Customer Reviews

Breaking the Phalanx: A New Design for Landpower in the 21st Century

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This is an excellent work and ranks among the best military theory I have read. Macgregor systematically presents the history of American combineds arms, tears apart the current structure, and rebuilds it into lethal, 21st century fighting force.

Unlike many professional military men who take up the pen, Macgregor is an excellent writer, who justifies ever proposal he makes, but avoids bogging down the work in mountains of detail.

I do not agree wholesale with all of Macgregor's points, particularly in regards to naval expeditionary forces, but the overall rigor of the book more than compensates for that fact. Macgregor has clearly grasped the premise that elite institutions (such as the American military) can only improve through the most rigorous process of self criticism and innovation.

"Breaking the Phalanx" is an innovative, outstanding work, and if there is any justice the Army will give him a medal for his brilliant contribution to American arms.

Future historians of American military doctrine may well identify this book as the fulcrum point of American military thought and force structure at the turn of the 21st Century. This is not a collection of war stories or a diatribe against what is wrong with the "system" today. This book looks at the future, and offers a plan. It is easy to be a naysayer, but Colonel MacGregor, to his great credit, did not take the easy way. Readers should be warned that there is some effort required to read and digest this important work. I would guess that the price would come first. However, if the value of a book is measured by the time required to read and understand it, then I would suggest that this is well worth the price.

In a very few pages, MacGregor advocates a total redesign of American land-based forces. His vision is an Army without divisions, one with tailored "groups" such as an air assault group and a heavy combat group. These "groups" consist of several (5-7) battalions of the required type, and could deploy more rapidly than current U.S. divisions. MacGregor's vision of the future suggests as many as 18 of these groups, mostly based inside the United States. Based primarily upon this he has been labeled as a "Regimentalist," a term that he explicitly denies as applicable to his ideas. (Note: For those unfamiliar with the U.S. Army, there is a long raging debate regarding force structure. A U.S. "Regiment"would be 2-3 battalions, akin to the "traditional" American regimental structure. Not to be confused with the current British system and nomenclature. In opposition are those that favor the current U.S. Division/Brigade structure. Careers have been lost in the course of this fight.)

Beyond the redesign of the force, MacGregor does what nobody else has seriously attempted since the 1980s. He takes on the training structures and doctrine of the Army. Specifically, he addresses that most sacred of cows -- synchronization. In practice, the contemporary U.S. Army still treats warfare as an activity that can be carefully scripted. Because of the concerns with synchronization in operational and logistical planning, not enough attention is devoted in training to the missed or seized opportunities for battlefield success which may result from subordinate initiative and new fighting techniques and tactics. MacGregor takes this issue on. One should also remember that this book appeared before the current draft of FM 100-5 (the U.S. Army base doctrine, now called FM 3). It now forms a portion of the discourse upon the concepts embodied in the new doctrine.

This is a well written book that those interested in the topic will need to use and consult as they consider the uncertain future. It gives insight like few other books do on the current trends of theory and military force structure as they appear in the United States. If there are any shortcomings at all, I would say that it comes in the area of information and its applications in the future. In this area, MacGregor is both a little too positive and vague about how anything beyond tactical communications affects U.S. forces. He uses a hypothetical scenario to describe how a conflict might unfold once the Army adopts his force structure. Although he mentions CNN early in his scenario, that is the last significant point at which he notes the interaction and role of non-military communications/information upon the military. For a scenario involving western military forces this is inexcusable. Admittedly, this is a book about the U.S. Army and landpower, and so perhaps information is a little beyond the scope. But given the quality of treatment for the other topics he addressed, I personally would have liked to see more on this subject from him. In Macgregor's book, satellites are never shot down, CNN doesn't show up on the battlefield, the BBC doesn't broadcast from your assembly area.

This book received a lot of attention in the Army when it was published, and for good reason; it attacked the Army's organization that had existed since the second world war. Interestingly, the Army's new chief of staff, General Eric Shinseki, has begun changing the Army in ways first outlined in this book over two years ago. Among the changes: the adoption of more rapidly-deployable forces, "medium weight" forces, Light Armored Vehicles, such as those used by the USMC, and a squadron/battalion sized reconaissance element for greater intelligence. The Army has also modified the Officer Personal Management System, a move MacGregor advocated. Sadly, MacGregor himself is a full-bird colonel right now assigned to the National Defense University. Essentially, Macgragor has been put out to academic pasture. He will not get to command a brigade, and consequently will probably not be promoted again.

