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Ground forces too small
The Washington Times ^ | January 25, 2005 | Robert H. Scales

Posted on 01/25/2005 12:30:14 PM PST by neverdem

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To: Sola Veritas

Preaching to the choir, Bro.


21 posted on 01/25/2005 12:49:26 PM PST by 506trooper (No such thing as too much guns, ammo or fuel on board...unless you're on fire)
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To: 506trooper
I don't think the Dems really intend to put forward such a measure. However, they do rhetorically elude to it...

http://orsa.blogspot.com/2004/05/giving-junior-senator-from-new-york.html
22 posted on 01/25/2005 12:50:32 PM PST by .cnI redruM (Senator Boxer - For whom the bell curve tolls!)
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To: .cnI redruM

Trying to read through this, I think Gen. Scales was to long at the war college. However, I think they cut far deeper during the Clinton years than was safe and prudent. Regardless of how they are organized, be it division, RCT, or Brigades,I think we need more troops. High tech can "kick the door" open, but in the kind of conflicts we are going to be fighting, we need the manpower to hold and control the room.


23 posted on 01/25/2005 12:51:40 PM PST by womcg (was in the hospital longer than Kerry was in-country)
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To: .cnI redruM

Good link, thanks.


24 posted on 01/25/2005 12:52:09 PM PST by 506trooper (No such thing as too much guns, ammo or fuel on board...unless you're on fire)
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To: .cnI redruM
Yeah, it's pretty much a given that infantry takes the brunt. I've seen very few well played chess matches where the pawns weren't the first pieces down and off the board.

In WWII, you had a tremendous number of naval and merchant marine personnel die, along with airmen. Plus, you had more medical casualties among non-combat personnel - especially in the tropics due to diseases.

Now that our medicine is much better, our naval and air assets are harder to hit and the wars are confined to theatre, the front line troops are about the only ones our enemies can touch - unless, of course, you count terror attacks against civilians, which killed over twice as many as have died in Iraq to date.

25 posted on 01/25/2005 12:52:29 PM PST by dirtboy (To make a pearl, you must first irritate an oyster)
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To: womcg
Yes, and very much so. I look at it this way. No matter how high-tech an army gets, its soldiers can only die once.
26 posted on 01/25/2005 12:53:29 PM PST by .cnI redruM (Senator Boxer - For whom the bell curve tolls!)
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To: dirtboy

I think Scales tripped over his reproductive appendage in his attempt to promote an expanded force.


27 posted on 01/25/2005 12:56:23 PM PST by verity (The Liberal Media is America's Enemy)
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To: neverdem

Fighting the last war once again.


28 posted on 01/25/2005 12:56:30 PM PST by thoughtomator (Favorite Dish: Spotted Owl Teriyaki)
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To: dirtboy
dirtboy, General Scales is not saying that he doesn't expect the infantry will take the most casualties. He's saying that, given that, we should have more infantry or we will find ourselves once again in the post-Vietnam "hollow Army" situation where (from the article):

"the pressures of fighting a war with too limited a force caused Army noncommissioned officers, the human glue that holds our Army together, to leave en masse. The result was chaos. In the early '70 conditions became so bad that the American Army virtually ceased to exist as a fighting force. Again in the late seventies the Carter administration tried to accomplish too many missions with too few soldiers. Again the Army voted with its feet, creating a "hollow Army" that embarrassed the nation with its incompetence during Desert One, the failed hostage rescue effort in Iran. The lessons are clear: a good army takes generations to build and only a few short years to break.

29 posted on 01/25/2005 12:58:59 PM PST by mark502inf
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To: dirtboy

The truth is, during this war so far, far more civilians than military have been killed at the hands of the enemy.

Civilians ~3000
Military ~1100

The reason we have a military is to prevent our enemies from killing our civilians.


30 posted on 01/25/2005 12:59:18 PM PST by thoughtomator (Favorite Dish: Spotted Owl Teriyaki)
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To: thoughtomator

Good point. What would you have done to prevent those 3,000 deaths on 9/11/01?


31 posted on 01/25/2005 1:02:44 PM PST by .cnI redruM (Senator Boxer - For whom the bell curve tolls!)
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To: .cnI redruM

What would I have done? I would have treated the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 as the act of war that it was, and hunted down the culprits with the same vigor that we hunt them today. Remember, one of the key figures in that bombing - Ramzi Yusef - was an Iraqi intelligence agent.


32 posted on 01/25/2005 1:03:55 PM PST by thoughtomator (Favorite Dish: Spotted Owl Teriyaki)
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To: thoughtomator

I knew there was a reason I voted against that Bill Clinton guy twice. Was it two or three times he was offered OBL for the taking?


