From TransFormaTion To CombaT The First stryker brigade at War

A Need for Change
During General Gordon R. Sullivan’s tour as Chief of Staff of the
Army, between June 1991 and June 1995, as a consequence of the dissolution
of the Soviet Union, the U.S. Army began to develop a new
strategic vision. By acquiring advanced information technologies such
as the tactical internet, it sought to produce an agile, sustainable force
capable of meeting any challenge that emerged in an as-yet-undefined
future. In this way, by adopting the latest digital technology, the armored
and mechanized divisions of the existing force would gain a significantly
improved awareness of whatever circumstances they encountered in the
field. The concept, Force XXI, looked forward to the next century and
to the Army’s role in it.
Force XXI employed an innovative approach to warfighting that
sought to improve a combat unit’s battlefield awareness by networking
battlefield information systems. At the command level, the process
would accelerate decision making by providing officers at all echelons
with continually updated information on the positions and activities of
their forces. In the field, by improving combat commanders’ knowledge
of the enemy’s location and movement, it would allow friendly forces to
deploy with a minimum of guesswork to points where they could have
the greatest impact.
The key developmental tool for Force XXI, a division-size Experimental
Force, began to take shape in 1993. The U.S. Army Training
and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) planned to convert an existing
division into a pilot organization to test future force designs. In December
1994 the Army designated the 2d Armored Division based at Fort
Hood, Texas, as the Experimental Force. Reflagged as the 4th Infantry
Division in 1996, the new interim division, totaling 15,820 people, was
slightly smaller than its predecessor. Other changes to the unit included
an increased number of fire-support systems, expanded reconnaissance
and intelligence capabilities, additional infantry, and greater consolidation
of logistics support.
Digitization, a term that originated in the Army of the 1990s with the
acquisition and testing of computerized communications systems by the
Experimental Force, was the main idea behind Force XXI. Those tests,
culminating in the Advanced Warfighting Experiment in 1997 that pitted
a digitized task force against a conventional foe, affirmed the concept
of a “networked battlefield” in the minds of senior Army leaders. The
nearly instantaneous sharing of computerized information on events in