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WASHINGTON -- The Army will undergo a fundamental transformation to make America's land forces more responsive to short-notice crises and smaller-scale conflicts, such as the war over Kosovo, that have increasingly occupied the American military in the 1990s.
The Kosovo conflict, almost entirely an air war, showed that the Army was unable to move sizable combat forces quickly. It took far longer than expected to deploy Apache attack helicopters to Albania, and they never saw combat.
The transformation will take years but will begin immediately with the conversion of two combat brigades at Fort Lewis, Wash., into more flexible, faster-moving units, Gen. Eric Shinseki, Army chief of staff, said Tuesday. Eventually the entire Army will be changed, he said.
In a speech to an Army booster group, Shinseki spelled out ambitious goals: achieving capability to move a brigade-size force of about 5,000 soldiers from the United States anywhere in the world within four days, a division of about 15,000 soldiers within five days, five divisions within 30 days.
``That is a stretch from our current capability,'' he said.
Shinseki, who took over as the top uniformed leader of the Army in June, raised the possibility of eventually doing away with today's tank by developing a family of wheeled vehicles less restricted by weight yet lethal and capable of providing troop protection against armored attack.
``Can we, in time, go to an all-wheel vehicle fleet where even the follow-on to today's armored vehicles can come in at 50 percent to 70 percent less tonnage?'' he asked in his remarks. ``I think the answer is yes .''
At a later news conference with Army Secretary Louis Caldera, the top civilian official, Shinseki said it was too early to spell out what kinds of equipment, including armor, will be done away with. ``Everything's on the table,'' he said.
The Army, like the other U.S. armed forces, has been struggling since the end of the Cold War to adjust to an increasing demand for mobile forces capable of responding to regional crises in remote areas like the Balkans -- while at the same time maintaining the capability of fighting an all-out land war.
Shinseki said the Army would not change its basic mission. ``War-fighting remains Job One,'' he said.
The chief of staff said it is too early to estimate the cost to the Army to make the changes.