看起來，歐巴馬所謂的「亞洲再平衡」，對海軍而言，是「海空一體」，對陸軍而言，是Pacific Pathways。
可是這裡有個問題：美國海軍陸戰隊與美國陸軍有功能重疊的疑慮。海陸說：陸軍越來越像我們。陸軍說，我們還有民政、重建、醫療、空管等功能。
I Corps commander on Pacific strategy: 'Army
is not trying to be Marine Corps'○Stars and Stripes (2015.01.24) http://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/i-corps-commander-on-pacific-strategy-army-is-not-trying-to-be-marine-corps-1.325480
The Pacific rebalance
requires all the military services and their capabilities, and the Army has
increased its presence in the Pacific “exponentially” in the past year, the
commander of I Corps told reporters Friday.
Lt. Gen. Stephen Lanza, commander of the Joint
Base Lewis-McChord-based I Corps, said the unit is spread throughout the
Pacific and is “truly part of the rebalance”
and the whole-of-government strategy.
“The Army is not
trying to be the Marine Corps,” Lanza said during a media roundtable in
Washington, D.C., in response to questions about the similarity of the “Pacific
Pathways” deployment program to Marine Corps deployments and operations.
“When you have a
holistic strategy in the Pacific, you need all enabling capabilities. And, really, you have to come at rebalance from a joint perspective.”
The demands in the Pacific exceed any one
service’s abilities, Lanza said, and the Army can bring unique capabilities to
the region, including engineer brigades,
civil affairs, medical brigades and aviation.
For example, he said, when a super
typhoon hit the Philippines in 2013, the
Marines responded immediately, and the Army came in later for sustainment and
logistics support.
“That’s the kind of relationship we have,” he
said. “It’s really not a contentious
issue. It’s that we’re not going to
fight as a single service anymore.”
Other demands in the region include air and missile defense and cyber security threats, he said.
And as resources and funding dwindle, Lanza
said, there will be an even greater need for services to work together.
So far, I Corps has been given the resources
it needs and is “truly executing our portion of the rebalance,” Lanza said,
focusing on stabilization, security and
relationship building.
Those relationships are critical, he said, not
just to build trust between the individuals and services but also between
countries.
But the services will need continued support
to sustain the presence and interoperability, he said.
“You have to be
present,” Lanza said. “You have
to be forward of the dateline.”
Army expanding Pacific Pathways exercises in 2015○Stars and Stripes (2014.12.08) http://www.stripes.com/news/army-expanding-pacific-pathways-exercises-in-2015-1.317999
CAMP ASAKA, Japan — The Army is accelerating
its rebalance to the Pacific with three
brigade-level Pacific
Pathways deployments planned for 2015.
The missions follow this year’s four-month
deployment of a brigade from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington and
personnel from Schofield Barracks on Hawaii to Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan.
I Corps commander Lt. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza,
in Tokyo on Monday for the annual Yamasakura exercise with the Japan Ground
Self Defense Force, said Pacific Pathways 2015
kicks off in March and will continue for nine months.
The first event involves a brigade deploying to Thailand,
South Korea and the Philippines to participate in the Cobra
Gold, Foal
Eagle and Balikatan
exercises, I Corps spokesman Col. David Johnson said.
Another brigade will go to Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia
to join in the Talisman Saber, Garuda Shield and Keris Strike training. A third brigade will deploy
later in the year, although the locations and exercises have yet to be settled,
Johnson said.
Pacific Pathways is part of the Army’s effort
to develop a semi-permanent presence in the region,
adding to the large forces already
stationed in South Korea and Japan. The
rotational forces will allow for a U.S. presence in friendly nations without the expense and political complications of
permanent overseas bases.
From a larger perspective, Pathways is part of
the Obama administration’s Pacific pivot,
which was intended to reinvigorate America’s diplomatic, economic and military
influence in the region.
The brigade-level deployments — which
eventually will include I Corps troops from Alaska — are a big step up from
previous engagements by the Army in the Pacific, Lanza said.
