The Modern Louisiana Maneuvers - US Army Center Of Military History

for Defense Analyses simulations center in
Alexandria, Virginia, on 14 October 1992.
Following BG Franks' introductory briefing,
Task Force members presented a series of
demonstrations of operational simulations
and other available technologies to support
evaluation of warfighting and Title 10 issues.
The Board itself met in executive session for
about an hour at the end of the afternoon.
The body addressed the modified issues forwarded
from the GOWG, approved the list
for further investigation and evaluation in
the Louisiana Maneuvers in 1993, and assigned
proponents.
This final list of issues included five Title
10/departmental issues and five warfighting
issues and folded in several investigations
begun before the initiation of the LAM process.
The Title 10/departmental issues included
the question of whether the Army
needed numbered continental U.S. armies
(CONUSAs) ; the identification and assessment
of new technology to improve lethality
and deployability and conserve resources;
the acceleration of the acquisition process;
the validation of changes to mobilization
policy; an assessment of the Army's ability
to deploy worldwide three divisions in thirty
days and a corps in seventy-five days; and a
three-part sustainment issue: analysis of the
implications of varying war reserves'
stockage levels, analysis of split logistical
operations, and assessment of improvements
in the visibility of all Army assets. The
warfighting issues were equally broad and
varied; they included assessment of the requirement
for headquarters above corps;
military operations with unfamiliar forces;
domination of night operations into the 21st
century; enhancement of command and control
in combat across the force, including
battlefield digitization and fratricide reduction;
and command, control, communications,
computers, and intelligence (C4I) and
battlefield information dissemination. The
Issues Directorate then took the approved
issues and the proponency assignments and
began working with the proponents to develop
evaluation plans. 14
38
The timing of the first GOWG and Board
of Directors meetings caused the Army to
compress, for FY 93, the schedule that
Sullivan had foreseen for the Louisiana Maneuvers.
Theoretically, the issues for an upcoming
fiscal year should have been solicited
by the Task Force from proponents, discussed
by the GOWG, approved by the Board of Directors
, and inserted by planners in evaluation
modules embedded in upcoming Army
and CINC exercises before the fiscal year ever
began. These evaluation modules would have
detailed the experimentation with organizations,
equipment, or policies called for in the
evaluation plans. The culminating exercise,
beginning in FY 94, was to be the General
Headquarters exercise (GHQx) that was to
involve the HQDA Staff. That, at least, was
what Sullivan envisioned in the beginning.
To begin the next cycle in a timely manner,
the second GOWG convened at Fort
Monroe on 7-8 December 1992. This session
reexamined the 1993 Board of Directors
issues and those issues not forwarded
from the first GOWG to the Board, and discussed
proposed issues for FY 94. Many of
those participating had also participated in
the first GOWG, and their experience eased
the process.
More important to the functioning of this
GOWG and to its productivity, COL Rodgers
and his staff had searched diligently and
fruitfully before the second meeting for some
way to level the playing field within the
meetings so that all present could contribute
without openly conflicting with their
colleagues. They found their solution in an
electronic meeting system that the Army already
was developing through the Georgia
Tech Research Institute. Each GOWG participant
had access to a networked computer
terminal that was tied to a larger split screen.
Issue submissions or either items would appear
on the large screen and on each
terminal's screen. The participants could type
their own responses at their terminals and
those responses would appear anonymously
on the main screen. Each individual could
then weigh the responses of others in craft-
The Modern Louisiana Maneuvers