col. (Retired) Mike Shaler, provides contemporary lessons from influential US Army leaders who helped transform the US Army following the war in Vietnam. That transformation is not unlike the one that must occur in the contemporary force.

When I first met one-on-one with General Gordon R. Sullivan, he was the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) president and I was the Army's chief of military history. The subject of our meeting was the National Museum of the United States Army (NMUSA), a fledgling project mobilizing public and private funds to build a world-class museum on Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The US Army Center of Military History, which I commanded, was responsible for selecting and conserving artifacts and facilitating interpretation and design for the project. The Army Historical Foundation (AHF) - under the aegis of but distinct from AUSA - had the mammoth task to raise and eventually commit the private funds necessary for completion.¹

Well before this 1999 meeting, I knew of Sullivan's passion for and thoughtful use of history. A historian myself, I had been impressed with and inspired by the historical metaphors he drew upon to direct the Army's energies as chief of staff. Two in particular come to mind. First, "No more Task Force Smith's" was his admonition to maintain readiness despite plummeting funding - recalling the US Army's sorry state prior to the Korean War.² Second, his Modern Louisiana Maneuvers and resultant Louisiana Maneuvers (LAM) Task Force harkened back to the massive exercises that helped enable the Army's preparations for World War II.³ My doctoral dissertation followed the 88th Infantry Division through its World War II mobilization and deployment, so I knew how transformative this experience had proven to be.⁴

Sullivan's passion for history was lifelong, and supported facilitating still-to-be-written history as much as using history already on the shelf. When the time came to write a history of the Army's transformation from the forward-deployed Cold War behemoth to the nimbler digitized expeditionary Army that followed, he was a huge supporter of the project. As I was writing Kevlar Legions: The Transformation of the US Army, 1989-2005, Sullivan was happy to review and comment on my draft chapters.⁵ He also ensured access to people I needed to correspond with. He assisted in every way he could without ever attempting to influence the narrative. Fittingly, the book's "coming out party" was at an AUSA convention in front of many who were part of the events chronicled. Of all who were there - or not there - no one had been more instrumental in the transformation the book described than General Gordon R. Sullivan.

The Need for Transformation: A New Era

Shortly after the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, I was en route home to Garlstedt with the battalion I commanded after a training exercise. As our convoy pulled into a rest stop along the Autobahn, we were swamped by crowds of Germans, many emerging from sputtering East German-made Trabant automobiles. The jubilant Germans showered us with praise and blew kisses, apparently thanking us for sticking with them through the long night of the Cold War.

It was a good time to be an American soldier in Germany. Someone else, even a stranger, often bought your beer at a gasthaus. Soldiers standing in line to pay for gasoline could find a German in front of or behind them had already paid their bill. Partnership and other German-American events invariably included grateful acknowledgements of "our American friends." The Cold War was over. Democracy had triumphed. The world was amidst a tectonic shift.⁶

Even as I was figuring out how to gracefully get our convoy back on the road, Sullivan was leading deliberations at the highest levels to come to grips with the paradigm shift the US Army was witnessing. He was the Army's deputy chief of staff for operations (DCSOPS) and soon would become vice chief of staff. His purview included hands-on management of Army Staff efforts to anticipate the mammoth adjustments necessary.⁷ By the time Sullivan became chief of staff in 1991, the required changes were even more mammoth. In the interval, the rest of Central Europe and the Balkans liberated themselves, Germany reunited, the United States fought an unexpected war in the Persian Gulf - shocking itself and rest of the world with the effectiveness of its military technology - and the Internet came into being. Within months, the Soviet Union itself would collapse.⁸

Sullivan was prepared to manage change. He certainly had seen it. Commissioned from the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) at Norwich University as an Armor officer in 1959, he served one tour in Korea, two in Vietnam, and four in Europe. As Sullivan rose through positions of increasing rank and responsibility, he witnessed the downward spiral into the Hollow Army of the 1970s then the Renaissance that carried it back through ever-increasing levels of effectiveness in the 1980s. In concert with General Carl E. Vuono, his predecessor as chief of staff, Sullivan envisioned a framework for change broader than a single-minded focus on technology. Vuono promoted this framework as the six Army Imperatives of Doctrine, Force Mix, Modernization, Training, Leader Development, and Quality People, which will be discussed later in this chapter.⁹ For Sullivan, the specific changes he had witnessed during the Cold War and Post-Vietnam Renaissance would be less important than having an approach to change that could adapt to varying circumstances.

Sullivan needed a partner to help champion the changes he envisioned. He chose his longstanding colleague and friend Frederick M. Franks Jr. to command US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC). Franks's previous TRADOC assignments and his exploits commanding VII Corps in Operation Desert Storm prepared him for his upcoming role leading change within the institutional Army and guiding change within the Army at large. Franks additionally had served on the Army Staff, as J-7 Training on the Joint Staff, and in positions of command from platoon through corps. He was an ideal choice in this undertaking.¹⁰

If Franks was Sullivan's ideal partner for the Army's transformation, TRADOC was the ideal organization to shepherd the process over the long haul. Established in 1973, TRADOC was instrumental in the Army's Post-Vietnam Renaissance and combined the mission of anticipating and enabling the Army's future with broader responsibilities to train, educate, and develop its soldiers. Its school system provided Army training and education conducted outside of units, cycling through soldiers to prepare them for both near and long-term developments. Each school wrote doctrine and established standards within its area of purview. From recruitment and initial entry through career development and retirement, TRADOC shaped the professional experience of every soldier. Its responsibility for doctrine and doctrinal development shaped the Army as a whole.¹¹

The new era featured vast geopolitical changes. The Soviet Union had collapsed. Most of its Cold War allies and several former constituent states were attempting to "escape West," shedding Russia's shadow in favor of closer ties to the European Union and NATO. Even the Russian people were attempting democratic governance. China had crushed domestic dissent but embraced economic reforms and Western investments. Only North Korea, and perhaps Cuba, retained Cold War-vintage hostility.¹²

As the existential threat posed by the Soviet Union and nuclear Armageddon receded from view, a new dawn of arms control and disarmament seemed possible. This inspired the United States and most of its allies to radically reduce defense expenditures. While Sullivan was chief of staff, Army budgets and active-duty strengths dropped to two-thirds of their previous highs.¹³ Unfortunately, as Sullivan presciently opined in his change-of-command speech, there would be "no time-out from readiness."¹⁴ Deployments tripled, and America's smaller Army was busier than ever.¹⁵

Globalization scattered Americans and American interests more widely than ever before. The disappearance of the leviathan Soviet threat led, ironically, to a proliferation of lesser threats elsewhere. As Soviet-vintage discipline collapsed, pent-up ethnic hostilities in the Balkans, Caucasus, and Central Asia exploded back into view. Additionally, rogue states and insurgencies - flush with bargain basement arms and sensing opportunity as the rest of the world disarmed - tried their chances. Meanwhile, humanitarian crises and failed governance continued to bubble up. In remediating these, the United States remained as indispensable as ever.¹⁶

The forward-deployed US forces of the Cold War era were out of position for the smaller and more scattered threats that followed. Downsizing concentrated on the forward forces, and US Army Europe ended up as a shadow of its former self. Combat-ready forces became increasingly concentrated in the United States, as were the reserves intended to reinforce them. This reconfiguration was easier to sustain - and more agreeable to Congress members in whose districts the forces were located. However, ensuring forces could quickly deploy wherever they were needed would require radical improvements in the Army's expeditionary posture.¹⁷

Operations Just Cause in 1989 and Desert Storm in 1991 had been impressive, if imperfect, demonstrations of what it takes to move large forces somewhere fast. Sullivan drew on lessons learned from these deployments to prepare for the new era. He also absorbed lessons concerning the equipment that had been employed. As breathtakingly impressive as America's technological performance had been, further improvement seemed necessary.