Col MacGregor was first seen as the S-3 along with (both were then Majors) LTC H.R. McMaster fighting the Battle of 73 Easting described in Tom Clancy's Armored Cav. After battling the Iraqis, both of these brilliant tacticians went to work to better America's Army taking their experiences of combining arms in the Cav to heart. LTC McMaster focused in his book on the geo/domestic politics that led our nation into war in Vietnam and Col MacGregor looks into U.S. Army force structure/design.

MacGregor begins by showing that in WWII, the U.S. Army created Regimental Combat Teams combining-arms to defeat the German mechanized armies long before the marines (who never had to fight a mechanized 1st world enemy in WWII or ever for that matter) created their smaller battalion-sized imitation brand. MacGregor shows that the Regiment/Brigade size is just the right size to combine arms (armor, infantry, artillery, engineers, aviation) as the Division is larger and harder to fight as an entity. My only regret is that he then proposes we get "break" the Divisional phalanxes to create Brigade Combat Teams where young one-star generals can command units fully equipped for modern warfare at all times and not assembled ad hoc. This is not necessary since you can create BCTs within existing Divisions, maintaining the honor/fighting traditions/identity of these legendary formations. The idea that by making the Army smaller we will be rewarded by the same amount of money that was for the larger force then being transferred to new equipment---is doubtful with America's anti-military spending mindset. Less is rewarded with less. These two assumptions have black-listed this otherwise fine book---just read the book and keep in mind that what he proposes can be done with existing Divisions and all will be well. 30 BCTs are better than 26.

Col MacGregor then shows how we can mix/match what the U.S. Army already has to achieve some amazing capabilities---to show us the need he writes a Clancy-esque scenario in the Middle east to illustrate why reorganization is needed. His Airborne/Air Assault force structures create possibilities of Air-Mech 3-D maneuvers that could unhinge enemies by dislocation and support 2-D heavy force combinations by positional advantage. His recomendations throughout the book to move to an Army that is able to strategically deploy and be dominant in maneuver using digital means and PGMs is the proper combination of America's military power that stands in stark contrast to those that just want to posture from the sea/air or even space and never take control of the ground. He states: "precision strike is a capability not a stragey", and he is (pardon the pun) on target! Its almost prophetic that he stated that we must be able to deploy before a foe attacks his neighbor---just two years later we had the Serbs brutalize Kosovo and America could not rapidly deploy combined-arms units in relevant Brigade sizes by AIR as fast as we needed to. His book is full of brilliant observations of things from the obsolescence of surface amphibious ships to the need to have forces that rapidly deploy by AIR and not take 6 months to go by ship in an age of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Read with a highlight pen and be ready to make marginal notes to yourself!

MacGregor is a hero. He needs to be honored with the highest peacetime honor the Army can bestow for moral courage and given any choice of assignment. As the years go by and his ideas are adopted we should never forget many of them began with this fine book, written by a fine scholar, warrior and human being.

Airborne, Sir!

A very intriguing and thought provoking book. It should be required reading for anyone interested in Military Affairs. This is precisely the type of thinking that we need at this time. We are on the verge of a great revolution in military affairs and we need some new thinking to go along with all our new technology. Douglas MacGregor is the type of leader this country needs. He should be the type of person who makes Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but his career will probably suffer because of this book.

This an excellent book and the author should be applauded for applying some long overdue deep thought (especially at the time of writing) to practical problems 1st world armies face in the coming decades - with shrinking budgets, less manpower and greater technology driven specialisation. The first two-thirds of the book are extremely relevant to people involved in the military across the world, however, in the last chapters the book narrows its focus to a discussion of uniquely American problems and current defence politics - which is to be expected given the nationality of the author. All in all a very intelligent and practical look at the future - well worth the asking price.

