Deployments Stretching Army, Study Finds

Associated Press ^ | 1/25/06 | Robert Burns

[astounded]

Read Chuck Horner in his book with Tom Clancy on the Persian Gulf War in 1991. He bucked the higher-ups in DC, refusing to permit his airmen to rotate in and out of theater. His experiences in SEA in the mid-60s taught him that the only thing rotating personnel does is to switch their priority from winning to surviving. His philosophy was stay until victory, death, or a wound that requires evacuation.

[A. Pole]

In the ancient Roman army enlistments were for 20 years and the soldier went with his unit to the far-flung outposts on the frontier for the entire time of his enlistment.
[...]
I'm not recommending lifetime posts because we shouldn't have long-term world-wide committments.

You cannot be a global superpower without long-term world-wide committments.

[livius]

Oddly enough, I met somebody in the Air Force (I think he was an NCO or whatever its AF equivalent is) on a commercial flight recently who complained about the rotations. He had been in for 13 years and he said that during the years prior to 9/11, people were rotated only once or twice in an elistment, but now they get rotated out virtually constantly. He objected because it was hard for him to plan his personal life and continue his studies, particularly since his wife was also serving in the AF and she was moved around fairly often, too.

I didn't point out to him that things had changed after 9/11 and that, furthermore, if he really didn't like it, he could find another line of work. I'm sure the fairly quick rotations are probably planned to move people in and out of danger zones as rapidly as possible, and were probably meant for his benefit. However, if this is the case, I'd say the policy is being badly explained and there's an information gap that leads some people, even career people like this guy, to develop a serious feeling of resentment.

Again, I don't know how much of this is due to policy, how much to poor explanation and motivational strategies, and how much to individual attitude.

[wildbill]

Did I say we shouldn't have world-wide committments? No, I said "long term world-wide committments" by which I meant stationing troops in areas where the need for the committment was obsoleted by events or technology.

In fact, most of our overseas troop committments were made at a time when transfer of significant numbers of troops and their accpmpanying equipment was by ocean-going freighter. I don't even think we have those ships any longer except as rusting, moth-balled hulks, having proved that we can transfer whole army divisions by air more quickly and with greater precision. How for example would you have transfered an army division to Afghanistan during WWII era?

The troops at bases in Germany are now looking at a line of demarcation that no longer exists because of events. We simply have not had the political will to recognize that times have changed and to end the occupation.

Same with Korea. The N. Koreans are a special case in a way because they are still militant and crazy to boot--but that is no reason to have 30,000 Americans at the end of the barrel of N. Korean guns, hostages in some bizarre standoff. If we want human 'tripwires' to justify our use of nukes against N. Korean agression, we could simply reduce the number to a regiment.

[Wristpin]

"I do however recognize that we are down from 18 divisions (1992) to 10 divisions due to cuts made by the Clinton administration, in its infinite wisdom. Clinton effectively destroyed one of the cornerstones of US military policy for over half a century: being able to fight a war on two fronts at once."


However, they still maintained that those force levels would support a two theatre conflict. I don't see it.

Now the question remains...do we increase force levels keeping in mind that every 10,000 troops costs One $Billion a year?