BREAKING TACTICAL FIXATION: The Division's Role

CAMPAIGNING OVER THE LAST HALF DECADE has left an indelible mark on Army professional discourse and doctrine. When it comes to counterinsurgency operations, we are a small-unit Army. Tough fighting and persistent nonlethal operations both in the streets of Baghdad and on other fronts for the last five years has proven just how critically important it is for tactical leaders and Soldiers to reside directly with their host nation forces, among the very population that they protect. In contact with opposing forces, the Army has transformed. Modularity provided a means and a way to meet the strategic requirement of rapid response and intervention, yet the chosen strategic solution caused Army leaders to refine tactics for the modular, deployable formations. Combat and transformation have caused America's land-power leaders to make the tactical level of war their focus for close to a decade. The Army has virtually ignored the divisional headquarters role in today's modular force. This, with the past decade's tactical orientation, will likely prove detrimental to the current counterinsurgency mission and to fighting and winning decisive campaigns. Doctrine development verifies this point. The current division field manual, Division Operations, was published in 1 996. The most current field manual, FMI 3-91, is currently only a draft, dated early 2006. The successful execution of full spectrum operations in a modularized force that operates on a fully committed rotation cycle requires the full advantage of division headquarters capabilities and roles. We may overlook this point if we remain fixated on the tactical elements of counterinsurgency. Attention to the tactical level - specifically the brigade combat team and below - has unnecessarily diverted attention away from the operational level of war. The division headquarters bridges the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of complex, full spectrum military operations. In an era of persistent conflict and evolving doctrine, the Army must aggressively address the division headquarters' organization, functions, and roles. Division Headquarters Redefined Today's division headquarters has broken the ties to Cold War structures. The Army sprinted to modularize brigade combat teams, but the division headquarters evolved more slowly. Operational success increases with favorable outcomes at the tactical level, but not exclusively. Many view the division commander as a provider who allocates resources to teams. This is tactical myopia. Divisions do manage enablers - true. However, the division commander and his staff provide other critical functions to the modular forces, especially in counterinsurgency. The division brings coherence to tactical efforts: combined planning and operations across vast operational environments, interagency coordination, and commander and key leader engagements that shape the future operational environment for months and years. Acknowledging the power and limitations of brigade combat teams is a critical first step toward redefining the division headquarters. In today's modularized force, it is the division commander and his staff - no others - who combine the capabilities of brigades and key enabling units to coherently fight widely scattered battles and engagements. The modular brigade is a very powerful organization, but it is the division commander who pulls together these brigades - all trained at disparate locations - and provides them a unifying vision. The commander focuses everyone on the end state that extends beyond unit rotational time lines and changing task organizations. The commander's staff then plans and directs actions, creating solutions to achieve the desired future, in concert with other units and agencies, coalition partners, and host nation leaders. Lacking a robust and more experienced staff, brigades simply cannot take on such scope or touch on all the elements of power. The teams have limits, and they best serve the Army when the teams' leaders acknowledge these limitations candidly. …