During remarks at the Army Aviation Symposium1 in Arlington, Va., on Jan. 15, Cone2 quietly dropped a bomb. The Army, he said, is considering the feasibility of shrinking the size of the brigade combat team from about 4,000 soldiers to 3,000 over the coming years, and replacing the lost soldiers with robots and unmanned platforms.
“美国陆军正朝着规模更小、作战能力更强、机动性更好、反应更敏捷的方向发展。”美国陆军训练与条令司令部司令罗伯特·科恩上将表示。至于其规模缩减的程度和方式，则令人颇感意外。
"I've got clear guidance to think about what if you could robotically perform some of the tasks in terms of maneuverability（机动性）, in terms of the future of the force," he said, adding that he also has "clear guidance to rethink" the size of the nine-man
infantry3 squad4.
He mentioned using unmanned ground vehicles that would follow manned platforms, which would require less armor and protection,
thereby5 reducing the weight of a
brigade（旅，队列） combat team.
Over the past 12 years of war, "in favor of force protection we've sacrificed a lot of things," he said. "I think we've also lost a lot in
lethality6." And the Army wants that maneuverability, deployability and firepower back.
The Army is already on a path to shrink from 540,000 soldiers to about 490,000 by the end of 2015, and will likely slide further to 420,000 by 2019, according to reports.
Cone said his staff is putting together an
advisory7 panel to look at those issues, including fielding a smaller brigade.
It's hard to see such a
radical10 change to the
makeup11 of the brigage combat team as anything else than a budget move, borne out of the necessity of cutting the personnel costs that eat up almost half of the service's total budget.
Cone used the Navy as an example of what the Army is trying to do.
"When you see the success,
frankly12, that the Navy has had in terms of lowering the numbers of people on ships, are there functions in the brigade that we could
automate13 -- robots or manned/unmanned teaming -- and lower the number of people that are involved given the fact that people are our major cost," he said.
Some of Cone's blue-sky thinking was echoed by Lt. Gen. Keith Walker in a Jan. 6 interview with
Defense14 News.
In what Walker called the "deep future" -- about the 2030 to 2040 time frame -- he said that "we'll need to fundamentally change the nature of the force, and that would require a breakthrough in science and technology."
While Walker, the commander of the Army Capabilities
Integration15 Center, which
oversees16 much of the Army's
modernization17 and doctrinal changes, didn't talk about replacing soldiers with robots, he did say the Army wants to
revamp（修补，翻新） its "tooth-to-tail" ratio, or the number of soldiers performing support functions
versus18 those who actually pull triggers.
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