As discussed in the previous chapter, critics have raised concerns about the Army's current size and structure, its ability to fight wars and sustain extended deployments, its dependence on reserve units, and the speed with which it can deploy. This chapter examines ways to address those concerns by altering the Army's size and structure. The Congressional Budget Office analyzed eight alternatives, evaluating the costs, advantages, and disadvantages of each.
 

Policy Choices and Their Implications

Any proposed alternative force structure for the Army will require trade-offs, either because it will incur additional costs or because it will reduce the Army's ability to perform some mission. To demonstrate the effects of changing the Army's force structure, CBO examined the implications of varying three attributes of the current force structure:

• The overall size of the Army, as measured in major formations (theaters, corps, divisions, and brigades);
  
  
• The distribution of combat and support forces between the active and reserve components of the Army; and
  
  
• The types of major combat forces and the levels of support forces associated with them.

Increasing the Size of the Army

Increasing the overall size of the Army is the most direct way to address concerns about its ability to fight more than one conflict simultaneously or its ability to sustain large forces on extended deployments. By adding combat forces to the Army, along with the echelons-above-division support forces that those combat forces would need, the Army would gain more combat units that could be used for warfighting or peacekeeping missions. Alternatively, if the Army must sustain any given level of commitment for extended deployments, having a larger Army would provide a larger pool of forces that would be available to meet that commitment, reducing the frequency with which any given unit would need to be deployed (thus reducing stress on personnel and units).

The primary disadvantage associated with increasing the size of the Army is cost. Adding active divisions to the Army requires about 40,000 personnel per division (about 15,000 for the division; 15,000 for EAD support units; and 10,000 for Table of Distribution and Allowances positions and trainees, transients, holdees, and students positions). Additional personnel generate significant recurring costs, some of which (such as health care and pensions) generate long-term obligations for the government. Furthermore, adding units to the Army would incur one-time costs to purchase equipment for the new units. In this study, CBO also assumes that the Army would modernize any new forces over time, so its procurement budget would increase to allow the Army to purchase newer, more advanced equipment as time went on.

It is also possible to create more combat forces by reducing the amount of support forces in the Army. To illustrate the potential for different policy choices, several of CBO's alternatives create additional combat forces by either reducing the levels of some types of EAD support units or by eliminating some echelons (such as the corps). In those alternatives, the costs for increasing the number of combat forces would be reduced, but the resulting force would be somewhat less capable of some types of warfighting.

Reducing Dependence on the Reserve Component

Although the Army's current structure makes active combat units very dependent on reserve EAD support units, that dependence could be reduced by increasing the number of units in the active component, according to critics of the Army's need for extensive reserve mobilization. The Army could achieve that result through two distinct approaches. First, the Army could simply create additional EAD support units in the active force, reducing the need to mobilize reserve EAD support units. Second, the Army could swap units between components, using the personnel freed up in one component to create a unit equivalent to the one disbanded in the other component. Although the latter method would not reduce the overall dependence on reserve units, it could reduce the Army's need for reserve mobilization in peacekeeping operations by concentrating units necessary for such operations (such as military police) in the active component, while concentrating units that are not needed for such operations (such as artillery) in the reserve component.

The primary disadvantage of reducing dependence on the reserves is the cost associated with creating additional EAD support units in the active force. Such costs are similar to those associated with increasing the size of the Army. However, CBO assumed that if the number of active EAD support forces were increased, the number of reserve EAD support forces could be decreased by an equivalent amount, offsetting the costs of adding active EAD units somewhat. (Active units, however, cost more than equivalent reserve units.)

Creating New Types of Units

Numerous proposals to reform the Army to better address current concerns involve creating new types of units. The Army frequently reorganizes its forces and is now engaged in one such restructuring. CBO generated alternatives that would respond to four major proposals that have been made in public debate:

• "Peacekeeping" formations. Many observers have suggested that the Army's practice of using combat forces for peacekeeping operations may be inappropriate. A number of defense experts have suggested creating formations oriented around military police, civil affairs, engineers, and other types of units that have been in high demand for peacekeeping operations.
  
  
• "Brigade-based" formations. Many critics have argued that the Army's command echelons, which are large and inflexible, date back to World War II. Some defense experts have argued that by constructing relatively independent brigades and eliminating one or more of the higher echelons (division, corps, or theater), the Army might be able to wage war more rapidly and effectively.
  
  
• "Expeditionary" formations. Many defense analysts argue that the ability to rapidly deploy requires changes in organization, not just equipment. Some defense experts argue that the Marine Corps' structure of Marine expeditionary forces offers an example of "best practices" for organizing land forces to be able to rapidly deploy to distant conflicts and that the Army could be restructured in a manner more similar to the Marine Corps.
  
  
• "Transformational" formations. In recent years, a large section of the defense community has argued that advances in precision-guided munitions, sensors, and communications networks have made it possible for relatively small, high-technology forces to defeat much larger conventional opponents. Many defense experts within that community have argued that smaller, lighter ground forces equipped with long-range precision firepower would have superior abilities to fight wars compared with traditional Army forces.

Each type of formation has various advantages and disadvantages, many of which are connected with how the force that uses the new formations is designed. For example, the number of additional personnel the Army can sustain in extended deployments using peacekeeping formations depends in part on the design of the peacekeeping units but also on how many of them the Army might establish.
 

Measures for Evaluating the Effects of Changing the Army's Force Structure

To show the specific advantages and disadvantages of changing the Army's force structure, CBO designed and analyzed eight alternative force structures. They are divided into three groups that focus on each major type of change--increasing the size of the Army, reducing dependence on the reserve component, or creating new types of units. The alternatives include a wide array of policy choices, ranging from those that would represent relatively limited changes to the current force to those that would represent relatively dramatic changes to the current force.

None of the alternatives, however, reflect the Army's current modularity plan. As discussed in the previous chapter, CBO does not have sufficiently detailed descriptions of those plans, including their budgetary implications, to fully analyze the Army's proposed changes. In particular, the Army has not yet decided exactly how many major combat units it will have, nor has the Army released any details about the support forces that will be needed for a modular Army. In an effort to combine CBO's limited understanding of the modularity plan with this analysis, CBO briefly assessed how modularity might affect each alternative. For example, although CBO is not sure exactly what support forces will be needed for modular divisions, the alternative presented here to add divisions to the Army would require similar trade-offs in a modular Army (gaining more capability to wage wars and sustain extended deployments by increasing the size of the Army and incurring additional costs).

CBO used several measures to compare the alternatives with one another and with the Army's current force structure. The first set of measures describes the overall size and composition of the force (see Table 2-1). It includes:

• The number of active- and reserve-component personnel required for the force;
  
  
• The total number of corps, divisions, and brigades in the force; and
  
  
• The number of fully supported combat brigades the Army could deploy overseas to a military contingency.

Table 2-1.

The second set of measures describes the estimated cost of the force (see Table 2-2). It includes:

• The five-year (2006-2010), 10-year (2006-2015), and entire long-term projection-period (2006-2022) costs for procuring equipment for the force and for continuing to modernize that equipment over time; and
  
  
• The five-year, 10-year, long-term, and recurring costs for military personnel and for the force's operations and maintenance.

Table 2-2.

The third set of measures describes the force's ability to fight wars (see Table 2-3). It includes:

• The number of combat brigades and personnel the Army would use for a notional major combat operation;
  
  
• The number of support personnel who could be provided for combat personnel in a major combat operation;
  
  
• The number of reserve personnel who would be mobilized for a major combat operation;
  
  
• The number of major combat operations the force could simultaneously conduct; and
  
  
• The speed with which the force could deploy a single brigade, division, corps, or theater overseas.

Table 2-3.

The fourth set of measures describes the force's ability to sustain extended deployments (see Table 2-4). It includes:

• The number of personnel and brigades that could be sustained in extended deployments while using only active combat forces and the number of reserve personnel who would be mobilized to support those deployments; and
  
  
• The number of personnel and brigades that could be sustained in extended deployments while using active and National Guard combat forces and the number of reserve personnel who would be mobilized to support those deployments.

Table 2-4.

In analyzing the Army's premodularity force structure, CBO used a notional force for a major combat operation. That notional force, composed of one theater, two corps, six divisions, and 20 combat brigades, is not identical to the specific forces used in any operational plans or recent military operations, although it approximates the size and composition of forces assumed in war games as necessary to prevail in a major conflict. By comparison, Operation Desert Storm was conducted with 23 Army brigades, whereas Operation Iraqi Freedom was conducted with about eight Army brigades. (Both operations included Marine Corps and allied forces as well.)

