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Battalions may get more captains
Officers would be pulled from brigade combat team headquarters
By Matthew Cox - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Dec 6, 2008 7:08:33 EST
The Army wants to fortify the battalion staffs in its 76 brigade combat teams by trimming hundreds of captains out of the larger brigade headquarters units.
The move would mean each maneuver battalion would have three battle captains to manage current operations. In most cases, battalion staffs have only one of these young officers who are critical for ensuring the unit operates smoothly.
This is part of a host of proposed changes to the Army’s 43 infantry BCTs, 25 heavy BCTs, seven Stryker BCTs and one armored cavalry regiment that Training and Doctrine Command is recommending to improve the effectiveness of the operational force.
“This is not a wholesale change of BCTs; what we are doing is trying to rearrange the soldiers inside the BCTs to make them more effective,” said Jim Stone, deputy director of the Soldier Requirements Division at Fort Benning, Ga., who recently took part in a “holistic” review of the Army’s modular brigade structure.
The review looked at roughly 7,900 personnel requests from BCT commanders ranging from more intelligence specialists to more scouts for mounted reconnaissance units.
In August, the Army G3 directed TRADOC to do the review roughly five years after the service embarked on a massive effort to transform its active and National Guard combat divisions into 76 modular BCTs.
Since then, all the BCTs have deployed either to Iraq or Afghanistan.
“As a result of those deployments, BCT commanders and division commanders have said ‘we need to make some changes,’ ” Stone said.
After weeks of negotiations between TRADOC officials and unit commanders, the review effort settled on approximately 5,100 personnel changes to the BCT structure, Stone said.
The challenge for the review was to give commanders what they need without increasing the size of the force, which can grow no larger than 547,000.
“Our task was to see what we can do within the force structure,” Stone said. “We generated spaces that we can take out of the BCTs and went back to the brigades and said ‘Can you live without these spaces?’ ”
One of the toughest challenges was finding enough captains to bring the number of battle captains in every battalion staff from one to three, Stone said. This is no easy task since the Army struggles to retain captains.
“The cost to do that is 380 captains that we have to take away from the 76 BCTs,” Stone said, explaining that the plan is to ask the BCT staffs to give up “your assistant plans guy, your assistant air defense guy.”
Stone stressed that all the proposed changes involve moving personnel spaces, not actual soldiers, from one job to another.
“In all cases, we are talking about spaces, not faces,” he said, adding that it could take until 2011 for these changes to be complete. “It will take a while for this to hit the field.”
Thousands of spaces affected
The review also recommends increasing the strength of mounted reconnaissance platoons in every BCT. Mounted recon platoons typically have between 18 to 30 soldiers assigned to them, depending on the type of the BCT.
Review officials found spaces within the BCTs to be converted into more than 3,000 scout slots, enough to add six scouts to every mounted recon platoon.
“It gives them the ability to dismount and go look at something” more effectively, Stone said.
Another significant shift in personnel would take more than 1,000 spaces from various jobs within the BCTs — maintenance specialists, cooks, truck drivers, personnel specialists — to place one additional military intelligence soldier in each company to supplement what are known as intelligence support teams, the five- or six-member teams that work for the company commander.
“Companies are doing things right now that we didn’t envision them doing,” Stone said, describing the increased need for intelligence support. “Company commanders have more of an intelligence processing requirement now than they had before.”
The review team couldn’t grant the complete request from BCT commanders that called for two additional MI soldiers per company, Stone said. As a compromise, one additional MI soldier will be placed in each battalion headquarters to float among the companies as needed, he said.
Another recommendation calls for shifting 380 soldiers from inside the BCTs to add five soldiers to each tactical unmanned aerial vehicle platoon, Stone said.
“We are trying to give them more ability to operate UAVs on a 24-hour basis” if necessary, he said.
Some requests from BCT commanders had to be denied, Stone said. One called for a dedicated rear detachment, which meant a lieutenant colonel and a master sergeant for the BCT level and a captain and a staff sergeant at the battalion level, he said.
There also are proposed changes to BCTs that will not come out of the unit structure, Stone said.
The Army intends to shift 60 personnel spaces to create a signal company within 3rd ACR, he said. Another Army plan involves finding 304 spaces to create a four-person technical intelligence support team in each BCT, Stone said.
This team would provide expertise on captured enemy weapons and equipment, he said.
The recommendations are working their way up through TRADOC and will ultimately go the Army G3 for approval early next year, Stone said. The plan was briefed to Forces Command and to all of the proponent schools in early November.
Some of the recommended changes will be “painful” for the BCTs, Stone said, but overall they will lead to better formations.
“The consensus is that these BCTs are pretty damn good,” Stone said. “This was not wholesale surgery; this was around the edges to make them more capable.”
BCT changes
The Army is considering shifting roughly 5,100 personnel slots within the Army’s 76 brigade combat teams.
Here are a few highlights of the proposed changes to the 43 infantry BCTs, 25 heavy BCTs, seven Stryker BCTs and one armored cavalry regiment that make up the active and National Guard operational force:
• Trim 3,000 personnel slots from BCTs to increase the number of mounted reconnais¬sance soldiers by six per platoon in all BCTs.
• Trim 1,079 personnel spaces out of the BCTs to spread the same number of military intelligence soldiers across the BCTs at the company level.
• Trim 380 captain spaces from BCT staffs to give each battalion staff a total of three bat¬tle captains.
• Trim 380 personnel slots from the BCTs to beef up battalion tactical unmanned aerial vehicle units at the battalion level.
• Trim 42 personnel slots from the BCTs to add the same number of counter-fire spe¬cialists across the seven SBCTs.
