U.S. Army tries to justify Modularity Plans without factual analysis: Why the Plan is a recipe for disaster

A senior Army officer and combat veteran writes:

"This is a visual centering of what they have been talking about up top for more than two years. (Actually six, if you start with the 'mixed divisional' concept they were trying to foist off about 1996). I wonder whom they are trying to sell here? I thought we were going with 'off the shelf technology' but I see where the FCS is still in that embryonic stage, yet presented as if it were available. There is no magic wand to wave and have all the divisional commands go away and everyone bellies up to the concept of brigade-centric warfare. Note, the untried, unproven Stryker is still front and center of the light force, without thought to the fact that it is probably becoming a failure even as we speak, and the AF will provide the Army with enough C-17s to make it all work. All the Reserve Units are happly infiltrated into the warfighting scheme without regard to their input, as well. The proposal, if implemented, would turn the MILPO/PERCEN/PERSCOM/HSRC pukes on their heads, and that would never do.... the only way that true reform is going to happen is to first go to some sort of cohort system to get us out of the individual replacement system. Until that happens, shuffling Soldiers is the main job of the Army, and warfighting takes second place."

Another Army Colonel writes in:

"There is an astonishing lack of detail. It is, I think, more apparent than real. Timelines are too long. No experimentation to validate concepts and organizations. I see no evidence for BG commands and no change in the echelons of command and control, just confusing references to UEx, UEy and Units of Action - all new names for the same old shit, brigade, division and corps. Saying something is modular and creating modules of viable, independent combat power are quite different. The 2 battalion maneuver brigades with HUMMV/Brad scouts is not new, it is just stupid."

IN-DEPTH

The following analyzes the "Why we are Changing the Army" power point slides recently unveiled to try to justify the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Peter Schoomaker's "modularity" vision. The culprits who wrote this poisoned brew are probably shown on SLIDE 17 as the "E Hill" power-point Ranger author is probably on the OFT or TF Modularity staff:

ü John McDonald
ü John Gingrich
ü BG Ralston
ü LTG(R) Jordan
ü EOH Stratcoms (Patti Benner & staff)
ü OCLL (staff)
ü SecArmy speechwriter
ü OFT (staff)
ü G-3 Army Transformation Office (staff)
ü TRADOC CPG and Stratcoms
ü TF Modularity

Typical Army Transformation "Boiler Plate"

You could take this power point show and change a few pet peeves and it would be the same (boiler plate) whether it was Shinseki's or Sullivan's or Schoomaker's "vision". These things go as follows:

Part 1: Boogie man (Do what the boss says or else sky falls)

Part 2: Discard the Past (I'm the boss in charge now, anything the guys before me did is obsolete)

Part 3: Naked Emperor Phase (I'm the boss do what I say or else)

SLIDES 1-3

This is the easiest part for Army apologists to write because our planet filled with humans with a like for destruction is full of problems that make good bullet statements on a power point show (ppt). The reader says, "Yeah, I see that". But this is like a spoonful of sugar in your mouth; it pleases but doesn't provide lasting nutrition.

The slides list world problems; "floating" them out like balloons to the reader without asking and answering the most important question, which is WHAT IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW WITH HUMANS IN 2004 AND WHY ARE THEY FIGHTING?

These first slides are pure alarmist smokescreen because to explain WHY people are fighting would result in a people-centric warfighting formula when if you have prior knowledge the Army's vision is an inanimate objects-centered construct of Alvin & Heidi Toffler's "Third Wave" world view that says we are in a computer age where we can skimp on the physical and just cherry pick and click 'n drag things together to try to solve any problem with minimal effort. This manifests itself clearly later on in SLIDE 23.

Because the Army Vision refuses to address the state of humans and war today, its from the get-go totally out of touch with reality. The problem "boogie man" balloons the Army authors float out there are just what popped into the ppt author's heads at the time they were typing in the captions. Another person would have other things pop into his or her head. There is no framework of understanding of modern battlefield realities that is comprehensive and thus can ANTICIPATE and PREDICT what problems are going to occur so we can prepare ahead of time to meet them well. In other words, no real thought has gone into this plan for the reorganization of the United States of America's Army which must provide decisive, land combat strategic maneuver in order to protect 270 million human beings. That no professional debate or analysis has gone on within the ranks sounds alarm bells that this must be stopped immediately before proceeding.