In two alternatives, CBO adjusted the size of the notional force to reflect the potential qualitative improvements in warfighting that those alternatives might have. Proponents of both the brigade-based Army and the transformational Army claim that a smaller force structured in the manner they describe would be as effective as a much larger force without those structures. Although CBO was unable to assess the validity of such qualitative claims, it evaluated a notional force that was only 60 percent of the size of the notional force used in other alternatives to illustrate the potential benefits that such claimed improvements could offer. In those cases, it is possible for a force to be less capable of fighting wars overall (in the sense of having fewer combat brigades), but more capable of fighting multiple wars simultaneously (in the sense that the number of brigades required for a major combat operation would be smaller).

Similarly, for deployment times, CBO estimated an average time to deploy a given force. That average includes several different scenarios, with forces originating from different points (the East and West coasts of the United States) and being deployed to different points (in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East). As with the notional major combat operation force, that deployment time approximates the time to deploy a force but is not identical to specific timelines used in operational plans or recent military operations. Ground forces used for Operation Desert Storm required about five-and-a-half months to deploy, whereas ground forces used for Operation Iraqi Freedom required about three-and-a-half months to deploy (not including the continuing flow of units that were deployed during combat operations in Operation Iraqi Freedom--the 4th Infantry Division, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, and 1st Armored Division).

Finally, CBO's estimates of the size of the force the Army could sustain for extended deployments is a maximum size force the Army could sustain absent any other commitments. The Army, however, currently has a number of such commitments, including those in South Korea, Kosovo, the Sinai Peninsula, and Afghanistan. Maintaining those commitments would reduce the Army's ability to sustain large numbers of forces for extended deployments. The United States historically has been involved in numerous extended deployments, but those deployments have varied greatly in size and duration (see Table 2-5 for historical peak sizes of U.S. peacekeeping and occupation forces).

Table 2-5.

Additional Considerations

In order for CBO's analysis to fully reflect the changes that any given alternative would have on the entire Army's force structure, CBO made some additional technical assumptions about how changes in each alternative would affect each measure of performance. (See Appendix C for additional detail about the measures CBO used in this analysis.)

Increasing the Size of the Army. For alternatives that increased the size of the Army, CBO created only fully supported combat formations. In those alternatives, the size of the increase in personnel the Army required included three components: personnel to man the additional combat forces, personnel to man the EAD support units for those additional combat forces, and additional personnel to account for increased overhead for a larger force. Because of the inclusion of those components, the number of additional personnel required to increase the size of the Army is always larger than the nominal size of the combat units added.

The increase in overhead personnel is necessary because the number of TDA and TTHS personnel the Army requires has historically varied with the total size of the Army.⁽¹⁾ That relationship results because a larger Army, with more units and equipment, simply requires more personnel managers, more equipment managers, more trainers, and so forth. Similarly, a larger Army must recruit more personnel, leading to more soldiers in basic or advanced training; has more soldiers with temporary medical disabilities; and has more soldiers moving between assignments. In each option where CBO varied the overall size of the Army, it included a factor to allow for the additional (or reduced) number of personnel required for TDA units and for TTHS personnel. It is possible that the ratio of the Army's overhead personnel to deployable units could change in the future, but CBO had no basis to assume that the Army would achieve any greater level of efficiency in any of the alternatives examined in this paper.

Reducing Dependence on the Reserve Component. For alternatives that altered the active Army's dependence on reserve support units, CBO's measures of how many reserve personnel would need to be mobilized or deployed depended on a number of factors. There were three conceptually separate categories that could require reserve personnel to be mobilized:

• Mobilized and deployed overseas;
  
  
• Mobilized and in training, preparing to deploy overseas; and
  
  
• Mobilized to fill in for deployed active-component units at U.S. bases.

The first category of reserve personnel is relatively easy to estimate, since it is simply the number of reserve personnel in units required to support active units, in addition to any National Guard combat forces and reserve support units that may be employed.

The second category of reserve personnel is primarily relevant for peacekeeping operations, which may last for many years. In such operations, if reserve units are deployed, at some point a new set of reserve units must be mobilized and trained to full proficiency to replace the deployed units.⁽²⁾ To smoothly transition from the deployed unit to its replacement unit, the latter must be mobilized some months before the transition to allow time for training and deployment. Thus, the number of reserve personnel mobilized for such an operation will frequently be greater than the number of reserve personnel deployed (as has been the case with operations in Iraq and Afghanistan). That would not generally be the case for a purely warfighting operation, however, where a deployment would not need to be sustained over long periods.

The third category of reserve personnel is associated with the Army's practice of mobilizing some reservists to fill in for deployed active units at their home bases. That practice, known as "backfill," allows bases to continue functioning in a normal manner when their units are deployed (for example, reserve personnel might be called up to provide guards for the installation). Although the number of reservists mobilized for that purpose is smaller than the number of active-component personnel for whom they backfill, reserve-component mobilization can be significant if the active force is heavily committed. Thus, even if the Army was able to conduct an operation by deploying only active units, it would probably still mobilize reserve personnel (although it would not deploy those personnel overseas).

The level of reserve mobilization that CBO analyzed in this study does not necessarily correspond to the number of individual reservists who would be mobilized. Instead, it represents the average number of reservists who would be mobilized in an entire year (and thus is analogous to man-years). In certain cases, more individual reservists might be mobilized than the average level of reserve mobilization--for example, if reserve units were deployed for six months to a peacekeeping deployment and continually replaced, two individuals would be mobilized for each man-year of mobilization.

Creating New Types of Units. When CBO created new types of units, it estimated the size of the support forces those new units would require and the weight of the equipment those units would include.

In general, CBO created new units by building up new combinations of existing units. For example, the peacekeeping divisions CBO analyzed are a new type of division, but they are composed entirely of existing types of battalions. Therefore, CBO could estimate the support requirements and equipment weight of those units using existing Army units as a guide.

An additional type of change that CBO made in one alternative (to create expeditionary units) was to increase sealift assets and prepositioned equipment sets on ships that the Army could use. Additional sealift assets improve the time it takes to deploy Army forces by simply providing more capacity to ship forces overseas. Prepositioned equipment--sets of Army equipment loaded onto large cargo ships permanently stationed near potential conflict zones--speeds Army deployment because the equipment in those sets is already loaded on ships that are generally stationed closer to potential conflicts than ships coming from U.S. ports.

CBO did not increase the amount of airlift assets in any alternative because the United States generally does not transport unit equipment by air; airlift can only lift a very limited fraction of what sealift can; and in many potential scenarios, the infrastructure available for airlift is poor enough that the existing fleet of cargo aircraft could not be fully employed.

Costs. All of CBO's costs were estimated using the forces in DoD's Future Years Defense Program for fiscal years 2005-2009 as a base. Costs for alternatives represent the incremental change in funding required compared with that base. Operation and support (O&S) costs were estimated using various sources of budgetary data and included, among other things, the costs associated with pay and benefits for personnel, spare parts, and fuel. All costs are in billions of 2006 dollars.⁽³⁾

CBO separately estimated investment costs, which represent the costs to develop and acquire new weapon systems and equipment; operation and support costs, which represent the costs for pay and day-to-day operations; and construction costs, which represent the costs to build and maintain military facilities. Investment costs beyond 2009 were estimated against CBO's long-term projection of defense plans.⁽⁴⁾ (See Appendix D for additional details about how CBO developed costs for the alternatives.)
 

Alternatives That Would Increase the Size of the Army

CBO's first two alternatives illustrate the costs and effects associated with increasing the size of the Army. Many observers have suggested that a larger Army is needed to improve the Army's ability to deal with stressful missions such as the occupation of Iraq, respond to other threats that could arise during the occupation of Iraq, or reduce the stress on the reserve component. In the past year, the Secretary of Defense has authorized a temporary increase in the size of the Army (by 30,000 personnel), the Congress has authorized an increase of 20,000 active personnel, and many external observers have called for a larger Army.

Alternatives 1A and 1B would both increase the size of the Army by two divisions but do so in different ways. Alternative 1A would increase the overall size of the active Army, offering greater warfighting and peacekeeping capabilities at greater costs. Alternative 1B would increase the size of the active Army's combat forces by reducing some types of support units, offering greater warfighting and peacekeeping capabilities, but potentially increasing the risk associated with some types of missions.

CBO's alternatives specifically examined the effects of adding two divisions to the Army, but adding a single division or more than two divisions would involve similar considerations. CBO chose to consider the addition of two divisions because it is a relatively popular suggestion in public discussion.

