Transforming the Army
Adaptation to the latest technology is no new experience for the United States Army. Throughout the events described in this pamphlet, the Army has attempted to better accomplish missions and to save lives by harnessing newly developed capabilities. This innovation in turn has radically altered tactics, organization, and industrial relationships.
The soldiers of the Revolutionary War Army went into battle with a great assortment of firearms, many of them personal and most of them muskets accurate only to a range of 100 yards. Following its independence, the federal government nurtured a small but healthy arms industry, spurred along by Eli Whitney’s advocacy of interchangeable parts, which made possible standardized gun design. Once brought to an appropriate standard of training, the soldiers fighting the War of 1812 greatly benefited from the improved quality and standardization of their equipment. By the time of the Mexican War, American arms were technologically equivalent to those of Europe, with particular advances made in the mobility, flexibility, and potency of field artillery. Socalled horse artillery deployed onto Mexican War battlefields with impressive speeds and often provided decisive concentrated fires.
The American Civil War catapulted warfare into the Industrial Age. On the battlefield, the barrel-hugging features of the newly designed Minie Ball extended effective
rifle range to 600 yards, several times that of earlier wars. Great masses of men 
advancing shoulder to shoulder against each other were now perilously exposed, and Civil War armies eventually disappeared into trenches except during the most daring of attacks. Radically increased ranges and capabilities characterized the most modern of Civil War artillery as well. Off the battlefield, railroads now sped large numbers of troops and huge stockpiles of supplies over unprecedented distances, telegraphs coordinated strategic movements in a tiny fraction of the time required during earlier wars, and a massive industrial base was harnessed to the demands of war.
By the time of the Spanish-American War breech-loading repeating rifles were standard issue, and an early version of rapid-firing machine gun, the Gatling Gun, was available as well. Coordinated operations with the Navy facilitated success, and logisticians and Army medical practitioners learned to cope with the extraordinary demands of transoceanic distances and tropical warfare.
World War I would introduce and World War II perfect mechanized alternatives to the trench warfare that had evolved from Civil War precedents into the stalemate of the Western Front in 1917. The powerful combination of the tank, time-on-target (i.e., firing in a coordinated manner from dispersed positions into a single target) artillery, and radio coordination carried warfare to a whole new level of technical sophistication and ferocity. Cooperation with the air and naval services became a new imperative, as did massive industrial mobilization. The United States Army emerged from World War II as the most thoroughly mechanized and most impressively resourced in the world.
The Korean War saw some improvements in equipment and the introduction of at least one revolutionary
item, the helicopter. By the time of the Vietnam War the helicopter had come into its own, and ground combatants achieved whole new levels of tactical mobility, logistical sustainability, and fire support. Heliborne medical evacuation saved thousands of lives that otherwise would have been lost and set an example for expedient care that civilian society soon sought to emulate.
With DESERT STORM the United States Army introduced a designer fleet of technical innovations into combat: the extraordinarily lethal Abrams armored M1A1 tank, the highly flexible Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, the totally mobile Apache attack helicopter, the high-volume, longrange Multiple Launch Rocket System (M LRS and the incredibly precise Patriot missile. This formidable combination tore apart
one of the world’s most combat-experienced armies in a few days’ time. In the aftermath of DESERT STORM, technical advance continues, with a careful focus upon information management, digitization, and precision guided munitions. The transformation into the I nfo rmation Age of the computer has been as dramatic as the entry into the Industrial Age that preceded it. Even as we enter the twenty-first century, the Army’s chief of staffhas committed to yet another revolutionary transformation, capitalizing on the latest technologies to achieve the greatest possible global reach and responsiveness. 
Despite the pace of technical advance, the key ingredients in the Army’s formula for success remain the soldier and his or her leaders. In certain respects even more is demanded of modern soldiers than was demanded of their forebears. They must maintain and use increasingly complex equipment. They are more dispersed across an ever more dangerous battlefield, thus requiring more skill and initiative than ever from junior officers and NCOs. Now, as always, the success of the soldier is the truest possible measure of the success of the Army. By guaranteeing that soldier the most advanced technology, suitable doctrine, and ample resources available, the United States Army has always sought to accomplish its mission with a minimum loss of life.
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Last updated 7 September 2006 |