Military

Operation Steadfast: The United States Army Reorganizes Itself

 

CSC 1985

 

SUBJECT AREA Topical Issues

 

 

 

 

      USMC Command and Staff College            April 1985

      Quantico, VA

 

              Operation STEADFAST: The United States Army

           

                            Reorganizes Itself

 

                                                JAMES A. BOWDEN

                                                    MAJ, IN

                                                USA

 

 

     The history of the United States Army is more than the stirring

 

accounts of battles, campaigns, leaders, and soldiers arrayed in a

 

chronology or divided along any analytical azimuth.  There is another

 

history, the history of the Army in peace, which is very important.

 

What happens in the peacetime Army helps to determine the performance

 

of the Army in war.  The study of the Army as an organization is a

 

vital to understanding the Army in war or peace.  The Army as an org-

 

anization is at once a federal bureaucracy and a professional Ameri-

 

can institution.  Consequently, the study of the Army requires an in-

 

terdisciplinary approach to fully appreciate the complexity of the

 

organization and the interrelationships of simulataneous endogeneous

 

and exogeneous forces at any point in history.  Therefore, the hist-

 

ory of the Army is to a surprisingly large degree the history of the

 

organization as much as it is the history of the relatively brief,

 

violent, and vitally important encounters which are the raison d'etre

 

for the organization.

 

     A study of the organization may begin with structure and proced-

 

ures, political relationships and the environment of the era.  The

 

structure and processes, informal and formal, sociological and

 

political, help to determine who shall "run" the uniformed,

 

professional Army.  This is very important despite the outward

 

appearances today of a great, green machine and consumer of vast

 

resources.  This was important in the pre-World War II Army which

 

appeared to be so many far-flung small outposts peopled by polo-

 

players and dedicated students of war alike.

 

     People really make the difference in the Army as an organizat-

 

ion.  The organizational structure and procedures which help to

 

select the uniformed leaders of the service are subject in turn to

 

the influence of the leaders.  We have come full circle.  The

 

idiosyncratic influences in this mass organization are as vital as

 

the individual pyschological factrors are in combat.  Individuals in

 

key positions leave an imprint on the organization which is difficult

 

to quantify but impossible to ignore.  The success and failure of the

 

Army on the battlefield and its ability to help deter war is

 

predicated on the Army as an organization of structure, procedures,

 

and people in peace.  Obviously, politics intervene in the vertical

 

spectrum of war from individual combat to global strategy.  Yet,

 

success and failure at all levels is influenced by the Army, as it

 

is, in peace.  Operationally, battlefield success in war in the

 

tactical levels from squads to the theater operations is largely a

 

function of the Army, rather than politics of any stripe.  Also, the

 

environment of a period of time affects all aspects of the

 

organization.  The history of the United States Army as an

 

organization parallels the growth of the modern, American, democratic

 

state.

 

     This paper is a detailed account of the Army Reorganization of

 

1973, Operation STEADFAST.  It examines how, given the structure,

 

procedures, people and environment, a very important reorganization

 

was conceived and managed by the professional officers of the

 

institution which led to real changes in the structure, procedures.

 

and people of the organization.

 

     Once the decision was made to begin the withdrawal of U.S.

 

Forces from Vietnam in the Summer of 1969, the Army was a bureaucracy

 

facing a classic situation of organizational retrenchment.  Yet, the

 

obvious external pressures on the Army as an institution from every

 

direction in American society and from every other national

 

institution did not dictate the timing nor the exact shape of the

 

changes in the organization.  It seems that the direction of change

 

would necessarily be a reduction in size and resources for some years

 

to follow.

