Bring back the 11th Airborne Division. Why? Because the Army needs strategic mobility in the coming "turn to the Pacific" and while the 82nd is good, it can't be in two places at once.
But, wait the boys from the 101st will say. We have unmatched mobility. That's true...once they get to the battlefield. But getting them to the scene requires as much work as moving a heavy division. Additionally Strykers have lost any chance of being a truly strategically mobile force. They're too heavy, too vehicle dependent which means that they have too big a logistics tail to be supported at distance.
Which brings me back to a Infantry centric, strategically deployable force. Which in the US Army means another Airborne Division.
It really wouldn't be that hard to do either. The 173rd Airborne Brigade would serve as the foundation of the new unit and you could go from there. Quite honestly I find the Army's new focus on aligning units regionally to be a mistake, but if they did have two divisions (the 25th ID were once known as jungle fighters so they're a natural) allocated to the Pacific with one forward deployed it would allow them to get into that fight. If one of those units was a forward deployed Airborne unit (Australia anyone??? They're doggies so we'd have to keep them in the Northern Territories to keep from scaring small children), then the Army would almost have to be part of the Pacific fighht game plan....as a side note, the 82nd could be responsible for the Atlantic area of operations and the 11th for the Pacific. How's that for regional alignment?
