On Point: the United States Army in Operation Iraqi ... - Boekje Pienter

commanders to consider the battlespace across the spectrum of conflict in ways rarelyconsidered over the previous 50 years. The Army’s adoption of the COE is remarkablebecause it is largely the result of an acceptance of the idea that the Army had to changehow it viewed the operational environment following the Cold War. The COE is anestimate of the possibilities and an accounting for known variables that forces intellectualand physical agility.• The Combat Training Centers (NTC, JRTC, CMTC, and BCTP) adjusted theirrepresentations of the battlefield to reflect experiences learned on the fields of Somalia,Haiti, Rwanda, and the Balkans. For a variety of reasons, JRTC was the most successfulin replicating the environment experienced in Iraq, although the other centers were notfar behind. Both JRTC and CMTC mobilized resources to train for environments otherthan the Soviet Central Front model earlier than the NTC and BCTP. At the outset, theJRTC training featured contingencies that in the 1980s were less dangerous than theCold War’s worst case, but in some ways more complex. In the early 1990s the CMTCembarked on changes to accommodate possible missions in the Balkans. BCTP madesimilar adjustments, including civilians on the battlefield, more complex scenarios,and greater emphasis on SOF within the limitations of the simulations used. The NTCalso responded to changes in the environment but retained a requirement to train formajor regional contingencies, so change there was more incremental than at the othercenters. By the late 1990s the NTC attempted to account for changes in the operationalenvironment. These centers reinforced the lessons gathered in the field, turning many ofthem into valid lessons learned.• Deployment Readiness Exercises (DREs) served to reinforce these lessons learned justbefore the forces deployed to the operations. One of the benefits of the high deploymentoperations tempo was that a vast percentage of soldiers rotated through the DREs and thesubsequent contingency operations, leading to a wide distribution of these lessons andskills.Thus, the Army suffered a swirling mix of initiatives, lessons, bureaucratic dynamics,policy and fiscal challenges, and a myriad of realized and unrealized opportunities as itapproached the end of the 1990s. However, many of the conditions for a dramatic leapforward in capabilities were resident in this chaotic and frequently quixotic environment. Butbefore discussing how these vectors coalesced to produce a successful and dominant force,it is necessary to describe the changes going on in the joint community and within the sisterservices. Indeed, these initiatives, coupled with the experiences of the 1990s, set the necessaryconditions for much of the Army’s evolution. Just as the Army absolutely depends upon thejoint team to get to, and execute, the fight, the joint team depends on the Army to consolidatetactical gains—to link tactical engagements with the nation’s strategic objectives. With thisconcept firmly implanted, changes in the joint community gave context, weight, validity, and asense of urgency to the Army’s introspection.Evolution of the Joint Community–The Army in a New DOD ContextThe Army’s institutional and organizational response to the challenges of the 1990s did notoccur in a vacuum. The sister services, joint community, and the entire Department of Defense15