 

     However, the Army Reorganization of 1973 was the first of three

 

reorganizations,  which as a sum became a fundamental reformation of

 

the organization.  The change was profound because, unlike the

 

changes of the turn-of-the-century Root Reforms or the 1942

 

Reorganization (or the incremental changes in iterations of the

 

National Security Act of 1947), this reorganization was internally

 

directed with the assistance of the civilian leadership in the

 

Department of the Army.  Whereas, all former reorganizations required

 

the alliance of a very activist Secretary and a reform-minded

 

contigent of officers to battle the entrenched bureaucratic interests

 

of another alliance of officers and their allies in Congress.  This

 

reorganization is more limited in scope than the Prussian reforms of

 

the early 19th Century because it did not involve the society at

 

large, nor did it explicitly reform the principal organizations

 

within the Army.  It was a reform which preserved and enhanced the

 

opportunities for the professional officer corps to maintain its

 

autonomy in the management of the organization within the framework

 

of civilian control over the military.  This was an absolutely

 

essential prerequisite to marshal the human and material resources

 

needed to rebuild the Army after the political debacle in Vietenam

 

and the disintegration of the Army which was away from the fight.

 

    The United States Army in 1985 was painfully rebuilt from the

 

uniformed mob of the early 1970's by the investment of the hard work

 

of the officer and non-commissioned officer corps and the infusion

 

of some fine young people and carefully managed resources. The key

 

individuals to set the stage for the rebuilding of a national

 

institution were Army Generals William E. DePuy, Bruce C. Palmer Jr.,

 

and Creighton W. Abrams Jr.  This is an examination of the first step

 

in the reformation, Operation STEADFAST.

 

 

 

          BETWEEN REORGANIZATIONS - A TURBULENT DECADE

 

                          1962-1972

 

 

     WE TRAINED HARD -- BUT IT SEEMED THAT EVERY TIME WE WERE

 

BEGINNING TO FORM UP INTO TEAMS, WE WOULD BE REORGANIZED.  I WAS TO

 

LEARN LATER IN LIFE WE TEND TO MEET ANY NEW SITUATION BY

 

REORGANIZING, AND THE WONDERFUL METHOD IT CAN BE FOR CREATING THE

 

ILLUSION OF PROGRESS WHILE PRODUCING CONFUSION, INEFFICIENCY AND

 

DEMORALIZATION.

 

                                PETRONIUS ARBITER, 66 AD

 

 

 

     Petronius Arbiter's quote was a beloved epigram for many Army

 

officers as the Army reorganized itself during the throes of the

 

traumatic withdrawal from Southeast Asia.  The epigram was facile

 

enough to vent the frustrations of staff offficers pushing papers in

 

the Pentagon.  Yet, as the epigram gave no indication of the real

 

training and expertise of someone called Petronius Arbiter, the Army

 

Reorganization of 1972-73 could appear to be much less than it really

 

was.  Actually, Petronius Arbiter was the chronicler of the

 

pornographic carryings on of the court of the Emperorer Nero. (1)  In

 

fact the Army Reorganization of 1972-73 was more than a shuffling of

 

the housekeeping duties of the stateside Army to meet the pressures

 

of the Executive Branch and the Congress to drastically reduce after

 

a war.  The Army's Reorganization was an extraordinary, internally-

 

directed move to develop improved control of the management of the

 

Army and, consequently, increase the autonomy of the Army under the

 

direction of the professional, uniformed officers.  The turbulent

 

decade since the last major reorganization of the Army in 1962 (based

 

on the Hoelscher Committee's Project 80 Study) had not sown the seeds

 

for the need to reorganize as much as it had created the opportunity

 

for major changes.

 

     The "reforms" and reorganization brought about during the

 

McNamara era threatened the autonomy of the Army more than any other

 

Service.  When the analysts for the Secretary of Defense sought to

 

develop a programmatic approach to manage the department under the

 

direction of a chief executive officer, the Army was ill-prepared to

 

report its assets in personnel, equipment and finances.  It was

 

equally at a loss to explain how all the pieces of the puzzle of

 

commands, combat units and headquarters' staffs fit together to man,

 

equip, train and employ an "Army".  Since the 19th Century the Army

 

had been a series of semi-autonomous bureaus, which were loosely

 

federated as the "staff", and the units spread out in the field,

 

which were the "line".  The organizational history of the Army is the

 

story of conflict between the line and the staff.  The opportunities

 

for conflict are neither accidental nor neglected anachronisms.  As a

 

member of the Executive Branch, the War Department (the Department of

 

the Army), the United States Army (the regulars), the Army of the

 

United States (the National Guard and the conscripts), and the United

 

States Army Reserve (the Reserves - also part of the Army of the

 

United States) have their perogatives in the management of resources

 

and their internal autonomy written into the legislative concrete of

 

the United States Code.  The internal bureaucratic struggles of the

 

organization are fanned in the fires of the budgetary process.