Both Sullivan and Franks realized that modern weapons were able to precisely engage targets at ranges greater than their operators could reliably identify those targets. Below the division level, the communication of battlefield situations still relied on venerable and vulnerable mixes of radios, land lines, and grease pencil-facilitated graphics. Satellite-based global positioning systems (GPS) appeared in the last weeks before Desert Storm but were too few to sustain clear battlefield pictures below the company level. During intermingled combat, units too often found themselves involved in harrowing episodes of fratricide.¹⁸

Managing logistics in Desert Storm - like managing tactics - also superimposed a veneer of modernity atop a base of approaching obsolescence. No one had enough confidence in the supply situation to replace the mountainous depots and lengthy truck fleets dictated by just-in-case logistics with more nimble just-in-time logistics. Overcompensation was preferrable to potential underperformance.¹⁹

America's Desert Storm Army operated on the verge of the Information Age. Microchips, precision-guided munitions, and advanced sensors had introduced a technological revolution, but constituent components had not yet been adequately networked. On a grander scale, the Information Age needed the fledgling Internet to fully develop. Between 1989 and 1991, HTML, HTTP, URLs, and practical browsers made their debut. Within a dozen years, hundreds of millions of Internet users would be canvassing millions of web sites for thousands of reasons supported by ever-expanding arrays of servers and digital infrastructure. This proved as big a leap forward as the printing press or telephone. As Sullivan mulled over reasons why the Army needed to transform, none seemed more pressing than to bring it into the Information Age.²⁰

Digitization and the Information Age

As an assistant S-3 brigade training officer in 1980, I was astonished by my first encounter with a Wang word processor. For the first time I knew of, a typist could edit text without retyping whole pages. This would have saved me considerably on my dissertation, for which I paid typists by the page, given the rewrites my prose required. A little more than a decade later, I assumed responsibilities as a division G-3. Wangs were out, PCs (personal computers) were in, and both were still foreign to me. I asked the office staff to print attachments sent to our office so I could read them. Worse, I asked them to type and print e-mails that I had handwritten - then marked edits on the printed drafts. Gently and over time, they taught me how to open and read attachments on my own PC with no paper involved. I also could save everybody, including myself, considerable time by handling my own e-mails - typing recklessly since it was so easy to fix mistakes.

During this time when Sullivan undertook to move the Army into the Information Age, I believe my digital skills - or lack thereof - were typical of Army officers in my age cohort. Presumably, officers older than me would have been even worse off in this regard. The transformation Sullivan envisioned could not wait for digital talent to bubble up from the bottom over time. The Army needed to move decisively. Most of the change necessary would have to be driven from the top.²¹

The Army experimented with computers as early as the thirty-ton Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) it sponsored during World War II. Subsequent evolution gave artillerymen their Tactical Fire Direction System (TACFIRE) and similarly provided air defenders, air traffic management controllers, logisticians, personnel managers, and others with hardware and software specific to their needs. Within each "stovepipe," development progressed independent of what was going on in the others.²² The Institutional Army witnessed a similar proliferation of hardware and software. TRADOC schools developed capacities for electronic simulation useful for both training and experimentation.²³

Sullivan and Franks had witnessed dramatic advances in electronic simulations over the course of several assignments. As they brainstormed what the Modern Louisiana Maneuvers should consist of, they settled on distributed interactive simulation (DIS) as a promising early initiative. Building on existing capabilities of TRADOC schools such as Forts Leavenworth, Benning, and Knox, they organized an expansive system of interconnected Battle Labs. Each institution drilled concepts and issues within its own specialty, but also linked with others for broader effects. TRADOC and US Army Forces Command (FORSCOM), responsible for the Army's deployable forces in the United States, cooperated in exercises that linked schools, tactical headquarters, and units maneuvering "in the dirt." Soldiers hundreds or even thousands of miles apart participated in these sprawling exercises.²⁴

Distributed interactive simulations proved valuable for exercising and training headquarters at all levels. They also aided in concept development and experimentation. Units and equipment that otherwise could not have been pulled together participated together in simulations. Proposed combinations could be tested in simulation first, weeding many out and continuing with the more promising. "Spiral development" saw concepts developed in simulation, tried out "in the dirt," adjusted, further refined in simulation, then returned to "the dirt" for further testing. Ideally, each cycle came closer to the desired goal.²⁵ Hybrid initiatives evolved that mixed simulations, physical equipment, Tables of Organization and Equipment (TOE) and Tables of Distribution and Allowances (TDA) units, hardware, and software.²⁶ These included Advanced Technology Demonstrations (ATDs), Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations (ACTDs), Advanced Warfighting Demonstrations (AWDs), and Advanced Warfighting Experiments (AWEs).²⁷

Sullivan leaned heavily on existing Army organizations as he pursued transformation, but also established the LAM Task Force - forty-plus members led by a brigadier general - as a temporary agency to assist in coordination. He based this initially at Fort Monroe, Virginia - co-located with TRADOC - where the emphasis was on deliberations and innovation and then moved it to Washington, DC - co-located with the Army Staff - and shifted the emphasis to synchronizing execution.²⁸ Sullivan routinely assembled General Officer Working Groups (GOWG) drawn from across the Army to brainstorm digitization issues and had them report to his four-star "Board of Directors." This leveraged a broad range of professional experience and encouraged digital competence at the highest levels - with trickle-down effects.²⁹ When my division commander began sending personal emails to me, his G-3, it proved a powerful incentive to tune into the Information Age.

Individuals throughout the Army began to recognize that digitization could add value to communications, simulations, activities of the Institutional Army, and command and control at upper echelons. Less obvious was the role it could play at lower levels on tactical battlefields. Certainly, GPS had proven useful and greatly facilitated Desert Storm's sweeping "Left Hook."³⁰ Another promising possibility was more and better linked GPS that would provide an accurate battlefield picture, but no one knew for sure how such a system might work.³¹

Desert Storm's horrific experiences with fratricide provided a powerful incentive for research and improvement. A high-powered Army task force assigned to address these issues would home in on problems with target identification and situational awareness. The task force designed a live-fire test scenario evoking the darkness, dust, smoke, featureless terrain, and intermingled combat associated with most of the fratricides that had occurred and invited corporate America to propose and test technical responses. The Army Materiel Command (AMC) mustered support from the defense industry. The response was impressive; within less than a year more than a dozen different systems had been prepared for field testing in a giant technology demonstration. Test scenario observers likened the range complex to the mix of weird alien creatures during the bar scene in Star Wars.³²

The overwhelming majority of the proposed solutions focused on target identification and attempted some version of identification friend or foe (IFF): laser interrogation, multispectral beacons, reflector arrays, GPS feedback, millimeter wave transmission, laser-activated thermal identification, or other technologies to notify a potential shooter that a potential target was friendly. Of the solutions proposed at the technology demonstration, one focused on situational awareness rather than target identification - the Enhanced Position Location Reporting System (EPLRS) shepherded by Unisys. It depicted transmitter locations on a visible grid with frequent updates. If every friendly vehicle in a sector had a working transmitter, their locations could be known to everyone who had access to the system.³³

For Sullivan and Franks, the EPLRS approach addressed two critical problems at once. Improved situational awareness would help reduce fratricide and also improve battle command and battlespace management. As mentioned earlier, the Army of Desert Storm relied on a venerable mix of radios, land lines, and grease pencil-facilitated graphics to keep abreast of tactical situations. During National Training Center exercises with the Inter-Vehicular Information System (IVIS), a successor to EPLRS, vehicle crews were able to monitor the locations of their comrades on small screens with elegant precision. With digital communications, information could be aggregated and shared. Commanders could zoom in and zoom out via blue force tracking to construct a battlefield picture with as much or as little detail as they cared to have. Further, this coverage could theoretically be extended to individual dismounts, although this would have been a stretch at that time.³⁴

