The Modern Louisiana Maneuvers - US Army Center Of Military History

With cancellation of the 1993 version of
Exercise PRIME DIRECTIVE, the exercise that
was to have been the vehicle for much GHQx
93 experimentation, it became necessary to
find other ways to evaluate the 1993 LAM
issues and to assess HQDA's ability to perform
its Title 10 functions. As of the initial
exercise coordination conference on 12-13
January 1993, HQDA had not yet settled on
a way to do this, but during a LAM Quarterly
IPR later in the month, GEN Sullivan
directed that a GHQx be conducted during
FY 93 in which the DA staff would participate
and be forced to allocate scarce resources.
By February, Sullivan had chosen
to participate in Exercises ULCHI/Focus LENS
(Korea) and FUERTES DEFANSAS (SOUTH COM)
during July and August. Through mandating
DA participation in these exercises,
Sullivan sought to accomplish the GHQx 93
mission, which was to stress the headquarters'
crisis-response and decisionmaking system
to see if the Department could resource,
synchronize, and maintain asset visibility in
two concurrent regional conflicts. When
conducted 12-28 August, GHQx 93 did
challenge existing capabilities, particularly
the staff in the DCSOPS' Operations Directorate,
which established a Crisis Action
Team to support the two exercise headquarters
on mobilization, deployment, sustainment,
and redeployment issues 35 The Army's
Concepts Analysis Agency and the Joint Staff
supported the exercise, which postulated one
major regional contingency (MRC) and one
lesser regional contingency (LRC) , occurring
nearly simultaneously, to better test the Army
Staff.
GHQx 94, a four-phase CPX, began in
November 1993 and consisted of four weeks
of active play spread in increments over eight
months. Although the exercise again presented
a scenario of two simultaneous regional
crises, it involved many more agencies and
participants than had the previous version and
included, in the third phase, a linkage to the
Command and General Staff College's endof-course
exercise, PRAIRIE WARRIOR 94. A highlight
of PRAIRIE WARRIOR 94, from the point of
44
view of the LAM, was the first full exercise,
through simulation, of the Mobile Strike Force
(MSF), a brigade task force with Information
Age equipment and capabilities 36
The extensive GHQ exercise resulted in
several observations, which the ODCSOPS
Operations Directorate briefer listed as "insights"
in his presentation to the July 1994
Board of Directors meeting. First, force projection
requires proactive, anticipatory
decisionmaking; second, force proj ection
with a two-MRC strategy requires establishing
priorities and ensuring a balanced force
structure; third, continuous staff interaction
is necessary to ensure National Command
Authority and CINC decisions that allocate
scarce Army resources effectively; fourth,
early access to Reserve Component forces is
essential in support of a force-proj ection
Army; fifth, total asset visibility is essential
to support a force-projection Army; sixth,
projected available deployment dates for RC
combat forces are inconsistent; and, finally,
some units identified for the first MRC could
not initially meet published criteria for deployment.
The Board of Directors approved
the DCSOPS recommendations and taskings
resulting from the findings, and the Director
of the Army Staff distributed the briefing
slides with his own cover memo, setting suspense
dates for corrective action plans.
DCSOPS representatives also received approval
of the concept for GHQx 95 at the
same July 1994 Board of Directors meeting 3?
Although Sullivan understood quite well
the essential Joint character of modern war,
and although the Army secured Joint Staff
support of the GHQx's, the Army made no
concerted effort, at least during the first two
years of the Task Force's existence, to involve
the Joint Staff or the Joint Chiefs any further
in the Louisiana Maneuvers. While the Joint
Staff apparently expressed some interest in
what the Army was doing with LAM, certainly
GEN Powell, as an Army officer, could
not push greater JCS involvement. Sullivan
himself was concerned on two counts: first,
that integrating the other services would be
very tough to do, and, second, that if other
The Modern Louisiana Maneuvers