Its like these problems have somehow suddenly popped up anew and the Army is just now REACTING to them, without reforming itself and asking why they were not anticipated long ago. Its like we are a "day late and a dollar short" to use the folksy terminology the CSA likes to employ.

The answer here is for the Army Senior Leadership to assemble all the world's experts on modern warfare from both the Tofflerian/RMA and VanCrevaldian/4GW camps and have it out and to choose one or the other warfighting and reality philosophy and then proceed to design a new Army force on them. But what's happening here is the Tofflerian non-sense world-view is being infiltrated into a new Army reorganizational scheme without ANY honest debate, analysis and thinking.

Then the slides pontificate about how our forces need to be and how they are adapting which they are clearly not. Upon closer examination these are outright lies and hypocrisy that will disgust any military professional whose primary focus is the most effective common defense possible not personal existentialist self-glory by changing colors to please whoever is the current boss.

The first lie on SLIDE 2 is "We are a nation at war".

Says who?

The American has not declared "war" on anybody.

The majority of Americans are living at peace and the Bush Administration is thus free to engage in war with volunteer hired help composed of economic co-dependants and careerist narcissistic egomaniacs as the proxies of the civilian populace who get to be soccer moms and dads while daily our troops are picked off by enemy bombs shown on the daily and weekly news cycles. Worse yet, as the Bushies get to spend $BILLIONS on sexy war toys, they are held to no standard of success/failure, again the desired "floating" of a "boogie man" balloon without any responsibility to where it fits in reality.

Slide 2 continues with the convenient agnosticism that "This is a prolonged period of conflict for the U.S. with great uncertainty about the nature and location of that conflict"

This is perfect for Army leadership to click 'n drag on their staff officer's personal computers and do whatever-they-want-when-they-want not guided by any true warfighting doctrine that is accurate to reality or any standards of success or failure held accountable to the American people. Its maximum "wiggle-tude". The Generals get to play.

"We must be able to defuse crises and/or defeat aggression early to prevent escalation, limit damage"

The real reason is the Generals don't want to fight. They want quick and easy wars that are over soon so they can as soon as possible go back to garrison ego games and soaking money from Congress to buy their ego technotoys. The real Army is about mowing lawns, running in formation so middle-aged men think they are still young, change-of-command ceremonies and writing back-stabbing counseling statements and bad OERs for those we can identify and torpedo who are truly caring about the men and the mission, lest they rise to power and turn the situation around where common sense and results through competence become the norm.

The next statement is pure hypocrisy:

"Thus, we need flexible, rapidly deployable forces and sufficient depth and strength to sustain multiple, simultaneous operations"

"Flexible" means Schoomaker wants "$5 and $10 bills" in his "pocket" not "$100 bills" (large division structures) that after changing around leaves his pockets "full of "change" as he said at a defense conference of the Joint Chiefs and media televised on CSPAN2 months ago. Having "loose change" means parts of the 500,000 man Army are not engaged in the Bush neocon wars of defacto imperialism, we cannot have that. Rumsfeld chose Schoomaker to be Army Chief so he would cut out the "fat" and squeeze more out of the Army so monies could then be transferred to the sexy bombs dropped from aircraft that the Tofflerian "Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA) folks fantasize are the key to modern warfighting. Details:

www.geocities.com/transformationunderfire

"Rapidly Deployable" are code words that Schoomaker wants the Army to be primarily fleshy human bodies with a rifle in their hands and a ruck on their back ("everyone a rifleman") so they can be packed like sardines into USAF fixed-wing aircraft and transported to neocon post-bombing campaign zones and clean up the mess on the cheap. At the most all they need is a HMMWV or a Stryker truck the Tofflerian/RMA folks think are cheap to operate because they roll on air-filled rubber tires. The Tofflerian/RMA "vision" is all about skimping on the physical to pay for the expensive mental gadgets we think we need.

"Sufficient depth and strength to sustain multiple, simultaneous operations" means Schoomaker wants just enough to get by, because he's being handed multiple world hot spots from the Bush neocons where Army troops are needed to clean up after the Air Force and Navy bombs. He doesn't want on-scene qualitative overmatch with our forces in RPG and roadside bomb resistant M113 Gavin light tracked armored fighting vehicles as the minimal transportation standard; he's "spinning pie plates" trying to get cheapo chessboard pieces to places scattered all over the world to please his Tofflerian/RMA/Neocon masters. It's the WWII Italian Army all over again. Insisting that his men take light tracked AFVs along would take up some of that space/payload in the Air Force transport plane taking them to existentialist battlefield glory. It would cost a little more to operate an Army with tracked, armored mobility and with such empowerment they might actually think of using MANEUVER to locate, encircle and separate bad guys from good guys when the Tofflerians want their sexy bombs to get the limelight and the glory by blasting the bad guys, and a bunch of innocent civilians, but that's OK because it's the "American Way of War" and we want to "protect our Soldiers". Yeah, right. Its actually the Tofflerians want to protect their technocash cows.

