Responding to the spiraling challenges of war and terrorism, military planners are speeding up efforts to re-engineer the U.S. Army, its training programs, bases and equipment into the force of the future.

"It’s a deliberate acceleration of efforts," says Lt. Col. James Galvin, manager of a task force charged three years ago by then Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki to drive the staged transformation of the army into a technologically advanced fighting force by 2020. Shinseki’s successor, Gen. Peter Schoonmaker, is now telling the task force to boost the capabilities of current forces by accelerating those parts of the pro-cess that can be applied immediately. Schoonmaker "wants to pull that future force capability back to the current force," Galvin says.

Galvin spoke at a military engineers conference in Savannah, Ga., in November. It included a review by engineers of last spring’s invasion of Iraq and reports on plans for modernizing the army and its facilities.

Galvin and other Pentagon planners described how the new army will take shape by reorganizing its large divisions. Component brigades will be converted into greater numbers of smaller, more agile and more lethal fighting units. The first of these are being fielded now.

The troops are getting lighter, faster, tougher fighting vehicles, equipped with real-time satellite data links. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers uses a similar concept in Iraq with "tele-engineering" field kits. They have proven invaluable. Forward units now have access to subject matter experts, without having to send the experts to the front lines. The new army will make such reach-back capabilities ubiquitous.

The transformation of the army implies major changes for base design and construction, but the needs are still being defined. One tool for that purpose, "Fort Future," is a data-driven design tool being specifically developed to support the transformation by researchers at the Corps’ Construction Engineering Research Lab at Champaign, Ill. The product, which is part of a suite of base-planning software, was demonstrated at the conference.

One software function predicts land-use implications of future training requirements. It maps them against growth trends of surrounding communities to anticipate potential conflicts. As planners pointed out, changing training demands for field exercises may well raise local land-use and development issues. New generations of fighting vehicles travel faster and the weapons shoot farther. Training ranges may have to grow to accommodate them.

Other base design changes will be driven by changes in unit missions and their organizational structures, planners say. Posts are to become less like bus stations, with individual personnel in constant rotation, and more like true home stations supporting stable communities of troops, their dependents and civilian support workers. Bases are expected to become holistic support facilities, capable of sustaining their units and supporters independently from surrounding communities, if security issues arise to make it necessary to close them off.

In a concept called "unit manning," soldiers and their commanders will train together, hit peak capability together and wind down operations together as tours end, all at one facility. Army posts of the future will also serve as co-location centers for mixes of interdependent units, such as logistical and combat air support, medical or artillery units, or even units from other military services when their missions call for close coordination.

Modular bases can be re-configured to respond as training needs change. Strategies evolve more rapidly today than during the Cold War.

But most of all, future bases are to be combat preparation and force projection platforms. Troops will train with a heavy reliance on virtual reality experiences and imbedded information technology that will follow them into action by satellite connections wherever they are deployed. Home bases will be capable of launching airlifts of their complete brigades as fully-capable, self-sustaining units within hours, deploy them anywhere in the world and then sustain them with intelligence, maintenance support and supplies directly sourced through their dedicated bases back home.