Army's bad decisions.

• Author: Kojro, Chester A.
• Position: Letters - Letter to the Editor

In the July 2004 story, "Investment Decisions Haunting Army Today," Sandra I. Erwin is correct in identifying the connection between decade-old risky decisions and today's lack of essential combat equipment, but the problem is much older and deeper.

The Carter administration lamented its inability to launch a deep raid into Iran and began efforts to create a Joint Rapid Deployment Force. Ever since, the Army determined that lighter forces are the ideal solution. It conceived the 10,000-man light infantry division, which is incapable of sustaining itself even in peacetime maneuvers. Next was the high-tech light division, the 9th Infantry Motorized Division--aka the "dune buggy division"--which lacked its essential armored gun system and could not survive on the battlefield.

So the Army created a myth that it could eliminate heavy armor protection and could achieve combat survivability through technical wizardry. About 1984, the Army insisted on "universal" total replacement schemes like the Armored Family of Vehicles that proved to be ridiculously unaffordable as well as technically unachievable. Rather than cancel them, the Army repeatedly restructured the programs by cutting back the number of variants and stretching out procurement. In what was finally proposed around 1988 as the "Armored Systems Modernization," the Army was to field about 18 variants in three increments of 18 years each, meaning 54 years to...