The Modern Louisiana Maneuvers - US Army Center Of Military History

On 9 March 1992, GEN Gordon R.
Sullivan, Chief of Staff of the u.S. Army, announced
his intention to alter radically the
way the Army approached change. In his
message to the Army's senior leaders,
Sullivan described a new concept, which he
named "the Louisiana Maneuvers" after the
historic exercises that the u.S. Army used to
test new organizations and doctrine on the
eve of Wo rld War II. These new maneuvers ,
however, were not another series of largeunit
field exercises as their predecessors had
been; in fact, they were not, strictly speaking,
maneuvers at all. The Louisiana Maneuvers
were the expression of GEN Sullivan's
vision of a systematic way to assess and improve
the Army's ability to carry out its mission.
The Chief of Staff envisioned the new
Louisiana Maneuvers as using a variety of
means, including rapid feedback from experimentation
and exercises and an increasingly
sophisticated and extensive use of computer-based
simulations, to shape the post­
Cold War Army 1 From that point until mid-
1995, the modern Louisiana Maneuvers
spearheaded institutional change within the
Army
This monograph is primarily an institutional
history of the modern Louisiana Maneuvers
, describing their purpose, organization,
functions , and activities. The history of
the maneuvers offers useful inSights into the
Army's approach and reaction to change. A
INTRODUCTION
full assessment of the maneuvers' long-term
effects on the Army must await implementation
of the primary initiatives that resulted
from the Louisiana Maneuvers process , and
since one of Sullivan's purposes was to change
the way the Army changes , such an assessment
must also address the institution's longterm
propensity for change. This study,
though, can draw several tentative conclusions
about the importance of Sullivan's vision
for the future Army and about the Louisiana
Maneuvers' initial effect on shaping the
Army of the 21st century2
The original Louisiana Maneuvers took
their name from several high-level, increasingly
complex, experiment-based field exercises
that the Army conducted, principally
in Louisiana, during 1940 and 1941. The
term is most closely associated with the General
Headquarters exercises that Army Chief
of Staff GEN George C. Marshall and MG
Lesley ]. McNair, GHQ Chief of Staff,
mounted in 1941 in Louisiana and then in
the Carolinas . These maneuvers culminated
a series of corps- and field army-level exercises
that the Army had inaugurated in 1938
to train troops and units , test newly developed
doctrinal and organizational concepts,
identify equipment requirements, and evaluate
the future senior leaders of the wartime
Army By 14 September 1941, 472,000
troops were concentrated for these maneuvers
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