A major determinant in how much equipment the Army will acquire in the future is a possible return to the division-based organization. When the Army was reorganizedt his last decade during the Iraq War from a division- to a brigade-based structure, equipment demand soared because each brigade had to be outfitted with enough vehicles and aircraft. Now the Army is reconsidering the modular brigade makeup simply because it is too expensive to maintain and in some cases there are not enough resources to supply every brigade, Chiarelli said.
The Army will have 158,000 Humvee trucks by 2012, and it is not clear why such a high number is needed, Chiarelli said. “A lot of that [growth in the Humvee fleet] had to do with moving to a modular force,” he said. It has now become clear that the modular force is “not as efficient as a division-based force when it comes to equipment,” he explained. Whereas in a division, equipment can be allocated to units based on need, “When you break into brigades, you have to provide the capability to each and every one of the brigades.”
The Army Training and Doctrine Command is expected to offer recommendations over the next six to nine months for possibly doing away or partially modifying the modular brigade structure, Chiarelli said.
Now I admit that I've long thought that the division had a role in allocating fire support for the various brigades under it in high intensity combat. A decade ago I wrote in Military Review that I thought we could go to a 2-brigade division (with more divisons for rotation purposes) to make the division more strategically mobile, with the option of adding a third National Guard brigade (or another active duty brigade if time is of the essence) in case we needed more bulk for a more capable enemy in a high intensity conventional environment.
While the brigade combat teams have been successful in Iraq and Afghanistan in a counter-insurgency role, maybe full spectrum combat means we need the traditional division. But to bring back the traditional division role (as opposed to the new role these headquarters gained as command entities like the old World War II corps rather than being a logistical entity, too, as they were until recently) simply because we can't afford to buy low-tech Humvees and trucks? Really?
If we need the old-style division back, by all means bring it back. But if the reason is we don't want to buy vehicles, just buy the damn vehicles.
