The Modern Louisiana Maneuvers - US Army Center Of Military History

Given the constraints within which he
worked, it is not surprising that Sullivan initially
made a few false starts. Eager to build
momentum for change within the Army, he
began work on redesigning the Army's divisions
during the first few weeks of his term.
While en route to Europe in late June for his
first visit as Chief of Staff, he analyzed several
proposals for new division deSigns and
identified options for further analysis. By
early July 1991, however, Sullivan had realized,
as he advised the DCSOPS and his Staff
Group, that the Army needed to proceed
more deliberately in reshaping its combat
units than his earlier consideration of the
redesign proposals indicated. He discarded
the redesign options he had developed, along
with a tentative timetable that would have
fielded a prototype division and slice only
two years later. Central in his mind-and in
line with CBRS-was the need to finalize the
Army's force-proj ection doctrine for the
post-Cold War era before actually reorganizing
the force. This doctrine, formulated in
response to the new national military strategy,
would drive the changes in the design
of the force. 2o Pursuing his intent to include
senior Army leaders in the corporate
decisionmaking of the Army, he discussed
revising the doctrine with the Army's fourstar
generals at the Summer Senior Commanders
Conference, 6-8 August 1991. 21
Also that August, GEN Frederick M.
Franks assumed command of the Army Training
and Doctrine Command (TRADOC).22
Franks took very seriously TRADOCs role as
the architect of the Army's future forces. He
came to the command with many ideas about
the ways in which land warfare was changing-ideas
based on the Army's experience in
Operation JUST CAUSE and on his own experiences
as the VII Corps Commander in Operation
DESERT STORM. He also had some definite
thoughts on how Army doctrine should
evolve to accommodate those changes, which
he enunciated in terms of five "battle dynamics":
early entry, lethality, survivability; battle
space-mounted and dismounted; depth and
simultaneous attack; battle command; and
12
GEN Frederick M. Franks
sustainment. These battle dynamiCS ultimately
became part of the new doctrine 23
After Franks had visited the elements of
his command over the next few months and
assessed their prospective role in accomplishing
TRADOCs multifaceted mission, he came
away with the sense that the Army had not
established institutions to experiment with
the changing nature of warfare. Thus, when
he visited Sullivan on 1 November 1991, he
discussed with the Chief of Staff the results
of his assessment and recommended that the
Army create some mechanism to experiment
with change. In support of his recommendation,
Franks cited examples from recent Army
history, including both the Louisiana Maneuvers
and the Howze Board studies that had
resulted in the air assault concepts first tested
and implemented by the Army in the early
1960s. Given his command's role as architect
of the future force, Franks believed he should
begin this experimentation with change in
TRADOC 24
As it happened, BG Harold W Nelson,
Chief of Military History, had just given
Sullivan one of the first copies of Christopher
The Modern Louisiana Maneuvers