With respect to fratricide, none of the tested IFF devices worked all that well. Technologies that could prevent multiple aircraft separated by considerable distances from shooting at each other proved less adequate when dealing with masses of intermingled vehicles in swirling dust and smoke. A combat identification panel (CIP) with a unique infrared signature visible through thermal sights did prove useful and has been widely used since. Other IFF devices were tested in the field in more limited circumstances. The eventual remediation of the fratricide problem leaned very heavily on the enhanced situational awareness afforded by EPLRS and its successors, coupled with the CIPs and extensive training.³⁵

If vehicle positions could be readily shared via such systems as EPLRS or IVIS, why not vehicle fuel and ammunition status? Digitization offered logisticians an opportunity to track real-time status with exacting detail. Bar coding of items and Conex containers could help units know where everything was, with precise information only a "click" or two away. Terms like "total asset visibility" and "just-in-time logistics" gained favor in the military lexicon. The more Army leaders learned about digitization, the more they liked it. Energized by Sullivan's General Officers Working Groups and other brainstorming sessions, exposed to recommended readings concerning "revolutions in military affairs," and observing digital technologies maturing before their eyes, they pushed digitization into virtually every aspect of Army operations.³⁶

Sullivan, with Franks in the lead supported by the LAM Task Force, steered this innovative thinking into a blueprint called Force XXI. Force XXI included synchronization matrices for both the institutional and the deployable Army that extended out a dozen years. With Force XXI, existing vehicles and systems would be fitted with off-the-shelf technology via applique in most cases. Purpose-built platforms and equipment might come later. Off-the-shelf did not imply a grab bag approach. In July 1994, the Army Digitization Office was stood up to govern digitization policy, procurement, and use. A few months later, the 2nd Armored Division from Fort Hood, Texas, was designated as the experimental force for digitization. By the time General Sullivan retired from the Army in July 1995, the institutional Army was making ample use of digital equipment. Within the deployable Army, such use was experimental, prototypical, and modest; however, Force XXI did describe a way ahead for both.³⁷

Achieving an Expeditionary Posture

In August 1995, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein again threatened Kuwait and Saudi Arabia after his son-in-law and others defected through Jordan. The 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, which I then commanded, had the Division Ready Force 1 (DRF1) mission. Our unit was ordered to reinforce the Kuwaitis and sped through Fort Hood's recently revamped airfield to draw prepositioned equipment from Army War Reserve 5 (AWR-5) in Camp Doha, Kuwait. Rehearsed, the companies took less than six hours to inspect, upload, and roll out. They deployed into desert tactical positions and achieved Readiness Condition 1 (REDCON 1) within twelve hours of landing. A Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) battery and target acquisition battery joined our unit, having been altogether lifted in by air from the United States. Such "commuter containment" into Kuwait had happened before. Resembling REFORGER, the exercise program Intrinsic Action prepared Americans and Kuwaitis alike for such contingencies.³⁸

This smoothly orchestrated 1995 deployment to Kuwait contrasted considerably from my experience as a battalion commander deploying to Desert Shield/Storm five years earlier. Then our unit was part of a heavy brigade in Germany moving "backward" through the system to link up with forces flowing from the United States into a theater unfamiliar to all of us. Improvisation and changes of plans were widespread, using energy and effort to make up for lack of experience and rehearsal. Our heavy equipment travelled by sea, with our troops doing most of the uploading in Bremerhaven and offloading in Saudi Arabia. For an uncomfortable two weeks, our brigade sat virtually unarmed in the desert awaiting our equipment. The first US forces to arrive for Desert Shield were referred to as "speed bumps" until tanks and other heavy equipment arrived.³⁹

Sullivan regarded Operations Just Cause and Desert Storm - hasty deployments to unexpected contingencies - as harbingers of things to come in the aftermath of the Cold War. Other Department of Defense (DoD) leaders agreed. In February 1992, DoD expanded the United States Transportation Command charter to control its service components in peace as well as war.⁴⁰ This accompanied determined efforts to expand and improve sealift and airlift. The highly capable Roll-on/Roll-off Fast Sealift Ships in the Ready Reserve Force expanded from seventeen in 1990 to thirty-six in 1996.⁴¹ The capabilities and readiness of other shipping also received serious attention. Airlift organization was redesigned with the June 1992 establishment of the Air Mobility Command.⁴² With respect to aircraft, a notable addition in 1995 was the C-17 Globemaster III, which could deliver large loads over strategic distances using short runways.⁴³

The Army's role with respect to achieving strategic mobility involved more than waiting around like passengers for a bus. US installations, which housed ever-larger proportions of the deployable Army, would redesign themselves as "power projection platforms." A half billion dollars went into state-of-the art airfields, railheads, ports, and connections between them. The 1992 version of Army Regulation 210-20, Master Planning for Army Installations, laid out expectations in some detail.⁴⁴ The Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management was established as a major Army Staff agency and reinforced this effort. The 1993 version of Field Manual (FM) 100-5, Operations, gave much more attention to "power projection" than ever before.⁴⁵

Sullivan ably shepherded Army efforts to enable launching faster from stateside installations, but also endeavored to reduce the tonnages that would be necessary to launch. Expanding on Prepositioning of Material Configured to Unit Sets (POMCUS) concepts that had enabled REFORGER, he deliberated with DoD to position brigade-sized Army War Reserve (AWR) stockpiles around the world to be available for contingencies. By 1995, AWR-1 was in the United States, AWR-2 in Europe, AWR-3 afloat but generally in the Indian Ocean, AWR-4 in Korea, and AWR-5 in Southwest Asia - most notably Kuwait. Having such equipment overseas and close to prospective action would save time and effort, as troops could be flown in quickly to man it.⁴⁶

Initiatives to make Army forces, whether light or heavy, more lethal also trimmed tonnages likely to be necessary to support contingencies. The fielding of the man-portable, 2,000-meter range, top attack, fire-and-forget, soft launch Javelin anti-tank missile was a major step in this regard. Light infantrymen became far less likely to be "speed bumps" in the face of armored attacks - and thus could be expected to accomplish more.⁴⁷ Improvements to the sights, sensors, and munitions available for tanks, armored vehicles, attack helicopters, and artillery promised to reduce the ammunition tonnages necessary to support those systems.⁴⁸ Desert Storm planners had overestimated the amount of ammunition that ultimately proved necessary. Fleets of trucks bearing ammunition that was never used trailed out behind American armored columns. This additional logistical mass encumbered their advance; perhaps the Army could have done with less.⁴⁹

Of course, Army planners did not want to run short of ammunition - or anything else - in pursuit of nimbler contingents. The information architecture sufficient to enable the just-in-time logistics discussed earlier could help. Another concept that became popular in the 1990's was split-based logistics. The Cold War practice was to accumulate "iron mountains" of supplies in respective theaters for envisioned contingencies. These accumulations were sufficient to support units in theater, reinforcements flowing into theater, and the time-phased force and deployment lists (TPFDLs) of support forces accompanying these reinforcements. While the practice made sense with long-established theaters, Desert Shield/Storm underscored the difficulty of transferring the model to an unexpected contingency. Sullivan faced short-notice deployments to Northern Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Kuwait, the Balkans, and elsewhere. With split-basing, home stations were responsible for individual replacements, major end items not already in theater, repair parts to support those items, and exotic munitions or other supplies. The theater handled routine supplies such as food, water, fuel, and most ammunition. A variation on split-basing could be semi-permanent intermediate staging bases (ISBs) established outside the conflict zone. Whether drawing on home stations or ISBs, split basing enhanced expeditionary capabilities by reducing the tonnages that had to be stockpiled in theater.⁵⁰