Some observers have questioned whether the Army would be able to recruit sufficient personnel for additional forces. CBO did not analyze the potential likelihood that the Army might be incapable of recruiting additional personnel. In the 1980s, the Army was about 60 percent larger than it currently is, the national youth cohort was slightly smaller than it currently is, and the Army was able to recruit all of the personnel it required on a voluntary basis. However, in the 1980s, the United States was not engaged in large, ongoing military operations, and the prospect of being deployed to such operations might deter some fraction of potential enlistees from joining the Army.

Alternative 1A--Add Two Active Divisions

This alternative would increase the size of combat forces in the Army by adding two divisions with a total of six combat brigades to the active component. One of those new divisions would be a heavy division (with three heavy brigades), and the other would be a light division (with three light brigades). Overall, this option would add about 78,000 personnel to the Army--57,000 active and 21,000 reserve (see Table 2-6).

Table 2-6.

Those two divisions would require a total of about 29,000 additional active personnel. This option also would add the full range of support units associated with two divisions (including corps support groups, corps artillery brigades, and so forth). Those support units would preserve the Army's current mix of active- and reserve-component support units and would require about 12,000 additional active and 18,000 additional reserve personnel. This option also would increase the number of personnel assigned to the Army's administrative units and the size of its individuals account by about 15,000 active and 3,000 reserve personnel to allow for increases in administrative workload and in the number of trainees, transients, holdees, and students.

Costs. Relative to the cost of maintaining the current force, CBO estimates the cost to implement this option would require an additional $31 billion to provide the new divisions with current equipment and to continue modernizing them over the 2006-2022 projection period. It would also require just over $95 billion in O&S and construction costs through 2022 and just under $7 billion annually thereafter (see Table 2-7).

Table 2-7.

The primary benefit of this alternative would be to increase the Army's ability to fight wars and to sustain extended deployments. Its primary disadvantage would be the costs associated with a larger force.

Effects. With additional divisions and combat brigades, the Army would be more capable of fighting multiple wars simultaneously (see Table 2-8). Adding divisions also would allow the Army to send more forces to any given conflict, thus increasing its chances of prosecuting conflicts successfully or succeeding more rapidly with fewer casualties.

Table 2-8.

The Army also would be more capable of sustaining extended deployments for peacekeeping missions (see Table 2-9). With more forces, the Army would be capable of sustaining a larger force deployed to any single commitment or maintaining a larger number of commitments overall. The additional forces available in this option would be roughly sufficient to assume one additional commitment of about the size of the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan. Alternatively, if the Army had a larger pool of units to draw upon for the same level of commitments, it would be able to rotate individual units and personnel through deployments at a lower pace, reducing stress on personnel and equipment. It would also be less likely to have to mobilize National Guard combat units for peacekeeping missions, thus reducing the level of reserve mobilization that would be needed.

Table 2-9.

Increasing the size of the Army would not directly reduce the level of reserve mobilization the Army would need to fight wars or sustain extended deployments, since this alternative preserves the current level of active-component dependence on reserve EAD support units. An active combat force deployed to a theater of operations for conflict would still require mobilizing about the same number of reserve support units, and an extended deployment of any given size would still require about the same proportion of reserve units. Because this alternative would permit the Army to sustain larger forces deployed overseas for extended periods and would increase the size of the reserve component, more reserve personnel would need to be mobilized on average to maintain the maximum level of sustained deployment. (Sustaining the maximum deployment would also require additional reserve personnel to backfill for active units.) Conversely, the Army would be more likely to be able to meet any given level of commitment with active forces only, thus reducing the need for reserve-component mobilization.

Adding divisions to the Army, structured in the same manner as current forces, would not affect their ability to deploy.

Implications for the Modular Army. Although this alternative was measured against the premodular force structure, it would produce many of the same changes when applied to the modular Army. Adding two modular divisions would increase the Army's ability to fight wars (by providing additional combat forces) or sustain extended deployments (by increasing the pool of available units and personnel). Adding two modular divisions would also require additional personnel and increase costs for investment, O&S, and construction. Since the Army's modular divisions will be larger than premodularity divisions and include four brigades (versus three), adding two modular divisions would probably produce a larger benefit to warfighting and peacekeeping abilities but cost more in terms of required personnel and funding.

Alternative 1B--Add Two Active Divisions by Reducing Support Forces

This alternative would add two active-component divisions to the Army (as in the previous option) but would do so without appreciably increasing the overall size of the Army. Instead, it would make room for additional combat units by eliminating some support units from the Army's current structure. Overall, this option would add about 6,000 active personnel to the Army (see Table 2-10).

Table 2-10.

This alternative would create the two additional active divisions by eliminating all short-range air-defense (SHORAD) units and some corps-level field artillery units from the Army's force structure while restructuring the remaining field artillery units. One of those new divisions would be a heavy division (with three heavy brigades), and the other would be a light division (with three light brigades). Specifically, this option:

• Eliminates all divisional, corps-, and theater-level SHORAD batteries and battalions;
  
  
• Eliminates all corps-level self-propelled howitzer artillery battalions and brigades;
  
  
• Eliminates the support units associated with the eliminated SHORAD and field artillery units;
  
  
• Restructures divisional self-propelled howitzer field artillery battalions into eight-gun batteries;
  
  
• Restructures divisional and corps-level rocket-launcher artillery battalions into nine-launcher batteries;
  
  
• Reduces the level of logistics units associated with supplying field artillery units; and
  
  
• Adds one light and one heavy division, along with EAD support units.

CBO chose to eliminate those support units because, according to some observers, they may not be needed and because the Army has taken some steps along those lines as part of its current reorganization. The reorganization of field artillery batteries into larger-sized batteries would change the Army from its current six-gun/six-launcher pattern of organization, which was adopted in 1995. Reverting to the prior pattern for artillery would eliminate a large number of headquarters batteries, battalions, and brigades (by having fewer, larger units). The justification for eliminating corps-level artillery brigades would be that precision munitions have vastly improved artillery capability to the extent that fewer cannons are needed to produce the same effect.⁽⁵⁾ Reducing the level of logistics units associated with supplying field artillery units would be in line with a historical trend toward lower rates of artillery fire.⁽⁶⁾

CBO estimates that eliminating SHORAD units would free up about 14,000 personnel positions, and eliminating the field artillery units would free up about 16,000 personnel positions. Reductions in support forces would free up another 20,000 personnel positions, yielding 50,000 personnel positions that could be used to create additional combat forces and their support units. In this option, creating two new divisions would require about 54,000 personnel slots, slightly more than the number of personnel slots freed up.⁽⁷⁾ Allowing for increased numbers of overhead positions, creating two new divisions in that manner would require 6,000 more active personnel.

Costs. Implementing this option would cost an additional $34 billion to provide the new divisions with today's equipment and to continue modernizing them over the 2006-2022 period.⁽⁸⁾ It would increase the Army's O&S costs by $20 billion over that same period and by just over $1 billion annually thereafter (see Table 2-11).

Table 2-11.

Effects. The primary benefit of this alternative would be to increase the Army's ability to fight wars and to sustain extended deployments, in a manner similar to Alternative 1A (see Tables 2-12 and 2-13). Its primary disadvantage would be the potential risks the Army would face in conducting operations with a significant aerial threat to Army forces or operations that required high volumes of cannon artillery fire.

Table 2-12.

Table 2-13.

The benefits in this option are virtually identical to those in Alternative 1A. The slight reduction in personnel available to sustain extended deployments (compared with the change produced by Alternative 1A) and the reduction in personnel associated with conducting a major combat operation both result from this option's somewhat smaller divisions and EAD support units. As such, under this option, the 20-brigade notional major combat operation force would require fewer personnel. Similarly, the size of the pool of units and personnel available for sustaining extended deployments is somewhat smaller.⁽⁹⁾

This alternative would increase the active Army's dependence on the reserve component slightly. The positions freed up by reducing support units would come disproportionately from reserve units (35,000 of the 50,000 positions). Creating two new active-component divisions using those positions would require transferring about 19,000 positions from active EAD support units to the reserve component. Because of that transfer of personnel, this alternative would require higher levels of reserve mobilization to support extended deployments (compared with either the current force or with Alternative 1A).

This option would improve the speed with which the Army could deploy forces overseas. Each division and its associated EAD support units would be slightly smaller and have less equipment to transport. With less equipment to move, units would be able to finish deploying faster than the current force could.