“In the past, we would send a small contingent
to these countries,” he said. “They
(exercises in the Pacific) were more about partnership
building and cultural exchanges.”
Pacific Pathways involves operational training and gives soldiers the chance
to do reconnaissance and build relationships with partners in the region that
will stand them in good stead in an emergency, Lanza said.
“We are doing things that are tactically significant in these counties,” he said. “Pathways facilitates future operations.”
Lanza dismissed talk of a turf war between the
Marine Corps and the Army over engagement in the Pacific.
“The Pacific is
big enough for all the services,” he said, noting that seven of the world’s 10 largest militaries are in the
region.
Soldiers rotating there for Pacific Pathways
will complement what the Marines do, he said.
“All these capabilities are required in the
Pacific,” he said.
Yamasakura is not part of Pacific Pathways. However, Japanese troops will be in Australia
as observers at next year’s Talisman Saber exercise, and Australian observers
are in Japan for Yamasakura.
Lt. Gen. Koichi Isobe, commander of Japanese
Ground Self Defense Force’s Eastern Army, noted that 4,500 of his troops were
exercising alongside 2,000 U.S. personnel this month.
Lanza said I Corps is working with Japan on
cyber and ballistic missile defense and operational fires and sustainment
during Yamasakura.
The Army is integrating ever more closely with
Japanese forces, he said, noting that U.S. and
Japanese personnel are sharing a common headquarters during this year’s
training.
Pacific Pathways: Army prepares new tack for deploying forces in Pacific○Stars and Stripes (2014.05.01) http://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/pacific-pathways-army-prepares-new-tack-for-deploying-forces-in-pacific-1.280623
FORT SHAFTER,
Hawaii — In the wake of President Barack Obama's Asia trip aimed at offering
reassurances that the administration remains committed to the Pacific
rebalance, U.S. Army Pacific is planning to bolster the land-based force’s
relevance in the region.
Under Pacific
Pathways, the Army will develop small units that will be forward-deployed
for quick response to humanitarian emergencies or regional threats.
The plan is also a
way for the Army to create a semi-permanent
presence in parts of the Pacific where it’s not politically or
financially feasible to establish bases. And because the unit and much of its equipment
will remain forward deployed, it will provide an efficient resource in a time
of budget cuts and a shrinking military.
But analysts and
some military leaders have questioned whether the initiative will duplicate Marines’ skills and assets and is a
“solution in search of a problem.”
While the plan
would use the series of established military exercises with Pacific nations as
“training pathways,” it will also support more substantial exchanges of subject
expertise and personnel, USARPAC spokesman Jim Guzior wrote in an email to
Stars and Stripes.
The Army is
involved in a host of annual multilateral exercises in the Pacific, with
countries such as the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Cambodia and
India. Materiel is normally transported
to and from each exercise at great expense. Instead of a series of Army units traveling to
an exercise for 10 to 30 days and returning home, the
new pathways model would deploy a smaller unit whose “nucleus” will move from
one exercise to the next, USARPAC commander Gen. Vincent Brooks told reporters
earlier this month during a land force symposium held in Honolulu.
And implementation
of the plan is months, not years, away.
“We are headed
toward being ready to start loading the vessels that are going to move here in
a few months,” Brooks said. “It’s not just an idea; we’re going into execution
with this.”
The new units would
be made up of about 700 troops, although the number will vary depending on the
mission. Deployments could potentially last six months or longer.
On Monday, Obama
announced a 10-year
agreement with the Philippines that gives the U.S. military greater access
to certain bases on the archipelago. Pacific
Pathways will undoubtedly benefit from large equipment that can be pre-positioned under the agreement.