"Jointness" was a critical aspect of the Army's pursuit of an improved expeditionary posture. Troops and equipment would arrive by sea and air. Beyond that, Army units relied heavily on the US Air Force and Navy for combat support and service support. Sullivan actively courted his colleagues from other services as deliberations moved forward.⁵¹ Close air support received particular attention. Ground troops had long regarded close air support with a mixture of awe and anxiety, mindful of how helpful it could be but worried about fratricide. Most Cold War plans featured a fire support coordination line (FSCL) beyond which pilots were encouraged to drop their munitions with few if any restrictions. Inside the FSCL, air strikes were far more tightly controlled. In practice, ground commanders preferred to engage targets inside the FSCL with Army assets and rely on the Air Force for deeper targets. More than a few US troops have been lost to friendly air strikes.⁵²

Expeditionary combat might not facilitate the orderly battlefield architecture an FSCL implied. Air strikes were likely to be available before sufficient artillery massed, rendering close air support even more critical during the early stages of a deployment. During Desert Storm, precision-guided munitions allayed some fears concerning fratricidal strikes but at that time were too expensive to use on other than high-value targets. Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), developed during Sullivan's tenure, changed this paradigm. These add-on kits convert a "dumb" bomb to a "smart" one via an inertial guidance system coupled to GPS. They are cheap, precise, and not vulnerable to smoke or weather. They radically improved the safety and effectiveness of close air support, considerably enhancing the potent expeditionary posture the Army was trying to achieve.⁵³

An architect and advocate of Vuono's six Army Imperatives, Sullivan invested heavily in training and leadership as well as organization and equipment to achieve the expeditionary posture he sought. TRADOC schools taught requisite skills and authored appropriate doctrine. FORSCOM's reaction forces drilled on airlift, sealift, load plans, preparations for overseas movement, and other elements of speedy deployment. Major training events often started as Emergency Deployment Readiness Exercises (EDREs). National Training Center (NTC) rotations began with units drawing their heavy equipment under tactical circumstances. Tens of millions of training dollars went into Sea Emergency Deployment Readiness Exercises (SEDREs). In these, units raced to a designated port, uploaded their equipment onto Roll-on/Roll-off Fast Sealift Ships, and subsequently participated in an amphibious or through-port training exercise. The benefits of recurrent rehearsals accumulated. This is why the US Army's 1995 deployment of an armored brigade from Texas to Kuwait within the course of a news cycle seemed routine. Three months later, our unit was expediently relieved in place by another brigade flying out of Fort Carson, Colorado. Stateside bases had become efficient power projection platforms in this new expeditionary era.⁵⁴

The Six Army Imperatives

As the battalion I commanded, 2-66th Armor, rolled through the night battle for Objective Norfolk during Desert Storm, I thought I had a good knowledge about what was going on - and to a degree I did. However, when I walked the battalion perimeter several days later and talked with individual crews, I noted how much information had never made it onto the battalion command radio net. Virtually every crew, and in many cases individual, had done some extraordinary unreported thing to keep the battalion as a whole beetling forward through the darkness. Using thermal sights, gunners talked their drivers through scattered minefields. Recovery crews snatched tanks from trenches and bunkers they had fallen into and sped them on their way. Tank commanders shepherded less-well-protected vehicles into the cover their own superior armor afforded. Dismounts from the combat trains fought fierce little battles to thwart bypassed Iraqis attempting ambushes. The list went on. This is not to mention that the pace of reporting could not keep up with the pace at which targets were engaged. The attack would have been paralyzed if the only actions taken were those of which the battalion commander was aware.⁵⁵

My insight in the aftermath of the battle for Objective Norfolk was hardly novel. The US Army has long recognized its dependency on the initiative and skill of its leaders and soldiers at all levels. "Mission command" is a cherished concept that combines shared intent with decentralized execution, drawing the utmost out of all participants at the same time. Vuono and Sullivan reinforced this concept with their canonization of the six Army imperatives of doctrine, force mix, modernization, training, leader development, and quality people. Soldiers of a certain age may remember carrying a wallet-sized card listing the imperatives and definitions. As Sullivan transformed the Army, the imperatives provided a framework for change, permeating the entire organization and assuring balance and a shared vision. Transformation would not be about new equipment alone.⁵⁶

Doctrine is the Army's way of communicating "what right looks like" with respect to making things happen and provides a baseline of understanding that leaders can adapt within the Mission Command framework. As already discussed, Sullivan's and Frank's rewriting of FM 100-5, Operations, provided a grand view that pyramided down to hundreds of other field manuals, technical manuals, training programs, and additional doctrinal literature, largely authored by TRADOC. In light of the major changes embodied in the 1993 version of FM 100-5, most of this was rewritten. Rather than driving doctrine from the top down alone, Sullivan encouraged it to bubble up from the bottom. The pre-Desert Storm "training revolution" that had given the Army the highly instrumented and realistic NTC habituated it to the egalitarian self-critique of after-action reviews (AARs). In part assessment and in part confessional, AARs encouraged soldiers of all ranks to participate in improving unit performance. In 1985, the Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) was established to collect, analyze, and disseminate lessons learned from NTC rotations. In the aftermath of Desert Storm, Sullivan expanded its portfolio, dispatching teams of experts to drill in on topics of interest. This provided more grist for his LAM Task Force, also organized to capitalize on insights from throughout the Army.⁵⁷

The radically improved situational awareness enabled by digital technology did have doctrinal implications. Some opined this would "flatten" command hierarchies since so much information and guidance could pass back and forth so quickly. In practice, this did not work out so well since battle command involves much more than information alone. However, digitization did thin out the people and assets necessary to sustain accurate tactical and logistical pictures. Headquarters and command nodes could be leaner and nimbler, accomplishing more with less. "Modularity" gained popularity as a buzz word, describing units that could readily "plug in" and "plug out" with minimal assets required to sustain communications interfaces. Company clerks as such eventually disappeared, along with a fistful of other personnel involved in information management. In the institutional Army, comparable developments thinned out clerks and civilian secretaries. Captains and majors handled considerably more filing and correspondence themselves. Although this was but the tip of the iceberg with the arrival of the Information Age, it did establish a doctrinal trajectory that would make command and control increasingly less cumbersome.⁵⁸

Force mix designs "teams of teams," gathering the assets required for one type of mission or another into units built up from small to large. Our unit's tanks on Objective Norfolk, for example, were accompanied by contingents of scouts, mortarmen, mechanics, and other support troops while being overwatched by artillery. As Force XXI emerged as a blueprint for the evolving Army, it gave due attention to the tables of organization of future units, how they would knit together, and command relations among them. Underlying principles would remain, but force mix would change with technology and anticipated circumstances.⁵⁹

One aspect of force mix particularly visible to Sullivan was increasing reliance on the Reserve Component. Desert Storm underscored the Army's dependence on National Guard and Army Reserve combat support and combat service support units for major operations. Recurrent deployments thereafter, despite a shrinking Army, furthered this dependence. Far from being on a "deep bench" anticipating "the big one," Reserve Component units and individual reservists routinely deployed with contingents going overseas.⁶⁰ Congress extended presidential call-up authority from 90 to 270 days, allowing sufficient time for mobilization, train-up, overseas service, and redeployment.⁶¹ Reliance on the Reserve Component extended to combat as well as support units, given the unrelenting manpower demands. For example, the contingent activated in November 1994 to serve in the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) Sinai was largely drawn from the Reserve Component. National Guard and Army Reserve units came to regard mobilization and deployment as likely, albeit on more extended force generation cycles than their active-duty counterparts.⁶²