The hypocrisy really kicks in in SLIDE 3.

"War is the norm, peace is the exception"

This smug statement is disturbing because it lacks any moral ethos that humans killing other humans is a bad thing; its like a happy statement that Army Generals will always be employed and will get maximum funding and power to play. Its total ignorance of Robert E. Lee's warning not to love war. There's no caveats that if we want peace and have to earn it by having an effective military etc.

"Our adversaries seek adaptive advantage through asymmetry"

The hypocrisy of using the "a" word is stunning. The Army has just said its going to skimp and then admits the enemy is looking for weaknesses to attack.

1-800-DUH.

What the F**K are you going to PHYSICALLY DO about this adaptive enemy? The Army thinks its going to click 'n drag as problems blind-side them REACTIVELY. The enemy gets the first punch. He has the initiative. Without a framework understanding of modern warfare to anticipate events, modularity is just knee-jerk reactivity to what the enemy does first. If you are going to "turn the other cheek" you damn well better not have a "glass jaw".

A good example of this day-late-and-a-dollar-short reactive mentality is the roadside bomb crisis in Iraq which has caused the entire country to be unstable. The Army if it understood the 4th Generation Warfare battlefield is NON-LINEAR wouldn't have thousands of people and a pre-ponderence of units driving around in unarmored SUVs thinking there are WWII-style "fronts" and "safe" rear areas. The enemy is all around and can attack in any direction at any time. The Army's REACTION after wrongly placing 100,000 troops in 12,000 HMMWV trucks into Iraq on the cheap, is to slap some makeshift armor onto HMMWVs and slowly build and rebuild "up-armored" HMMWVS at $250,000 each which when they are put into service fail to protect our Soldiers and because a lack of fundamental tracks vs. wheels foresight are mechanically breaking down because its too much weight on too fragile drive trains. Details:

www.geocities.com/wheelsvstracks

The wisdom of an "ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure" is not in the Army modularity concept. The modularity concept is all cure and no qualitative prevention and forethought.

"We have near peer competitors in niche areas Conventional Force on Force conflicts are still possible"

"There is an enormous pool of potential combatants armed with irreconcilable ideas"

This is another excuse to not even to try to understand the modern battlefield our enemies [Ignoring the sound of advice of former Secretary of Defense MacNamara to have EMPATHY presented in his award-winning documentary, THE FOG OF WAR] and make sense of their ideas that are causing wars---which is non-negotiable as to whether this can be overlooked or not; in order to win. The Army just wants to blow them up using the Air Force's bombs, and come in afterwards in trucks and on foot to clean up. The current Army leadership composed of anal-retentive, linear non-thinkers who have lived lifetimes spitting back whatever their bosses want (regardless of external reality and truth) to get promoted is saying its too hard for them to think non-linearly and mix and match ideas and see patterns emerge to understand our enemies, yet says its smart enough to mix and match reactively, after the enemy presents problems first with modularity. If its important to adapt forces then its mandatory that you adapt your THINKING to understand the problem before doing anything else.

"Our homeland is part of the battlespace"

Here the Army Generals reveal their true secret longing, which is to retreat back to fortress America and the BS garrison lifestyle of social rank and class and fight their battles on Capital Hill for their handfuls of sexy technotoys they can brag about in their biographies about how "visionary" they were and secure post-retirement employment with General Dynamics Land Systems to live a jet-set lifestyle attending General Officer's club "conferences" on future warfare where they get to constantly invoke the "a" word and assume just because we have a word for the enemy kicking our ass we have got the problem covered.

