Posted on 07/20/2003 8:05:30 PM PDT by Pokey78
WASHINGTON, July 20 — The strains on American ground forces as the Bush administration extends their global missions are prompting new debates on Capitol Hill and within the Pentagon over the question of whether the military needs more troops worldwide.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and senior military officers spent time over the weekend considering how to assign enough soldiers to fill the long-term mission of stabilizing Iraq while simultaneously fulfilling other overseas commitments and providing security against terrorism at home and abroad.
Mr. Rumsfeld has been telling Congress in recent days that before the Pentagon takes the major step of asking for money to enlarge the military, he hopes to cut back on less urgent foreign assignments, to move people in uniform out of administrative tasks and back into combat units and to change the balance of assignments between active-duty forces and those in the National Guard and Reserves.
A senior adviser to the defense secretary said that while it was easy enough to identify how many Army or Marine Corps troops the Pentagon needed for the global campaign against terror and for extended tours of duty on the ground in Iraq, Mr. Rumsfeld made no final decisions over the weekend. He waits for a larger blueprint from the military that would make new troop rotations more predictable.
"We are not fighting in a knife fight here — we're looking out long term," said one Pentagon official involved full time in planning force rotations for Iraq.
But the military is struggling with what another Pentagon planning official called "the tyranny of fixed numbers," which is especially critical for the Army.
Of the Army's 33 active-duty combat brigades, only three are described as free now for a new mission: the Stryker Brigade Combat Team at Fort Lewis, Wash., built around a new, lightly armored vehicle called Stryker; a brigade of the First Infantry Division at Fort Riley, Kan.; and a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division that returned to Fort Bragg, N.C., from Afghanistan six months ago.
Twenty-one brigades are now assigned overseas — 16 of them in Iraq. Of those not abroad, most are already earmarked as replacement forces for other missions, like the one in Afghanistan, are rebuilding their ranks or are on emergency standby in case of a crisis with North Korea.
Officials said the National Guard and Reserves, which as of Wednesday had 201,099 members on active duty, would probably have to shoulder some of the burden of any additional missions as well.
The Marine Corps could also be asked to share long-term peacekeeping duties, which traditionally have fallen to the Army.
On Capitol Hill, two members of the Senate Armed Services Committee — one a Republican, and one a Democrat — have been driving the debate, and both predicted in interviews last week that Congress would support a request to expand the military's personnel roster, even with the growing budget deficit.
"I was much more comfortable with end-strength during the cold war than I am today," said the Republican, James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma. He said reducing the size of the military after the collapse of communism left America's ground force "in near crisis" as it was stretched to deal with expanding global commitments in the battle against terrorism.
The Democrat, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, said, "I think we need to make a decision very quickly, within weeks, about whether we need to increase the end-strength of the Army."
While he agrees with Mr. Rumsfeld that efficiencies can be found in the "tooth-to-tail ratio" of combat forces to administrative and support functions, Mr. Reed said, "We are going to be committed in Iraq in a way that we did not anticipate," adding that the Afghan mission will require years to complete and the North Korean threat dictates "a continued, forceful military complement."
Some of the steps urged by Mr. Rumsfeld to reduce the long-term strain on the troops were included in a confidential memorandum dated July 9 to the service secretaries and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff requesting that they move to "rebalance" the active and reserve components.
In the memorandum, a copy of which was provided by a senior aide to Mr. Rumsfeld, the defense secretary wrote, "The balance of capabilities in the Active and Reserve components today is not the best for the future."
Describing it as "a matter of the utmost urgency," Mr. Rumsfeld said that by July 31 he expected several proposals. They include how to reduce the need for the involuntary mobilization of the Guard and Reserves, how to restructure the active and reserve forces "to correct imbalances that result in lengthy, repeated or frequent mobilization," and how to make the mobilization and demobilization process more efficient.
Even so, Pentagon officials drafting plans for the long-term Iraq mission said proposals were under review to mobilize two Army National Guard "enhanced separate brigades," which train with the active-duty force and receive the most modern equipment. They would still need extensive training before going to Iraq. Officials said that a nine-month tour would require a yearlong activation and a yearlong deployment would require 15 months of service.
