Quote Originally Posted by Rifleman View Post
How is the Army any more modular now than it had been all along since getting rid of Pentomic for ROAD?

I read the idea behind going to brigade HQs in the division was to recreate the flexibility found in the combat commands of the WWII armored division. The brigade had home battalions, but I know battalions were often cross attached to other brigades within the division for operations. And I think 3d Brigade, 82d Airborne Divison was OPCONNED to the 101st in Vietnam.

I thought that was modularity. Maybe it's just flexibility?
It has to do with deployable units, or what level is modularly deployable.

In early OEF/OIF, when a division deployed a BCT, the BCT required a slice of the divisional MSCs (a BN from DIVARTY and DISCOM, and ENG if a heavy DIV, and companies from the MI BN, ADA BN, EN BN if a light DIV, SIG BN. A couple of separate platoons, too (MP and CHEM, IIRC). This offered the division the opportunity to fatten the first BCT deployed, at the expense of follow on BCTs. It also created issues with prep and training- when do you stop falling under your organic functional command and fall under the BCT you will deploy with. I can remember my BN CDR bouncing between the BDE and the DIVARTY, getting conflicting guidance. Despite a DIV directed task org effective, it was a negotiation on which DIVARTY events we would still participate in, rating changes effective, etc, etc, etc. Then, when a DIV deploys separate from its BCTs, those functional commanders have nothing to command- yeah, they are still special staff officers, but they have full time representatives for that.

There are also administrative details that are difficult when you are attached to a BCT. As a BN, its not too bad, but some things cause confusion to change over and back between the organic and attached HQ. For companies and platoons, its even worse (since they aren't set up to be administratively separate, but when deployed with their BCT are separated from their organic HQ).

I think that the BCTs are better overall- most of the training issues attributed to modularity are really attributable to a shortage of force structure and rapid turn around between deployments- than the division based force- we had 7 de facto BCTs before 2004 (only 82d, 101st and 1st CAV had all of their BCTs co-located).