Implications for the Modular Army. Although this alternative was measured against the premodularity force structure, it would probably produce many of the same changes when applied to the Army's new modular structure. Adding two modular divisions would increase the Army's ability to fight wars (by providing additional combat forces) or sustain extended deployments (by increasing the pool of available units and personnel). Adding two modular divisions would also require additional personnel and would increase costs for investment, operations and support, and construction. The Army's modular divisions will be larger than premodularity divisions and include four brigades (versus three), but CBO does not know what EAD support units those divisions will require. Some of the changes in the modular division, such as eliminating the divisional SHORAD battalion and returning to an eight-gun artillery battery, suggest that the Army may be able to create some of the additional brigades associated with modularity by eliminating support units in a fashion similar to this alternative.
 

Alternatives That Would Reduce Dependence on the Reserve Component

CBO's second two alternatives illustrate the costs and effects associated with reducing the active Army's dependence on mobilizing reserve units to support active combat units. That dependence has been the focus of sustained public and Congressional concerns since the mid- to late 1990s, when increased numbers of reserve personnel were mobilized to assist in a number of extended deployments (including Bosnia, Kosovo, and Operations Northern Watch and Southern Watch to enforce the no-fly zones over Iraq). The war on terrorism, particularly the occupation of Iraq, has greatly increased the levels of reserve mobilization needed to assist in military operations. That mobilization, however, is frequently disruptive and unwelcome to reserve personnel, can potentially interfere with the National Guard's state missions, and is seen by some observers as inconsistent with the spirit and mission of the reserve components.

Alternatives 2 and 3 would both effectively eliminate the need to deploy reserve EAD units to support active combat units in sustained deployments. Alternative 2 would reallocate EAD support units between the active and reserve components, thus eliminating reserve mobilization for peacekeeping efforts, whereas Alternative 3 would create sufficient active EAD support units for the entire active force, thus eliminating reserve mobilization for both peacekeeping and major combat operations.

Implementing those alternatives, however, would not preclude several situations where reserve personnel would need to be mobilized, either for peacekeeping operations or for major combat operations. For example, the Army might need to mobilize National Guard combat forces for very stressful combat operations or for very large sustained deployments (as the Army is currently doing in Iraq). Further, as discussed previously, the Army routinely mobilizes reserve personnel to backfill for deployed active-duty units.

Alternative 2--Reallocate Support Forces Between the Active and Reserve Components

This alternative would eliminate the active Army's dependence on reserve support units for peacekeeping by shifting support units between the active and reserve components of the Army. Support units that are crucial in extended peacekeeping operations, such as military police, military intelligence, or civil affairs, would be transferred from the reserve component to the active component to minimize the need to mobilize reserve personnel to sustain extended deployments. To offset the shift in support units to the active component, units that are not essential to extended peacekeeping operations, such as field artillery, attack aviation, or air-defense artillery, would be transferred from the active component to the reserve component. Overall, this option would add about 28,000 active personnel to the Army and reduce reserve personnel by 24,000 (see Table 2-14).

Table 2-14.

This alternative would make a distinction between units that are needed to support extended deployments and those that are not. Historically, the Army has deployed about 40,000 personnel to a combat theater for every division it has deployed, reflecting the size of the full "slice" of support units the Army needs for high-intensity combat operations. In peacekeeping operations, however, which generally require less sustained combat, several forms of support units (primarily those intended to augment the firepower of combat divisions) are not as necessary. In addition, those operations place much lower demands on the Army's logistics system and require fewer support units to provide adequate logistics supplies. (Peacekeeping operations also allow the Army to augment its logistics capabilities with civilian contractors.) Because all Army forces are tailored to their specific missions, however, the level of support forces that would be provided in any given peacekeeping operation may vary. The occupation of Iraq involves significantly more intense combat than the stabilization force in Kosovo, for example, and thus, Army units in Iraq receive more support units than those in Kosovo. CBO's distinction between units needed only for warfighting and those needed for both peacekeeping and warfighting is intended to represent a typical level for sustained deployments.

In this alternative, the entire set of EAD units necessary to support active combat units in peacekeeping missions would be in the active component. The remaining EAD support units needed for those divisions, which would be primarily deployed for warfighting missions, would be entirely in the reserve component. This option would not change the level of reserve mobilization the Army would require for major combat operations (where both sets of units are needed) but would eliminate the need to mobilize reserve EAD support units for active combat forces to sustain extended deployments. Because the size of the set of EAD support units needed for active combat forces is larger than the number of personnel spaces available in the active component, this alternative would shift 20,000 personnel spaces from the reserve component to the active component. Allowing for changes in the number of overhead positions required for the different component, this option results in an increase of 28,000 active personnel and a reduction of 24,000 reserve personnel.

Costs. Implementing this option would not change the Army's investment program over the 2006-2022 period, since it would not create or eliminate any units--only shift units between components. The alternative would increase the Army's operation and support costs by $27 billion over that same period and by nearly $2 billion annually thereafter (see Table 2-15).

Table 2-15.

Effects. The primary benefit of this alternative would be to reduce the Army's need to mobilize and deploy reserve personnel to support active combat forces in extended deployments. Its primary disadvantages would be the costs associated with adding active-component personnel, the need for potentially time-consuming reserve-component mobilization of many types of EAD support units in wartime, and potential inefficiencies in the personnel process.

Implementing this option would have essentially no effect on the Army's ability to either fight wars or sustain extended deployments (see Tables 2-16 and 2-17). It does not create or eliminate any units but instead swaps units between the active and reserve components, leaving the total Army's set of units unchanged. The Army would still have access to all of the same combat divisions and the same set of support units.

Table 2-16.

Table 2-17.

This alternative would reduce the Army's need to mobilize and deploy reserve personnel to support active units. For an extended deployment that used the entire active Army's combat forces, the Army would need to mobilize, on average, 30,000 to 35,000 reserve personnel, compared with the 52,000 to 57,000 personnel the current force would need to mobilize (see Table 2-17). The vast majority of those mobilized personnel would provide backfill for deployed active units and would not be deployed overseas. The remaining reserve personnel, who would be mobilized and deployed for extended deployments, would be associated with National Guard special forces groups or other specialized communities and would not be needed to support active combat forces.⁽¹⁰⁾

This alternative would not reduce the Army's need to mobilize reserve personnel to engage in major combat operations. For such operations, the Army would need to mobilize and deploy EAD support units from the reserve component for warfighting, and the number of personnel affected would be the same as for the current force.

This alternative would not directly affect deployment timelines, since the weight of the equipment that has to be transported is not affected by whether the unit is in the active or reserve component. But this option might indirectly affect deployment timelines because many types of support units would exist only in the reserve component, and reserve units typically require at least a month for mobilization. However, that situation is already the case under the Army's current structure for some types of units (such as civil affairs units).

This option has the potential to cause some problems for the reserve personnel systems. Currently, the reserve components recruit former active-duty personnel, and such recruits (with prior service) make up a significant portion of the reserves' personnel. Such personnel are attractive, in part, because they have already completed the military training the reserves require. However, if entire classes of units were concentrated in one component almost exclusively, the reserve component would be less able to recruit prior service members with the appropriate training. Similarly, personnel with prior service would be less able to find a unit requiring skills that they already had and would need to be retrained, or they might find the idea of starting a new military specialty unappealing. CBO was unable to assess the likelihood or magnitude of that potential issue.

Implications for the Modular Army. Although this alternative was measured against the premodularity force structure, its reallocation of support forces to reduce the active Army's dependence on the reserves may well apply to a modular Army. The Army has already been engaged in a limited rebalancing of support forces, for example, by retraining National Guard field artillery battalions as military police units. However, the Army has not announced details about the modular Army's EAD support structure. If, as seems probable, the increased number of combat units in the modular Army forces the Army to rely more heavily on reserve combat forces, then the modular Army will require even more reserve personnel to be mobilized to support extended deployments. In that case, the modular Army would also benefit from reallocating support forces, but the number of personnel positions that would have to be transferred from the reserve to the active component would be even greater.

Alternative 3--Eliminate the Army's Dependence on Reserve Support Units by Increasing the Size of the Active Army

This option would eliminate the active-component Army's dependence on reserve-component support units for peacekeeping and warfighting by adding enough personnel to the active Army to create support units for all of its combat units. That action would effectively terminate the Total Force Policy and sever the tight operational linkage between components that the Army has maintained for the past three decades. Under this alternative, the active Army would be able to engage in the full range of military operations without needing to mobilize and deploy reserve personnel. Overall, implementing this option would add about 312,000 active personnel to the Army and eliminate 260,000 reserve personnel (see Table 2-18).

Table 2-18.

In this alternative, the size of the active Army would be increased to create the entire set of warfighting and peacekeeping EAD units needed to support active Army combat units. The corresponding reserve-component EAD units that were previously intended to support active units would be eliminated. In addition, this option would:

• Transfer all units associated with I Corps from the reserve component to the active component.
  
