Increasing Strategic Responsivenes Rotating U.S. Army Corps Through Phases of the National Military Strategy
Abstract
The purpose of this monograph is to answer the question: Can the Army increase its strategic responsiveness in order to narrow the current gap between Army capabilities and requirements? To arrive at an answer, this paper begins by examining complexity theory to provide the cognitive tools necessary to understand how systems interact with their environments. Chapter three examines the changes in the national security and military strategies in response to the national and domestic factors over the last decade. It also assesses the impact these changes produced, an imbalance between Army requirements and capabilities. Utilizing Martin Van Creveld's rules for enhancing command performance, chapter four explores alternative proposals that aim to close the gap between requirements and capabilities by increasing strategic responsiveness. While investigating the problem and potential solutions, it became clear that versatility is the key to reducing this gap. Versatility, the capacity to shift capabilities to meet requirements, is achieved by separating the force in time and purpose. However, without rotation of forces between missions, the force becomes agile and not versatile. In particular, the paper recommends the Army divide its overarching requirement to fight and win the nation's war into the three deomins of the 1997 National Military Strategy (NMS) and establish semi-independent forces capable of dealing with each of these domains separately. It postulates a model that rotates balanced corps between the domains of shape, prepare, and respond. By rotating the force between the domains, the Army builds a versatile general-purpose force, increases its stability, and reduces the effects of a demanding OPTEMPO. The combined effect is a force with the increased strategic responsiveness required to narrow the ever-shifting gap between capabilities and requirements.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 14, 2002
- Accession Number
- ADA403652
Entities
People
- Michael A. Getchell
Organizations
- United States Army Command and General Staff College