In his most recent testimony this month on Capitol Hill, Mr. Rumsfeld said that if national security required increasing force levels, particularly in the Army or Marine Corps, "Obviously, we would come to Congress and make that request." But "at the moment," he added, "we do not see that that's the case."
Mr. Rumsfeld did not say so expressly, but the concept of increasing troop numbers — and costs — contradicts a basic tenet of his goal for military transformation, which is to rely on new technology and rewrite doctrine to allow smaller forces to attack with greater speed and deadliness.
Before asking for more troops, Mr. Rumsfeld said, the Pentagon is trying to reduce commitments in Bosnia and Kosovo, as well as in Sinai, and may reconfigure the way American forces are assigned in Germany and South Korea.
Pentagon officials who deal with personnel have also identified 300,000 jobs done by people in uniform that could be turned over to civilians, he said.
One Pentagon planner said the Army was also considering whether to fill the needs in Iraq not with traditional brigades under their standard division structures, but to cobble together smaller units — battalions and companies — in new combinations.
The debate is really one about balancing risks — the risk that there will not be enough soldiers to carry out diverse missions or that current troops will not re-enlist after repeated, exhausting assignments that degrade their quality of life and do not leave enough time for training. The risk that money spent on personnel will not be available for important new technology and for modernizing the current arsenal must be weighed against those.
At present, about 370,000 Army troops are deployed in 120 countries, from a total active-duty force of about 491,000, according to Pentagon statistics. Army reservists and National Guard members on active duty this month total 136,835, out of a force of about 550,000.
The Marine Corps has a total force of about 176,000, and about 20,000 of its reservists are now on active duty as well, from a pool of 39,000. About 9,000 marines are now in Iraq.
As of last week, marines were also stationed in Afghanistan, Japan and the Horn of Africa and were conducting exercises in Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Australia, Pentagon officials said.
We should NOT grow the Armed Forces! We should get out of Bosnia, Kosovo and Germany and our force structure will be FINE. The real problem has been the mission that are not vital security interest missions - like the new demand for liberian intervention. Yes, we are too small today to be the world's policeman, but let's not get sucked into that. IMHO, let's handle one tyrant at a time.
As an example, put together a tariff law that will make Chinese goods unsellable in the United States. Make sure the Chinese understand the situation clearly. Point out that it would be nice if the Chinese supplied ten or fifteen decent divisions to the American commanded Iraqi peace force. Offer the Russians support in Chechnya and serious money. Point out to the Japanese that they want to pay the bill the Russians give us, or they can get the tariffs the Chinese didn't get. Point out to the Egyptians that the (as I recall) three or four billion dollars they get from the US Government every year will have to stop, unless. These are just the most obvious opportunities. Make sure the ruling classes whose arms are twisted don't loose face. othing to it.
The Army is not big enough, its that simple. Former fighter-pilot Rumsfeld is getting a crash course on ground warfare--not quite as clean as up there in the wild blue yonder.
Mr. Rumsfeld did not say so expressly, but the concept of increasing troop numbers — and costs — contradicts a basic tenet of his goal for military transformation, which is to rely on new technology and rewrite doctrine to allow smaller forces to attack with greater speed and deadliness.
Unfortunately for the transformation theorists, some real wars came along and reality trumps theory every time.
The military will get much more clout. The NEA and AFSCME, etc. will have less. In the end Empire fails when enough good troops can't be had.
Bosnia and Kosovo only account for a few thousand troops. And German does not tie down our troops, we just use it as a forward staging base now. There are only four combat brigades stationed there and three of them are now in Iraq.
And you may be right about not growing our armed forces overall, but the Army sure needs to get bigger.
Yeah, Rummy was believing his pipe dreams were true. Not as bad as McNamara was, though. If McNamara thought something was true, you could count on him being pointed 180 degrees wrong. What a moron.
I like the comment from another poster: Let the client states provide the troops.
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