"We are adapting to these challenges NOW"

This statement makes me want to throw up. What a f**king lie. Army Soldiers are getting creamed by RPGs and roadside bombs while thousands of M113 Gavin light tracks that could be up-armored and save their lives and limbs sit in storage. Enough to "transform" the entire Army within 1 year out of its WWII style safe rear area doldrums. Yet the army is squandering $BILLIONS on Stryker truck lemons that need each year the exact same amount of repair dollars as it took to pay for their purchase. More $BILLIONS go towards a Future Combat System, homogenized everyone into a medium thinly armored truck fantasy that is too heavy to fly for 3D air-mech maneuver and too light to fight in open terrain for 2D maneuver. The Army Generals do whatever pops into their heads as "boss" and the rest of the army follows in lock-step to do the "concept" when the reorganization should be driven by the THREAT. The Army has just said earlier that the enemy (THE THREAT) is too hard to understand so it needs a blank check to do whatever it wants when it wants AFTER THE PROBLEMS HAVE SURFACED.

Part 2

SLIDES 4-7

SLIDE 5

"We need to generate more versatile combat power because…

We have extended worldwide commitments

We will remain at war for the foreseeable future

We must be more responsive to Combatant Commanders' needs"

Here ignorance reigns, "versatile" would mean overmatching capabilities when the Army is skimping so our troops have less capabilities so we can Air Mail them to world trouble spots we have bombed and alienated with our "take us-or leave-it foreign policy". Responding to Combatant Commander's needs is a manifestation of the "I am the boss" ego trip which is what keeps narcissistic egomaniacs in the Army. Its all about being dictator and ordering people to do what you want regardless of facts and reality. Its what these Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) types live for. And a stepping stone on the "Holy Grail" to General Officer status is having a turn as "Combatant Commander" somewhere. All modularity is is a ego menu for whoever is in charge at the time to request his favorite entrees. If you are Hagenback and you are in Afghanistan you don't request field artillery. If you are a Shinseki, you can request a Stryker brigade on rubber tires that is better to meet and run away from the enemy than a heavy M1 tank that is still on the ship" as he liked to say. Because there is no prior forethought and qualitative improvements to make things better like finding ways to get heavy M1 tanks faster to the battlefield, "modularity" is an illusion that we can as the problem blind-sides us click n drag something together to get by. Its ad hocery in its worst form: its encouraged and institutionalized. Because you never precisely say what you are going to use you never have to compare/contrast it to what scenarios could unfold and identify weaknesses and fix them. For example, if the problem is the terrain ahead is full of lakes and rivers the modularists will say, "we will attach some bridging units" to let our units in non-swimming vehicles pass. Or we will take the bridge. The modularist has his pat excuse answer. This is BS.

This ad hocery is not new, its often encountered in the USMC, another complete BS organization of talkers and not doers. The modularist ad hocery staff officer never tells you about all of the capabilities that you will NOT HAVE in your tool box when the crisis arises because he chose not to EARN THEM beforehand by prior preparation. One of these is having amphibious vehicles that can swim across lakes/rivers so in event the bridges are blow up by the enemy (both pre-existing and the ones we try to erect) we can SWIM ACROSS ANYWAY and continue to move. Note that the Stryker lacks props n rudders to swim, and M113 Gavins swim by their tracks and can be fitted with waterjets to swim in oceans. FCS doesn't swim at all. The Tofflerian click 'n drag modularists think they can mouse click away problems just as bureaucrats they paper away problems in garrison. We will find ourselves once again stuck for weeks on the near side of the Sava River like we were in '95 and unable to enter Bosnia if the earth votes against us with bad weather or the the enemy vetoes our crossing with high explosives. Buy again, the Tofflerian/RMA types are not interested in PHYSICAL MANEUVER which amphibious vehicles by thinking and buying/modifying ahead gives you, they want to skimp and use MENTAL FIREPOWER.

Sadly this American laziness is not new, on Omaha Beach on D-Day our troops were creamed when heavy bombers failed to take out the German defenders as they waded ashore on foot without tracked armored vehicles with obstacle defeating devices. On the British/Canadian beaches they had [General Percy] "Hobart's Funnies" and they rapidly overcame obstacles and pushed inland with light casualties. At one point General Bradley who had rejected the British offer to fully employ Hobart's Funnies, thought about withdrawing from Omaha beach and presenting the Germans a gap in the landing forces if exploited would have resulted in us being sent back into the sea. So this lack of battlefield foresight and tangible preparation is no small matter, battles and wars hinge in the balance on these seemingly small issues. Again, the America folk wisdom of "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link" is being ignored here.

