Hundreds gather to plan Army Reset for Afghanistan, Iraq

By Paul Boyce, U.S. Army Forces CommandJune 18, 2009

FORSCOM commander
(Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL

FORT MCPHERSON, Ga. (Army News Service, June 18, 2009) -- Key Army leaders and planners gathered in the football-field-sized Atlanta convention center Wednesday to focus on reintegrating Soldiers and families, and preparing Army units for future operations.

"I think all of you know that the chief of staff of the U.S. Army is very much interested in adapting the institution," said Gen. Charles C. Campbell, commanding general of U.S. Army Forces Command. "His concept includes three components: improving Army Force Generation, adopting an enterprise approach, and reforming the requirements and resourcing processes of the Army."

To help achieve those goals, U.S. Army Forces Command - the Army's Readiness Core Enterprise - hosted more than 430 Army participants for the Reset Rehearsal of Concept, or ROC Drill.

The massive endeavor of synchronizing the U.S. Army's process to build readiness in its war-fighting units for future operations marched forward during more than 12 hours of briefings and discussions focused on hundreds of tasks associated with reset.

Forces Command's logistics and operations planners designed the Reset ROC Drill to support institutionalization of reset within the Army's four core enterprises, to demonstrate the behaviors associated with the Army's enterprise approach to accomplishing reset, and to align the core-enterprise outputs to specific outcomes.

Briefings included presentations by the Readiness Core Enterprise, Human Capital Core Enterprise, Materiel Core Enterprise, and the Services and Infrastructure Core Enterprise.

"One of his objectives for asking me to lead the ROC Drill in my capacity as the lead for the Readiness Core Enterprise was to create a forcing function to compel the Army to act like an enterprise," Campbell explained. "I will tell you that based on my interactions with the other Core Enterprise leads, I can report to the chief of staff of the Army that the ROC Drill was effective."

Reset is a cyclical process that restores previously deployed units to a level of personnel and equipment readiness that permits resumption of training for future missions.

Army Force Generation, or ARFORGEN, involves a structured progression that builds unit readiness over time, resulting in recurring periods of availability of trained, ready and cohesive modular units to meet both combatant command and Army requirements.

Beyond improved planning and interactions, Campbell said the Army leadership's second objective "relates to refining the roles, responsibilities and strategies that relate to manning, equipping and training ... so that we can assuredly set the conditions for a unit that is being redeployed to progress through the levels of readiness that permit it to resume collective training."

"There's no other way to do this than to take a holistic approach if this Army is going to continue to lead the way," said Dean G. Popps, acting assistant secretary of the Army for Acquisitions, Logistics and Technology.

"Today is a great day for opportunities, to get at the healthy discussions we need to have," said Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody, commanding general of U.S. Army Materiel Command and lead for the Materiel Core Enterprise. "We have an opportunity to adapt our institution, to better support ARFORGEN, to better protect dwell time, to better prepare our men and women for deployment, and reset our Army."

"This is all about achieving a level of predictability for Soldiers, their families and commanders," said Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commanding general of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command and lead for the Human Capital Enterprise.

"The ROC Drill shows there is no doubt that senior Army leaders are aware of the burden that our Soldiers and families bear and we are committed, as an enterprise, to finding innovative and comprehensive ways to lighten their load," said Lt. Gen. Robert Durbin, special assistant to the Army chief of staff for enterprise management.

The Department of the Army headquarters hosted a similar ROC drill in 2007. A ROC drill is a tool that ground-force commanders use to align, coordinate and synchronize their forces on a terrain model. For this ROC drill, the group worked on hundreds of tasks, some months in advance of the June 17 meeting -- including identifying institutional gaps or "friction points" that require mitigation to improve synchronized efforts across the staffs. Their actions and lessons learned focused on improving family-support programs, manning, equipping, sustaining and training forces, as well as facilities improvements.

We're "executing the rehearsal of concept drill to a high standard where information can be considered by all," said Col. John Schulz, U.S. Army Forces Command assistant deputy G-4.

The 40,000 square-foot convention center area included a 17.5-foot-tall by 40-foot-wide Department of Army graphic model of the three reset phases: in-theatre, reset and train/ready forces. Near this World War II-style "sand table" graphic were teams of assembled briefers and planners, as well as five movie-size screens displaying the process needed to enable transparent, synchronized efforts.

The assembled group reviewed and discussed more than 600 slides and made more than two dozen recommendations.

Beyond the Department of the Army and FORSCOM, the partnership behind the Reset ROC Drill featured numerous Army generals, Senior Executive Service members, planners and action officers from U.S. Army Materiel Command, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, U.S. Army Installation Management Command, the reserve components and dozens of associated disciplines, such as Army G-1 (Personnel), Army Chaplains and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.