“I think that
Pacific Pathways is a direct response to the Pentagon’s 2012 Defense Strategic
Guidance to rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region,” Christopher Dougherty, a
fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington,
D.C., wrote in an email interview with Stars and Stripes. “For decades, Korea
has been the primary focus of Army forces in [U.S. Pacific Command], and
Pacific Pathways is an attempt to break out of that mindset and demonstrate
that the Army can contribute to stability and security beyond
the Korean peninsula. If the Army
can do that, they may be able to argue more successfully for preserving their
end strength and budget.”
Brooks told
reporters that Pacific Pathways will be built around a truncated
brigade structure, taking its leadership and one or two of its
subordinate battalions, then adding elements that
are not “organic” to a brigade, such as aviation. The unit will morph to adapt to the particular
needs of partner nations and any given exercise.
The number of
soldiers under Brooks’ command has increased during the past several years to
106,000, he said, but funding is not keeping pace. Pacific Pathways is “an
efficient way for us to use the limited resources that we’re going to have,” he
said.
Brooks declined to
say from where soldiers for the new unit would be drawn. Outside of South Korea, most of the troops
under his command are either in Hawaii or Joint Base Lewis-McChord in
Washington state.
The Pacific
Pathways concept has drawn skepticism since it went public late last fall.
A Washington Post
article in December framed the initiative as setting up a “turf battle” with the Marines, the service that is
designed to maneuver amid sea, shore and land.
Indeed,
the Marines are already positioned for a similar role. The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit conducts
multilateral activities from Okinawa, and by 2016, about 2,500 Marines are
expected to be rotating
through a southern base in Darwin, Australia, every six months.
In January, the
Washington, D.C.,-based Brookings Institution published a brutal assessment of
Pacific Pathways by Marine Lt. Col. Aaron Marx, describing the Army’s proposed
expeditionary model in the Pacific as not a supplement to the Navy and Marines
but as “simply a less-capable replication.” He dismissed it as a Marine Expeditionary Unit
“without the ships, the expertise or doctrine.”
During the April land-forces symposium, Maj. Gen. Richard Simcock,
deputy commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces, was asked during a panel how the
Marines and Army can clearly define their roles in the Pacific. He said that just as he heard criticism during
the 12 years of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that the U.S. didn’t need two armies, he’s now hearing there’s no need for
two Marine Corps.
He said the
commitment of the Marine Corps as an “extended land force” was “maybe not the
best mission” for the service but argued it was what the nation needed during
operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. “Pacific Pathways may not be the
best fit for the U.S. Army, but it may be what is required for the United
States right now and throughout the Pacific region.”
Dougherty called
this an “imperfect” analogy because there was “an obvious demand” for more
ground forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Put another way,
there was a pressing problem and a clear solution,” he said. “Pacific Pathways, on the other hand, looks
like a solution in search of a problem. There
does not appear to be insatiable demand in the Asia-Pacific region for combined
training exercises with U.S. infantry battalions. At a time when the Army’s budget is declining
and there are other more pressing problems to solve, this may not be the most
efficient use of resources.”
Even some
high-ranking brass have wondered aloud about the logistics. Lt. Gen. John Wissler, commander of the Third
Marine Expeditionary Force and Marine Forces Japan, told reporters in April
that the Navy’s shortage of amphibious battle ships
could inhibit Pacific Pathways.
Even Brooks
admitted that bringing Pacific Pathways to implementation has been slow,
particularly because it involves diplomatic and military relationships with a
number of Asian nations.
“Anything that
looks like a change has to be understood and accepted in the region and done transparently,” he told reporters.
Peter
Chalk, a senior political analyst at the RAND Corp. who has written about
the Army’s future role in Southeast Asia, said the
concept of small Army expeditionary forces would enhance the service’s ability
to deliver and disseminate humanitarian supplies, restore critical
infrastructure and provide emergency medical support.
“I think the key is
that they have to be small because within
the Asia-Pacific there is still an awareness and a suspicion of large-scale
U.S. forces being stationed in their region that would unwittingly involve
these countries in regional power plays between Washington and Beijing,” Chalk
said.
