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Keeping Our Best Army Coalition Relevant by Transforming Together

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  • Keeping Our Best Army Coalition Relevant by Transforming Together

    Ever wonder why a Canadian battalion can be inserted into an American bde, or a British arm'd bde with a majority force of two Canadian battle groups, or how the Brits managed their Basra AO with American air support, or how Australian SAS managed to direct US planes - all with minimal hiccups and no train up time?

    ARMY Mag

    Keeping Our Best Army Coalition Relevant by Transforming Together
    September 2003

    By Lt. Col. Robert L. Maginnis, U.S. Army retired

    The U.S. Army's most dependable allies in the global war on terrorism are also members of a 53-year-old standardization program known as ABCA (armies of America, Britain, Canada and Australia, with New Zealand as an associate member). Like our armed forces, the ABCA program is undergoing a radical transformation to remain relevant and responsive by focusing on combat interoperability.

    The ABCA armies have shared the hardships and victories in far flung countries like Somalia and Kosovo. British and Australian forces were integral to Operation Iraqi Freedom and Canadian and New Zealand soldiers shared the burdens in Operation Enduring Freedom. As the United States continues to prosecute the war on terrorism, interoperability, especially among these most dependable allies, is paramount.

    Last year, anticipating the growing importance and demands for coalition operations, ABCA leaders decided that the standardization program needed a radical transformation to remain relevant. On May 2, 2003, a year-long program review was completed and a number of recommendations were approved by the program's leaders, which included U.S. Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. John Keane. ABCA's senior leaders launched a transformation effort that began this summer with a new vision, mission, goals, structures and processes.

    The new vision is one sixth the length of the old one and focuses like a laser on the effective integration of member armies' capabilities in a joint environment. The new mission seeks to optimize interoperability through collaboration and standardization. The goals are ambitious: relevance, responsiveness, standardization, mutual understanding, knowledge sharing, efficiency and effectiveness.

    The ABCA program was initiated after World War II by General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, chief of the British Imperial General Staff. It was intended to sustain and build on the close cooperation enjoyed by the Allies during World War II. In 1947, Eisenhower and Montgomery published a "Plan to Effect Standardization" among the original three member armies, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. Australia was added to the program in 1964 and New Zealand became an associate member in 1965.

    During ABCA's first 50 years, it issued warehouses full of standardization agreements designed to align members' doctrine and equipment. ABCA's products have helped enhance mutual understanding among our armies. It has increased effectiveness across hundreds of shared combat, contingency and training experiences.

    Today, the retooling of ABCA is based on the leadership's vision that, together, member armies must transform into forces that are lighter, more lethal, quicker and which have shed their Cold War thinking.

    About U.S. Army Transformation, former Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Eric Shinseki stated, "We must transform our force to meet these challenges, and we must do it faster." He warned, "If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less." Maintaining relevance is key for the Army in Transformation. Making our Army more interoperable with key allies is part of the new reality in today's asymmetric global battlefield.

    The Transformation revolution of the entire military is being dictated by the new Rumsfeld doctrine, which has emerged on the battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq. It requires our land force to become lighter and more lethal, a force that can be quickly moved to combat zones. Transformation is distinct from modernization, which focuses on equipment. The new threat, and the next war, requires, first of all, new thinking, then new equipment and technology to manifest that new thinking in a land-sea-air-space-cyber battlefield.

    The example of the 173rd Airborne Brigade's insertion into northern Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom is a current reminder that Transformation is a necessity.

    Middle East geopolitics blocked the use of Turkey for staging an avenue of approach to Baghdad for the 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized). Turkey's refusal of staging rights forced Central Command to create a northern front by inserting the 173rd Airborne Brigade into Harir, an airfield in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.

    Thus, in Iraqi Freedom, the point of the northern spear was the 173rd Airborne, a coalition of special operation forces, and the Kurdish peshmerga guerrilla fighters. They faced down two Iraqi corps of 12 divisions with armor units. Fortunately, due to overwhelming U.S. airpower from Mediterranean-based carriers, the Iraqi forces were checked and then crumbled as the coalition stacked-up battlefield wins from Kuwait to Baghdad.

    Initially, our northern front units lacked mobility and robust antiarmor capabilities. Armor units did eventually join the light forces to bolster the effort. Although in this case the coalition helped make its success with airpower dominance, it is easy to see that different circumstances might have been devastating. That is why transforming Army forces to a lighter and more lethal force is a necessity.

