The Grey Beard Brigade
If you are like me, a soldier in the United States Army from 1973 to 2001, you have likely been disappointed with the Army’s drift over the past three decades. It was not an exclusive downward slide. The same has occurred in the Army’s sister services. In that span of time, physical fitness and appearance standards declined. The skill sets required to engage in conventional war, now characterized as large-scale combat operations (LSCO), have atrophied alarmingly, the fancier name notwithstanding. Likewise, the readiness of our forces during years of counterinsurgency (COIN) wars degraded as combat formations—corps, divisions, brigades, battalions, and companies and batteries—were hollowed out and refashioned to accommodate the frequent rotation of fighting forces in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the process, we gutted key Army branches like the artillery, air defense, and engineers, to bolster the need for manpower in bespoke Brigade Combat Teams (BCT) that were combat centerpieces during COIN operations. Indeed, the Army unwisely eliminated both division and corps artillery formations, which were essential to combined arms capabilities in LSCO. This was mindless. Indeed, a huge blunder.
Even now, that illogic continues as the Army’s armored cavalry, aviation assets, and special forces are being defenestrated to account for the manpower needs of other branches. That is a poor way to address manpower, and sadly, it is consistent with the decomposition of combat power and skills in the wake of the COIN years.
Moreover, weakening the contribution of critical army branches fails to recognize that the Army fights with combined arms, which contemplate the synchronization of essential capabilities to create the necessary impacts to overwhelm the enemy on the battlefield. That combat principle has not changed. It remains sound doctrine. Indeed, if anything, it has been reconfirmed by what we are seeing—or should have seen—in Ukraine as that country struggles fighting a war of attrition for its survival against a Russian invasion.
The ill-advised structural manipulations, loss of combat skills, and lack of rigor in soldier discipline and training have combined to create a hollow Army that will be hard-pressed to meet the challenges of future war that almost certainly lie ahead. Those wars will be fought on highly lethal and transparent battlefields that will test our ability to apply our doctrine and skills in LSCO successfully. The Army has considerable work to do to get ready.
Back to Divisions: Rebuilding for LSCO
In truth, there have been glimmers of hope in recent years following COIN. Army leaders have wisely concluded that if it is necessary to fight and win in LSCO, immediate change is required. Once again, the division has been reestablished as the fundamental synchronizing agent of combat power. The base piece will no longer be the BCT, which, although bulked up for COIN, would have been insufficient to coordinate the complex and inherent synchronization actions of divisions in the 1990s. Divisions must be trained to do this again, consistent with the 2024 Army Force Structure Transformation Initiative.
Yet, divisions require more combat power, including three whole maneuver brigades, an aviation brigade, necessary reconnaissance assets, and a Division Artillery (DIVARTY) with a full complement of direct and general support battalions to support the division’s main effort in combat as well as orchestrate and conduct the division’s counterfire fight. Moreover, a robust sustainment, engineering, air defense, and communications component is essential to support the division. Declaring the division’s revival is necessary, but it is hardly sufficient. The Army must do more than breathe life into this body. It must provide sinew and muscle. The Army is inadequate in both.
Enter the Secretary of War’s presentation to the nation’s generals and senior non-commissioned leadership at Quantico, Virginia, on 30 September 2025. In particular, Army generals and sergeants major were present to observe the proceedings. And some of the central points made then now give them the license to determine what must be done to repair our Army in meaningful ways.
“Lethality is our calling card, and victory our only acceptable end-state.” —Secretary Pete Hegseth
However, what caught my ear—and I am sure those like me who fought in the First Gulf War in 1991—was Secretary Pete Hegseth’s acknowledgment concerning the capabilities and readiness of the Army and joint forces to fight and win in that conflict. He correctly pointed to the 1980s Reagan military buildup that preceded the Gulf War. He also recognized the contributions of senior Army leaders of that era, many of whom had fought in the Vietnam War. The financial investment in military capability, combined with the wisdom of combat veterans who wrote the AirLand Battle doctrine we executed in the sands of the Middle East, set the conditions for victory. We should take note of that now. But more importantly, it was the warrior spirit, training, and abilities of US Army soldiers and their joint service comrades who fought in that conflict that produced victory.
In that regard, Secretary Hegseth correctly noted the business of our services today, to wit, “From this moment forward, the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: war fighting, preparing for war, and preparing to win, unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit.”
That must be the focus of America’s Army. We must rebuild our combined arms capability. We must properly structure ourselves to fight. We must equip our soldiers with the finest and most lethal weapons. And we must train with rigor to be ready to fight, as if combat will come upon us at “0-dark-30” tomorrow.
Call in “The Grey Beard Brigade”
However, the Army’s leadership faces a penultimate challenge. Simply put, it is challenging for officers and non-commissioned officers to reimagine the kind of Army to fight in LSCO when they have never experienced that sort of war firsthand. And in that regard, they have “forgotten” that which they did not know.
Many of our senior leaders—fine as they may be, indeed combat tested during COIN—lack the experience of how we prepared to fight before 1990, when the Army was keenly focused on conventional war, just as we must be for LSCO now. Nor have they trained with the same rigor as the Army did in the 1980s and 90s, when it was preparing for an invasion of the North German plain by the forces of the Warsaw Pact. And most concerning, this Army has not fought within full-fledged divisions operating under robust corps on expansive and dangerous battlefields that will test the heart and abilities of the best of soldiers. Gone are the days when whole divisions conducted force-on-force maneuvers over vast expanses of terrain as we did in the days of REFORGER (Return of Forces to Germany) to test our skills at echelon and scale. But there’s good news. Many who did are still here to help the Army “remember” what it has not learned about preparing division echelons and their subordinates for combat.
It is time for the Secretary of the Army to direct and assemble—now—a “Grey Beard Brigade,” volunteer teams of former warfighters, to be dispatched across the Army to help units at all echelons learn and reconnect to what they must do to fight and win in conventional war. They must know what those of us who have served in years past understood, including the lessons we learned in planning, operating, training, moving, shooting, communicating, maintaining, deploying, and redeploying in both war and peace.
Yet it is difficult to imagine what you have not experienced, especially given the span of time that now exists between the last conventional war and the one that lies ahead for the Army. The soldiers of the Vietnam and Gulf War eras have long since retired. The good news is that they still understand—seasoned as they are—what must be done to achieve the ultimate challenge of any army: to fight and win in combat.
The Time to Ask is Now
To be sure, the Army has much to do in recruiting quality personnel, building on its sound doctrine, designing rigorous training, developing and fielding the best equipment, and providing the resources to exercise at every echelon and at full scale, all in preparation for conventional war. It’s time to ask some people who know how to do that to pitch in with sound advice based on their experiences and wisdom. And in the process, achieve what Secretary Hegseth has made clear: “Lethality is our calling card, and victory our only acceptable end-state.”
Many of us are only a call away.
