Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee - Army Transformation

Federal News Service July 21, 2004 Wednesday

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

SUBJECT: ARMY TRANSFORMATION

CHAIRED: REPRESENTATIVE DUNCAN HUNTER (R-CA)

WITNESSES: GENERAL PETER SCHOOMAKER, U.S. ARMY CHIEF OF STAFF LIEUTENANT GENERAL BENJAMIN S. GRIFFIN, U.S. ARMY, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR FORCE DEVELOPMENT; LIEUTENANT GENERAL JOHN M. CURRAN, U.S. ARMY, DEPUTY COMMANDING GENERAL FUTURES, TRAINING AND DOCTRINE COMMAND

BODY:

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REP. SKELTON: Mr. Chairman, let me join you in welcoming General Schoomaker, General Griffin, General Curran, for this very, very important hearing. We appreciate your calling it, and appreciate the work that they do.

I was interested in your comments regarding my interest in history. As I've told you many times, I think everyone who wears a military uniform should be a historian as well. And so, get ready for those questions when the question part comes.

Let me tell you I've been looking forward to this hearing. Some two weeks ago, we had a very interesting hearing with the Vice Chief of Staff General Cody, and each time one of us asked him if the Army could handle the great demands that were being placed on it, he replied that the answer lay in the realization of the Army transformation. Last week, we had a distinguished panel of outside witnesses who gave us their impression of Army transformation. They were a very thoughtful group of people.

Now, as a result, we have so many questions about the Army's transformation plan that I hardly know where to begin. General Schoomaker, I commend you for recognizing the need to change, developing a vision, moving out smartly to achieve it. It's difficult, but thank you for doing that. This is the hallmark, I think, of great leadership.

And each of the witnesses we had last week expressed enthusiasm for a transformation that you've begun. Still they had some cautious reservations as you might imagine. For example, we're all concerned with emphasis on the technology at the expense of the human component. Whether it's the number of soldiers, or the profession education, or the internal cultural changes they believe the Army needs to achieve.

So, General, I applaud your initiative in setting this new course for the Army. I think it's past due, and I'm not worried that the transformation is happening during wartime as may, I think, would. As one of the witnesses noticed last week, it's during wars that militaries do transform to meet the new challenges, and as the chairman mentioned a few moments ago. The First World War saw the tank break through lines that had been stalemated for years. World War II saw the advent of the aircraft emerge as the dominant power. But those sorts of wartime transformations took place at a time when the entire weight of a nation was behind the war effort. The whole of the country's economic might was then committed. The population was sacrificing daily, and that's not the case today.

Today the Army is fighting a war, and simultaneously trying to transform within a set of domestic limitations and the constraints that they're on. So what you're trying to do is a bold move, and the Army is still going to come up with billions of dollars short if we're not very, very careful. You're trying to make all this happen while staying below certain troop levels. We've had our discussion on this before, general, the constraints such as the limit on the Army's capability to experiment to build new units, develop new operational concepts, to test them. All them in my opinion create the need for additional troops. Quite simply, we just need those additional troops to help you do what you want to do. That's why I worry about the Army today. Like I said last week, the Army is already stretched dangerously thin.

It's interesting, Mr. Chairman, and I heard yesterday from the National Guard back home in Missouri that their retention is, as a result of today's situation, is sliding downhill very, very fast. Some of the units in the Missouri National Guard are now down to only 80 percent when they were just a few months ago up to 100 percent. The Army is thin, and not just National Guard but Reserve and active duty. And we need every pair of boots on the ground, as well as every piece of equipment. There seems to be no elasticity, no capacity for that. So this is a pretty tall order, and we here in the committee want to help you, general, succeed in your efforts.

But there's a difference between risk and gamble. Risk is one thing-if it goes wrong, you can recover. A gamble is something that it is quite the contrary. So I hope we can work together on this. You can succeed in your transformation. We can win the guerrilla warfare, win the war against terrorism, which is the real war, and transform for tomorrow. It's a tall order. But, general, under your leadership we can do it. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

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REP. SKELTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I've been sitting here, General, listening, hoping somewhere in your discussion, your well- thought-out-and I compliment you on it-proposal for transformation in the Army, listening to the words that would form the basis-and you did use the phrase later "development" at one point-speak about professional military education.

It ought to be the basis of everything you do. And when I heard not long ago the discussion of the Army cutting command general staff college back from the required 10 months, I could not believe it. I think that crisis has passed.

