The Modern Louisiana Maneuvers - US Army Center Of Military History

several years and to maintain the Army's effectiveness
as a fighting force. To accomplish
that, he would need a vehicle that permitted
him to exercise positive leadership.
The Concepts-Based Requirements System
(CBRS), which the Army had developed
during the Cold War, was oriented on dollars
and the Program Objective Memorandum
(POM) process. CBRS governed nearly
all Army change processes and had done so
successfully throughout that conflict. Tied
as it was into the Defense Department's Planning,
Programming, and Budgeting System
and into the congressional funding process,
CBRS and the mechanisms that supported it
would likely continue to govern most Army
modernization for the foreseeable future.
Sullivan determined, however, that CBRS
would not suffice as a leadership vehicle for
the new era.
As he engaged in this process of "discovery
learning," seeking such a vehicle,
Sullivan sought advice and good ideas from
a vast array of colleagues, former subordinates,
and consultants. To name all of those
with whom he discussed these and related
matters is not possible. He certainly did consult
GENs Dennis ]. Reimer, Frederick M.
Franks,] .H. Binford Peay III, jimmy D. Ross,
Leon E. Salomon, john H. Tilelli, GEN (Ret.)
Carl E. Vuono, MGs Lon E. Maggart and
William A. Stofft, and BG Harold W Nelson.
Based on his discussions, his sense of
Army history, and particularly his reading
of Christopher Gabel's The U.S. Army GHQ
Maneuvers of 1941 (published in fall 1991) ,
Sullivan decided that to change the way the
Army changed he needed to engage in a
"Louisiana Maneuvers" (LAM) of his own.
He said that he took the name from
GEN George C. Marshall's pre-World War
II General Headquarters exercises in Louisiana,
Texas, and the Carolinas because, "I
was compelled by the power of Marshall's
ideas and by his intent to conduct experiments
that would be the basis for designing
new units and battlefield processes . ...
Borrowing Marshall's title was a signal that
business as usual was not good enough, that
vi
I was fostering innovation and growth in
extraordinary ways . .. I made it part of my
office to Signal that I-not merely my staffwas
going to be personally involved."
During the last months of 1991 and the
beginning of 1992, the Chief of Staff worked
with his colleagues and advisers to develop
a concept for iterative experimentation that
would make extensive use of computerbased
simulations to test proposed doctrine,
procedures, organizations, and equipment.
He relied in this work upon his staff and
upon his senior commanders, notably GEN
Franks, the u.S. Army Training and Doctrine
Command (TRADOC) Commander, within
whose command much of the original analysis
of the concept's viability took place.
Sullivan's objective was to evolve a process
that would enable the Army to arrive at solutions
that had been proven in simulation
before changing policies or doctrine, buying
equipment, or reorganizing forces. The
result of this effort, and of the interplay of
creative tensions among the Army's senior
leaders that contributed to the evolution of
LAM, was a strategically agile process that
involved those leaders as a corporate Board
of Directors in gUiding the Army into the
21st century. The personal extension of the
Chief of Staff's Office organized to make LAM
work was the LAM Task Force, headquartered
at Fort Monroe, Virginia.
The LAM process, which functioned from
mid-1992 to mid-1994, was a cyclic exercise
with several definite steps. The Task
Force first solicited issues and good ideas
from the Army's major commands. It next
presented the issues to a General Officer
Working Group (GOWG), composed of GO
representatives of the commands submitting
the issues, that discussed and approved or
disapproved the various issues and prioritized
them before forwarding them to the
Board of Directors (BoD). The BoD then considered
the issues forwarded from the
GOWG, considered other issues proposed by
BoD members, and approved selected issues
for experimentation and investigation during
that year's LAM cycle. The BoD also pri-