  
• Transfer the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment from the reserve component to the active component.
  
  
• Convert the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment from a mixed-component unit to a fully active-component unit.
  
  
• Transfer both National Guard special forces groups from the reserve component to the active component.

Those transfers would result in an active Army with four active corps, an active ACR for each corps, and 35 fully supported combat brigades, all with active-component support units.

Costs. Implementing this option would not change the Army's investment program over the 2006-2022 period, since it would not create or eliminate any units. It would increase the Army's O&S costs by about $333 billion over the same period and by about $26 billion annually thereafter (see Table 2-19).

Table 2-19.

The primary benefit of this alternative would be to eliminate the Army's need to mobilize and deploy reserve personnel to support active combat forces, either for major combat operations or in extended deployments. Its primary disadvantage would be the costs associated with adding active-component personnel.

Effects. This option would not change the Army's ability to fight wars. It would not create or eliminate any units but instead swap units between the active and reserve components, leaving the total Army's set of units unchanged (see Table 2-20). The Army would still have access to all of the same combat divisions and the same set of support units.⁽¹¹⁾

Table 2-20.

However, this option would improve the Army's ability to support extended deployments (see Table 2-21). The number of soldiers the Army can sustain in extended deployments is limited by the policy that reserve personnel cannot be deployed as frequently as active-component personnel can be. In this option, transferring a corps, the ACRs, and the special forces groups to the active component allows those units to rotate through deployments at the higher rate for active personnel rather than the lower rate for reserve personnel.

Table 2-21.

This alternative would eliminate the Army's need to mobilize and deploy reserve personnel to support active units. For an extended deployment that used the entire active Army's combat forces, the Army would need to mobilize, on average, 22,000 to 27,000 reserve personnel, compared with the 52,000 to 57,000 personnel the current force would need to mobilize (see Table 2-21). All the personnel who were mobilized would be used to provide backfill for deployed active units and would not be deployed overseas.

If the Army needed to mobilize and deploy National Guard combat forces, either for a very stressful major combat operation or to sustain a very large extended deployment, it would still need to mobilize and deploy reserve personnel. But even under those circumstances, the number of reserve personnel mobilized and deployed would generally be greatly reduced from the levels associated with the current force.

This alternative would not directly affect deployment timelines because the weight of the equipment that has to be transported would be the same whether the unit was in the active or reserve component. This option might indirectly affect deployment timelines, however, because it places all EAD support units for active forces in the active component, thus eliminating the need for potentially time-consuming post-mobilization activities. However, the Army has been able, in the past, to deploy active support units first and complete post-mobilization activities for reserve units in a timely manner. Therefore, the link between the time required to mobilize reserve units and the time required to deploy Army forces is unclear.

Implications for the Modular Army. Although this alternative was measured against the premodularity force structure, the creation of a full set of active support forces to eliminate the active Army's dependence on the reserve component would also be possible under the Army's new modular structure. Although the Army has not announced details of the modular Army's EAD support structure, the modular Army will have more active combat units and thus will probably need to rely more heavily on reserve combat forces to support major combat operations or extended deployments. As such, the modular Army would also benefit from having a full set of active support forces, but the size of the increase in the number of active personnel positions that would be required to establish those units (and the corresponding decrease in the number of reserve-personnel positions that would be required) would be even greater.

This alternative would eliminate the active Army's dependence on the reserve component by adding sufficient personnel to the active Army to allow it to create a full set of EAD support units for all of its combat units. It does so while holding the active combat unit force structure constant. Conversely, a potential variation on this option would remove enough combat units from the Army's force structure to eliminate the active Army's dependence on the reserves while holding the number of personnel in the Army constant. If the option were implemented in that way, the Army would have to eliminate one active corps, four active divisions, and 13 active combat brigades. Although CBO did not examine the costs and full effects of that approach, such cuts in combat forces available to the Army would produce significant reductions in the Army's ability to conduct major combat operations or sustain extended deployments.
 

Alternatives That Would Create New Types of Units

The last four alternatives all restructure the Army but in ways that emphasize different types of units and thus reflect a variety of concerns and proposals. The Army has frequently reorganized its units in the past, creating new types of units or engaging in large-scale organizational reform. Such reorganizations are generally associated with either evolving concepts about how to best fight wars or changes in U.S. military strategy that emphasize different potential opponents or types of wars.⁽¹²⁾ In recent years, public debate and various defense experts have considered potential reorganizations that would improve various aspects of the Army in response to perceived shifts in war-fighting methods and national strategies.

The Army's current modularity reorganization is one version of plans to restructure the Army by creating new types of units. To some degree, all of the options CBO examined present ways to reorganize the Army by creating different, nonmodular types of units. However, modular units will have many similarities to current units, and all of the restructuring plans CBO analyzed have elements that would also be applicable to a modular Army.

The last four alternatives CBO analyzed are intended to show how the Army could be restructured with new units to meet different visions of how future conflicts will be waged and what types of conflicts the United States may need to engage in. Alternative 4, which would create peacekeeping divisions, is intended to illustrate the potential to restructure the Army to focus more on stabilization and reconstruction missions. Such missions have consumed a large and increasing share of the Army's forces in recent years and are arguably central to current U.S. national strategy. Alternative 5, which attempts to implement the ideas of retired Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor by creating a brigade-based Army, is intended to illustrate the potential for the heavy forces of today's Army to operate more rapidly and more independently. Those ideas were arguably influential in the Army's current modularity plan and respond to the perception that the Army's heavy forces are not well suited to the fast pace of modern warfare. Alternative 6, which would create expeditionary forces, is intended to illustrate the potential to greatly improve the speed with which the Army can deploy to distant theaters. The time required to deploy U.S. forces has been of concern to DoD and many defense experts since Operation Desert Storm, and reducing that time is widely considered to be crucial to future U.S. strategy. Finally, Alternative 7, which would create transformational forces, is intended to illustrate what a small, light force that depends on long-range, precision-guided firepower would look like. Those attributes form some of the core themes of the idea of military transformation that has become central to most debates about the future of the U.S. military.

Alternative 4--Organize Stabilization and Reconstruction Divisions

This option would convert two active Army divisions into dedicated peacekeeping divisions. It is based on a proposal from the National Defense University that describes the organization and structure of a potential stabilization and reconstruction (S&R) division.⁽¹³⁾ Those S&R divisions would include military police, engineer, medical, civil affairs, and psychological operations units, all of which have been in high demand for peacekeeping operations, along with a single medium-weight Stryker brigade. This option would eliminate one heavy and one light infantry division from the active component (along with their associated EAD support units) and would create four active-component S&R divisions and one reserve component S&R division. Overall, implementing this option would reduce the Army's active personnel by 2,000 and reserve personnel by 9,000 (see Table 2-22).

Table 2-22.

Costs. Implementing this option would reduce the costs for the Army's investment program by $14 billion over the 2006-2022 period, since the Army would have fewer combat divisions that would need to be modernized. It also would reduce the Army's O&S costs by $18 billion over the same period and by about $1 billion annually thereafter because the S&R divisions would have lower costs than combat divisions do (see Table 2-23).

Table 2-23.

The primary benefit of this alternative would be to provide the Army with dedicated peacekeeping forces specializing in the sorts of missions associated with extended deployments. Its primary disadvantage would be the reduction in combat forces.

Effects. With fewer divisions and combat brigades, the Army would be less capable of fighting multiple wars simultaneously (see Table 2-24). It also might have to send fewer forces to any given conflict. Alternatively, if the Army had significant peacetime commitments, it might have to abandon some of those commitments during a conflict because of high-priority combat needs.

Table 2-24.

This option would slightly increase the Army's ability to sustain extended deployments for peacekeeping missions (see Table 2-25). The additional S&R divisions increase the pool of personnel and units available for rotations to extended deployments, but that increase only slightly offsets the decrease produced by eliminating two combat divisions and their EAD support units. The overall size of the Army would not change significantly in this option; the increase in personnel that the Army could sustain on extended deployments comes from converting EAD support units that would not have been used in peacekeeping into S&R units that would be. However, since such units form only a fraction of all of the units involved in two combat divisions and their full set of EAD support units, the benefit of converting them is limited.

Table 2-25.