Modernization was an essential tenet of Force XXI thinking and, of course, a crucial aspect of the digitization being pursued. However, not all modernization was digital, such as the previously discussed development of the Javelin anti-tank missile and JDAMs. Although the fielding of the famous "big five" (Abrams tank, Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, Apache attack helicopter, Black Hawk utility helicopter, and Patriot missile system) was largely complete, all five saw further improvements and upgrades.⁶³ Improvements and upgrades also were made to other systems - some dramatic. Perhaps most important, the approach to modernization drifted away from the bureaucracy of the military specifications (MILSPECs) process with its tightly supervised interplay between the Army and industry. More attention was given to quickly adapting off-the-shelf technology given the pace at which commercial technologies were advancing. One observer noted that the MILSPECs process would have brought the Army a seventeen-pound single-channel GPS that cost $34,000, whereas it was instead able to buy a three-pound multichannel commercial version that cost $1,300. In a few years, that cost dropped to $800. Digital and other technologies went onto existing platforms and vehicles via applique, which saved time and money.⁶⁴

Training was a major concern for Sullivan and played into his metaphor concerning "No more Task Force Smiths." Amid downsizing and plummeting budgets, he aspired to keep remaining Army units well-trained for current contingencies and design training that would enable the evolving transformation he sought. Some exercises, such as the EDREs and SEDREs, addressed both requirements. Through relentless scrimping, Sullivan kept the training operational tempo at about 800 miles per vehicle crew per year and maintained individual and crew weapons qualification. In Fiscal Year 1995, seventy-seven battalions rotated through the national combat training centers - no mean budgetary feat. Meanwhile, training programs appropriate to increasingly digitized experimental units were developed in Advance Warfighter Experiments and other exercises. In April 1994, a full-up instrumented task force took to the National Training Center. In December, the 2nd Armored Division became the experimental force for digitization. This assured ample attention to unit training as digitization progressed. Increasing numbers of personnel required individual training to use and maintain digital equipment. TRADOC, AMC, FORSCOM, and the defense industry cooperated to establish relevant programs.⁶⁵

Leader development similarly straddled the divide between preparing for contemporary contingencies and anticipating future ones. It progressed in the institutional Army under TRADOC supervision and in the deployable Army under the supervision of FORSCOM and other major commands. The Army's post-Vietnam "renaissance" had heavily emphasized leader development and paid particular attention to establishing ascending scales of education and experience for noncommissioned officer professional development (NCOPD). The investment proved invaluable in Just Cause and Desert Storm, which was amply demonstrated by the professionalism and performance at all levels of participating US units.⁶⁶ Digitization added a new dimension to leader development as "traditional" military knowledge ran alongside digital savvy. Younger soldiers were often more proficient with digital equipment than their older superiors, and career paths that developed digital sophistication were not necessarily the same as those that developed traditional combat leaders. Cyber Warfare was not yet a "thing" for the Army, but LAM Task Force brainstorming was anticipating it. Requirements to develop both tactical and technical leadership - and establish balances between them - were not new to the Army. Digitization made these perhaps more important than ever.⁶⁷

Another aspect of leader development that received particular attention in the early 1990s was family readiness. Recurrent deployments increased the stress on Army families. Studies reinforced the believable notion that the number one reason soldiers left the Army was that their spouses and/or families didn't like it. Family support groups had done yeoman service during Desert Storm, but performance and expectations with respect to supporting families had nevertheless been mixed. In 1994, the Army Community and Family Support Center fielded a comprehensive array of instructional materials in pursuit of standardization. Army Family Team Building emerged as a train-the-trainer program to prepare volunteers for varying levels of responsibility. Commanders were responsible for the programs supporting their units and provided necessary resources. The term "family support group" came to be replaced by "family readiness group." The change diminished notions of dependency and reinforced notions of preparedness and resilience. The emerging expeditionary Army recognized that Army families are central to its success.⁶⁸

Quality people are the pediment on which all other success is built. Army recruits in the 1980s were overwhelmingly high school graduates and had solid scores on armed services vocational aptitude tests. Sullivan feared reckless downsizing would hemorrhage talent and decimate units. He remembered the damage done by the dreaded "pink slips" in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. With his allies and colleagues, Sullivan convinced Congress to take an incremental approach, holding losses to less than 50,000 a year. This and incentives such as the Voluntary Early Release/Retirement Program (VERRP) and Voluntary Selective Incentive Program (VSIP) enabled separations to remain overwhelmingly voluntary and attritional. In Fiscal Year 1995, for example, enlisted personnel were involuntarily separated only for cause. In that year, the active Army reenlisted 104 percent of first-termers and 100 percent of the mid-termers it sought, and attracted 105 percent of the separating soldiers it sought to the Reserve Component.⁶⁹ More than 95 percent of new recruits were high school graduates. Complicated wrangling with Congress and the Joint Staff did much to enable this. So did the Army's image as dynamic, capable, and busy - an image encouraged by high states of readiness in the units Sullivan was able to retain.⁷⁰

Sullivan and Franks took a broad approach when acting in the present and planning for the future. Doctrine, force mix, modernization, training, leader development, and quality people featured prominently in every major undertaking. Sullivan's sense of history served him well. The Army imperatives had longstanding roots that would extend deep into the future.

Sustaining Momentum over the Long Haul

The Eisenhower Luncheon at AUSA's 1999 annual meeting in Washington, DC, was a glittering affair. Hundreds of tables mixed uniformed soldiers, corporate and political leaders, and invited guests in a grand ballroom. An elevated table running the length of one wall seated four-star generals, AUSA illuminati, and selected guests of honor. The keynote speaker was new Army Chief of Staff General Eric K. Shinseki. His subject was Army Transformation, now spelled with a capital "A" and "T." Fittingly, given the topic, he was introduced by General Gordon R. Sullivan, AUSA president.⁷¹

Sullivan's successor as Army chief of staff, General Dennis J. Reimer, had served as Sullivan's vice chief of staff (VCSA) and FORSCOM commander. Reimer's successor, Shinseki, had served as Reimer's DCSOPS and VCSA.⁷² Each man was familiar with and supportive of the direction his predecessor had been taking the Army. Similar continuity extended into the depths of the Army. Project officers and NCOs thoroughly mastered the concepts, hardware, and software involved in the ongoing transformation and passed their knowledge to their successors. TRADOC schools kept the tenets of anticipated transformation in view even when most of their students had little firsthand experience with the advancing hardware and software involved. Agencies and "elevator speeches" morphed over time, but underlying concepts remained the same. The vision and direction of transformation remained consistent, although funding was not yet sufficient to achieve closure.⁷³

As AUSA president, Sullivan was uniquely positioned to further his previous work. Among many other roles, AUSA promotes dialogue, education, and cooperation concerning land warfare. It has a seasoned staff, prestigious trustees, and interlocking advisory committees serving a membership that includes soldiers of all ranks, retirees, and representatives of relevant industries. Its conventions bring together key leaders and broad audiences in fora that home in on critical issues. US Congress members and presidential advisors listen to the counsel and advice of AUSA's resolution committees. In this dynamic environment, Sullivan played a key role in keeping transformational ideas and actions vibrant and relevant.⁷⁴

I attended the 1999 Eisenhower Luncheon as Shinseki laid out his vision for Army Transformation. Several months earlier as chief of military history, I had served on Shinseki's transition team as he prepared to become chief of staff. His speech took a long time to compose and drew on numerous sources. It was as thorough, meticulous, and well-thought out as Shinseki himself. As he addressed his prestigious audience, I knew much of what was coming and was gratified to see how well it went over.⁷⁵ What I did not know was that in less than two years' time, terrorists would crash airliners into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, precipitating the Global War on Terror. Transformational ideas that had been on a long timeline with little funding suddenly became imperatives on a short timeline with ample funding. The Army budget almost doubled between 2000 and 2005.⁷⁶