 

       In the decade of the Sixties the Office of the Secretary of

 

Defense (OSD) was about to abrogate the autonomy, divided as it

 

was, of the Army.  The war in Vietnam diverted the attention of OSD

 

and the Army to the pressing details of present-tense crisis after

 

crisis.  The Army Staff in Washington and the line organizations in

 

the Continental United States (CONUS) did an excellent job in

 

preparing and prosecuting a distant war with minimal support from

 

mobilization.  The fighting Army which was built after the post-

 

Korean doldrums from the latter 1950's through the 1968 may have been

 

the finest, professsonal Army fielded by the United States.  The Army

 

as a bureaucracy, however,  was in different shape.  Since OSD had

 

taken the steps to bring the Services in line with the programmatic

 

approach of major U.S. corporations, the Army existed in the note-

 

books of organizations and commands on the shelf behind Secretary

 

Mcnamara's desk. (2)  The sum of the notebooks, theoritically, was

 

the Army "program".  Every change within the Army which changed

 

resource allocations had to be approved through the OSD.  The Army,

 

staff and line, was becoming the handmaiden to the notebooks.  While

 

the daily attention of the Army and OSD were focused on Vietnam

 

several steps were taken which would allow the Army to move towards a

 

thoughtful reorganization.  The start of the withdrawal from Vietnam

 

in the Summer of 1969 created the pressures which plunged the Army

 

headlong into the pursuit of reorganization.  The events which

 

prepared the way for reorganization included the following.

 

 

 

The Haines Board - 1966.     The Report to the Army Board to Review

 

Officers Schools in February 1966 concluded the Continental Army

 

Command had too much to do.  The report recommended further study to

 

reduce the span of control for the Continental Army Command. (3)

 

Interestingly enough the report was chaired by the officer who would

 

later oppose such a reorganization as the CONARC Commander, General

 

Ralph E. Haines.

 

The Brown Board - 1967.     The Brown Board was an in-depth

 

examination of the Army's equipment management from Company-level to

 

Headquarters, Department of the Army. The Board recommended changes

 

in the Army's logistical procedures and organization. (4)

 

The Blue Ribbon Defense Panel - 1970.     The Report to the President

 

and the Secretary of Defense on the Department of Defense was an

 

across the board review of the Department.  Mr. Gilbert H. Fitzhugh,

 

Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the Metropolitan

 

Life Insurance Company, headed a bi-partisan panel which produced 133

 

recommendations for Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird on July 1,

 

The Vice Chief of Staff of the Army (VCSA or the "Vice") Gen.  Bruce

 

Palmer Jr. attended a briefing with Secretary Laird, Mr. Fitzhugh and

 

members of the Blue Ribbon Panel on 19 July.  When Gen. Palmer

 

briefed the Army's General Staff Council the following day he was

 

critical of the Panel's recommendations.  He did not agree with the

 

Panel's recommendations for "a single program budget structure".  (5)

 

Secretary Laird had taken the responsibility for the Army programs

 

and budget from the notebooks behind the desk and given it back to

 

the Army.  However, the Assistant Vice Chief of Staff (AVCSA or the

 

"A-Vice") Lieutenant General (Lt.Gen.) William E.DePuy was aware of

 

the need to review the Army's organization and management.  The

 

coming reduction in the size of the Army in the post-Vietnam era

 

would put new pressures on the Army.  If the Army failed to influence

 

the process of cutting back, then it might have been reduced and

 

controlled with a capriciousness and completeness far exceeding

 

McNamara's notebooks.  Consequently, the appointment of the Blue

 

Ribbon Panel in 1969 was the impetus for the Chief of Staff, Gen.