The mix of soldiers and units in each S&R division might be qualitatively superior to the Army's current combat forces for peacekeeping missions, given their specialties and the historic demand for such types of units in those missions. Historically, the Army has treated S&R missions as a limited subset of the full range of missions that combat units may face and must be prepared to conduct. However, many observers and military personnel have argued that the missions and equipment of many combat units are inappropriate for S&R missions, which frequently require skills similar to those of police forces. They believe the Army's more powerful combat units, with their heavy armor and firepower, are poorly suited to patrol neighborhoods, develop contacts with the local civilian population, provide essential services (such as public works), or conduct other duties associated with peacekeeping. In contrast, units such as civil affairs (which are trained to establish basic governing structures for occupied civilian populations) or construction engineers (which are trained to engage in various construction and civil engineering tasks) are more useful in peacekeeping settings than armored battalions. However, S&R missions historically have stressed establishing secure conditions in an area as the precondition for successful stabilization and reconstruction efforts. In this view, the Army's combat units are more capable of establishing secure conditions than are support units, which often require combat units to protect them in insecure environments. CBO was unable to quantitatively assess what mix of types of units might be most effective in peacekeeping.

This option would produce a slight decrease in the level of reserve mobilization needed to sustain extended deployments, since each active S&R division could be deployed without the reserve support units associated with combat divisions. However, that reduction would be lessened if the Army needed to mobilize and deploy the reserve-component S&R division.

Adding peacekeeping divisions to the Army would not affect the ability of Army forces to deploy. Although the S&R divisions are structured differently from Army combat forces--for example, they have less equipment to transport--S&R divisions would not be sent to a major combat operation. Such formations might be deployed after a major combat operation or even during combat operations, but the speed with which the Army could deploy any given set of combat units to a theater would not be affected by the composition of the follow-on S&R divisions.

Implications for the Modular Army. Although this alternative was measured against the premodularity force structure, its creation of dedicated peacekeeping formations by eliminating some combat formations would also be possible for a modular Army. Since the Army's modular divisions will be larger than premodularity divisions, a modular Army would be able to create slightly more S&R forces by eliminating combat forces, but the overall effect of trading combat forces for peacekeeping forces would be similar.

Alternative 5--Convert to a Brigade-Based Army

This option would reorganize the Army in the manner suggested by Colonel MacGregor by eliminating higher-level command structures and organizing the Army into a number of autonomous brigade-sized combat groups.⁽¹⁴⁾ It would eliminate divisions and corps (and the traditional support structures associated with them) and create a set of 25 large, semiautonomous, brigade-sized combat groups for the active component. Types of support currently provided by higher-echelon formations would instead come from a mix of support groups. This alternative would not change the number of active personnel in the Army but would reduce reserve personnel by 383,000 (see Table 2-26).

Table 2-26.

This option would eliminate all currently existing divisions and brigades, all corps, and the Army's theater-level structures. It would replace those units with the following units (all composed entirely of active personnel):

• Three light reconnaissance strike groups, similar to the light cavalry configuration of the Army's 2nd ACR;
  
  
• Nine airborne/air assault groups similar to brigades of the Army's 101st Air Assault Division;
  
  
• Thirteen combat maneuver groups, similar to the heavy cavalry configuration of the Army's 3rd ACR;
  
  
• Nine aviation combat groups, similar to the Army's corps-level aviation brigades;
  
  
• Six air-and-missile-defense groups, equipped with Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile;
  
  
• Six command-and-intelligence groups--composite units with signals, military intelligence, and psychological operations units;
  
  
• Three chemical-response groups, intended to help respond to biological or chemical warfare;
  
  
• Three early-deploying support groups, to provide logistics functions;
  
  
• Four engineer groups, to provide engineering support; and
  
  
• Five late-deploying support groups, to provide more robust logistics functions.

This option would also create the following units in the reserve component:

• Two air assault groups;
  
  
• Two combat maneuver groups;
  
  
• Five aviation groups;
  
  
• One air-and-missile-defense group;
  
  
• One command-and-intelligence group;
  
  
• Two engineer groups; and
  
  
• Five later-deploying support groups.

Because this option would create a full set of combat and support units using active-personnel positions freed up by eliminating the active Army's existing units, active combat forces would not need to rely on reserve EAD support forces.⁽¹⁵⁾

All of the combat groups in this alternative are larger, but more autonomous, than current combat brigades. Under this alternative, the Army would structure a combat force with a relatively small headquarters element commanding a collection of combat groups and a mix of support groups appropriate to the situation. That structure would be smaller and more flexible than current combat forces, which require division- and corps-level headquarters and layers of support units and which maintain many essential support functions at a relatively high command level. However, with 25 active maneuver brigades--CBO considered only the first three types of groups as combat units, the remaining groups being analogous to current EAD support units--that force would have fewer combat brigades than the current Army does.

In addition to the organizational changes outlined in this option, CBO chose to change the Army's investment program considerably. MacGregor's work illustrates how the Army's current heavy forces, with the combination of the M1 Abrams tank and M2/3 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, can be made more deployable, flexible, and lethal. As such, the Army's Future Combat Systems program, which is intended to produce similar effects, might not be necessary if this option achieved its goals. To reflect that possibility, this option would terminate the FCS program and replace it with various initiatives to rebuild, remanufacture, and upgrade the Army's heavy equipment. Among other things, the investment program in this option would:

• Continue the Abrams tank conversions under the M1A2 system enhancement program at a steady-state rate indefinitely into the future;⁽¹⁶⁾
  
  
• Continue the upgrades under the Abrams common engine program until the entire tank fleet had received new engines;
  
  
• Continue various programs to remanufacture and upgrade the M2/3 Bradley fighting vehicle at a steady-state rate indefinitely into the future;
  
  
• Restart the program to upgrade the M270A2 multiple-launch rocket system and modernize all of the Army's rocket-launcher artillery platforms;
  
  
• Continue the program to upgrade the AH-64D Longbow and modernize all of the Army's attack helicopters; and
  
  
• Continue the program to remanufacture the UH-60 L/M Blackhawk helicopter at a steady-state rate indefinitely into the future.

The cumulative effect of those conversion and remanufacturing programs would be to maintain the Army's current fleet of heavy armored vehicles and helicopters in a viable state for the indefinite future while continuing several low-cost evolutionary upgrades that would maintain U.S. forces' technological superiority over potential opponents.⁽¹⁷⁾

The primary benefit of this alternative would be to provide the Army with more flexible and autonomous combat forces that could be deployed more rapidly. Its primary disadvantage would be a reduction in the number of combat forces available to the Army.

Costs. CBO estimates that implementing this option would reduce the costs for the Army's investment program by $176 billion over the 2006-2022 period, primarily as a result of terminating the FCS program but also because the Army would have fewer combat forces to modernize. It also would reduce the Army's O&S costs by about $138 billion through 2022 and by $10 billion annually thereafter (see Table 2-27).

Table 2-27.

Effects. With fewer combat brigades in this option, the total Army would be less capable of fighting multiple wars simultaneously (see Table 2-28).⁽¹⁸⁾ It also could have to send fewer forces to any one conflict. Alternatively, if the Army had significant peacetime commitments, it might have to abandon those commitments during a conflict because of the reduced number of combat forces available.

Table 2-28.

A brigade-based Army would also have a smaller pool of personnel and units to draw on for sustaining extended deployments (see Table 2-29). As such, it would be less capable of sustaining larger numbers of personnel or combat brigades through rotational deployments. The reduction in forces available in this option would be roughly equivalent to about three to four commitments the size of the current U.S. commitment to Afghanistan.

Table 2-29.

Supporters of this option would argue that although it would decrease the overall number of combat brigades in the active Army, it would improve the Army's ability to fight wars overall. Colonel MacGregor suggests that such forces would be able to deploy faster and engage in fast-moving operations that would overwhelm conventional enemies with far fewer forces than current structures require. CBO was not able to assess such claims about the qualitative improvement in warfighting that a brigade-based Army might provide. However, to illustrate the potential of such an effect, CBO assumed that the brigade-based Army could deploy a corps-sized force of six combat brigades (as opposed to 10 for the current force) and a theater-sized force of 12 combat brigades (as opposed to 20 for the current force). If that were the case, then under this option, the active Army would be capable of prosecuting nearly as many conflicts simultaneously, even though it had far fewer combat brigades. Even with that assumption, however, this option's large reduction in National Guard combat forces would mean that the total Army would still be less capable of fighting multiple wars simultaneously.

Detractors of this option might argue that the Army would be structured with small, possibly inadequately supported combat forces. Some observers do not believe that it would be plausible to engage in sustained combat operations with such limited levels of support; others argue that attempting to do so would incur an unacceptable level of risk. Historically, the Army's combat divisions, along with their EAD support units and slice of corps and theater assets (in other words, the size of the corps or theater divided up among the subordinate divisions), have each required about 40,000 personnel in a theater, suggesting that the Army has, in the modern era, always required more than one EAD support soldier for every one divisional combat soldier (varying between 1.3:1 and 1.7:1, depending on the type of division).⁽¹⁹⁾ This option would reduce that EAD ratio to slightly more than 0.9:1, much lower than any other option in this paper. Although some observers consider that level to be unrealistically low, others have been enthusiastic about MacGregor's restructuring proposal.

