The 1962 Howze Board and Army Combat Developments
Abstract
1992 THE Army's Training and Doctrine Command created a set of new organizations called Battle Laboratories Battle Labs) to augment the combat development activity of the Army's specialized branches and services. The development of aviation during the present century profoundly affected military affairs, but only within the last thirty years were Army ground forces directly affected by aviation technology. The shift took place as a result of the ad hoc 1962 U.S. Army Tactical Mobility Requirements Board (the Howze Board), which led to the innovation of 'air cavalry' and the integration of the armed helicopter into combined arms warfare. The Howze Board's ad hoc approach to testing, although it was better than no testing at all, was not the best way to carry out combat development. The Army should do better in the future. Army combat development must be improved by closer connection and interaction between its model building and testing activities. Now, models and their simulations are uncritically used with little attention given to whether the model is empirically validated. These conditions suggest that somewhere in the Army's system there should be a mechanism to lay out programs of models and assertions about tactics and operational performance that can be empirically validated and field tested. It may be necessary for the Battle Labs to take on this function and actively design and carry out field experiments ff they are to achieve their objective.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1994
- Accession Number
- ADA282756
Entities
People
- J. A. Stockfisch
Organizations
- RAND Corporation