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

by Douglas A. Macgregor

This work proposes the reorganization of America's ground forces on the strategic, operational and tactical levels. Central to the proposal is the simple thesis that the U.S. Army must take control of its future by exploiting the emerging revolution in military affairs. The analysis argues that a new Army warfighting organization will not only be more deployable and effective in Joint operations; reorganized information age ground forces will be significantly less expensive to operate, maintain, and modernize than the Army's current Cold War division-based organizations. And while ground forces must be equipped with the newest Institute weapons, new technology will not fulfill its promise of shaping the battlefield to American advantage if new devices are merely grafted on to old organizations that are not specifically designed to exploit them. It is not enough to rely on the infusion of new, expensive technology into the American defense establishment to preserve America's strategic dominance in the next century. The work makes it clear that planes, ships, and missiles cannot do the job of defending America's global security issues alone. The United States must opt for reform and reorganization of the nation's ground forces and avoid repeating Britain's historic mistake of always fielding an effective army just in time to avoid defeat, but too late to deter an aggressor.

Genres: Military Fiction, Military History

302 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Douglas Abbott Macgregor is a retired colonel in the United States Army, former government official, author, consultant, and political commentator. An Armor Branch officer by background, Macgregor was a leader in an early tank battle in the Gulf War and was a top planner in the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. His 1997 book Breaking the Phalanx argued for radical reforms inside the United States Army. After retiring from the military in 2004, Macgregor became more politically active.

Reviews

[Owlseyes]

https://www.theamericanconservative.c...

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had this book on my shelf for a while and just never got around to it until I saw the interview Tucker Carlson did with Douglas Mcgregor in which he practically had the US Military surrendering to the Russians.

Mcgregor does raise some interesting and good points in this book about centering the US Army around combined arms combat brigades instead of divisions. It was an idea that was partially used in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Unfortunately, it does not take the author very long to go off the rails and destroy his own arguments.

The first point where I could not longer take him serious was in his opening scenario where we are fighting Iraq and Iran. Iran uses a nuclear weapon to taken out an aircraft carrier and the US reacts by....business as usual. We just merrily continue on with the original plan like it was just another day at the office, like Iran would not use more.

The second point is, Mcgregor builds his premise that the US Army is the defining military force because nothing can be accomplished without boots on the ground. He reinforces the US Army supremacy over the other branches by having these combat brigades stationed all over the world ready to respond in an instance and then they can just stroll into any hot spot anytime and bring peace to the land. Name a Middle East, African or Central/South American country that is going to allow the permanent stationing of a 3000-5000 person combat brigade in their country. I will be waiting a very long time.

Mcgregor even implies at one point that the military leadership should disregard the civilian and political leadership to put troops and equipment where it thinks they need to be.

The final point that really threw me for a loop was him trying to argue that the Marine Corps and Navy pretty much just need to be gutted. With his plan of Army combat units all over the world there is no need for the Marine Corps. The Navy just needs to dump most of its carriers and start cancelling submarines because there is no one left in the world that can seriously challenge the Navy so they just need to be available to give the Army a ride when needed and protect the sea lanes with a few destroyers.

While Mcgregor acknowledges many of the missions that the USMC had done such as evacuations of civilians (NEO) and other Operations Other Than War (OOTW), it is inconvenient so he just dismisses them with the statement that US Air Force and Special Operations Forces will handle it. Zero details on how a mass evacuation in a crisis would be handled by a few planes and personnel. The withdraw from Afghanistan proved that point a lie.

Obviously none of this has aged well with the continuing rise of China.

The most glaring flaw in his grand plan with the complete lack of forced entry capability. Time and time again through the book, Mcgregor just glosses right over it and talks about these Army heavy brigades just showing up and offloading in some friendly port. Troops flying into to some friendly airfield to be mated up with said offload vehicles and equipment. The presumption every time was that there would also be nearby friendly ports/airfields throwing open their arms to greet the Americans.

As I said before, Mcgregor does make some solid points on reorganizing the Army to make it more flexible and responsive but in some very unrealistic ways. His just flippant dismissal of the US Navy and Marine Corps proves that in one way he is a product of the very system he disagrees with with. Its all about the Army.