Detractors of this option also might note that MacGregor's plan assumes that the Army would be capable of eliminating the theater level of command, which performs a number of functions important to other military services operating in a theater (such as seaport operations). If that plan was implemented, the other services might need to be enlarged to compensate for the lack of support from the Army. In addition, because many theater-level tasks are currently assigned to the Army as part of its legal roles and missions, changes to those tasks would require revisions to title 10 of the U.S. Code.

Because the combat and support groups created in this option are entirely active-component units, it would make the active Army much less dependent on reserve EAD support units, whether for peacekeeping or for warfighting missions. The Army might still choose to mobilize some reserve personnel for major combat operations and would still mobilize some reserve personnel for peacekeeping operations (such as National Guard special forces groups), but in general, unless the Army needed to mobilize National Guard combat forces, reserve-component mobilization in this option would be minimal.

Converting to a MacGregor-style brigade-based Army would generally make the Army easier to deploy. Although at the level of a single brigade, the brigade-based Army would take longer to deploy (since each brigade would be larger and have more equipment), deploying a force equivalent to a division, corps, or theater would be faster. The increased speed would result partly because the corps- and theater-sized forces in this option would be smaller and partly because they would not need to deploy division- and corps-level command echelons and the large number of support units associated with them. When current forces are deployed, the units associated with a corps or a theater have about as much equipment and personnel as an entire heavy division with all of its supporting units. A brigade-based force that would not require deploying a corps (and did not include equivalent elements) would have much less equipment to transport and could be deployed more rapidly.

Implications for the Modular Army. Although this alternative was measured against the current force structure, converting the modular Army to a MacGregor-style brigade-based Army would produce essentially the same effects because the core of this option is to eliminate all of the Army's existing units and create an entirely new set of units. However, many elements of the Army's current modularity plan are similar to the brigade-based Army, including the emphasis on more-autonomous brigades, the creation of more-flexible division structures, and the decision to merge the corps and theater levels of command into one echelon. Nonetheless, the Army's modularity plan creates a larger number of smaller brigades (as opposed to this alternative's creation of a smaller number of larger brigades) and retains some of the command levels that MacGregor would simply eliminate.

Because this alternative would greatly reduce the reserve component's need for personnel positions, it would allow for a number of variations using those personnel positions--for example, restoring the theater level of command or increasing the number of National Guard combat units. Using personnel in those ways would decrease the cost savings that might be achieved by this alternative, but it would also increase the Army's overall ability to fight wars and to sustain extended deployments. For example, all of the National Guard's current major combat formations (and sufficient EAD units to fully support them) could be retained, thus significantly reducing the overall decrease in combat forces. If this option was modified in that manner, it would result in about 10,000 fewer reserve-component personnel than the current force has (as opposed to 383,000 fewer personnel), thus costing more but having about the same number of combat brigades as the current force.

Alternative 6--Convert to an Expeditionary Army

This alternative illustrates how the Army might be able to improve its deployment speed by adopting some organizational structures and practices used by the Marine Corps. It would eliminate the corps as a command structure, reorganize the Army into a series of expeditionary forces (similar to Marine expeditionary forces), and purchase additional sealift assets and additional sets of equipment that would be prepositioned on ships near potential theaters of conflict. Overall, this option would add 21,000 active personnel and 20,000 reserve personnel to the Army (see Table 2-30).

Table 2-30.

The Marine Corps does not employ a corps or theater level of command for its units. Instead, Marine Corps units are organized into a series of Marine air-ground task forces. Each task force has a command element (normally a small headquarters), a ground-combat element, an air-combat element, and a combat-service-support element. The task forces are distinguished by the size of the ground-combat element. The largest type of task force is the Marine expeditionary force, with a division, an air wing, and a force-service-support group.⁽²⁰⁾ Marine divisions, unlike Army divisions, are composed almost entirely of combat units, with support units (such as aviation or logistics) in the air-combat or combat-service-support elements.

In this option, Army forces would be structured in a manner similar to Marine expeditionary forces. Because the Army maintains both heavy and light forces (unlike the Marines), there would be separate types of light expeditionary forces and heavy expeditionary forces. Each expeditionary force would include:

• A command element, with headquarters and signals units;
  
  
• A ground-combat element, equivalent to a division with four combat brigades;⁽²¹⁾
  
  
• An air-combat element, with six to 11 battalions of helicopters, maintenance units, and Patriot missile units; and
  
  
• A support group, with engineer, military police, military intelligence, medical, and logistics units.

A heavy expeditionary force would have two armored and two mechanized infantry brigades in its division and a smaller aviation group emphasizing attack helicopters. It would have about 43,000 personnel. A light expeditionary force would have three light brigades and one Stryker brigade in its division and a larger aviation group emphasizing reconnaissance, utility, and cargo helicopters. It would have about 39,000 personnel.⁽²²⁾

In this option, the active Army would have five heavy and four light expeditionary forces, and the National Guard would have four heavy and two light expeditionary forces. The option would also retain the Army's current theater structure and 10 of the National Guard's current separate brigades. All of the National Guard forces would be fully supported combat forces, with sufficient EAD support units to simultaneously deploy all National Guard combat units to combat operations. As in the current force, active expeditionary forces would depend on reserve support units (which would be part of the expeditionary forces), although to a somewhat more limited degree than the current force does.

Finally, this alternative would greatly expand the Army's current program of prepositioning sets of equipment on board ships stationed near potential theaters. Prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Army used eight large, medium-speed roll-on/roll-off ships (LMSRs) to store a single heavy brigade's worth of combat equipment and equipment for some theater-level units in the Indian Ocean.⁽²³⁾ Currently, the Army is moving toward using six LMSRs to establish three flotillas, each with a single heavy brigade's worth of combat equipment, in the Mediterranean Sea, Indian Ocean, and Pacific Ocean. This alternative would expand the size of those flotillas, and the shipping capacity available to DoD, by purchasing 20 additional LMSRs (doubling the size of Military Sealift Command's LMSR fleet). Some of those LMSRs would be used to establish larger flotillas, each carrying two heavy brigades' worth of equipment. The remainder would be used to transport equipment from the United States to combat theaters.

In addition to the organizational changes outlined in this option, CBO chose to change the Army's investment program considerably. Because this alternative would greatly increase the speed with which the Army could deploy its forces, as in the previous option, the Army's FCS program, which is intended to produce similar effects, might not be necessary if this option achieved its goals. To reflect that possibility, this option would terminate the FCS program and replace it with a series of various programs to rebuild, remanufacture, and upgrade the Army's current heavy equipment. Those programs are the same as in the previous alternative, but because this alternative would establish an Army force structure with more heavy combat vehicles (for the larger number of heavy brigades and the additional sets of prepositioned equipment), those programs would have larger annual purchase requirements, offsetting more of the savings from canceling the FCS.

The primary benefit of this alternative would be to allow the Army to deploy much more rapidly than the current force can. Its primary disadvantage would be the costs associated with increased numbers of active-component personnel.

Costs. Implementing this option would reduce the costs for the Army's investment program by $87 billion over the 2006-2022 period, primarily as a result of terminating the FCS program. It would add $9 billion in costs for the National Defense Sealift fund (a Navy account that would be used to purchase the additional LMSRs), yielding total savings of $79 billion for DoD's investment program over the same period. Finally, the option would increase the Army's O&S costs by about $45 billion through 2022 and by $3 billion annually thereafter (see Table 2-31).

Table 2-31.

Effects. With additional divisions and combat brigades, the Army would be more capable of fighting multiple wars simultaneously (see Table 2-32). It also could send more forces to any given conflict, thus increasing the likelihood that the Army could prosecute conflicts with a greater chance of success or succeed more rapidly with fewer casualties. Alternatively, if the Army had significant peacetime commitments, the additional combat forces might allow the Army to maintain those commitments during a conflict when it might otherwise be necessary to withdraw forces from lower-priority commitments.

Table 2-32.

The Army would also be slightly more capable of sustaining extended deployments for peacekeeping missions (see Table 2-33). The additional forces available in this option would, however, be less than sufficient to assume one additional commitment of about the size of Bosnia or Kosovo at their height or of the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan.

Table 2-33.

