Douglas Macgregor

Career and education

Macgregor received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in international relations. Macgregor was the "squadron operations officer who essentially directed the Battle of 73 Easting" during the Gulf War. Facing an Iraqi Republican Guard opponent, U.S. troops with 10 tanks and 13 Bradley fighting vehicles destroyed almost 70 Iraqi armored vehicles with no U.S. casualties in a 23-minute span of the battle. As Macgregor was towards the front of the battle involved in shooting, he didn't "request artillery support or report events to superiors until the battle was virtually over, according to one of his superior officers." The risks he undertook "could have been criticized had the fight turned ugly."

At a November 1993 exercise at the Army's National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin, Lt. Col. Macgregor's unit vastly outperformed its peers against the "Opposition Force." The series of five battles usually end in four losses and a draw for the visiting units; Macgregor's unit won three, lost one, and drew one. Macgregor's unit dispersed widely, took unconventional risks, and anticipated enemy movements.

Macgregor was a top Army thinker on innovation according to journalist Thomas E. Ricks. He "became prominent inside the Army" when he published Breaking the Phalanx, which argued for radical reforms. Breaking the Phalanx was rare in that an active duty military author was challenging the status quo with detailed reform proposals for the reorganization of U.S. Army ground forces. The head of the Army, United States General Dennis Reimer, wanted to reform the Army and effectively endorsed Breaking the Phalanx and passed copies out to generals; however, reforming the U.S. Army according to the book met resistance from the Army's de facto "board of directors"—the other four-star Army generals—and Reimer did not press the issue.

Many of Macgregor's colleagues thought his unconventional thinking may have harmed his chances for promotion. While an Army NTC official called him "the best war fighter the Army has got," colleagues of Macgregor were concerned that "the Army is showing it prefers generals who are good at bureaucratic gamesmanship to ones who can think innovatively on the battlefield." Macgregor was also seen as blunt, and to some, arrogant. Despite Magregor's top post-Gulf War NTC showing, his Army career was sidelined. The summer of 1997 marked the third time the Army refused to put him in command of a combat brigade, "a virtual death warrant for his Army career, relegating him to staff jobs as a colonel for the remainder of his service."

Macgregor was the top planner for Gen. Wesley Clark, the military commander of NATO, for the attack on Yugoslavia.

In the fall of 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who had read Breaking the Phalanx, insisted that General "Tommy" Franks and his planning staff meet with Colonel Macgregor on 16–17 January 2002 to discuss a concept for intervention in Iraq involving the use of an armored heavy force of roughly 50,000 troops in a no warning attack straight into Baghdad.

Macgregor left the Army in June 2004. He is the vice president of Burke-Macgregor, LLC, a consulting firm based in Reston, Virginia, and he occasionally appears as a guest commentator on television and radio.

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