weekends off when we can. Sometimes we cannot, because they are on exercises and deployments.
In addition, whenever a three-day weekend or holiday comes up, we normally give them a fourth day off. That gives our soldiers and their families an opportunity to go somewhere and do something away from the base. Obviously, the soldiers from the corps alert units are not doing that, but will be confined to the local areas surrounding their bases at Fort Bragg, Fort Campbell, Fort Stewart, and Fort Drum. But we try to manage that pace and OpTempo as best we can.
“Quality of Life” is an Army term, and we’re very concerned about the amount of separation our soldiers have from their families. On average, XVIII Airborne Corps soldiers will spend six to seven months a year gone from their families, either on deployment, on exercises, training, or away at school. We’re trying to mitigate that as best we can in the areas that we can control.
Tom Clancy: Along with the high OpTempos, there is the matter of force modernization. Obviously this is a huge challenge because of the money involved. Can you give us your insight on this?
General Keane: There are significant challenges in modernization to be sure, and the reasons for them are obvious: the downsizing of our budgets. The instruments of war with the precision that they have and the technology involved are extraordinarily expensive, though they do have a large payoff on the battlefield. For example, if I might digress for a moment, in my judgment, one of the most important weapons developments in the post-World War II era in terms of conventional warfare has to be precision guided munitions [PGMs]. When delivered from a suitable platform [aircraft, helicopter, ship, submarine, vehicle, etc.] PGMs have an enormous payoff for us. This is because their precision and lethality provides us with the ability to target and destroy only the portion of a target array that we are interested in.
For example, if I want to take out a portion of a factory, we can now go in with PGMs, and take out only the part of the factory that is important to us, and not do any damage to the surrounding areas. Only an errant missile or malfunction would keep the strike from being successful, and the probability of this happening is dropping every day.
Contrast that with what we had to do in World War II, when we tried to reduce the industrial bases of Germany and Japan. We had to fly armada after armada of heavy bombers to do that, and we lost hundreds of crews in the process. Also, quite tragically, a large number of civilians lost their lives in those strikes. The PGMs we have today enable us to send a single crew on a mission that previously might have required dozens, with a very high assurance of achieving the desired mission results with a minimum of collateral damage.
Of course, PGMs and other technologies like that cost a lot of money, but at the same time they are truly saving lives, of our own military personnel, of non-combatants, and even of our enemies. We have no interest in taking unnecessary lives from our enemies. We just want to stop them from doing whatever it is that we’re opposed to. So technology costs money, and there is a lot of that involved when you’re talking about outfitting an entire corps or army. So we have to make the case for the technologies that we desire, and our people in Washington, D.C., are doing that.
Our concern for the future is the continuing modernization of our corps. Right now we’re moving the last of the old AH-1 Cobra gunships out and replacing them with newly remanufactured OH-58D Kiowa Warriors. Our force of AH-64A Apache attack helicopters will be upgraded in the latter part of this decade to the new AH-64C/D Apache Longbow configuration, which will be a significant improvement in our capability.
We’re also bringing in the new Advanced Field Artillery System [AFATAS], which is going to increase our fire-control capabilities for
In addition, whenever a three-day weekend or holiday comes up, we normally give them a fourth day off. That gives our soldiers and their families an opportunity to go somewhere and do something away from the base. Obviously, the soldiers from the corps alert units are not doing that, but will be confined to the local areas surrounding their bases at Fort Bragg, Fort Campbell, Fort Stewart, and Fort Drum. But we try to manage that pace and OpTempo as best we can.
“Quality of Life” is an Army term, and we’re very concerned about the amount of separation our soldiers have from their families. On average, XVIII Airborne Corps soldiers will spend six to seven months a year gone from their families, either on deployment, on exercises, training, or away at school. We’re trying to mitigate that as best we can in the areas that we can control.
Tom Clancy: Along with the high OpTempos, there is the matter of force modernization. Obviously this is a huge challenge because of the money involved. Can you give us your insight on this?
General Keane: There are significant challenges in modernization to be sure, and the reasons for them are obvious: the downsizing of our budgets. The instruments of war with the precision that they have and the technology involved are extraordinarily expensive, though they do have a large payoff on the battlefield. For example, if I might digress for a moment, in my judgment, one of the most important weapons developments in the post-World War II era in terms of conventional warfare has to be precision guided munitions [PGMs]. When delivered from a suitable platform [aircraft, helicopter, ship, submarine, vehicle, etc.] PGMs have an enormous payoff for us. This is because their precision and lethality provides us with the ability to target and destroy only the portion of a target array that we are interested in.
For example, if I want to take out a portion of a factory, we can now go in with PGMs, and take out only the part of the factory that is important to us, and not do any damage to the surrounding areas. Only an errant missile or malfunction would keep the strike from being successful, and the probability of this happening is dropping every day.
Contrast that with what we had to do in World War II, when we tried to reduce the industrial bases of Germany and Japan. We had to fly armada after armada of heavy bombers to do that, and we lost hundreds of crews in the process. Also, quite tragically, a large number of civilians lost their lives in those strikes. The PGMs we have today enable us to send a single crew on a mission that previously might have required dozens, with a very high assurance of achieving the desired mission results with a minimum of collateral damage.
Of course, PGMs and other technologies like that cost a lot of money, but at the same time they are truly saving lives, of our own military personnel, of non-combatants, and even of our enemies. We have no interest in taking unnecessary lives from our enemies. We just want to stop them from doing whatever it is that we’re opposed to. So technology costs money, and there is a lot of that involved when you’re talking about outfitting an entire corps or army. So we have to make the case for the technologies that we desire, and our people in Washington, D.C., are doing that.
Our concern for the future is the continuing modernization of our corps. Right now we’re moving the last of the old AH-1 Cobra gunships out and replacing them with newly remanufactured OH-58D Kiowa Warriors. Our force of AH-64A Apache attack helicopters will be upgraded in the latter part of this decade to the new AH-64C/D Apache Longbow configuration, which will be a significant improvement in our capability.
We’re also bringing in the new Advanced Field Artillery System [AFATAS], which is going to increase our fire-control capabilities for
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