“If the Army
continues to shrink,” Dougherty concluded, “Pacific Pathways may help offset
the effects of a smaller force by maintaining combat forces forward. This would greatly reduce the time required to
get forces into theater as compared with units stationed in the continental
United States, thereby improving the Army’s ability to respond quickly to
crises.”
Interview: Lt. Gen. Stephen Lanza, Commander, US Army's I Corps○Defense News (2015.10.22) http://www.defensenews.com/article/M5/20141022/DEFREG02/310220046/
Lt. Gen. Stephen Lanza assumed command of the US
Army’s I Corps at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in February. I
Corps, the only regionally aligned unit of the
Army’s three corps, supports the Pacific region. The
command conducts military-to-military engagements, capacity-building exercises
and security force assistance operations across the Asia-Pacific region. It
comprises the 7th Infantry Division and 593rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command
at Lewis-McChord, the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, I
Corps (Forward) at Camp Zama, Japan, and the US Army-Alaska brigade combat
teams at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson and Fort Wainwright.
Q. What activities will I Corps
conduct over the coming year?
A. The corps will have multiple Pacific Pathways exercises ongoing and then
we’ll be doing our certification for our joint task force for Talisman Saber. The corps now has increased its operational
role here over the last year with our support units, so now, we have the 7th Infantry Division, the 25th Infantry Division
and the 593rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command
as part of the corps, and combat brigades in Alaska that are part of US Army
Alaska, as well as I Corps (Forward) in Japan.
So the corps now is able to conduct mission command in a way that allows
us to execute the Pathways while simultaneously
doing other missions. The beauty
of what you’re going to see in the corps here, both now and in the future, is
that we’re already executing the Army Operating
Concept now. What we’ve done with
Pathways, and what we’ve done with missions being done simultaneously across
multiple countries, is really what the concept is. Smaller forces that are scalable and that
operate simultaneously.
Q. What would it mean for you as
I Corps commander if the force were to fall to 420,000 troops and you had less
money to execute the mission?
A. I think it impacts our ability to really
support what we do. We have forces in
Iraq, Afghanistan, Jordan, Kuwait. We
also have our forces in the Pacific that are conducting operations as part of
Pacific Pathways and the engagement strategy.
Of the three corps in the Army, we’re the
only corps assigned to a combatant commander. So if you look at going to that level, then
something has to give. What does not get
done? That’s really the decision. Which combatant commander does not receive
the support that they need? So right
now, we’re able to do the global missions out to 2016 that we’ve been given and
to do the regional missions that we have.
Q. So if you have the ability to
conduct the Pacific Pathways program in 2015, what’s next after the first
rotation wraps up?
A. We’re able to project Pathways out to 2015,
where we’ll do three different Pathways rotations. We’re able to complete the Pathways that
we’re on right now in Indonesia, Malaysia
and Japan.
We’re able to conduct our exercises in Japan in December at Yamasaki. We’re
able to program our certification for Talisman Saber in Australia. We’re able to support operations in Mongolia, the Philippines, Thailand, coming up. We’re able to do engagements with a myriad of
countries on a variety of things for which our country teams and embassies are
looking.
Q. If the force is cut further
and budgets tighten, would these missions go away in 2016 and after?
A. The key then becomes, where
do you put those forces, and then where do
you accept risk? If you move away from the Pacific, what we lose is the
partner capacity and the trust that we’ve built with our allies. That causes concerns because the ability to
de-escalate conflict, to avoid miscalculation, to have that trust between
partners, to enhance interoperability between our partners and our allies — if
you can’t continue that, that starts falling off of the table. And then that is what allows, perhaps, issues
in the Pacific to spin in a different way, because right now it is not so much
that it is about China as much as it is about
working with our partners and allies to balance what is going on in the Pacific
with our presence. So the ability
to prevent, to shape, to engage, to do things in a small way that are scalable,
that are done simultaneously, allows persistent engagement. My concern beyond ’16 is the inability to do
that.