SLIDE 7

"We must create units that are more relevant to Regional Combatant Commanders and generate versatile combat power with units that are…

o More self-contained, sustainable, lethal force packages
o Organized with capabilities for the full range of missions
o Truly joint interdependent - a trained and ready member of the joint force
o Comprised of adaptive, competent, and confident Soldiers and leaders"

So this claim of "relevant" and "versatile" attributes by the Army when its physically emasculating our forces so they cannot go cross-country, cannot swim, cannot prevail against RPGs and roadside bombs because they will some how mouse click their way around the terran and human problems is both hypocritical and infuriating. It's a lie.

Part 3 Naked Emperor

SLIDE 8

All that has been done is "reorganizing deck chairs on the Titanic"; the QUALITY of the "pieces" and their capabilities have not been improved, you just have smaller pieces thrown together into a smaller pie. This is a quantitative down-sizing with no qualitative improvements. The support pie pieces may also be too small as in the case of Aviation to DO ANYTHING. To do a battalion-sized Air Assault takes a lot of helicopters, if you scatter them all throughout the Army into penny packets, you will not have this as a decisive capability any longer: the same mistake the French made with its tanks in WWII when they were able to mass and meet/defeat the 2D maneuvering German Panzers preceded by Paratroopers dropped ahead in 3D air assault.

SLIDE 9

There is no qualitative optimization on the scene; light infantry never gets light tracked AFVs to ADAPT, adaptation to the Army is to NOT ADAPT but to move another piece around. So they put a Stryker Brigade in wheeled trucks in a place where roadside bombs and RPGs are. The piece doesn't fit. Stryker because its wheeled lacking mobility to go off-roads or over obstacles like barricaded cars and has poor situational awareness due to its many blind spots, ends up being worked around by Soldiers not riding it it. So they dismount the Stryker way short of their objective hoping the area is safe for the stranded Gunner/Driver because the vehicle is too vulnerable to follow. But the area is NOT SAFE, on the NLB, the enemy can attack at any time in any direction. So we've already had one of these early diosmount, isolated Strykers torched by RPGs into is unshielded rear fuel tanks in Mosul, Iraq. So now "Combatant Commanders" keep Strykers out of danger even more. Is this "versatile"? Is this "lethal" to the enemy? Is this adaptation?

So the Army gets burned literally and figuratively in Iraq and sends in a Heavy Brigade module. This is after their skimping and trying to do the least from the get go results in the asymmetric enemy killing lots of our Soldiers and throwing the entire countryside into lawlessness. This is gradualism of the worst kind. The heavy brigade module well work well by accident not design-the modularist inherited the tracked force structure from their predecessors who had a threatening reality of Soviet European tank invasion to keep them somewhat physically honest. If the light infantry modularists were in charge back in the '80s their answer would have been more heroic infantry on foot with lots of sexy anti-tank weapons and at best wheeled armored cars.

But the modularists haven't left the heavy brigade alone from sabotage let alone improved their capabilities which would require them to get half their units now riding around in vulnerable wheeled trucks and completely into tracks to be protected on the NLB, exploiting the thousands of available M113 Gavins in storage. The divisional armored cavalry air/ground team goes away replaced by scouts in HMMWV trucks that are not armored, not cross-country mobile and can't swim followed by medium-weight 33-ton tracked Bradleys with a 25mm chain gun, 7.62mm medium machine guns and TOW missiles that are noisy, can't swim nor fly by helicopters or C-130s. The fragile scouts in HMMWV trucks will be kept on a short leash ahead of the main body to their noisy Bradley protectors, eliminating any chance of seeing the enemy and developing the situation without them knowing about it; instead we will slam into the enemy, the HMMWVs will run and the Bradleys will wade into pre-set enemy ambushes and try to shoot our way out. In the Stryker units the situation will be worse because they are armed only with slow-firing remote weapons system machine guns and possible some 105mm mobile guns neither of which can fire on the move; they'll become sitting ducks in order to stop & shoot to get any suppressive fires on the enemy to break contact. The light infantry modules are worse off than anybody, unless they are in masking vegetated, rocky closed terrain, if the enemy bumps into them while they are on the move in wheeled trucks or on foot, they will be in a fight for their lives. If they lose they die and/or get captured ala Task Force Smith.

All Schoomaker is doing is re-labeling and shrinking units as they already exist hoping they can be thrown together to get by (ad hocery), he is not actually ADAPTING and improving their capabilities so they are actually more "versatile". Not only that the pieces we have are bad and have been that way for years. Modularity is a bureaucratic ploy to NOT ADAPT, to not change the basic light vs. heavy, combat vs. support, enlisted vs. officer and myriad other dichotomies/factions within the Army culture.

