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CHAPTER 13

 

The Total Army

 

The United States must continue to maintain adequate strength to meet its responsibilities. … The capabilities of our active forces must he improved substantially through modernization and improved readiness. At the same time, we are placing increased emphasis on our National Guard and Reserve components so that we may obtain maximum defense capabilities from the limited resources available. The strengthening of the National Guard and Reserve Forces … is an integral part of the total force planning.

Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird^[1]

 

Disillusioned with the experience in Vietnam, the nation questioned and reexamined the role of the United States in world affairs. The Army turned to a smaller, all-volunteer force for the first time since the end of World War II. A smaller Army, however, required more conventional firepower to provide a credible deterrent against Soviet aggression. A reexamination of division and brigade organizations began, resulting in the incorporation of new, sophisticated weapons and equipment. To meet the nation's needs with fewer resources, planners relied upon the concept of "One Army" or "Total Army," depending upon the jargon in vogue, which stressed the integration of the Regular Army, Army National Guard, and Army Reserve. Although the three components had served the nation together in the past, they had always remained separate and distinct from one another in many ways.

 

The 21-Division, 21-Brigade Force

The Nixon doctrine and smaller budgets drove Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird to set an Army goal of 21 divisions, 13 in the Regular Army and 8 in the National Guard, by 1973. Structured and equipped primarily to defend Western Europe, the divisions were designed for conventional warfare against the Soviet Union's heavy armor forces. To complement the divisions, the Army maintained 21 separate combined arms brigades, 18 in the Army National Guard and 3 in the Army Reserve. In addition, the Regular Army continued to employ special mission brigades as theater defense forces.^[2]

In October 1969 the Army Staff suspended all new work on revised tables of organization and equipment for armored, infantry, and mechanized infantry divisions because the proposed changes required too many men to field them. Instead, it directed the Combat Developments Command to develop divisions of fewer than

 

1. Melvin R. Laird, National Security Strategy of Realistic Deterrence: Annual Defense Department Report, FY 1973 (Washington, D.C. Government Printing Office, 1972), p. 24.
2. Ibid. pp. 86–87.