 

William E. Westmoreland, the Vice Chief, Gen.Palmer, and the

 

Asssistant Vice Chief, Lt.Gen. DePuy to appoint an ad hoc study group

 

from the Force Planning Analysis Directorate of the Army Staff to

 

look at the organization of the Department of the Army.(6) Lieutenant

 

Colonel (Lt.Col.or LTC) Winthrop Whipple, Jr., an operations analyst

 

and LTC John V. Foley, a cost accountant, spent the summer of 1969

 

studying the Army organization.  They reported to Lt.Gen. DePuy and

 

formally briefed  Gen. Westmoreland at the end of September.  The

 

Whipple-Foley "Pillot Study on DA (Department of the Army)

 

Organization" was a tightly controlled review of organizational

 

problems and the especific personalities involved.  Dissemination of

 

any information outside of the Office of the Assistant Vice Chief of

 

Staff (OAVCSA) was expressly forbidden.  The report was an outline of

 

the problems of organization, management, and personalities.  The

 

report found Continental Army Command (CONARC) had too many roles and

 

missions.  The Combat Developments Combat (CDC) was a command without

 

resources.  The Army Material Command (AMC) did not have life-cycle

 

control for the equipment management.  Personnel management was

 

fragmented among three agencies: OPO (Office of Personnel

 

Operations), TAGO (The Adjutant General's Office), and DCSPER (Deputy

 

Chief of Staff for Personnel). (8)

 

     Based on this report, Gen. Westmoreland appointed Major General

 

David S. Parker as the chairman of a Special Review Panel (SRP) on

 

Department of the Army organization on 30 September 1969.  "The

 

Parker Panel" had a charter to report recommendations to the problems

 

identified in the Whipple-Foley Pilot Study by July 1970.  The panel

 

would not look at tactical organizations.  The panel would closely

 

examine the U.S. Continental Army Command, the Combat Developments

 

Command, the Army Material Command, and the Headquarters Department

 

of the Army Staff (the Army Staff or ArStaff). (9)

 

 

 

The Parker Panel.    Maj.Gen. David S. Parker selcted LTC Richard W.

 

Thompson as the Executive Officer for the panel.  LTC Thompson came

 

from the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations (DCSOPS)

 

at the end of 1969. (10)  The "Initial Terms of Reference" were ap-

 

proved by Gen. Westmoreland to give guidance for the panel.  The pan-

 

el was to investigate the roles of the U.S.Continental Army, the sub-

 

ordinate numbered armies of the continental United States (CONUSA),

 

the Military District of Washington, the Combat Developments Command,

 

the Class II Activities reporting directly to the Department of the

 

Army Staff, and the Headquarters, Department of the Army Staff. (11)

 

The panel was to examine the agencies to look at the organization and

 

management of the resources to run the Army.  Specifically, the panel

 

would look at the allocation of functions within the Army Staff and

 

the major CONUS commands.  It would look at proposals for alternative

 

organization and management practices which would help the Army

 

operate with reduced resources.  The panel would recommend procedures

 

to carry out the changes.

 

     Maj.Gen. Parker chose 13 officers from a pool of 80 to serve on

 

the panel by January 1970.  One civilian, a budget expert from the

 

Deputy Chief of Staff of Logistics (DCSLOG), was also a member.  The

 

panel interviewed widely throughout the headquarters in Washington

 

and the installations across the United States.  It interviewed some

 

retired officers.  Additionally, the panel interviewed representat-

 

ives of major civilian industries (for example IBM and Xerox).

 

     The questions to the military commanders and to the captains of

 

industry were to the point.  Executives were asked about the level of

 

decision-making, systems management (horizontal) vs. functional

 

management (vertical), and the growth and use of ad hoc committees.

 

Staff issues of organization, function and growth were addressed.

 

The Army leadership wanted to know if the shape of management

 

information systems was a function of the techniques of management,

 

the nature of the business, or the degree of supervision by a board

 

of governors.  It was especially important to see how organizations

 

dealt with the related functions of research and development,

 

material procurement, storage, sale, rental, maintenance, and

 

elimination of obsolete equipment. (12)

 

     The panel developed 41 "Revised Problem Statements" by 28 April

 

1970.  Seven of the problems were with the Army Staff, one was with

 

CONARC, and the other thirty-three were with the functional

 

responsibilities shared by the Army Staff and the three major

 

commands in the United States; CONARC, Combat Developments Command

 

(CDC), and the Army Material Command  (AMC). (13)  Many of the

 

complaints dealt with the procedures used on the staff to complete

 

the paperwork for any "staff action".  The overlapping

 

responsibilities among the staff lead to endless "turf fights".