In 1997, Colonel Douglas Macgregor provided a well thought out blueprint for affecting a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) within the U.S. Army, and to a lesser extent the entire U.S. Armed Forces. The blueprint, as detailed in this book, apparently served as an inspiration for the restructuring of the U.S. Army from an organization based on stand alone divisions to its current brigade structure. Yet apparently neither the Defense Department (DOD) nor the Army fully accepted Macgregor's remarkably prescient thinking. His goal in this book was to demonstrate the Army's strategic relevance in the 21st Century as force to counter the bewildering multiplication of threats to U.S. National Security that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Macgregor noted that "military strategy" really refers to the use of military power to achieve strategic goals, but how effective that military power would be is a function of force structure, tactical and operational doctrine, and training. He also persuavely argues that RMA is not a matter of mere technological innovation, but rather concerns the willingness of the armed forces to "devise new ways to incorporate new technology by changing their organization, their tactics, and sometimes their whole concept of war."

Rather interestingly Macgregor adopted two of the then prevalent concepts of `Network Centric Warfare" (although he never uses this term) as the basis for his proposal to restructure the army. He argued that the newly conceived command system known as C4I [SR] (Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence [Surveillance, Reconnaissance] ) offered the means to build a new ground force structure based on smaller more flexible units which he calls "Combat Groups." He also argued that the Army should adopt a `networked type' of organizational structure based on a C4I system that would have a much flatter command structure than the traditional army hierarchical structure. His argument was centered on historical examples that demonstrated that when command authority was dispersed to smaller units, warfare by maneuver and adaptable tactics leading to battlefield success became possible. This latter was probably one reason why the Army only adopted his force structure concept and not his C4I proposal.

Macgregor also argued that the perennially out of control DOD budget could be brought under control by the sensible method of tying force structure and weapons procurement to actual strategic needs based on a rational analysis of real and potential threats to national security. Although DOD would claim that it always does just this, the evidence suggests otherwise as demonstrated most recently F35 strike fighter.

A remarkable book that is as relevant today as when it was written and is for the shelf of anyone seriously interested in military reform.

Interesting to note that COL MacGregor's book has been retrieved from the basement of the Pentagon and is being reread in light of our recent operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. It took a lot of courage to write this book since thinking outside the box is talked about, but acting outside the box is rarely done in the Army. In Iraq we still wanted to employ WWII force structures on the modern battlefield. However, we've also learned (maybe) that the much celebrated deep attack by Army Aviation was a failure.

Army officer Douglas Macgregor wrote "Breaking the Phalanx" as far back as 1996, but ten years on, his work looks amazingly prescient in predicting the course of transformation undertaken by the U.S. military and especially the U.S. Army since 2001.

"Breaking the Phalanx" does a superb job of capturing the essentials of the discussion within military and political circles as of 1996 about how to transform the U.S. Army for the demands of land warfare in the information age, a transformation for which the first Gulf War of 1991 gave only a foretaste.

Macgregor systematically lays down an historically-based argument for the continuing need to conduct decisive land combat, an argument that has been only reinforced by the course of the Global War on Terrorism. He then provides a template for how an information age army might organize, train, deploy, and fight. His book, controversial at the time, publicized the revolutionary synergies possible in agile, truly integrated joint forces using information technologies to bring lethal effects to bear at the point of contact with the enemy. These effects were realized in the unprecedented 2001 campaign to overturn the Taliban Regime in Afghanistan and the swift 2003 campaign to defeat the Iragi Army. These effects are now being institutionalized in the Army's on-going transformation into modular combined arms brigades as the basis of maneuver.

Parts of Macgregor's book discuss challenges that will always be an issue in any army. For example, it is always difficult to train officers in peacetime for wartime success; not least because peacetime armies tend not to reward the kind of calculated risk-taking vital to success in combat. Macgregor deplores the politicization of weapons acquisition, but given our democratic processes, some of this may be unavoidable. Some other parts of the book seem a little less relevant with the passage of time. Nevertheless, his work is an excellent starting point of any history of the transformation of the military into its 21st Century form.

This book is highly recommended to the military professional and to the historian of military transformation.

LTC MacGregor's concepts are new and interesting. While I would not automatically subscribe to his ideas concerning future reorganization of the US Army, his ideas deserve a serious look. It will do no good to take 21st Century weapons into battle if we are still fighting in a 20th Century mindset.