Because this alternative would increase the size of the active Army slightly, it would reduce the active Army's dependence on reserve EAD units somewhat. That effect would be relatively limited, however, since some of the additional active Army personnel would also be used to establish new combat brigades. In addition, all National Guard combat forces would be fully supported under this option. Thus, if the Army was required to mobilize National Guard combat forces to sustain extended deployments, the National Guard would be able to mobilize and deploy additional support units. That action would increase the number of personnel the Army could sustain overseas in an extended deployment but would also require more reserve mobilization.

Converting to an expeditionary Army would greatly improve the speed with which the Army could deploy. The larger number of prepositioned equipment sets in this alternative contributes to improving the speed with which smaller forces (brigades and divisions) could be deployed, since prepositioned equipment sets would already be loaded on ships at the beginning of a conflict and would be closer to potential theaters. In this option, having more prepositioned equipment in larger flotillas dispersed near more potential theaters is the major factor in improving deployment speed for smaller units. For larger units, the increased number of LMSRs in the military fleet would allow the Army's equipment to be transported in a shorter period of time. Finally, deployment speed would also benefit from the elimination of the corps structure. When current forces are deployed, the units associated with a corps or a theater have about as much equipment and personnel as an entire heavy division with all of its supporting units. An expeditionary force that would not have to deploy a corps thus would have much less equipment to transport and could be deployed more rapidly. Because each expeditionary force in this option would have significantly fewer support units than a current force (including the corps), deploying three expeditionary forces (with 12 combat brigades) would actually require somewhat less lift than a current corps (with 10 combat brigades).

Implications for the Modular Army. Although the alternative to convert to an expeditionary Army was measured against the current force, converting a modular Army to an expeditionary Army would produce many of the same benefits and incur many of the same costs. The expeditionary Army would improve deployment timelines when compared with timelines for the current force by increasing the amount of sealift available to the force, increasing the number of equipment sets prepositioned on ship flotillas, and eliminating the large corps structure. Because it would require about the same amount of lift as the premodularity force, a modular force would benefit equally from the increased sealift and prepositioned equipment available under this alternative and would see its deployment timelines reduced by roughly equivalent amounts. Although the Army has not announced the details of what the corps structure will look like in the modular Army, one of its goals is to merge the corps into the theater, making them more flexible structures. If the modular Army can achieve that goal, it will produce an effect similar to this alternative's restructuring of EAD support.

Alternative 7--Convert to a Transformational Army

This alternative illustrates the type of force that many defense experts, including DoD's former Director of Force Transformation Arthur Cebrowski, have suggested would be transformational--that is, reorganized to take full advantage of recent advances in communications networks, precision-guided munitions, and sensors. Such experts typically stress the virtues of small, light ground formations that can be rapidly deployed and that depend on long-range, precision firepower instead of their own weaponry for effectiveness. This alternative would have fewer divisions, and the mix of divisions would be shifted to lighter forces and special forces groups, with each division having access to more long-range firepower, especially attack helicopters and artillery. Overall, this option would reduce the number of active personnel in the Army by 115,000 (see Table 2-34).

Table 2-34.

For this alternative, CBO designed a smaller, lighter combat force than the current Army. Specifically, the alternative:

• Shifts one corps from the active component to the reserve component;
  
  
• Eliminates four active heavy divisions;
  
  
• Restructures the remaining active Army divisions to have two heavy divisions, two light infantry divisions, and two air assault divisions;
  
  
• Creates three new active special forces groups and two new National Guard special forces groups;
  
  
• Eliminates two National Guard heavy divisions;
  
  
• Restructures the remaining National Guard divisions to have four heavy divisions and two light infantry divisions, all fully supported with EAD support units;
  
  
• Preserves the current National Guard separate brigades; and
  
  
• Provides twice the Army's current level of rocket artillery and aviation assets to each division.

Those changes would make the Army much smaller, with a lighter mix of units than it has currently, but each unit would be more capable of delivering the types of long-range, precision firepower that advocates of transformation argue would make it possible for very small forces to defeat much larger forces without access to such technology. This option was designed so that both the active and reserve components would each have two corps with three divisions and an ACR each (in addition to the National Guard separate brigades). Each of those forces would be roughly equivalent to the Army's contribution to Operation Iraqi Freedom, which successfully achieved the goal of destroying the Iraqi regime in a very short period. Proponents of transformation forces see such combat operations as the type that will be more likely in the future, with small, rapidly moving lethal U.S. forces easily overwhelming an opponent's much larger conventional forces.

This alternative also would change the Army's investment program. In addition to reducing the quantities of equipment that the Army would need to procure for its smaller forces, this alternative emphasizes numerous Army programs that would improve the Army's ability to precisely deliver long-range firepower. The Army has a variety of such programs, including the Excalibur projectile for cannon artillery, the guided rockets for rocket artillery, and Longbow upgrades for the Apache helicopter.

The primary benefit of this alternative would be the cost savings from reductions in the number of active-component personnel. Its primary disadvantage would be the reduction in the number of combat forces available to the Army.

Costs. Implementing this option would reduce the costs for the Army's investment program by $24 billion over the 2006-2022 period, primarily because the Army would have fewer combat forces to modernize. It would reduce the Army's O&S costs by about $166 billion over the same period and by about $12 billion annually thereafter (see Table 2-35).

Table 2-35.

Effects. With fewer combat brigades in this option, the Army would be less capable of fighting multiple wars simultaneously (see Table 2-36).⁽²⁴⁾ It also could be less capable of sending additional forces to any given conflict. Alternatively, if the Army had significant peacetime commitments, it might have to abandon some of those commitments during a conflict because of high-priority combat needs.

Table 2-36.

Supporters of this option would argue that although it would decrease the overall number of combat brigades in the active Army, it would improve the Army's ability to fight wars overall. Transformation advocates often argue that the size or mass of a combat force is largely irrelevant to its combat power but that the capability to precisely deliver firepower is central to success in modern conflicts. This alternative would give the Army fewer forces, but those combat forces would have access to twice as much long-range firepower as current forces do.⁽²⁵⁾ Thus, transformation advocates would suggest that this option would create a force that would be at least as capable as today's larger, more expensive force. CBO was not able to assess such claims about the qualitative improvement in warfighting that a brigade-based Army might provide.

However, to illustrate the potential that such an effect might have, CBO assumed that the transformational Army could deploy a corps-sized force of six combat brigades (compared with 10 for the current force) and a theater-sized force of 12 combat brigades (compared with 20 for the current force). If that were the case, then under this option, the Army would be capable of prosecuting more conflicts simultaneously, even though it had fewer combat brigades.

A transformational Army would, however, have a smaller pool of personnel and units to draw on for sustaining extended deployments (see Table 2-37). As such, it would be less capable of sustaining larger numbers of personnel or combat brigades through rotational deployments. The reduction in forces available under this option would be roughly equivalent to two or three times the size of the U.S. commitment to Bosnia or Kosovo or to the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan. It also is unlikely that transformational forces would be qualitatively superior in peacekeeping operations, since the additional firepower provided to them is unlikely to be useful in such operations--in some respects, transformational forces would have the opposite advantages and disadvantages as the dedicated peacekeeping forces of Alternative 4.

Table 2-37.

This alternative would not change the degree to which active forces would depend on reserve EAD units for support, so the number of reserve personnel the Army would need to mobilize for any given operation would not change appreciably. However, since the Army would be considerably smaller in this option, it would be unable to sustain extended deployments as large as the current force can. As a result, it would need to mobilize fewer reserve personnel overall to support the smaller number of active units that it could sustain overseas.

Converting to a transformational Army would improve the speed with which the Army could deploy. Although at the level of a single brigade or division the transformational Army would need about the same amount of time to deploy (since each brigade would be about the same size as current brigades), corps- or theater-level forces would deploy faster, primarily because they, as defined in this option, would be smaller and have less equipment.

Each deployed force in this alternative also would include a higher fraction of light units than the current force has, further hastening deployment. However, each division in this alternative, along with its EAD support units, actually would have somewhat more unit equipment than a division in the current force, and the extra weight they would carry would reduce the benefits from improved deployment speed somewhat.

Implications for the Modular Army. Although the alternative to convert to a transformational Army was measured against the current force, converting a modular Army to a transformational one would produce many of the same benefits and incur many of the same costs. A smaller, lighter modular Army with access to more long-range precision firepower would have many of the same advantages in the sort of warfare that transformation proponents believe will characterize future conflicts. It would also have the same drawback regarding the forces' ability to support extended deployments, since much smaller Army forces are simply incapable of supporting very large extended deployments.

The aviation structure for this alternative was designed to match the Army's available number of helicopters to specific combat units. It would not change the overall number of helicopters in the Army.