General Kevin P. Byrnes was born in New York, New York in 1950. He entered active duty in 1968 and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant through the Officer Candidate School program in 1969. From 1969 to 1970, he served as a Forward Observer and Fire Direction Officer for the 2d Battalion, 94th Field Artillery in South Vietnam. He was next assigned to the 1st Infantry Division at Fort Riley, Kansas, serving as a Platoon Leader and Battalion S-4. From 1971 to 1974, he was assigned to the XVIII Airborne Corps, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, as an Artillery Intelligence Officer and later as a Battery Commander in the 1st Battalion, 39th Field Artillery.
Following the Officer Advanced Course, he attended Park College in Kansas City, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics. He was later assigned to the 3d Armored Division in Germany, where he served as a Fire Support Officer, Battalion Fire Direction Officer, S-3, and Executive Officer for the 2d Battalion, 3dÊFieldÊArtillery. He then served as Assistant G-4, for I Corps, Fort Lewis, Washington. In 1985, General Byrnes earned a Master of Arts in Management from Webster University while attending Command and General Staff College. Returning to Germany, he served as Operations Officer and Team Chief of the Inspector General, HQÊUSAREUR, until assuming command of the 4th Battalion, 3d Field Artillery in the 2d Armored Division (Forward). Following attendance at the Army War College in 1990, he served as Director of Political and Economic Studies and Director of the Strategic Outreach Initiative for the U.S. Army War College, CarlisleÊBarracks, Pennsylvania.
From June 1991 until May 1993, he commanded the 1st Cavalry Division Artillery, Fort Hood, Texas. From May to December 1993, he was the Chief of Staff of the 1st Cavalry Division. He went on to command Joint Task Force Six, Fort Bliss, Texas, from January 1994 until July 1995. From August 1995 until May 1996, he served as the Assistant Division Commander for Maneuver in the 1st Cavalry Division. His following assignment was in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans, Headquarters, Department of the Army, as the Director, Force Programs, from June 1996 until July 1997. General Byrnes then served as the Commanding General of the 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas and the Commanding General of the Multinational Division (North) in Tulza, Bosnia. He is currently Commanding General of TRADOC.
General Byrnes is a graduate of the Command and General Staff College and the Army War College. His decorations include the Distinguished Service Medal, the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal with fourth oak leaf cluster, and the Army Commendation Medal with second oak leaf cluster.Ê
"Yes, in many respects, the FA has walked away from the close fight."
"You can back-track weaknesses (at NTC) to a home station training program that lacks effective fire support integration because the unit doesn't have the simulations to do it."
"...look at what we have to train our fire supporters -- we're broken. We don't have simulations that support our great 13 Foxes."
"For collective training, we must continue to fully integrate fire support into all live training..."
"The direct support battalion commander must seek a balance in training, ensuring that delivery-related training is synchronized with fire support requirements."
Accelerating Army Transformation occurs against the backdrop of some key changes in the way we go about the business of building America's military capability. These include major changes in DoD's materiel acquisition guidance to help put basic functional capabilities more rapidly into our forces and then improve and perfect them over time. This is a new way of fielding force capabilities, but it is only a first step in the innovation and collaboration that we have to build into the development system if we are to achieve real Transformation quickly and make it sustainable.
There are other ideas in the air that are even more fundamental to Transformation. Not the least of these is capabilities-based force development. This is a new term that bears some discussion because the means of accelerating Transformation require a culture of innovation and collaboration. We must accelerate the cultural change if we are to accelerate the capability change.
Up to now, when we have used the words "collaboration" and "interoperability," we have really been speaking of cooperation and coordination. We have sometimes limited our notion of innovation to finding new ways of doing old tasks -- focusing on functional tasks instead of force capabilities. We built some great solutions in an environment that allowed us to train in our specialized fields, then alert, organize, train for the mission, deploy, train some more and then join in the action when we believed ourselves ready. To our collective credit, our great soldiers and leaders have been adaptable and dominant across the battle space, but we have occasionally been slow to respond with the complete set of capabilities needed to meet the mission requirements on our terms and on our timetable. We have always made it work, eventually, but we need to be better at providing the capabilities needed at the right time and place.
The goal of Transformation is a force that can see first, understand first, act first and finish decisively -- when called, wherever needed and not just against a specific kind of threat or in a limited range of conditions. Success requires doing all four, and the strategic/operational environment demands that they occur in a very short period of time. Building a force that can meet these expectations requires that we change the way we think about force development. When we approach the joint fight, we often start with a preconceived notion of the Army's roles and missions. We ask ourselves, "What unique capabilities does my service (or branch) perform in the joint force?" and then we attempt to defend our turf. This tendency is a part of service culture, not just the Army's, and it inhibits real innovation and collaboration.
To become capabilities-based, we have to take a much broader view. We must learn to ask a new question oriented on operational and strategic missions. The proper question becomes, "How must we design and develop the future force so that it has the right mix of capabilities and characteristics to rapidly provide joint combatant commanders with the complete set of joint capabilities they need to see first, understand first, act first and finish decisively every time?" Asking and answering this question is the essence of the culture of innovation and collaboration needed to effect rapid, thorough and enduring Transformation. Capability development is not about roles and missions; it is about designing forces that can rapidly and decisively win both the tactical engagement and the operational campaign.
We think that we have made progress toward the right kind of Transformation. Our new Stryker brigade combat teams (SBCTs) are designed to meet a current operational shortfall and to give the combatant commander a potent, flexible, expandable land capability in the early stages of conflict. The SBCT's ability to see and understand complements the capability of the joint force, and its early presence expands the range of actions available and provides the capability for decisive conclusion when it requires close combat. The capabilities and force attributes being built in the Objective Force unit of action will make even greater contributions to the nation's joint warfighting capabilities.
As always, the leadership culture of the Army is evolving in response to changes in the operating environment. With the transformation of our officer education system, the Army is focusing on developing more capable, confident leaders through continuous investment in personal growth and professional development throughout their careers. The Army intends to achieve this objective by improving and sustaining leader development through an experientially based education and training model enabled by increased use of technological capabilities. The Army is studying three high payoff institutional training and education initiatives: for lieutenants, the basic officer leader course; for captains, the combined arms battle command course and the combined arms staff course; and for majors, intermediate level education.
The Army should provide its soldiers the means of dominating any opponent. That is an eternal commitment that we cannot and will not neglect.
We also owe it to the nation to change ourselves -- our organizations, our methods, our materiel, our structure and our institutions -- to meet the demands of a changing, ever dangerous world in which single-service operations will become increasingly rare.
Transformation demands that Army culture accommodates both the enduring aspects of our core values and the temporal demands of the larger world in which we serve. It is a huge task, but we are well on the way to success. With the indispensable help of industry, academia and the science and technology community, we have fielded the first Stryker brigade combat teams in less time than many thought possible. We know what the Objective Force will look like and are preparing to take our work to the Defense Acquisition Authority. I invite the industrial, academic, scientific and technological communities who have always made America's armed forces the best in the world to continue to build on our partnerships and turn the vision into reality. I expect nothing less than total success as, together, we create the future.