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Army Transformation Wargame (ATWG) Vigilant Warriors 02

The annual Army Transformation Wargame (ATWG), sponsored by TRADOC, was conducted 21-26 April 2002, at the Army War College. Vigilant Warriors 2002, as the ATWG was titled, was the final major exercise for this year's series of wargames. While it looked at the Army and Joint operations, the ATWG also examined the future operational environments in which operations will take place.

War gamers at Carlisle Barracks, PA, tested the envisioned capabilities of the U.S. military of tomorrow -- a quickly-deployable, interoperable, high-tech force with global reach - in April 2002 as part of the Army's "Vigilant Warriors 2002" war games at Carlisle, the third annual. From April 21-26, a group of 500 U.S. and allied military and civilian personnel, sequestered in rooms filled with wall-mounted maps, telephones and computer terminals, conducted "table-top" exercises at Carlisle. The war gamers focused on using expected military capabilities of tomorrow -- to include the Army's future Objective Force -- to mitigate several global crisis scenarios set in the year 2020.

The primary purpose of the ATWG 2002 was to examine OF characteristics, concepts and capabilities in a series of crises in a future global environment. A number of teams were used to challenge national leadership to make decisions in support of the National Security Strategy (NSS) and the National Military Strategy (NMS). Each element of national power was considered: Diplomatic, Informational, Military and Economic.

Lessons learned from this year's war games not only assist the Army in development of its Objective Force envisioned around the year 2020, they also address service interoperability capabilities espoused by DoD's Joint Vision doctrine. The world situation has changed greatly since the Cold War ended a decade ago, he remarked, pointing to the absence of a peer competitor - for now - that can militarily challenge America.

Scenarios depicted in this year's Vigilant Warrior exercises include cascading military-strategic crises in the Far East, Indonesia, Latin America, the Balkans, the Caspian Sea region, and homeland threats to the United States, noted Bill Rittenhouse, TRADOC's director of war games. The war games provide military planners the opportunity to obtain operational understanding of the effects and capabilities of military transformation. However, the war-gaming process "goes beyond" addressing and solving mock military-political emergencies. It gets to the notion of strategic responsiveness across the spectrum, as a part of this joint team. It gets to change within our process of change, our institutions for that, our culture, our philosophy toward war fighting. Most importantly, war-gaming helps U.S. military planners to understand how emerging American technology could be applied to military needs, as well as technology available on the international marketplace.

The 2002 exercises at Carlisle involved increased combined arms or joint participation, Rittenhouse noted, as compared to more Army-specific scenarios in previous years. It would take several days to resolve this year's mock global "hotspots" at Carlisle, that in real time would last more than a year.

Army planners expect that brigades equipped with Strykers could be deployed to world hotspots within 96 hours, much faster than heavy armor units. It took six months to deploy U.S. forces to the Mideast for Operations Desert Shield and Storm, primarily because tank units had to be transported by ship. Digital communications partnered with unmanned aerial reconnaissance sensors will enhance these units' ability to instantaneously pinpoint the whereabouts of friendly and enemy forces, Rittenhouse noted. When matured, the capabilities of these units, now called Initial Brigade Combat Teams, will be shared across the Army and incorporated into the Objective Force of 2020.

Army Maj. Gen. Jerry Boykin, commanding general of the Special Warfare Center, Fort Bragg, NC, worked the war game as the special operations forces commander for the American Joint Task Force in the Indonesian scenario that involved a fictional U.N. action to separate warring factions. The idea is to get them separated and then be able to transition to a UN peacekeeping force.

The Indonesia scenario is a joint operation involving all the services. The Marines have a fairly robust force afloat. The Army is playing its Objective Force, and then we have the Air Force and the Navy playing their future technologies. US airborne and air assault troops would come in handy in his Indonesia scenario, as it is located in a part of the world with few improved roads. Robotics and UAVs would be widely used for high-human-risk surveillance, reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering missions. More long-range air transport and fast sea transport would be needed to move troops for his scenario.

The Caspian Sea scenario involved competing regional interests, and eventually war, over oil and natural gas. Forces seized territory near an important pipeline. After diplomatic efforts failed to resolve the situation, he noted, American troops were sent to the region. There had been 30 days of pretty intensive combat, with the Army's Objective Force being the key maneuver element that's come against the Red force. The Red air force is unique in the Caspian scenario. It's comprised entirely of unmanned aerial vehicles, almost 1,000 of them. They used them as 'niche' technology against the Army's Objective Force, which is a very . capable force. The Army's Objective Force in the Caspian Sea scenario is very rapidly deployable and gets to the battlefield with a lot of capabilities, especially in communications and intelligence-gathering.

As part of early lessons learned in the scenario, the joint community is going to have to weigh in to provide adequate air transport capability to get the Objective Force to the battlefield so it can be fully effective. There were numerous combat service support (CSS) sustainment issues that arose from Exercise Vigilant Warriors 02. Some included the need for a robust Logistics Civilian Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), identification of production shortfalls in our industrial base, the need to reexamine the strategy for Army Prepositioned Stocks (APS), and the requirement for a central, global logistics management agency.

The distribution-based logistics concept increases combat systems strategic mobility. It drives a change from the current practice of force-oriented Army pre-positioned stocks to a sustainment-oriented Army pre-positioned stocks strategy. Pre-positioning sustainment assets reduces the demands on strategic air and sealift for sustainment, thereby enhancing strategic responsiveness and agility. Effective distribution-based logistics provides strategic and operational sustainment mobility, mitigates the strategic impact of maximum on-ground airframe constraints, and significantly reduces the time required for maneuver force closure.