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.
My take on this subject was that the author was noting that it was the foot soldiers that were "fighting and dieing" not necessarily the air force and navy. The grunts are the ones who have to get up close and personal.
I thought that the gist of the article was that we have allowed our force structure to change so that we have less actual ground fighting units than we really need. ie. false savings by cutting ground troops and going for the sexy planes and missiles that aren't really effective given the current combat style. That's not to say that these other weapons aren't nice to have.