Posted on 09/25/2006 7:52:55 PM PDT by Perdogg
The strain on the Army from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan has become so great that top officials are now privately saying the only long-term solution may be to make the overall size of the Army bigger, adding as many as 60,000 troops, ABC News has learned.
It's not a request or a recommendation yet, but senior Army officials have discussed this for weeks and are now in agreement that the Army could meet its worldwide obligations more easily by expanding the overall size of its force.
Times have changed.
There are less rural farm kids to draw from, since family farms have been decimated.
Most volunteers are from rural backgrounds.
Im not saying you didnt do well as a draftee, but the military lost the discipline inducing about 25 years ago, about 10 years after the draft. They went with quality versus quantity, because it costs less to have people do what they are told.
They dont have the overhead anywhere near what was - pre Gulf War 1.
They pay more, because they dont want to waste training on someone who does not listen to orders or has a negative personal agenda. Lots of the dirty details, almost all are contracted out. No more buffing floors, KP, laundry details,take out the trash,clean the bathroom, fire/dorm/hurricane watch/CQ after basic training, and I doubt they emphasize it there either.
I know. I also know that there are many things that I DON'T know. Sometimes we must take things on faith, especially when actions seem so questionable.
That being said, I'd do a little happy dance if he assumed room temp.
LLS
Dh was activated a few years ago "for 7 months" which turned into 20 or 21. And now 7 months after coming off active duty, he's being reactivated in a few weeks. A few of our friends though are in the IRR and they've just been given a heads up...after 8 years of civilian life. Dh is pretty senior so what we're dealing with is nothing compared to the enlisted folks where many are heading back across the pond for their third and fourth time.
No one on the inside will complain, but it sure can't continue like this much longer.
What threat is Europe facing that we need ground troops there for? Sure, keep the air logistical hubs like Ramstein and the hospital at Landstuhl, but do we need armor and artillery units there?
And South Korea and Japan should be able to deal with anything the North Koreans have.
I had an Army Captain confide to me overseas that he was up for promotion to Major and he was scared that he could not even preform at Captain level because he had been out 5 years and never ever expected to be recalled.
Many of todays leadership skills are perishable and frankly many people shelve all that aquired kowledge when the hit the civillian job market.
I have a better idea.
send all the generals in the Pentagon to Kabul,
tell them to stay there untill
they figure out how to work with what they have.
The Army is currently at about 533K. The plan is to reduce the structure to around 482K. All DA is saying is we should rethink the force structure with an eye towards keeping the force at current levels.
The Draft is just what the Dems need to re-stoke the fires of the Vietnam Anti-War movement. All the crys to bring back the draft from the Dems and Rangel in particular, are the exact same crys, almost word for word, that they used to protest the draft and call for its end as well as an end to the Vietnam War.
If the Dems pass it, I'm cool with it. But whichever party passes it will soon be a minority party.
Right. But that's not what they want to do.
The Army and Marine Corps both are way too small. Without the aggressive use of the National Guard and Marine Corps Reserve the Militay would be unable to fight the Iraq War without stripping whole Divisions from elsewhere and thus basically committing our whole Force to Iraq.
The Guardsmen are under pressure from their families to get out. The NG should be used for National Emergencies which threaten us directly and for State situations.
My nephew is seving his second tour in three years and that's a bit much.
If we had to invade Iran we would be in trouble. The nccessary manpower is not there. Let's beef up our forces and reverse the downsizing that continues to this day.
You can also thank the GOP Congress who was in charge of both houses during MOST of Clintons term. Undeniable fact concerning responsibility
To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
To provide and maintain a navy;
To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
In other words the buck stops there. At any time the GOP house and senate could have said NO to Bill Clinton. Instead we had Armed Services Committee Chairman like RINO Arner R-Virginia agreeing with all Clinton did. Ironically it was the GOP who set the End Troop Strength numbers for 1996 of which +- a few thousand still stands today as operational numbers. You can also blame the current leadership in the GOP for choosing a man who's past record as Sec of Def was at best so so and started this nations military into it's darkest days of readiness post WW2 called the Hollow Carter military.
It's ironic you always hear the term Hollow Carter military used but no one dares mention that it was pretty much that way when he got it. He nor congress adressed any issues until the failed hostage rescue atttempt. Not that I support or defend Carters actions because I don't nor will I support or defend the GOP when it is wrong either. Carter sat on his hands as did the DEM house and senate while all this took place. When it came to crunch time all you heard was oops!
I will say this much during the Hollow Carter military no carrier flunked INSURV and no carrier failed LITE OFFs. ORE, PEB, INSURV, etc were done with scrutiny by some of the finest and most knowledgeable NCO's and officers the Navy had in it's history.
Clinton was a pathetic and corrupt POTUS like Carter and Ford were pathetic as well as Poppy Bush minus the corruption but that does not excuse the bad policies that went unanswered and unchecked while Clinton was in office by the GOP and continue today. Bill Clinton is no longer POTUS, our military has problems, and the GOP and Bush has had 5 plus years to address them. They deserve having their feet held to the fire and being held accountable by voters.
The GOP on 9/12/2001 wasted a Golden Opportunity to increase the military to a realistic level of active duty and passed it up. They could have had the volunteer military saturated with volunteers but what did they do? This has to be the only case in U.S. history where congress and POTUS downsized the military during war. I expected better from the GOP.
No we don't. Units from Germany and Korea have been used to provide troops for Iraq.
Bears repeating. Red Herring Alert. We need more authorized endstrength to build formations with volunteers in order to ease the strain of cyclic deployments. We need additional funding to sustain current OPTEMPO. This is a long war but- WE DON'T NEED A DRAFT for the reasons stated above. It becomes the defeatists version of a trojan horse.
It's more like 1.4 million, and only a part of those are ground forces available for deployment.
Better yet, find me a government agency or branch of the military that told Congress "You gave me too much money. I want to give some back"!
The army was funded for 482,000 in 2006.
Enlistment is up.
60,000 will not be impossible to achieve.
Recruiting met the goals for the year, and it took them till mid-September, two weeks before the end of the fiscal year, to do it. But increasing the size of the Army by 13% will mean increasing the recruiting goals by a larger percentage than that while trying it increase retention. It'll be interesting to see how they accomplish that.
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