In 1995, Sullivan had left the Army with a capable expeditionary posture, considerable digitization in its institutions, and prototypical or experimental digitization in its units. Reimer pushed transformation forward, adjusting as necessary. Deployments to the Middle East, Balkans, and elsewhere continued unabated. Indeed, the daily average number of soldiers deployed from home station increased by half during Reimer's tenure.⁷⁷ He completed the conversion of stateside installations into effective power projection platforms while presiding over what amounted to a revolution in military contracting. Seeking to preserve its "teeth" amidst radical downsizing, the Army found ways to turn over more of its "tail" to civilian contractors - often heavily populated by former service members. This imperative became even more necessary because of cuts to the number of Department of the Army civilians, reduced from 488,000 in 1989 to 225,000 in 1999.⁷⁸

With respect to digitization, Reimer and his TRADOC commander, General William W. Hartzog, pushed ahead with special attention given to reliably answering three questions: Where am I?, Where are my buddies?, and Where is the enemy? With sure knowledge of these, the rest of America's vast panoply of military technology could be effectively brought into play. Recurrent exercises steadily enhanced the ability to acquire and manage this requisite knowledge. Reimer accumulated the means to field a brigade fully equipped with Force XXI applique technology. He field-tested Force XXI equipment through the division and corps level. Better yet, Force XXI technologies became sufficiently mature to spread across the Army when funding permitted.⁷⁹

Shinseki envisioned Army Transformation as tripartite, consisting of a Legacy Force, an Interim Force, and an Objective Force. The Legacy Force, the deployable Army as it then existed, was to be sustained and recapitalized. Shinseki regarded Force XXI's applique technology as a feature of the Legacy Force that would trundle on in vintage vehicles with modern digital equipment. The Objective Force was futuristic, using a distant target built around vehicles and technologies that did not yet exist. New with Shinseki was the idea of an Interim Force: highly mobile, of middling weight, and sporting the most advanced technologies available.⁸⁰ Shinseki mustered the leadership, equipment, and focus to develop this Interim Force with astonishing speed. When he retired from the Army in June 2003, the first Stryker Brigade Combat Team was ready to deploy - and none too soon.⁸¹

Between the 9/11 attack in 2001 and the 20 March 2003 invasion of Iraq, Shinseki assured the forces that would participate in Operation Cobra II had applique Force XXI technology and enjoyed every possible advantage with respect to manning, logistics, and leadership. The deployment progressed far more smoothly than Desert Shield, largely because of prepositioned equipment, improved sealift and airlift, and training for such a contingency.⁸² Satellite-facilitated communications, networked computers, advanced sensors, ubiquitous GPS, Blue Force Tracking, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), JDAMs, and other innovations came into play once combat commenced. The ponderous phalanx of Desert Storm was replaced by nimbler maneuvers such as the five simultaneous V Corps attacks of 31 March or the subsequent Thunder Run into Baghdad, the latter conducted by a brigade that had two of its other battalions attacking in a different direction. Generals Tommy R. Franks and David D. McKiernan, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) and Land Component commanders respectively, were confident enough in the qualitative advantage they enjoyed that they attacked from a "rolling start" with minimal preparatory bombardment. They followed through with relentless aggressiveness thereafter.⁸³ In Desert Storm, a million-strong Allied force overwhelmed 540,000 Iraqis and overran 24,000 square miles in a forty-three-day campaign.⁸⁴ In Cobra II, half as many Allies overwhelmed twice as many Iraqis and overran 170,000 square miles in about half as much time. In both cases, American forces were at peak training and preparedness. The Cobra II enhanced performance can be readily explained: US forces made striking qualitative advances in the intervening dozen years, whereas the Iraqis did not.⁸⁵

As units rotated into Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere for the Global War on Terror, pre-deployment preparations rendered them increasingly modernized and digitized. Shinseki's successor, General Peter J. Schoomaker, enhanced agility and expeditionary posture by shifting to a modular brigade-based Army and unit manning. This evolution had been underway, as Force XXI capabilities enabled brigades to be as potent as divisions had been in many respects and modern communications thinned out the personnel required in command nodes. Within a few years, ample funding, large rotations, and continuing innovation completed the transformation to the digitized expeditionary Army Sullivan had envisioned.⁸⁶

The US Army's overwhelming dominance in conventional operations did not entirely transfer when Afghanistan and Iraq devolved into insurgencies, but US forces nevertheless gained important advantages from the Army's transformation. Time and again, American units swept away opponents who dared to confront them; dominant knowledge can be an ingredient for success at the lower end of the combat spectrum as well as the upper.⁸⁷ Insurgents learned to eschew direct combat with US forces, and more than half of US casualties were caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Even IEDs proved susceptible to American training and technical innovation. In one two-year period, the number of IED attacks that produced casualties remained unchanged even though the number of attacks quadrupled.⁸⁸ Dissatisfaction with results in Afghanistan and Iraq must find reasons other than the quality of the US forces that fought there. While US forces were there, they were dominant; when they withdrew, they were not. Using a fraction of the force structure that historical experience would recommend, US forces kept the lid on in two difficult countries for a long time with minimal casualties. They left because their countrymen no longer believed the prospective results were worth the cost.⁸⁹

Concluding Thoughts

The US Army changes daily but transforms rarely. True transformation is a paradigm shift from one posture to another that is altogether different. Examples include the transformation from a frontier constabulary to the "Army for Empire" following the Spanish-American War or the creation of the mammoth national mobilization-based Army that fought World Wars I and II. The most recent transformation was from the forward-deployed giant of the Cold War to today's nimbler digitized expeditionary Army. Given the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rise of the Information Age, and technologies such as precision-guided munitions, microchips, and advanced sensors, adaptation short of transformation would have been an inadequate response.

No single person was more responsible for this latest transformation than General Gordon R. Sullivan. A thoughtful student of history, careful listener, and avid observer, he processed myriad ideas into meaningful actions. He perceived and acted on dramatic strategic, socio-economic, and technological changes and developed expeditionary capabilities and Information Age assets within a framework that addressed doctrine, force mix, modernization, training, leader development, and quality people. Force XXI emerged as his blueprint, and he advanced it through a prototypical phase. As AUSA president, he sustained focus and momentum, assisting his successors' transformational efforts with the considerable assets his new position could muster. After 9/11, the Army's budget almost doubled, and it had good ideas about how to use the money. Within a few years, America fielded a truly digitized expeditionary Army.

The Army may now need another transformation. China's rise and the aggressiveness of Russia, Iran, and North Korea have altered the strategic situation. Greying populations put a socio-economic limit on the young manpower available to the United States, most of its allies, and many likely adversaries. Robotics and artificial intelligence are serving up yet another technological revolution. The authors of the Army's next transformation might be wise to take notes from General Sullivan and those who worked with him to achieve the last one.