 

     The Office of the Assistant Vice Chief of Staff (OAVCSA) was

 

a source of controversy.  The panel reviewed the functions of the

 

OAVCSA in detail. The OAVCSA had been intended as a stop-gap measure

 

which would work its way out of a job in two years as it addressed

 

the issues driven by OSD.  (14)   After General Johnson retired in

 

1968, the new Chief of Staff, Ben.  William E.  Westmoreland, brought

 

in his team with Gen.  Bruce C.  Palmer,Jr. as the Vice Chief of

 

Staff.  The new Assistant Vice-Chief  was William E. DePuy, Lt Gen.

 

DePuy redefined the duties of the A-Vice to solve some of the more

 

pressing problems of the Army Headquarters.  The A-Vice got involved

 

in the need to reach budgetary compromises somewhere below the

 

absolute pinnacle of the organization.  More of the efforts of the A-

 

Vice and the importance of the office as a means to intervene in the

 

Army Headquarters will be discussed later.  The "off-line" office of

 

the OAVCSA allowed the Chief of Staff and the Secretary of the Army

 

to have a very high-popwered office for fire-fighting the issues of

 

crucial importance to the organization without becoming bogged down

 

in the details of day-to-day responsibilities   The Parker Panel

 

reported, "In spite of the announced trend toward decentralization

 

within the DOD, the requirement for rapid and detailed response is

 

likely to require a continuing capability such as is provided by the

 

OAVCSA." (15)

 

     The Parker Panel determined that the responsibility for

 

management doctrine for all the non-tactical management of

 

information systems was fragmented among the Army Staff.  The Army

 

needed to closely examine how its many systems were operating, how

 

they were regulated and interacted, and how they contributed to the

 

management of the Army. The Army Authorization Documents System

 

(TAADS) is the paperwork which shapes, supports, directs, and

 

authorizes the Army at one level of authority below public law.  An

 

Army does not move on its stomach, it moves on its Regulations

 

and Tables.  TAADS had become too slow to keep up with the Army in

 

transition.  The Army had not standardized its Automatic Data

 

Processing Systems (ADPS) communications. (16)

 

     There were many cooks and no chef for material development.  The

 

Office, Chief of Research and Development (OCRD) did not have the

 

sole authority in the research and developoment field.  The

 

criticisms in the area of material development were not restricted to

 

OCRD.  The problems were an indictment of the entire system by the

 

users of any piece of equipment in the Army, the Army Staff, the DOD,

 

and the Congress.  The AMC, CDC, OCRD, ODCSOPS, and the OAVCSA were

 

involved in the research, development and acquisition of material for

 

the Army.  General Chesarek, the former A-Vice and the Commanding

 

General of AMC at the time, wanted to put another Deputy Chief of

 

Staff on the Army Staff.  The Deputy Chief of Staff for Material

 

Systems (DCSMS) would consolidate many of the functions spread across

 

the staff and among the major commands. (17)  This would help to

 

solve the problem of running all requirements for materiel through

 

the Assistant Chief of Staff for Force development (ACSFOR).

 

Furthermore, the Army lacked the technically competent officers to

 

manage a weapon or piece of equipment from its conception through

 

development until it is phased out of the inventory.  The career

 

development of officers needed for the material life-cycle management

 

was not receiving enough attention.

 

     The Combat Developments Command (CDC) was criticized because it

 

was a major command without any clout.  CDC should have been the

 

organization for the Army to develop the doctrine to guide the

 

employment of its many weapons systems and units across the spectrum

 

of combat.  There were overlapping responsibilities between CONARC

 

and CDC for doctrinal publications.  There was inadequuate

 

interaction between the doctrine developer and the schools.  Yet, the

 

CDC was lacking in manpower and financial resurces.  Consequently,

 

the officer in CONARC who was supposed to monitor the training in one

 

of the Army schools had no corespondent at CDC who could write

 

doctrine.  The officer at CONARC would have to fill both functions.