Should Brigade Combat Teams be regionally aligned?

¶ … Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) be regionally aligned?

Over the last ten years, the Army has been forced to go through a careful reexamination of itself and the strategies that are utilized. This is because the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have made commanders study new ways that will improve their units' abilities to adapt and evolve with emerging threats inside a theater of operations. At the heart of this approach, is realigning the mission through increased training and adjusting to specific areas for successfully completing key objectives.

To fully understand how this will impact American forces requires focusing on: the benefits and drawbacks of a regionally aligned approach. Together, these elements will highlight why Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) should be strategically integrated.

Describe the benefits and shortcomings of regionally aligned forces and the training scenario

Background

The basic foundation of the realignment strategy is to move away from the model that was utilized in the past and begin focusing on a new approach that will strengthen collaboration / support. What is happening is many different BCSs are moving away from one single command structure (under CENTCOM) to areas that are regionally aligned. The main idea is to use the regional command to improve training, collaboration and cultural understanding. In the event that hostilities arise in particular area, is when these units will have more precise intelligence and experience in addressing a host of challenges.

Shortcomings

One of the biggest shortcomings with regionally aligned forces is the deficiency of adaptive personnel. This is because the Army will spend tremendous amounts of resources in training someone to focus on a particular region (such as: becoming fluent in the language and understanding the culture). Only to have, these individuals transferred to another regional command. This requires that they have to go through new forms of training and it is wasting the Army's resources / skill sets by not effectively focusing these talents. When this happens, there will be a deficiency of adaptive personnel inside particular regions. This can hurt the ability of these forces to work effectively with local units by not having an understanding of their culture or traditions.

Moreover, these challenges can lead to rivalries. These issues were problematic in the 1990s and early 2000s. What happened is those units that were aligned to particular commands were given more resources, technology and support. While those BCSs that were in areas (which are not considered to be of strategic interest) received limited assistance and tools. Once an incident develops in a particular part of the world, is when some units may not be prepared to deal with these challenges. This causes the underlying security situation to become worse, resulting in select areas being used as safe havens for enemy forces.

In the future, this will create a situation where there is lack of a defined mission statement. This takes place when commanders and personnel believe that one threat is most likely. Yet, another is emerging which nobody is prepared for. This is problematic, as it is increasing the security risks and wasting resources.

Conclusion

BCTs should be integrated as a part of the regionally aligned strategy. This is because these units can understand the nature of the threat and work with local forces in addressing these issues. When this happens, there will be strong relationship between American and regional armies. At the same time, the costs decrease and the standards of professionalism will improve. This is the point that a specific country will have units that are capable of dealing with a host of possible threats.

However, a certain degree of flexibility must be utilized during this process. The reason why is because there is the potential for issues that could hurt the quality of the training. The most notable include: there is a deficiency of adaptive personnel, rivalries can become dominate and there is the lack of defined mission / training protocols. These areas are troubling, as they will have an adverse effect on critical regions. In the future, this increases the security risks and it makes local forces incapable of dealing with new threats. To avoid these issues requires that a certain amount flexibility and common sense must be embraced at all times. If this can occur, it will help to improve the security situation on the ground and allow local forces to become more capable of addressing these challenges.