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Notes

1. "About Us," Army Historical Foundation, accessed 25 April 2024, https://armyhistory.org.
2. General Gordon R. Sullivan, "No More Task Force Smiths," Army (January 1992), 18.
3. General Gordon R. Sullivan, "Louisiana Maneuvers 1994," in The Collected Works of the Thirty-Second Chief of Staff, United States Army (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 1995),103-5.
4. John Sloan Brown, Draftee Division: The 88th Infantry Division in World War II (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1986).
5. John Sloan Brown, Kevlar Legions: The Transformation of the U.S. Army, 1989-2005 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2011).
6. The anecdotes and sentiments featured here are based on the author's personal experience or conversations with fellow soldiers in Garlstedt, Germany, 1989-90.
7. "General Gordon R. Sullivan," in William G. Bell, Commanding Generals and Chiefs of Staff, 1775-2005: Portraits and Biographical Sketches of the Army's Senior Officers (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2005).
8. Brown, Kevlar Legions, 46-56.
9. General Carl E. Vuono, "Guided by Six Imperatives: The U.S. Army in the 1990s," in Army 1990-1991 Green Book, October 1990, 20. See also General Carl E. Vuono, "Remarks to the Conference of Army Historians 29 March 1990, Army History 15 (Summer 1990) for a listing of the six imperatives and his remarks in their entirety.
10. General Franks served in Joint and Army Staff billets as well as in concepts and education assignments at TRADOC and as executive officer to General Donn Starry when he commanded TRADOC.
11. Anne W. Chapman, The Army's Training Revolution, 1973-1990: An Overview (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 1994); and "About Us," US Army Training and Doctrine Command, accessed 30 September 2024 [Note: Access to this "About Us" website no longer exists with the transition and transformation from TRADOC to T2COM. Citation link removed deliberately].
12. William Echikson, Lighting the Night: Revolution in Eastern Europe (New York: William Morrow, 1990); and George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Knopf, 1998).
13. Brown, Kevlar Legions, 73-76.
14. General Gordon R. Sullivan, "Arrival Ceremony," in The Collected Works of the Thirty-Second Chief of Staff, 3-4.
15. Stephen L. Y. Gammons and William M. Donnelly, Department of the Army Historical Summary Fiscal Year 1995 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2004), 3-7, 46-48.
16. Dan Smith, Kristan Ingstad Sandberg, Pavel Baev, and Wenche Hauge, The State of War and Peace Atlas (Oslo, NO: International Peace Research Institute and Penguin Books, 1997).
17. L. Martin Kaplan, Department of the Army Historical Summary Fiscal Year1994 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2000), 124-29; and Department of the Army, Army Regulation 210-20, Master Planning for Army Installations (Washington, DC: 1992).
18. Fratricide: Reducing Self-Inflicted Losses (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Center for Army Lessons Learned, April 1992); and Fratricide: Risk Assessment for Company Leadership (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Center for Army Lessons Learned, March 1992).
19. William G. Pagonis with Jeffrey L. Cruikshank, Moving Mountains: Lessons in Leadership and Logistics from the Gulf War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School University Press, 1992).
20. Janet Abbate, Inventing the Internet (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999); and Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet (New York: Touchstone, 1998).
21. General Gordon R. Sullivan, "Maintaining Momentum While Accommodating Change," Army 1991 Green Book: The Year of Desert Storm (October 1991), 24-32.
22. Rebecca R. Raines, Getting the Message Through: A Branch History of the U.S. Army Signal Corps (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 1996), 352-74.
23. General Frederick M. Franks Jr., "TRADOC: Seeding Future Victories," Army 1992-1993 Green Book (October 1992).
24. James L. Yarrison, The Modern Louisiana Maneuvers (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 1995), 20-75.
25. Yarrison, 20-75; and "Special Digitization Task Force; Charter for the Army Digitization Office," Army Information Paper, 9 June 1994, Historians Files, US Army Center of Military History.
26. Table of Organization and Equipment (TOE) units are deployable combat, combat support, and combat service support units. Table of Distribution and Allowances (TDA) units are non-deployable and typically associated with a school, installation, or agency at a specific geographic location.
27. Brown, Kevlar Legions, 90-92.
28. Yarrison, The Modern Louisiana Maneuvers, 1-8, 49-71.
29. Brown, Kevlar Legions, 90-92; and "General Gordon R. Sullivan's Speech to the Association of the United States Army Louisiana Maneuvers Symposium, 25 May 1993," in The Collected Works of the Thirty-Second Chief of Staff.
30. The "Left Hook" was the name given the large-scale enveloping attack by US VII Corps and US XVIII Airborne Corps from west of the Wadi al-Batin that swept around the Iraqi Army in Kuwait and cut the Basrah to Kuwait City Highway.
31. Robert H. Scales Jr., Certain Victory: The US Army in the Gulf War (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Staff, US Army, 1993), 213-320.
32. Briefing, Department of the Army, "Friendly Fire Determination," 9 August 1991, in Historians Files, US Army Center of Military History; and Briefing, Combat Identification Task Force, "Combat Identification," 22 November 1991, in Historians Files, US Army Center of Military History.
33. Briefing, Combat Identifications Systems Program Office to Senior Officer Review Group, "Combat Identification Technology Demonstration Presentation," 14 February 1992, in Historians Files, US Army Center of Military History; and "Combat Identification Program Second Draft," 17 October 1991, in Historians Files, US Army Center of Military History.
34. Brown, Kevlar Legions, 121-24; and General Fred Franks Jr. with Tom Clancy, Into the Storm: A Study in Command (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1997), 488-511.
35. Brown, 121-24; and Briefing, Combat Identifications Systems Program Office to Senior Officer Review Group, "Combat Identification Technology Demonstration Presentation."
36. Lt. Gen. Johnnie E. Wilson, "Power Projection Logistics Now . . . and in the 21st Century," Army 1994-1995 Green Book, 137-43; General Leon E. Salomon, "At AMC the Future Begins Today," Army 1994-1995 Green Book, 69-75; and Lt. Gen. Paul E. Blackwell, "Winning the Wars of the 21st Century, Army 1994-1995 Green Book, 121-34.
37. Yarrison, The Modern Louisiana Maneuvers, 49-71; Message, General Gordon R. Sullivan, Chief of Staff, "Building the Force for the 21st Century-Force XXI," 7 March 1994, in The Collected Works of the Thirty-Second Chief of Staff, 318-21; Information Paper, DACS-AD, "Army Digitization Office Status and Future Strategy," 27 September 1994, in Historians Files, US Army Center of Military History; and Army Digitization Office, Report to the Congress on Army Digitization, February 1995.
38. Desert Voice Special Edition, Camp Doha, Kuwait, 17 October 1995; and 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, "INTRINSIC ACTION 95-3 After Action Review," 17 October 1995, Historians Files, US Army Center of Military History.
39. Katherine McIntire, "Speed Bumps, 82nd Airborne's Shaky Line in the Sand," Army Times, 21 October 1991.
40. U.S. Transportation Command: A Short History (Scott Air Force Base, IL: US Transportation Command Office of Public Affairs, 2005).
41. U.S. Transportation Command.
42. Air Mobility Command Fact Sheet (Scott Air Force Base, IL: Air Mobility Command Office of Public Affairs, August 2007).
43. Betty R. Kennedy, Globemaster III: Acquiring the C-17 (McConnell Air Force Base, KS: Air Mobility Command Office of History, 2004).
44. Department of the Army, Army Regulation 210-20, Master Planning for Army Installations (Washington, DC: 1992).
45. Department of the Army, Field Manual (FM) 100-5, Operations (Washington, DC: 1993).
46. Mark D. Sherry, The Army Command Post and Defense Reshaping, 1987-1997 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2009), 106-12; and Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) 1454/161, "Service Recommendations for Sealift Package in the Persian Gulf," 8 February 1980, cited in Sherry, 112.
47. Blackwell, "Winning the Wars of the 21st Century;" and "Army Weaponry and Equipment," Army 1994-1995 Green Book, 233-319.
48. Blackwell.
49. Pagonis and Cruikshank, Moving Mountains; Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 1992); and Birger Bergesen and John McDonald, Assessment of Contingency and Expeditionary Force Capabilities (McLean, VA: Science Applications International Corporation, 1992).
50. Pagonis and Cruikshank; Bergesen and McDonald; and Wilson, "Power Projection Logistics Now . . . and in the 21st Century."
51. Memorandum for the Record of Telephone Conversation, Brig. Gen. (Retired) John S. Brown with General (Retired) Gordon R. Sullivan, 091300 May 2008.
52. Department of the Army, FM 100-5; Fratricide: Reducing Self-Inflicted Losses; and author's personal experience as a battalion S-3 (1985-86), battalion commander (1989-91); division G-3 (1992-93), and corps G-3 operations (1993).
53. Army Senior Leader Update, "Precision Strike: A Unique American Military Advantage . . . but with Limitations," 14 August 2001, Historians Files, US Army Center of Military History; and Peter Grier, "The JDAM Revolution," Air Force Online: The Journal of the Air Force Association, September 2006.
54. Brown, Kevlar Legions, 102-6.
55. John S. Brown, "The Battle for Norfolk," in Leaders in War: West Point Remembers the 1991 Gulf War, ed. Frederick W. Kagan and Chris Kubik (New York: Frank Cass, 2005).
56. Vuono, "Guided by Six Imperatives;" and John J. Romjue, American Army Doctrine for the Post-Cold War World (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2001).
57. Sullivan, "Maintaining Momentum While Accommodating Change;" Anne W. Chapman, The Army's Training Revolution, 1973-1990 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 1994); Briefing, "Center for Army Lessons Learned for the Chief of Military History," 20 January 2000, in Historians Files, US Army Center of Military History; and Yarrison, The Modern Louisiana Maneuvers, 7-25.
58. Army Command, Leadership and Management: Theory and Practice, A Reference Text, 1992-93 (Carlisle Barracks, PA: US Army War College, 1992); Yarrison, 33-71; Lt. Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan to the Army's General Officers, "Force XXI," 5 March 1994, in The Collected Works of the Thirty-Second Chief of Staff, 316-17; and Army Digitization Office, Report to the Congress on Army Digitization, February 1995.
59. Message, General Gordon R. Sullivan, Chief of Staff, "Building the Force for the 21st Century-Force XXI," 7 March 1994, in The Collected Works of the Thirty-Second Chief of Staff, 318-21.
60. James T. Currie and Richard B. Crossland, Twice the Citizen: A History of the Army Reserve, 1908-1995 (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief, Army Reserve, 1997), 521-80; and Michael D. Doubler, I Am the Guard: A History of the Army National Guard, 1636-2000 (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2001).
61. Public Law 103-337, Section 673b.
62. Maj. Gen. John R. D'Araujo Jr., "Army National Guard: The Nation's Strategic Insurance," Army 1994-1995 Green Book, 91-95; and Maj. Gen. Max Baratz, "Army Reserve: Committed Force of Citizen Soldiers," Army 1994-1995 Green Book, 97-99.
63. Brown, Kevlar Legions, 38-41.
64. Brown, 127-28; and Salomon, "At AMC the Future Begins Today," 69-75.
65. Maj. Gen. Joe W. Rigby, "Digitizing Force XXI: A Team Effort," Army, May 1995, 36-44; and Gammons and Donnelly, Department of the Army Historical Summary Fiscal Year 1995, 11-22, 37-48.

