Over the past six years America's Army has undergone one of the most aggressive and impressive periods in its history. At the forefront has been its performance in the Global War on Terrorism. Equally successful, and almost as much maligned, have been the simultaneous modernization for the aging equipment fleet, transformation to modular configurations, and continued progress toward research and development of the Objective Force and its Future Combat System (FCS). Clearly, the Army needs a process for monitoring the status and preparedness for each of its modular Brigade Combat Teams (BCT' s) in order to maximize their ability to contribute to the National Military Strategy (NMS); however, transformation to modularity is not the end state. It is just an azimuth check on the path to the Objective Force. Some systems suffer in the short term but the process is far from broken. In spite of accusations that the Army is still operating with a Cold War mentality, the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) is not giving credit for the unparalleled progress that has been made to date, nor is it providing the strategic vision for a force other than the Current Force, Interim Force or Objective Force.
