Possible evolution of the US Army force structure this summer

While complaining about the unimpressive survivability of the Future Combat System vehicles he was ash-canning, and announcing a halt in the expansion of the US Army at 45 (vice 48) brigades, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates hasn’t indicated which three brigades he didn’t want. This is an issue of some interest for land forces suppliers.
Today, the US Army advertises that it has 43 brigades in the line (some mixture of armor, foot soldiers, and artillery), and another six purely of artillery (deemed “fires” brigades, for some reason). The National Guard has 28 in the line and another 7 of artillery. The composition and distribution of those line brigades breaks down as follows:

type	composition	Army	NG
Heavy	Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles with dismounting infantry and cavalry troops, and Paladin armored howitzers	17	8
Medium	LAV-III Stryker vehicles with dismounting infantry and cavalry troops, and 155 mm towed howitzers	6	1
Light	dismounted infantry, cavalry troops in armored Humvees, towed 105 mm howitzers, and MRAPs when they need them	20	19

The Army appeared set to get another two heavy and three light brigades to get from 43 to 48. Gates hasn’t indicated which two of those five he planned to stand-up, but I will bet—and I’ve heard this presumption generally—that they will be another two light brigades. Having enough having tanks is clearly not the shortcoming these days.
That said, this may not be the end of the story. As Christian Lowe of Defensetech pointed out the other day, there is an excellent chance that the now-starting Quadrennial Defense Review will wind up calling for more Stryker brigades. As I noted recently, Strykers have been the most heavily utilized vehicles in Iraq, and are well-suited to the terrain and long distances in Afghanistan.
Further, note that this count isn’t really the whole picture. The figures above don’t include the 75th Ranger Regiment, which has three infantry battalions, or any of the Special Forces groups. They also don’t include the ten engineering brigades of the Army and the National Guard (five each), and the three military police brigades of the National Guard. Both these types of units are rather important, but are especially so in counterinsurgency.
What does this all suggest for contractors? Quite a few things, but I’ll just highlight four:

• Whether those possible new Stryker brigades will be converted from light or heavy formations is anyone’s guess, but General Dynamics and its suppliers will appreciate the additional orders of LAV-IIIs either way. BAE Systems wouldn’t mind a request for a few more set of M777 howitzers either.
• If the number of heavy brigades is again cut, both General Dynamics and BAE Systems will have fewer M1s, M2/3s, and M109s to refit over time.
• Those 1,080 MRAP-ATVs that the Army will be ordering this year will probably be preferentially distributed to the cavalry battalions of the light brigades. At the moment, they’re trying to scout the wilds of Afghanistan with armored Humvees, and that’s a bit scary. If the congress approves more, they’ll refit those battalions faster.
• If the money that Gates is setting aside for Army recapitalization is really not needed for yet another armored vehicle program, funds may flow to other priorities—like additional ISR assets or new robotic concepts.

Generally then, this could be a serious QDR, and thus one worth watching. Now is probably the time to start preparing contingency plans for shifts in business, and launching at least the viewgraph campaigns to show how you can keep ahead of those rebalancing priorities.