Gen. Peter Schoomaker, Army chief of staff, has had a career shaped, in part, by terrorism. In April 1980, as a major, he commanded one of the Delta Force squadrons sent to rescue American hostages in Iran. The mission had to be aborted at Desert One, a staging area 200 miles southeast of Tehran, after sandstorms disabled too many helicopters. The episode turned tragic when aircraft collided in the dark, killing eight Americans.

But this failure, Schoomaker told Military Officer, was a “watershed event’’ in U.S. military history, resulting in today’s far more capable force. He names a string of terrorism incidents that shocked the world since Munich in 1972. Then adds, “It’s amazing how blind people were to the footprints. You ask, ‘What did America do about this?’ People seriously underestimated the peril for the country.’’

Schoomaker had various infantry, armor, and Special Forces assignments before settling into the “backwater’’ of unconventional warfare. His combat tours included Grenada, Panama, and the first Persian Gulf War. The final third of his career was a series of Special Forces command positions, capped by three years as commander in chief, U.S. Special Operations Command. He retired in November 2000.

Last year, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld surprised some Army leaders and signaled the importance of Special Forces in the war on terrorism by asking Schoomaker to return as the 35th Chief of Staff.

As the Army’s top officer since Aug. 1, 2003, he has pressed to quicken service transformation and to reset soldier expectations for a new century and more dangerous world. He discussed these efforts, plus Iraq and more, with contributing editor Tom Philpott. Interview has been edited for space and clarity.

The Army transforms as it fights wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Which is the greater challenge?

They have a very strong relationship to each other. We will not be successful in the war on terror if we do not transform our capabilities. We will not be effective and relevant in the 21st century unless we become much more agile but with the capacity for a long-term, sustained level of conflict. Being relevant means having a campaign-quality Army with joint expeditionary capability. It must be an Army not trained for a single event like a track athlete, but talented across a broad spectrum like a decathlete.

Involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan helps?

Without the momentum, resources, and focus war gives you, it’s very difficult to transform the force. There’s no pressure, no sense of urgency, to do the things you have to do. This is a strategic opportunity to pull the Army into the future.

But of the Army’s performance, we continually hear, “They’re good, maybe the best ever.’’ If so, why transform?

I’ll use my money analogy: We’re organized into $100 bills in our pockets, called divisions. If we buy groceries worth $19.80 and pay with a $100 bill, we get a lot of change. At the [next] store, we spend another $121. We don’t have enough change to handle that so we break another hundred.
Go through life this way, you end up breaking this huge organization, because it’s organized inappropriately. We need to go to more self-sustained, robust, agile, brigade-level organizations that can aggregate up when you need to spend only $60 or $70.

We’re building a modular force. Eighteen months ago, the Army had six heavy divisions, each different. We had two light divisions, different from each other and from heavy divisions ... so it’s very difficult to “plug and play.” We’re going to an Army where heavy divisions are alike, light divisions are alike, and there are brigade combat team units of action within each structure and across all components: active, Guard, and Reserve.

And the advantage?

It gives you $20 bills: units smaller than divisions and more useful and playable in a joint context. We won’t have to break our organization to create what we want. That’s modularity.

Also, the Army National Guard and Reserve are hugely over-structured, with almost 80,000 more spaces than faces. That means a lot of units are undermanned. Call up a truck company and you might have to pull two or three companies together to make one. It’s a structure based on a draft-induced expansible army. The [correct] idea for a volunteer force is not expansibility but going deeper into your surge structure. We have over a million people in uniform, but only 480,000 in the active component. [Without transformation it has been] very difficult to use the rest. We’re changing that.

Starting with modularity in the 3rd Infantry Division?

They are the first to move to a modular structure, experimenting with organizing themselves into four brigade units of action. That’s the way they will return to Iraq. The 101st [Airborne Division] is learning from the 3rd [Infantry Division]. Then the 10th Mountain [Division] will do another one. By [fall] we will have three more brigades than we started the year with. Eleven of 36 total brigades will be modular. Inside each will be maneuver units, reconnaissance units, fire units, logistics units, mps, engineers, civil affairs, all those things.

What’s the challenge to organizing the Army this way?

It’s huge, like taking your kid’s toy box and dumping it into the middle of the floor. You find huge equipage issues, personnel-balance issues. We’re using the war and its focus to force function into form. As units come back, they’ll be reset for the 21st century.

What are some of the equipment issues?

