Author Description

This study is a comparative analysis aimed at determining whether or not the U.S. Army's heavy corps and armor/mechanized infantry divisions actually possess the superior agility necessary to transform the doctrinal tenet of AirLand Battle into a battlefield capability, and use it as a means of defeating a much larger Soviet opponent. Among the many conclusions which could be drawn from this research are: agility has meaning only in a relative sense--relative to one's opponent, in this case a Soviet opponent; equivalent agility provides no advantage, superior agility must be achieved; the agility of a unit can be measured; a U.S. heavy corps and its major subordinate combat unit, the armor or mechanized infantry division, are not as agile as their Soviet counterparts; and the ability to apply agility as a mechanism for defeating a Soviet attack absolutely depends on the acquisition of near-perfect, real-time information about enemy and terrain conditions, a capability which the U.S. Army cannot claim. The study concludes there is a serious incongruity between the tenet of agility expressed in AirLand Battle doctrine and the current capability of the U.S. Army's ground maneuver units to apply it. To make matters worse, agility has yet to become a principal criterion in the development of U.S. Army individual and collective performance-oriented training, force design, and materiel. Fundamental deficiencies are highlighted, then followed with recommendations which could eliminate or alleviate their effects.