20-20 Hindsight: lesson for Army: forget everything you learned before you went to Iraq.

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Date: 01 July 2009
• Author: Jean, Grace V.
• Published date: 01 July 2009
• Author: Jean, Grace V.

ARMY WAR COLLEGE, Carlisle, Pa. -- The Army has never designed the perfect organization with which to go to war.

That may not be a realistic goal, the Army has learned. Instead, it will try to groom leaders who can adapt to many forms of war, says Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chief of the Army Training and Doctrine Command.

When the Defense Department sent Dempsey to Iraq in 2003 to command the 1st Armored Division, he was in charge of the quintessential heavy division built for the plains of Europe--but was not capable of taking on the governance, economic development and reconstruction duties that the military was assigned after the fall of Baghdad.

Troops learned the hard way. "By the time we left Iraq, the division was nothing like it was when we first got there," he says.

Since then, the Army has made significant adjustments. Long centered on its divisions, the service has evolved into a brigade-centric force with emphasis on its smaller units.

"We're probably going to get the materiel close, but not perfect. We're probably going to have some guidance that's good, but not exact," he says. "It's the leaders who will take organizations, materiel and guidance and turn them into something that succeeds. I think we've demonstrated our ability to do that, but we can't take it for granted."

Threats increasingly will come not from nation states, but from transnational groups such as al-Qaida, Hezbollah and Hamas, whose organizations are decentralized and networked. To defeat such groups the Army, too, must become decentralized and networked, leaders say.

That has many implications for the service. The more decentralized...