But I think this is a great opportunity for the United States Army to revisit the importance of professional military education. I do not understate this requirement. You would never send a bright young soul into a courthouse with a bunch of law books and say, "Try this death penalty case" without first having sent that young soul to law school.

And what you do is so much more important than walking into a courtroom. The reason we did so well intellectually in the Second World War was because we didn't have enough bullets to fill for the officers, so you sent them to college. You sent them to war colleges. They instructed. They were students. Troy Middleton, the corps commander of the Battle of the Bulge, spent 10 years of his military life in colleges, either as an instructor or as a student.

I would urge you, General, to take another look at what you're doing. Try to increase the military education, from the military art to study of cultures to study of languages. That's the glue that makes-whether it be on the tactical or operational or on the strategic level, that's the glue that brings victory. You have to outsmart the enemy, and you do this by old-fashioned study in the war colleges, the command general staff colleges, on your own. It's got to be done.

Let me share with you testimony of General Scales just last week. He said, "In 1976, the Army sent 7,400 officers to fully-funded graduate school. Today the Army sends 396, half of whom are going to West Point, the other half are being assigned to the Army Acquisition Command. Compare this with generals like the names of Abizaid and Petraeus, all of whom came up through a liberal-arts upbringing, and they asked General Abizaid whether he would rather have an acquisition officer on his staff or an officer who has studied Arabic and has immersed himself in Arab cultures. I think you know what the answer would be."

Well, I don't want to belabor the point, General, but I would hope that you'd go back and relook at this whole issue to see if you can put more study into this all-important subject of war ethos. That's part of it.

So with that I will refrain from asking you a question. I would certainly hope that in the days ahead we could receive information from this committee to see about how you can continuously upgrade the (studying?) professional military education of the United States Army.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

GEN. SCHOOMAKER: Sir, if I could just respond very briefly to you. First of all, there's no daylight between us. I agree with you. And I think that we never made a decision to reduce the war college or the command general staff college. And if you look on those 17 focus areas we have, you'll see that leader training and education, leader development, is one of the focus areas that we have.

But what I did ask them to do is to turn everything on edge and make sure that what we're doing is the best we can do. And so they export a bunch of different kind of ways. And I might also remind you-and I know you know this-at the beginning of World War II, one of the first things General Marshall did is shut down the war college and command general staff college and take a look at it and create it in a way that he wanted. He also removed several hundred officers out of the officer corps. I mean, he came in with a pretty heavy hand and did some pretty important things that had to be done, because even then the system was not perfect.

And so I ask people to take a hard look at this. And General Wallace and General Burns and Traduck (sp) are taking a very hard look at it. And as I've told you, you know, we are going to continue the 10-month program, but we've improved it. We have increased the number of officers we're putting into the school for the advanced military studies. We've looked seriously at the integration of joint war- fighting into all of our aspects.

On the civilian education side, I agree with you; there's a big difference in what we were doing decades ago and what we're doing today in terms of the military education. And in many respects, it's directly related to both the fiscal realities we have and the availability of officers to do that within the level of operations we have.

But it is a desirable ideal and it is one that we're looking at very hard, because I believe that these soldiers we have can do anything that we can lead them to do. And our ability to lead, our ability to use and maneuver soldiers and to deal with the complex environment we have, is directly related to education.

We train for certainty and we educate for uncertainty. And the world we're going into is far more uncertain than the world we've passed through. And so, you know, I agree with you on that. Thank you.

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REP. SKELTON: (Inaudible) -- professional military education. I think it's more than your seed corn. It's your guiding light. These days you have two major challenges: One, to continue to educate as well as train-let's talk about educate-on how you fight force on force. That's historically what the American Army has done so well.

But in addition to that, you have the asymmetrical challenge which includes, of course, the fighting, the cultural understandings, as well as the language requirements and all of that. So you really have to educate for two types of warfare. And slighting either one could cause us serious problems in the days ahead.

By the way, I don't go around advocating movies, but the one, "The Battle of Algiers," which I saw just recently, is excellent. I think every American military officer should see it. You can win so much and still lose the war and be chased out of town.

Let's look at your education system for just a minute; the Army war college, for instance. You send people to Army war college, Navy, Air Force and Marines, am I correct, which is a senior school?

GEN. SCHOOMAKER: That's correct.

REP. SKELTON: And a few moments ago, you said that the infantry is, if I quote you correctly, core to all that you're doing today. Is that correct?

GEN. SCHOOMAKER: I missed that part; I'm sorry.

