The Modern Louisiana Maneuvers - US Army Center Of Military History

one- or two-star representatives of the fourstar
commanders and selected other officers,
then met and received appropriate information
briefings on the process and their role in
it. The sponsors of the various issues then
presented their issues to the assembled
GOWG, which discussed them and voted
whether to recommend that the Board of Directors
consider particular issues for exercise
or experimentation in the next cycle of Louisiana
Maneuvers. Finally, the group voted on
the priority of the issues selected.
From the GOWG, the Task Force carried
the prioritized issues to the Board of Directors,
which met at least twice a year as part
of a scheduled Army senior commanders
conference. The participants were the Army
four-star commanders and the Army War
College Commandant, the DCSOPS, often
the DCSLOG, the Vice Chief, and the Chief
of Staff. Selected three-star commanders and
a few two-star officers also participated in
some Board deliberations. The Board was to
function as the Army's corporate board of
directors , with the members putting aside
their parochial regional or command-related
concerns and considering the issues recommended
by the GOWG, as well as other
matters, on the basis of what was best for
the whole Army. In addition to judging an
issue's worthiness for exercise, experimentation,
and funding and providing strategic
direction for the investigation of those approved,
the members also allocated or assumed
responsibility-became proponentsfor
particular issues. They often offered resources,
such as participation in their exercises,
to further resolving an issue.
Once the Board made its decisions, the
Task Force's Issues Directorate ensured that
those assigned proponency for the issues
understood their responsibilities and that
appropriate other agencies were designated
to support the proponents' efforts. The Issues
Directorate then worked with the Operations
and Exercise Directorates and with
the proponents to develop experimentation
and analysis programs that often included
participation in exercise simulations.
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One important way in which the LAM
Task Force then encouraged innovation in
the Army was by allocating "seed" money to
fund initial experimentation. HQDA used
funding from various sources throughout the
Army for LAM issue investigation, an expenditure
in the $6.5 million range beginning
in FY 94 (October 1993-September 1994).
Ultimately, the Task Force allocated the funds
to proponents based on the priorities established
in the GOWG and approved in the
Board of Directors meetings.7
With increasing frequency, the members
of the Task Force-from the Operations Directorate,
in particular-traveled and talked
to government researchers and industry as
they sought new, better tools and more innovative
approaches to investigating and resolving
issues. They especially sought more
powerful and sophisticated simulations that
could replicate reality with ever greater fidelity
so that the exercises and the experiments
conducted within them would yield
more realistic, detailed, and reliable results.
Through this search process, they also discovered
promising technologies and devices
of all sorts and advised interested agencies
about them 8 The increasing involvement of
Task Force members in this "technology
scouting," while useful to the Army, would
lead some to observe that they had strayed
from their original purpose and were too
involved at levels of detail below the strategic/operational
level that the critics believed
Sullivan had originally intended. Closer
analysis of the results of this activity-and
of Sullivan's responses to those results-indicates
that they were very much what the
Chief of Staff intended 9
The LAM process was iterative. Following
the exercise, experimentation, and analysis
program for that year's round of Louisiana
Maneuvers, the Task Force would collect,
analyze, and refine the results and prepare
to submit them with a newly solicited
round of issues to the next GOWG, thereby
starting the cycle again. 10 Eventually, the Issues
Directorate codified the process that
proponents' action officers should use to
The Modern Louisiana Maneuvers