Army’s next challenge: The ocean

Source: Politico
The U.S. Army has proved over its 238-year history that it can fight and win almost anywhere — in the jungles, deserts or mountains.
The next venue, however, might prove to be the most difficult: oceans.
President Barack Obama’s strategic “rebalance” to the Western Pacific was good news for three military services: the Navy, whose ships sail on or under the vast ocean; the Marine Corps, whose troops deploy from them; and the Air Force, which needs long-range weapons and aircraft to cover the skies. Less so for the Army with its heavy tanks and infantry formations.
The Army says it has an important role, too, but selling its sibling services, Pentagon leaders and Congress on what that is has become a full-time job.
As the Army gathers this week for its annual meeting at the Washington Convention Center, attendees are reminded that it’s playing for the highest stakes. If it can convince the Pentagon and Congress about the value of its role in the Pacific, the service could move into a natural new phase as it winds down the era of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But if it can’t seal the deal, the Army risks getting left behind.
“We are looking forward — regardless of where our budgets are, regardless of what we’re given, we have to look forward,” said Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno. “We can’t wait.”
Odierno and Army Secretary John McHugh are eager to talk up the Army’s future in the Pacific. Most of the chiefs of defense of the major Pacific powers are Army chiefs, they say. Seven of the world’s largest 10 land armies belong to Pacific powers. Tens of thousands of American troops are already stationed in Japan and South Korea.
The Army wants to meet the other services and U.S. allies overseas more than halfway. It’s elevated the head of U.S. Army Pacific, Gen. Vincent Brooks, to a four-star commander. That move was a posthumous vindication for the long-serving late Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, who represented Brooks’s headquarters at Fort Shafter as part of his longtime advocacy for the state’s military installations.
“My late husband felt that this fourth star was critical to our position in the Pacific,” Inouye’s widow, Irene, said at Brooks’s change of command.
Brooks said Monday that “doors have opened to the four-star command position in ways they weren’t before. This has been beneficial to the interest of the United States and certainly to the Army in the region.” Being a more-senior general gets Brooks in the door with senior commanders and ministers of defense, he said.
The Association of the U.S. Army gave Brooks a starring spot on the opening day of its conference on Monday, where he continued to describe the important role he said the Army would have.
“There’s plenty of work to be done in the Pacific, and our partners are eager to see us coming around,” Brooks said.
The trick will be carving out a role for the Army that the other services don’t already play. The Marine Corps, for example, has ancestral ties to the Navy and already owns fleets of vehicles and aircraft designed to operate from amphibious ships. And the Army needs the long-distance reach of Air Force cargo aircraft to get its troops across the vast Pacific — Brooks described how Army paratroopers had to fly for 16 hours from Alaska before they could jump into an exercise in Australia this year.
But the future can’t be about individual services, he said — commanders have to broaden their perspectives no matter which uniforms they wear.
“We operate jointly, everywhere in the world today. There’s no environment that doesn’t do something with another service. It’s not about the services. It’s about the environment.”
The Army also has short-term problems greater than winning over its uniformed siblings. McHugh blasted Congress for the budget roller coaster he has endured since he’s been on the job — he hasn’t had a budget for more than half the time he’s been secretary, he said, and Congress hasn’t passed an appropriation on time since 2007.
And sequestration has meant hundreds of vehicles, weapons and aircraft from Afghanistan aren’t being repaired and are unavailable, McHugh said, and many soldiers can’t even get time to train with their rifles.
“It really does bring back those pictures of World War I, of recruits working out with broom handles and sticks because recruits didn’t have real weapons to train with,” he said.
Even under these circumstances, commanders still say they don’t want the Army’s new philosophy to be just an academic exercise inside Washington — they want it to go all the way down to the operational level. That means doing their best to be a part of the Navy and Air Force’s big new conceptual push known as Air-Sea Battle.
Army Maj. Gen. Gary Cheek, who recently served as the Army’s deputy commander in the Middle East, told Congress this month that the services were cooperating to create new tactics in key areas such as the Strait of Hormuz. Both Army Patriot missiles and Navy cruisers might be placed under the tactical command of the Air Force, he said, ensuring “overlapping” coverage of weapons and air defense.
Cheek also described Army AH-64 Apache gunship helicopters operating from the decks of Navy warships at sea, training to go after small attack craft with targeting data from Air Force early warning aircraft. This kind of novel arrangement might help Navy commanders keep a “swarm” of Iranian small boats well away from American warships or oil tankers in the event of a crisis or conflict.
“Despite the title Air-Sea Battle, I’m very happy — and the Army’s very happy — to be a charter member of the organization, and a participant,” Cheek said.