33 posted on 01/25/2005 1:04:55 PM PST by .cnI redruM (Senator Boxer - For whom the bell curve tolls!)
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To: neverdem
Seems to me we need to expand all forces, especially the navy and army. Whether the foe 20 years from now is radical Islam or not, there will be a foe. I'm just as worried about a conflict with N Korea or China.

I'm a little surprised he would list Desert One as the result of weakness in the services. It was a relatively small scale operation which failed for logistical and technical reasons.

34 posted on 01/25/2005 1:05:06 PM PST by Williams
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To: mark502inf
dirtboy, General Scales is not saying that he doesn't expect the infantry will take the most casualties. He's saying that, given that, we should have more infantry or we will find ourselves once again in the post-Vietnam "hollow Army" situation where (from the article):

And I agree we need more soldiers. However, I find his diagnosis at the beginning rather strange.

A close look at photos of American service personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan reinforces the painful truism that soldiers and Marines are doing virtually all of the fighting and dying. This isn't a new phenomenon. From Korea to Iraq, four out of five of those who died at the hands of the enemy were infantrymen. Not just soldiers and Marines, but infantrymen, a force that today comprises less than 6 percent of those in uniform.

As opposed to WWII where we lost thousands of Merchant Marines to horrible deaths in the Atlantic? I do not see the fact that almost all of our combat deaths are front-line troops as being a problem - instead, to me it means we are able to keep conflicts in-theater and otherwise have complete control over our lines of communication to the theater - which historically is a luxury that few, if any, military powers have ever had.

And how will raising the number of combat troops decrease the ratio of combat troops to non-combat troops who are killed in combat? If you are cycling troops over six months instead of 12, you still have combat troops doing the fighting.

It's a puzzling way of approaching the core problem.

35 posted on 01/25/2005 1:05:07 PM PST by dirtboy (To make a pearl, you must first irritate an oyster)
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To: .cnI redruM

Four.


36 posted on 01/25/2005 1:05:36 PM PST by thoughtomator (Favorite Dish: Spotted Owl Teriyaki)
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To: 506trooper
Actually they probably need to add 4 Divisions.

So you're talking about another 100,000+ troops. Where do we get them from? The Army and Marines are barely met their quote for 2004.

We're kind of in a bind here. The army is trying to recruit to staff an occupation army, not an offensive army. The Pentagon is saying that troop levels will be at about 120,000 for the next two years. That means that the troops in the ranks now can expect at least another tour, maybe two in Iraq. They are stretched thin, are going to be stretched thinner, and I can't see that the administration is doing anything to alleviate the situation. And if they start failing to make their recruiting goals then it's only going to get worse.

37 posted on 01/25/2005 1:14:06 PM PST by Non-Sequitur
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To: All
I recently saw a stat that only 65,000 or so of the 400,000+ personnel we had in Vietnam in '69-'70 were actual combat soldiers (got it off a Vietnam Vet site).

Then I added up all the TOTAL number of troops in our major Army units today (10 divisions and 4 brigade-sized elements) and got around 176,000. And not all of those (about half?) are "trigger pullers".

We have Marines, too, of course. But I wonder, even including them along with the Army, if we have much more than 150,000 actual ground combat troops in the active military.

38 posted on 01/25/2005 1:14:12 PM PST by BushMeister ("We are a nation that has a government - not the other way around." --Ronald Reagan)
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To: dirtboy
the front line troops are about the only ones our enemies can touch

The reason the enemy can "touch" our infantry is that infantry is the branch that takes the fight to the enemy. They're the ones kicking in doors, stabbing & jabbing & throwing grenades, etc. And for obvious reasons you suffer more casualties when attacking than you do while defending.

And the greater our high tech advantage, the more likely we'll need more infantry to find, fix, & finish the enemy as our adversaries will not operate in a way that allows them to get blown away by some laser-guided bomb from out of sight; witness Iraq & Afghanistan today.

39 posted on 01/25/2005 1:14:31 PM PST by mark502inf
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To: mark502inf
The reason the enemy can "touch" our infantry is that infantry is the branch that takes the fight to the enemy.

In WWII, the enemy took the fight to us along our lines of communications as well. Enemy bombers and fighers were able to harass our troops and supply depos. So non-frontline troops took a lot of casualties. Those rates dropped as we gained control of the seas and command of the air.

So I see a high ratio of combat casualties as a sign that we control lines of communications - not as some inherent weakness in and of itself. I do agree we need more troops - but that is not gonna change the statistic that the author is citing.

40 posted on 01/25/2005 1:17:47 PM PST by dirtboy (To make a pearl, you must first irritate an oyster)
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