66. Command Sgt. Maj. David R. Davenport, "Where the NCO Professional Development System Began," Army, 27 February 2017; and Franks and Clancy, Into the Storm.

66. Yarrison, The Modern Louisiana Maneuvers, 49-71; Information Paper, DACS-AD, "Army Digitization Office Status and Future Strategy," 27 September 1994, Historians Files, US Army Center of Military History; and Army Digitization Office, Report to the Congress on Army Digitization, February 1995.
67. What We Know About Army Families (Arlington, VA: Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, 1993); Eric K. Shinseki, The Army Family: A White Paper (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2003); and Brown, Kevlar Legions, 341-83.
68. Gammons and Donnelly, Department of the Army Historical Summary Fiscal Year 1995, 23-36; and Maj. Gen. Wallace C. Arnold, "The Army's Most Valuable Resource: People," Army 1994-1995 Green Book, 151-57.
69. Gammons and Donnelly, 23-36; and Arnold, 151-57.
70. The author attended this Eisenhower Luncheon; and General Eric K. Shinseki, "Address to the Eisenhower Luncheon, Association of the United States Army," 12 October 1999.
71. "General Dennis J. Reimer" and "General Eric K. Shinseki" in William G. Bell, Commanding Generals and Chiefs of Staff, 1775-2005: Portraits and Biographical Sketches of the Army's Senior Officers (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2005).
72. Brown, Kevlar Legions, 453-83.
73. General Gordon R. Sullivan, "Relevant and Ready: AUSA Supports Soldiers and Families," Army 2006-2007 Green Book, October 2006, 9; and Briefing, Army General Staff, "Army Strategic Communications, America's Army: One Team, One Fight, One Future," 14 January 1999, Historians Files, US Army Center of Military History.
74. The author attended this Eisenhower Luncheon; and Shinseki, "Address to the Eisenhower Luncheon."
75. W. Blair Haworth Jr., Department of the Army Historical Summary Fiscal Year 2000 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2011), 10-24; and Brian F. Neuman, Department of the Army Historical Summary Fiscal Year 2005 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2013), 3-6.
76. Connie L. Reeves, Department of the Army Historical Summary Fiscal Year 1996 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2002), 72-79, 97; and Jeffrey A. Charleston, Department of the Army Historical Summary Fiscal Year 1999 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2006), 8-12, 48-54, 74-76.
77. Vincent Demma, "Contractors on the Battlefield: An Historical Survey from the Civil War to Bosnia," n.d., Historians Files, US Army Center of Military History; "Supplementary Report on Army Contracting," Historians Files, Center of Military History; Vincent Demma, Department of the Army Historical Summary Fiscal Year 1989 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 1998), 11-12, 109-10, 133-39, 191-96; and Charleston, 3-13, 32-35, 101-3, 108-9.
78. Brown, Kevlar Legions, 140-51; General William W. Hartzog, "A Time for Transformation: Creating Army XXI," Army 1996-1997 Green Book, October 1996, 53-59; and Briefing, US Army Training and Doctrine Command to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans, "Force XXI WFLA FY99-09 Modernization Recommendations," 31 January 1997, Historians Files, US Army Center of Military History.
79. Shinseki, "Address to the Eisenhower Luncheon."
80. Nick Johnson, "First Stryker Brigade to Achieve IOC This Month, Army Says," Aerospace Daily, 21 May 2003.
81. Operation IRAQI FREEDOM-It Was a Prepositioned War (Fort Belvoir, VA: US Army Material Command, 2003); and "Iraq by the Numbers," Army Times, 22 March 2004, 28-29.
82. Col. Gregory Fontenot, Lt. Col. E. J. Degan, and Lt. Col. David Tohn, On Point: The United States Army in IRAQI FREEDOM (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2004).
83. Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 1992), 2-16, 292-97, 313-17, 333-46.
84. Fontenot, Degan, and Tohn, On Point, 99-102, 329-82, 427-36.
85. Brown, Kevlar Legions, 392-442; William M. Donnelly, Transforming an Army at War: Designing the Modular Force, 1991-2005 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2007); and Army Comprehensive Guide to Modularity (Fort Monroe, VA: US Army Training and Doctrine Command, 8 October 2004).
86. Brown, Kevlar Legions, 413-33.
87. Joint IED Defeat Organization, "IED Trends," reproduced in Army Times, 27 October 2008; John T. Bennett, "Turning Point in Fight Against IEDs," Army Times, 1 October 2007, 34-35; and Clay Wilson, Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq: Effects and Countermeasures (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2005).
88. Brown, Kevlar Legions, 392-442.

 

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