There were fewer than 500 up-armor Humvees in the whole Army [last] summer. We’re on a path now to having [more than] 5,000 just in Iraq. Plus we added 12,800 add-on armor kits.

We had huge [shortages of] small- arms ammunition. We have huge aviation modernization issues, the reason we made the Comanche decision. [In February, the Army canceled the RAH-66 stealth surveillance/attack helicopter program and said the $14 billion earmarked for it through 2011 will be used instead to upgrade 1,400 aircraft and to buy 800 new helicopters for the Guard and Reserve.] We have a huge [wheeled-vehicle] recapitalization issue, with about 70,000 almost 30 years old.

The House wants to increase the active duty Army by 30,000 soldiers over three years and to make that permanent. You’ve warned against taking resources away from modernization to do that.

We all agree the Army should grow. The issue is how to pay for it. Right now we have supplemental funding to increase numbers we’re bringing in and retaining. The flow into the reservoir is faster and the dam is being closed down, so they stay. That’s not stop-loss or stop-move. That’s increased retention. Stop-loss, stop-move applies to units going to [Iraq and Afghanistan], from 90 days out. But we are growing through increased accessions and retention. We have grown to 495,000 on active duty, up from 480,000 last year. We are making the Army as big as we can, as fast as we can. But paying for it is another issue.

We’re paying now with supplemental funding. If they make us put that into our core budget, finding the money means taking out programs. And that would cost us five procurement dollars for every personnel dollar. Congress could drive this in a different way by raising our top line. Nobody’s doing that. They want these extra people within the current top line. [That’s what I oppose.]

How will those additional troops be used? As war fighters or support troops?

What’s a war fighter? Are they [driving] the 600 trucks we put on the highways in Iraq that see 20 to 25 ambushes a night? Are they the mps we’ve got over there? Are civil affairs [personnel] war fighters? This business about tooth-or-tail is losing meaning. We’re creating more combat brigades, but inside those are logisticians, civil affairs, mps, engineers, signal [personnel]. We are taking down air defense artillery, some field artillery and some armor units. We’re creating more mps, more support units-of-action in transportation and civil affairs. The 30,000 is basically priming the pump.

As we grow the Army, we’re also looking inside, shooting at about 15,000 military-to-civilian [job] conversions at installation activities and institutions. We’re also looking to reduce the 61,000 to 67,000 people in motion in the Army each day. If we just captured 15 percent of those, we’ve got three more brigades.

Using the Assignment Incentive program in Korea, we’ve had 8,200 soldiers volunteer to extend their tours. If we stabilize 8,000, that is 8,000 others who don’t have to come [to Korea] now. That’s a division staying put. Across the Army last year we moved 296,000 people out of our 480,000, at a cost of more than $1 billion. This year we’ve returned about $92 million to the pot just by not moving people.

What are the plans for returning forces from overseas?

The Global Force Posture [plan] will distribute capability globally in a way that better meets national security strategy. For the Army, that means changing force composition in Korea and Germany. We’ll reduce overhead by rotating forces based upon what’s going on and where we need to engage. It’s a more agile, useful way of doing business than having forces stuck in places, which involves moving families, operating schools and stores. There are a lot of decisions to be made. But conceptually, combatant commanders who had owned forces in [their] theater now will be borrowing them. We can surge, we can plus up, we can pull down.

Is it a bad time to be pulling forces out of Korea?

Look at it in context. If we have to fight in Korea, we will not fight like [previous generations]. We have different capabilities. The geometry of the battlefield is different. That doesn’t mean there’s no need for robust ground forces. But we look at things like artillery and air defense, air and naval presence, amphibious presence, and our ability to return forces in proper numbers. We also look at the increased capability of the Republic of Korea army.

How would you characterize the operational strain on the Army today?

Depends on what part you’re in. This isn’t an extraordinary pace for the part I was in. But for the garrison Army, which had its focus on the Cold War and had a different view of how it was going to be used, as with reserve components, this is extraordinary.

But I go back to how we started our conversation. We must develop depth. Out of more than a million soldiers in uniform we need much more capacity than what we’ve got to sustain a higher level of engagement. That’s what this 21st century calls for us to do.

In the old way of thinking, when the light switch was off, you’re at peace. If the light switch is on, you’re at war. Now, life is more like a rheostat, [with war] always on a little bit. Unfortunately, our opponents control the rheostat. They turn it up; we turn it down.

