PENTAGON, WASHINGTON D.C. — The Army announced Thursday the immediate deactivation of the Maneuver Enhancement Brigade following an independent medical review that confirmed the formation is, clinically speaking, unable to perform the function its name describes.
“We brought in outside physicians,” said Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy Howell. “They were very professional about it. They said it happens to a lot of armies.”
The review, commissioned after a series of complaints from combat commanders who had requested enhancement and received none, found that the MEB had never achieved a sustained enhancement in any documented operational environment. In several cases, commanders reported that maneuver had actually gotten worse after MEB involvement, a phenomenon one physician described as, quote, not uncommon in these situations.
The findings were classified for six months before senior leaders agreed they could not keep pretending.
“Nobody wanted to be the one to say it,” said one G3 colonel who asked not to be identified. “You request enhancement. The enhancement doesn’t come. You file the after action. You write ‘maneuver enhancement: satisfactory’ because what else are you going to write. You move on.”
He confirmed he had written satisfactory seven times.
Combat commanders across the force said the announcement explained a great deal.
Maj. Gen. Dennis Falk, who commanded a division at Fort Hood from 2019 to 2021, said he had requested MEB support on four separate occasions and each time had been told enhancement was imminent.
“They kept saying it was coming,” Falk said. “I waited. Nothing happened. My chief of staff told me to just handle it myself.”
He confirmed he had handled it himself.
The MEB’s commanding general, Brig. Gen. Scott Tillman, held a press availability Thursday afternoon and said the unit had been unfairly maligned and that enhancement is a complex biological and organizational process that cannot be reduced to a simple pass or fail.
A reporter asked if the MEB had ever passed.
Tillman said the question was reductive.
The reporter asked again.
Tillman said he was aware of at least one instance in 2019 where a commander had reported feeling enhanced, though Tillman acknowledged the commander had also taken two Motrin beforehand and it was unclear which variable was responsible.
Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Patricia Rhodes said the findings were not a reflection on the Soldiers of the MEB, who had performed admirably given the inherent limitations of their formation.
“This is a structural problem,” Rhodes said. “Not a personal one.”
She confirmed that counseling resources were available.
Soldiers assigned to the MEB were informed of the deactivation in a Thursday morning formation that was described by witnesses as very quiet. One Staff Sergeant said he had suspected something was wrong for years but had kept re-enlisting because the duty station was good.
“Fort Leonard Wood is not a good duty station,” said a different Staff Sergeant, unprompted.
Congress has already introduced a bill to reconstitute the MEB under a new name. The proposed replacement formation is called the Maneuver Amplification Brigade. Physicians who reviewed the proposal said the name change does not address the underlying problem. The bill passed committee 11 to 2.
At press time, the Army had ordered 4,000 copies of a new field manual titled FM 3-90.666: Enhancement Operations and had scheduled a mandatory four-hour block of instruction on the subject for all combat arms units. The instruction was developed by the MEB. It contained no practical exercises.