REP. SKELTON: The infantry is very important to you.

GEN. SCHOOMAKER: That's correct.

REP. SKELTON: And is it true that you're shortchanging some of the infantry officers because they are needed on the front line today in Iraq or Afghanistan and not sending them to the war colleges?

GEN. SCHOOMAKER: We have not reduced our war college attendance because of --

REP. SKELTON: No, no, that's not my question.

GEN. SCHOOMAKER: Okay.

REP. SKELTON: Are the numbers of infantry officers being cut back because of the op-tempo?

GEN. SCHOOMAKER: Not to my knowledge.

REP. SKELTON: Would you check on that for me?

GEN. SCHOOMAKER: I will. I sure will. I would be very surprised. In fact, on top of the War College, we also have fellowships at institutes of higher learning.

REP. SKELTON: I understand that. But I want to make sure that the infantry, as well as the other necessary specialties, are being accepted and sent to Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine war college, particularly the Army war college. Would you check on that and get back and make it for the record, please.

GEN. SCHOOMAKER: I sure will.

REP. SKELTON: An interesting book came out-I forget the name of it-by a Major Nagle (sp) from the Army Command General Staff College.

GEN. SCHOOMAKER: I believe I sent you a copy of that.

REP. SKELTON: You did. I'm reflecting on it.

GEN. SCHOOMAKER: Okay.

REP. SKELTON: And it appears from that book that you were kind enough to send to me that the British did much better in asymmetrical type of warfare than the Americans, basically because the British in Malaysia, as opposed to the Americans in Vietnam, had a culture through the decades and the centuries of fighting this type of warfare and they did a good job there in Malay in 1946, '47, that era. And, of course, you know the story of Vietnam, having America never losing a battle but losing the war. You know that far better than I.

How do you make up for that today? How do you put America in the same position that the British were in so that they understand and can fight these asymmetrical types of warfare tomorrow, the day after tomorrow?

GEN. SCHOOMAKER: Well, we certainly can't take 200 years so that we get it through experience. You know, the title of that book was a comparison, for those who haven't read it, between the British experience in Malaysia and our experience in Vietnam. And the title of it, taken off of T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia's statement that this kind of warfare is like eating soup with a knife. It's slow and it's messy. And that's the nature of this war.

But the real thread that ran through the book and the reason that I wanted to send it to you was because what they talked about was the effect of culture on learning organizations. And the real study in that book is not about counterinsurgency but it's about the difference in the British culture and our culture at those times and place and how the difference in our learning organizations, our armies as learning organizations and the effect that culture had on them.

And my charts that I showed up here and that straight line and our focus on the Cold War and the enculturation of that doctrine and that focus that we had against that mitigated against our success in that kind of warfare. And what we are trying to do is to educate, to roll lessons learned in, to train and to broaden and to become truly a learning culture in our Army so that we are adaptable and flexible and that we have --

REP. SKELTON: I don't think you have any choice. You have to do --

GEN. SCHOOMAKER: We don't, no.

REP. SKELTON: And you have to play catch-up football, as you say, for centuries or else we will meet the same --

GEN. SCHOOMAKER: But, you know, breaking culture and breaking the emotional commitment, which is well-earned and well-deserved, by a lot of people that have served very faithfully, it takes time and leadership and patience to bring people along, not only intellectually but emotionally, to buy into the culture shifts that you have to make -- (inaudible) -- on this.

REP. SKELTON: General, could I ask you, in the next several days, to give some thought to your professional military education from second lieutenant all the way up to someone who spends 25, 30 years. And I'm not talking about the Schoomakers of this world. I'm talking about the person who does a good job and ends up lieutenant colonel or colonel and yet does yeoman's work in the field.

How you will educate-I'm not talking about training-how you will educate that person to do well in all situations, whether it be asymmetrical or whether it be force on force-could you have your staff set forth a plan for that potential officer so that we will know-you know the work that this committee did a number of years ago on professional military education. But let's play catch-up football and see where we are, if we've now made some strides on additional types of education for that officer.

GEN. SCHOOMAKER: Sure.

REP. SKELTON: And I'm not asking you to go back to between the wars, because you're a busy Army today, as opposed to then it was not a busy Army and they had time to go to school. But you've got to capture some of that, some way. And would you put together a plan for me at your earliest convenience?

GEN. SCHOOMAKER: Certainly.

REP. SKELTON: I'd sure appreciate that. Mr. Chairman, thank you.