This changes how the nation thinks about resources, about what laws apply. Part of the problem for so long was everybody said, “We can’t use war instruments against terrorism. It’s a police issue and we’re going to deal with it that way.’’ Well, welcome to the new world. It’s taken us a long time to figure [out we’re at war].

How will a constant war environment impact the typical soldier’s career and home life? More time away?

We can manage it in a realistic way. We would like to have an active force model under which soldiers can expect one major deployment in a three-year spin. For reserves, we ought to be able to do it in a five- or six-year spin. It’s just a different way of organizing your life.

Can you attract and keep enough volunteers with that higher-tempo lifestyle?

Sure. The biggest strategic question we have is what kind of volunteer Army do we need. It will be different. But we don’t have a choice if we want to have an America. Right now, our people are staying with us.

The American people are behind the troops, but many opposed the war in Iraq. What does that do to troop morale and to sustaining a long-term presence in Iraq?

We can make this a self-fulfilling prophecy, or we can decide we’re going to win it. This is going to be a long endeavor. The American people have to think about the alternative. These wonderful young people believe in what they are doing. They are well led. Many come back and say they just can’t believe what the media is saying. The focus is on the house burning on the corner, not all the other stuff. Soldiers ask, “Where’s the positive stuff?’’ These people who say they support the troops ought to have a different conversation about what this war is about.

Most Americans understood why we went into Afghanistan. Fewer understand why we went into Iraq. They see a quagmire and no weapons of mass destruction. Is that a legitimate discussion?

It is. But it’s not my discussion. My job is to make sure we are generating the capabilities this nation needs to fight its wars. I’m convinced Iraq is connected [to global terrorism.] I don’t see [it as separate from] the first Gulf War and Southern Watch and Northern Watch and Desert Fox and Desert Thunder. Saddam Hussein’s view is he’s still at war. He never accepted defeat in the first Gulf War. He still thinks he can win, though he’s in captivity. This has been one war for him, just different battles. He had a plan they are executing, I believe, [which explains some of] what’s going on right now.

Our leaving Iraq depends now on the capability of Iraqi security forces, correct?

It’s dependent upon Iraqi ownership and leadership, which we are working on. This is a talented population. The people have the ability. The nation has the resources. They are educated and can do this. I am convinced that addressing this base of terrorism in Iraq has got everything to do with helping get the Middle East straightened out. It really is a big challenge for us. It’s going to take us a long time.

If you had known in March 2003 what you know today about Iraq, would you have advised the president to go in?

I wasn’t on active duty then. But weapons of mass destruction are only one dimension of a very complex set of factors that the National Command Authority weighed. I do not believe we can have the security we want and a chance of really getting terrorism under control with Iraq the way it was. If we are successful, having a different Iraq will have a huge impact on the chemistry of that region. That’s as honest an answer as I can give.

Are you worried about sustaining a volunteer Army if the war in Iraq is a long, deep conflict?

Of course. Is it something that keeps me up at night? No. We are changing the nature of the volunteer force. We are going to attract people who are motivated for different reasons.

We’re going to need different incentives. We’re going to have to compensate this cohort differently. But they’re there. We are seeing them. The quality cut on these soldiers is higher than it was. We can do it, I’m convinced of that.

Are the reserve components burdened with too much responsibility in the war on terrorism? Many joined expecting weekend drills, not year-long tours in Iraq.

That goes to the changing nature of the volunteer force and people’s expectations. But the size of our reserves is considerable. We haven’t touched them all yet.

The National Guard is 350,000 soldiers. The Army Reserve is 205,000. The [Individual Ready Reserve] is 120,000. The good news is that among those we’ve deployed, retention is very high.

We’ve got recruiting challenges for the Guard among prior-service soldiers. But we’ve raised accession and retention goals and, overall, we’re making them.

Anything you want to add?

America ought to be very proud of our soldiers. They are extraordinarily brave. I truly believe they’re the next “greatest generation.” My dad was in service for 32 years. I’m 58 now so I’ve seen the Army for a long time. This is the best cohort of soldiers I’ve ever seen. They know how to fight. They’re paying a hell of a price.

To the American people, I say fielding an Army for our security shouldn’t be seen as the Army competing against the rest of society. This is America’s challenge. Pete Schoomaker isn’t the only guy who ought to be worrying about whether we can raise the next volunteer Army. The country faces a challenge it hasn’t faced, ever.