    Transforming and simultaneously building coalition interoperability is also necessary. In Iraq, ABCA members were interoperable primarily because of shared procedural measures, the use of liaison officers and doctrinal compatibility. Much remains to be done, especially as our armies transform technically and doctrinally. The shared ABCA objective is to reach as much coalition seamlessness as possible based on member army budgets.

    At ABCA's 50th anniversary celebration, Gen. Shinseki emphasized the need for our armies to transform together. He noted, "Coalitions remain the essential framework for the application of military force." This viewpoint echoes former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's pragmatic perspective about allied operations: "There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies; and that is fighting without them."

    Former British Army Chief General Sir Roger Wheeler was more specific about what makes an effective coalition: "We will have to think through very carefully how we organize and fight on future battlefields, and it will be essential that we do this together with our allies." He warns that "if we get too far out of synch" our armies will "not function effectively" together. That is what ABCA is seeking to prevent, and promoting interoperability through standardization is key.

    ABCA's recently completed yearlong program review was a top-to-bottom relook that resulted in radical proposals that will help the armies close their interoperability gaps.

    The review began with a strategic security assessment that shed light on changing geopolitical realities. In particular, the assessment noted a more urbanized battlefield and enemies that may rely on weapons of mass destruction. The assessment resulted in a view that accords with the accelerated requirements for armies that must fight in an intricately integrated land-sea-air-space-cyber and even geopolitical environment.

    ABCA recently demonstrated a new and necessary responsiveness to emerging requirements. Last fall, ABCA assembled a cadre of urban operations experts to draft coalition procedures before our armies joined combat in Iraqi cities. The procedure became a chapter in ABCA's Coalition Operations Handbook, which addresses topics like forming effective coalitions, logistics, communications and operations. The program's quick response prior to operations in Iraq -- three weeks -- is indicative of the fact that ABCA is an integral and critical part of war planning.

    The new ABCA will be marked by a heightened level of responsiveness and relevance. It will focus on the full spectrum of coalition land operations in a joint environment and will prioritize program resources around identified interoperability gaps, particularly regarding combat operating systems. A future concepts capability group will work with member armies to identify interoperability gaps and other capability groups formed around the battlefield operating systems (BOS) that will work to close those gaps.

    The program's new chief of staff will work with a board of allied general officers to prioritize efforts using limited resources, to close capability gaps by temporarily forming project teams, to focus on delivering specific gap-closing products. The board will then disband.

  • #2
    Historically, ABCA has been a tactical-level standardization program that produced agreements promoting interchangeable and or common equipment or doctrine. Now, with the armies being transformed from without and within, in the midst of an incredibly diverse landscape of missions, ABCA is incorporating lessons learned from ongoing combat and operational coalition missions. Future work will not be fettered by previous constraints. ABCA will be free to roam the spectrum of armies' needs, across all BOS and a range of operations, from tactical to strategic.

    One exciting aspect of ABCA's forward-looking initiatives includes the addition of standardization representatives at the U.S. Army's Objective Force Task Force Office, part of the U.S. Army's Transformation campaign plan. ABCA officers will work closely with our forward-thinking transformers to brainstorm and exchange ideas from the embryonic concept development stage through experimentation to doctrine and equipment fielding.

    Secretary Rumsfeld's emphasis on Transformation helped push ABCA toward radical change. Rumsfeld explained the rationale for change. "We entered the century really arranged to fight big armies, big navies and big air forces, and not to fight the shadowy terrorists and terrorist networks that operate with the support and assistance of terrorist states. And that's why we are so focused on transforming the department and the armed services. To win the global war on terror, the armed forces simply have to be more flexible, more agile, so that our forces can respond more quickly."

    Rumsfeld's challenge is especially significant for coalition partners like those in ABCA. Together, we must become more interoperable. As the demands on our armed forces increase across the globe, we become more dependent for mutual security.

    Transforming while fighting the global war on terror is not just a challenge. It is a necessity. We must capitalize on limited resources to stretch them across the landscape of dangers. We must encourage greater cooperation with important allies. True interoperability is imperative. That is why the ABCA program, which is changing to remain relevant, is so very significant.

    LT. COL. ROBERT L. MAGINNIS, USA Ret., is a senior systems analyst with the Alexandria, Va.-based BCP International Ltd. He is also a Fox News military analyst.

    Copyright © 2003 by The Association of the U.S. Army

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