SLIDE 10

"Units available" reveals ad hocery is what the Army has in mind to "tailor land forces for combatant commanders".

What happens if there is no "piece" in the puzzle that fits the problems?

SLIDE 11

Reveals entire focus is to keep up the troop rotation into Iraq to bail out the Bush neocons ill-advised invasion which overthrew the secular government there when we need a secular government there to counter all the Islamofascists surrounding them.

SLIDE 12

Nothing about being superior in force protection, mobility or firepower, we are just going to slink into areas on foot and hope for the best.

SLIDE 13

82 piece pieces makes it easier for Schoomaker to keep plates spinning.

SLIDE 14

The question should be what IS changing?

"Everything we do is designed to support the Soldier

A heritage of fighting and winning our Nation's Wars

Traditions reflected in our unit's lineage and honors"

How are we supporting the Soldier when he is on foot or easily blown up in a HMMWV/Stryker truck? How are we protecting battle lineage and honors when we are going to turn the 82d Airborne into the 1234 BUA Module?

The most important slide in this presentation is slide 23 because it reveals the technotactical ignorance (sand) that the entire modularity plan rests on.

SLIDE 23

Quantitative Gradualism without qualitative comprehension of the battlefield problem

"Mission Category 1

o Offensive, Defensive, and Security Missions in open or mixed terrain
o Against either regular or irregular forces
o Premium on mobile protected firepower balanced with dismounted infantry

Mission Category 2

o Offensive, Defensive, and Security Missions in or near urban terrain against either regular or irregular forces
o When in Forced Entry or Early Entry context, premium is on C-130 transportability and wheeled mobility
o Premium is on infantry strength and mechanical transport Mobile protected firepower is an asset

Mission Category 3

o Offensive and Defensive Missions in close terrain (mountains, jungle, forests) against either regular or irregular forces
o Premium is on infiltration by foot and air assault mobility"

It's a lazy American bureaucrat's way of looking at battle problems as a quantitative scale of effort and money, typical WWII mass mentality, its bad tracked heavy (mission category 1), bad wheeled medium (mission category 2) and bad foot light force (mission category 3) pieces. The categories are all wrong. The battlefield does not break down into either you go on foot or wheels or tracks. Light tracks are more mobile and protective than medium wheels. You will need airborne and air assault 3D mobility in open terrains if enemy leaders are expected to flee a 2D heavy force assault and you want to block them and get them.

This idea that the dividing line between heavy and medium forces is URBAN TERRAIN where you unwisely WANT TO send in forces on rubber-tired wheels is sheer madness. Rubber tires burn, these vehicles cannot pivot turn or go through or over obstacles, they are dead meet in an urban close fight. Whoever wrote this slide has seriously tactically incompetent.

Then to lump forced-entry as being only wheeled is another bald-faced lie; we have thousands of 10.5 ton M113 Gavin light tracks and a few 17-ton M8 Buford light tanks that are parachute airdroppable and the former is CH-47 helicopter air assault transportable; trying to infer that C-130 air-transportability can only be done with Stryker wheels is a monstrous lie when a Stryker is so overweight it has to be stripped down and flow in in two two C-130s for only short tactically irrelevant distances and doesn't roll-off combat ready. The Stryker cannot be parachute dropped from a C-130 and is not certified to drop from a C-17.

Which brings up the next point, if we are going to need to use C-17s to air transport 2-3 Strykers at a time, why not transport more capable 2-3 Bradleys or better yet 5-at-a-time M113 Gavins instead? This bald-faced lie to try to claim air-transportability as just a virtue of the Stryker is a shoddy attempt to justify a bad medium unit structure that has no relevancy.

The last common lie is that only foot mobile troops can fight in mountain and jungles flies in the face of the amazing success of our light/medium tracked Armored Cavalry in Vietnam and the similarly tracked Northern Alliance which actually won the war to remove the Taliban in Afghanistan. Whoever wrote this statement is not only tactically inept he or she is historically ignorant. This further shows the Schoomaker modularity vision is ill-conceived and created without analysis. Unless there is a whole lot of folks who are going to fiull in the many blanks here and actually change the Army so its sub-components are actually more capable, in this case the sum of the parts are lesser than the whole. This is anti-synergism.