Q. And that’s what Pacific
Pathways is all about, keeping and building those
relationships with new and old allies?
A. Yeah. The
concept is that in the past we had disparate exercises. But Pathways links this together operationally,
so that you have an operation going on in the Pacific that continues over a
four-month period. You have a deployment
going on that enhances our expeditionary capability and our readiness. You have innovation. And then, you have experimentation
being done. So there are a
variety of things that come out of that as you look at what a pathway does. Also, it provides you a capability and
capacity forward of the date, which is extremely important.
Q. US Army Pacific commander Gen.
Vincent Brooks recently spoke about this innovation part of it. How does that fit in? Are you looking at platforms, or are you
looking at leader development, training?
A. Yes and yes.
In Indonesia, we just conducted a combined-arms, live-fire exercise. We had two battalion commanders, one
Indonesian, one American, with Russian and US helicopters. They were given a mission to conduct a
combined-arms, live-fire exercise in a nonstandard range, and they came up with
that plan together. Now to do that,
you’ve got to be very creative and very innovative, and they pulled that off. That’s where the innovation comes in. I think that the part of the leader
development comes in when you’re a lieutenant or a young noncommissioned
officer, and you’re leading patrols in a jungle environment in Malaysia with
your Malaysian counterparts, and you’re building that together.
Q. Is there anything that has
come out of the first rotation of exercise that you want to tweak when it comes
to predeployment training?
A. At home station, I was very happy with the
training that we did at the National Training Center because the brigade went
in there and they did a decisive-action rotation, and they came out of there at
a high level of readiness. One of the
things on which we want to train is our ability to deploy rapidly using ships
and on how we contract for our shipping.
I think that that will be something in the future.
Q. And what about the innovation
aspect that you touched on earlier? Are
there technological solutions that you’re looking at?
A. I think another thing that we will want to do
is look at the requirements of the country teams early on — what do the country
teams want, and then how do we measure our training plan or operations to nest
with what their requirements are. The
other thing that we’ll have to do is to expand our ability to have more command
posts available. One of the things that
Pacific Pathways taught us is the need to have
smaller command posts that we can deploy rapidly into multiple locations, so
that we have distributive-mission command. That’s extremely important.
Q. Have communications with
allies, and between home station and the deployed teams, been difficult?
A. When you’re operating in different countries
across multiple time zones, the ability to have a network architecture, the
ability to achieve a common operating picture, is tough work. When you start looking at it with other
countries, how do you achieve that common operating
picture? How do you keep our
network architecture together, and how do you actually have interoperability
working collectively? We’ve worked that
with the Brits and with the Canadians, and it’s challenging. Imagine working it now with the Malaysians,
the Indonesians and others. So, those
are some things, in the future, at which we’re looking. These are all positive outcomes about working
Pathways in the future.
Q. Are there issues with
classification and encryption?
A. We spend a lot of time exchanging information
so that, while at the tactical level, we don’t have to really worry about some
of the authorities about whom you’re talking for classified information. I think that in the future a part of the
discussion will be at a higher level of what are we going to do for
interoperability, and how do we broker some of the authority and some of the
firewalls that you have right now in interoperability. You see that with Japan. You see that with [South] Korea in some of
the operations. We just finished an
exercise in [South] Korea where we had to have a high preponderance of liaison
officers to work with the 3rd [Republic of Korea] Army because of the ability
to pass information to fire coordination data, intelligence, etc.
Q. Coming off a decade of working
from fixed locations to being more expeditionary, that’s a big change.
A. After a decade of war we have learned a lot
about doing counterinsurgency. We have learned a lot doing small-unit tactics. We have learned a lot in Iraq and Afghanistan. The point now is to build on what we’ve
learned at that level and then bridge forward to increase our capability and
capacity to do a full range of operations.
First of all, logistics, the ability to work
in an austere environment, the ability to develop communications, logistic
support because we’ve been working from [combat outposts] and [forward
operating bases] over the last couple of years.
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