Officers would be pulled from brigade combat team headquarters
By Matthew Cox - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Dec 6, 2008 7:08:33 EST
The Army wants to fortify the battalion staffs in its 76 brigade combat teams by trimming hundreds of captains out of the larger brigade headquarters units.
The move would mean each maneuver battalion would have three battle captains to manage current operations. In most cases, battalion staffs have only one of these young officers who are critical for ensuring the unit operates smoothly.
This is part of a host of proposed changes to the Army’s 43 infantry BCTs, 25 heavy BCTs, seven Stryker BCTs and one armored cavalry regiment that Training and Doctrine Command is recommending to improve the effectiveness of the operational force.
“This is not a wholesale change of BCTs; what we are doing is trying to rearrange the soldiers inside the BCTs to make them more effective,” said Jim Stone, deputy director of the Soldier Requirements Division at Fort Benning, Ga., who recently took part in a “holistic” review of the Army’s modular brigade structure.
The review looked at roughly 7,900 personnel requests from BCT commanders ranging from more intelligence specialists to more scouts for mounted reconnaissance units.
In August, the Army G3 directed TRADOC to do the review roughly five years after the service embarked on a massive effort to transform its active and National Guard combat divisions into 76 modular BCTs.
Since then, all the BCTs have deployed either to Iraq or Afghanistan.
“As a result of those deployments, BCT commanders and division commanders have said ‘we need to make some changes,’ ” Stone said.
After weeks of negotiations between TRADOC officials and unit commanders, the review effort settled on approximately 5,100 personnel changes to the BCT structure, Stone said.
The challenge for the review was to give commanders what they need without increasing the size of the force, which can grow no larger than 547,000.
“Our task was to see what we can do within the force structure,” Stone said. “We generated spaces that we can take out of the BCTs and went back to the brigades and said ‘Can you live without these spaces?’ ”
One of the toughest challenges was finding enough captains to bring the number of battle captains in every battalion staff from one to three, Stone said. This is no easy task since the Army struggles to retain captains.
“The cost to do that is 380 captains that we have to take away from the 76 BCTs,” Stone said, explaining that the plan is to ask the BCT staffs to give up “your assistant plans guy, your assistant air defense guy.”
Stone stressed that all the proposed changes involve moving personnel spaces, not actual soldiers, from one job to another.
“In all cases, we are talking about spaces, not faces,” he said, adding that it could take until 2011 for these changes to be complete. “It will take a while for this to hit the field.”
Thousands of spaces affected
The review also recommends increasing the strength of mounted reconnaissance platoons in every BCT. Mounted recon platoons typically have between 18 to 30 soldiers assigned to them, depending on the type of the BCT.
Review officials found spaces within the BCTs to be converted into more than 3,000 scout slots, enough to add six scouts to every mounted recon platoon.
“It gives them the ability to dismount and go look at something” more effectively, Stone said.
Another significant shift in personnel would take more than 1,000 spaces from various jobs within the BCTs — maintenance specialists, cooks, truck drivers, personnel specialists — to place one additional military intelligence soldier in each company to supplement what are known as intelligence support teams, the five- or six-member teams that work for the company commander.
“Companies are doing things right now that we didn’t envision them doing,” Stone said, describing the increased need for intelligence support. “Company commanders have more of an intelligence processing requirement now than they had before.”
The review team couldn’t grant the complete request from BCT commanders that called for two additional MI soldiers per company, Stone said. As a compromise, one additional MI soldier will be placed in each battalion headquarters to float among the companies as needed, he said.
Another recommendation calls for shifting 380 soldiers from inside the BCTs to add five soldiers to each tactical unmanned aerial vehicle platoon, Stone said.
“We are trying to give them more ability to operate UAVs on a 24-hour basis” if necessary, he said.
Some requests from BCT commanders had to be denied, Stone said. One called for a dedicated rear detachment, which meant a lieutenant colonel and a master sergeant for the BCT level and a captain and a staff sergeant at the battalion level, he said.
There also are proposed changes to BCTs that will not come out of the unit structure, Stone said.
The Army intends to shift 60 personnel spaces to create a signal company within 3rd ACR, he said. Another Army plan involves finding 304 spaces to create a four-person technical intelligence support team in each BCT, Stone said.
This team would provide expertise on captured enemy weapons and equipment, he said.
The recommendations are working their way up through TRADOC and will ultimately go the Army G3 for approval early next year, Stone said. The plan was briefed to Forces Command and to all of the proponent schools in early November.
Some of the recommended changes will be “painful” for the BCTs, Stone said, but overall they will lead to better formations.
“The consensus is that these BCTs are pretty damn good,” Stone said. “This was not wholesale surgery; this was around the edges to make them more capable.”
BCT changes
The Army is considering shifting roughly 5,100 personnel slots within the Army’s 76 brigade combat teams.
Here are a few highlights of the proposed changes to the 43 infantry BCTs, 25 heavy BCTs, seven Stryker BCTs and one armored cavalry regiment that make up the active and National Guard operational force:
• Trim 3,000 personnel slots from BCTs to increase the number of mounted reconnais¬sance soldiers by six per platoon in all BCTs.
• Trim 1,079 personnel spaces out of the BCTs to spread the same number of military intelligence soldiers across the BCTs at the company level.
• Trim 380 captain spaces from BCT staffs to give each battalion staff a total of three bat¬tle captains.
• Trim 380 personnel slots from the BCTs to beef up battalion tactical unmanned aerial vehicle units at the battalion level.
• Trim 42 personnel slots from the BCTs to add the same number of counter-fire spe¬cialists across the seven SBCTs.
