The Modern Louisiana Maneuvers - US Army Center Of Military History

erational and staff assignments, and others
who served him and the Army as colleagues,
planners, and consultants. He usually communicated
with these individuals informally
and sporadically, depending on the information
he needed and the type of advice he
thought he required. Sometimes, Sullivan
convened groups of these people to gather
different perspectives on the issues confronting
him. Those who knew him well often
submitted unsolicited memos, essays, or articles
to stimulate his thinking, even after
he became Chief of Staff.29
Historians were among those whom he
consulted most frequently. He had known
MG William A. Stofft since they were students
together in the Armor Officers Advanced
Course at Fort Knox, 1964-1965,
and he had maintained contact with Stofft
as the latter moved on to become the Army's
Chief of Military History, Director of Management
on the Army Staff, and, after 1991,
Commandant of the Army War College.
Stofft provided historically based inSights
and advice, a function that BG Nelson,
Stofft's successor as Chief of Military History,
fulfilled as well. Sullivan had also known
historian Dr. Roger ]. Spiller since his tenure
as Deputy Commandant of the Command
and General Staff College. These historians
provided Sullivan with additional
grist for his intellectual milPo
The range of former colleagues with
whom the Chief maintained contact was extensive.
In addition to Franks, Peay, Ross,
and others with whom he routinely interacted
anyway, he enjoyed close and longstanding
ties with COL Lon E. Maggart. A
fellow Armor officer, Maggart had long been
associated with the community of Army intellectuals,
beginning with his membership
in GEN William E. DePuy's "Boathouse
Gang" of doctrine writers who had produced
the 1976 edition of FM 100-5 under GEN
DePuy's guidance. This manual had integrated
lessons learned from the 1973 Arab­
Israeli War with other important doctrinal
concepts to produce a startlingly new approach
to Army operations. Maggart had
14
served with Sullivan in the 3d Armored Division
and the 1st Infantry Division and had
maintained close contact with him over the
intervening years, prOViding Sullivan a
sounding board for ideas and a source of
fresh thoughts 31 Still another former subordinate
was COL Robert D. Rodgers. Rodgers
had worked for Sullivan and Maggart in both
the 3d Armored Division and the 1st Infantry
Division, and he had maintained contact
with Sullivan over the years as we1l 32 COL
Richard A. Cowell, who came to the LAM
Task Force as head of the Issues and then
the Synchronization Directorate and later
became the Task Force's last long-term Director,
had served as Sullivan's cavalry squadron
commander in the 1st Infantry Division.
This list does not begin to exhaust the number
of other officers to whom Sullivan turned
for advice and information and with whom
he "thought out loud" and discussed different
ideas 33
Consultants in various fields also made
contributions to Sullivan's thinking. Dr. Lynn
Davis, then the Head of the RAND Arroyo
Center, had received extensive briefings from
TRADOC's DCS for Analysis (DCS-A) on the
LAM concept and supported it. She then
conversed with Sullivan several times and
wrote several notes and essays in early 1992
to help him develop his own emerging concept
of the Louisiana Maneuvers 34 Another
consultant whose input had some impact
was LTG (Ret.) Frederic J. Brown, Sullivan's
former boss as the Armor Center Commander,
and an Army intellectual of long
standing. Brown corresponded with Sullivan
sporadically on the future course of land
warfare and the Army.35 Sullivan also made
a point of discussing the Louisiana Maneuvers
with GEN (Ret.) Jack N. Merritt, President
of the Association of the United States
Army, in order to gain the insights that the
head of the Army's support organization
could provide 36
In all of Sullivan's deliberations he considered
ways to take advantage of distributed
interactive simulations (DIS) to speed
the process of change, shorten test and ac-
The Modern Louisiana Maneuvers