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Wednesday, June 13, 2001

White, a retired brigadier general and former energy company executive, says if information technology is properly applied in the Army, there might be less or even no need for the middle levels of command.

He told reporters Tuesday that information technology in the private sector has had the effect of "flattening out" organizations, because all levels can instantly share the same "situational awareness" through computer networks. Top officers can communicate directly with the workers to give orders and seek information, he said.

The Army is organized into increasingly larger levels beginning with the smallest squad, then the platoon, the company, the battalion, brigade, division and the corps.

That hierarchy was developed when armies communicated long distances using flags and smoke. White questioned whether the structure was useful today when the Army was being asked to do so many missions with dwindling resources but dramatically improved connectivity.

He said he could foresee a day when lower levels of command would communicate directly with highest levels, absent the middle layers, which now act to implement orders from the top down.

"How do we flatten this organization to get more muscle out there?" White asked.

He said he was ready for the traditionalists and naysayers.

"We're going to have a run in because it's clear the potential is there," he said.

He said he wants to see broad experimentation with new organizational structures.

"By tradition, people who have great armies have failed to experiment. … They have been smug about everything," he said, pointing to Britain and France between the great wars as example. They remained stagnant, while vanquished Germany reorganized and developed new ways of fighting, quickly overrunning most of Europe in World War II.

White said one of the areas ripe for change was the massive logistics "tail" that supported the deployed troops: the people, material, weapons and the pace at which they are sent to the field.

If the Army had the same logistics tail 20 years from now, White said, "someone ought to shoot us."

As the Army and the other services try to find more combat power in their shrinking ranks, they are looking to the business side of the military as a source for more personnel. If those people's functions can be transferred to private contracts - outsourcing - there could be an enormous number of new war fighters.

White is committed to the idea.

"We are not going to study it. We are going to do it," he said.

He saw housing as one area that private industry could take over from the Army. The other was energy services. The Army contracts power for all its bases through the Defense Logistics Agency.

"I see no reason, whatsoever, why the Army is in the energy business," White said.

White was the vice chairman of Enron Energy Services, the Enron corporate subsidiary responsible for providing energy outsource solutions to commercial and industrial customers throughout the United States, according to his official biography.

White was likewise committed to transforming the Army into a lighter, more deployable force, but only if it could be done without sacrificing lethality and survivability for the troops.

"What I am demanding of the Army is that we have the same total commitment to transportation that we had in 1972 and '73 … that it is not optional," White said.

As the Pentagon shifts its attention to possible Asian fields of battle, the Army must be able to be quickly deposited on the other side of the world.

One of the reasons for enhanced strategic mobility "is just the sheer geography of the Pacific theater," White said.

'Whining' About the Berets

The most visible manifestation of the Army's nascent effort to transform itself, as well as the most controversial, is Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki's decision to outfit the entire service in black berets.

Berets were for the province of the elite Army rangers and Special Forces, and plans to outfit all Army troops in them raised a ruckus among traditionalists.

"As far as I am concerned, we are putting the whining and complaining behind us," White said. "It is my intent to move the army into the headgear within the constraint that it be made in the United States."

Under intense pressure from Congress, the Army last month canceled contracts with a British company that operates in China to make the berets. It also canceled contracts in other countries.

"I want to have a brass plaque on the textile mills saying we make the headgear for the finest army in the world," said White.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.

All rights reserved.

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