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| 2004-03-13 | ||
| WASHINGTON (AP) - The Army is spread so thin around the globe that when it needs fresh combat troops for Iraq this fall it will have little choice but to call on the same soldiers who led the charge into Baghdad last spring. The 3rd Infantry Division already has been given an official "warning order" to prepare to return to Iraq as soon as Thanksgiving. When those soldiers flew home from Iraq last summer to their bases in Georgia, few of them could have known they were, in effect, on a roundtrip ticket. They are not alone in facing back-to-back deployments to Iraq. Some of the same Marines who teamed up with the 3rd Infantry to topple Baghdad are already assembling again in Kuwait, only a matter of months after returning home, and more Marines will go next year. Other Army units that recently returned to the United States or are preparing to come home this spring, including the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., and the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Hood, Texas, are candidates for a quick turnaround. The Army has not announced which will join the 3rd Infantry in the next rotation, although it has notified three National Guard brigades and a National Guard division headquarters that they are likely to go in early 2005. One 3rd Infantry soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Eric Wright, put it this way in Iraq last June: "What was told to us was that we would fight and win and go home." It's not that simple. Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said recently that the Marines and the Army are going to share as equally as possible the burden of keeping forces in Iraq for the foreseeable future. But it has been and will remain predominantly an Army effort. "At some point we'll go back," said Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne. He said it also was possible his troops would be sent to Afghanistan next instead of Iraq. The 101st played a major role in the initial invasion of Iraq and has only just returned home. Some are concerned that the Army is being squeezed so hard that soldiers will quit in droves. Statistics on reenlistments and recruiting don't show that to be the case - not yet, anyway. And some who know the Army best say its soldiers are willing to accept the hectic pace. "We've got an Army and we're using it," says retired Gen. Gordon Sullivan, a former Army chief of staff and currently president of the Association of the U.S. Army, a booster group. Yet Sullivan, who recently visited U.S. troops in Iraq and Kuwait, acknowledged that sending war veterans back for a second tour of duty means the Army is stretched tighter than it has been in decades. "Loosely, in a historical perspective, it's not dissimilar to what you saw in World War II in Europe," he said in an interview. "We're just going to keep using them."
To make the challenge even greater, even as it struggles to provide enough active-duty forces for Iraq, the Army is quietly undertaking a fundamental reorganization of its combat divisions, starting with the 3rd Infantry. That infantry division will have four combat brigades, of roughly 3,800 soldiers each, instead of its traditional three, by the time it completes its training this fall and heads back to Iraq. It will get that extra firepower by acquiring some elements, such as artillery, military intelligence and military police, from its division and corps headquarters. A similar transformation is planned during the course of this year for the 101st Airborne and the 10th Mountain divisions. The Army also is relying more heavily on the National Guard and Reserve to maintain a combat force in Iraq. Brigades from North Carolina, Arkansas and Washington state are there or soon will be en route, as part of the 2004 rotation of forces. Another three brigades, from Tennessee, Louisiana and Idaho - plus a division headquarters from the New York National Guard - have been alerted that they probably will be sent to Iraq in the next rotation, in early 2005.
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| Posted by:Steve White |
| #9 Efficiency - look hard at the current NG structure. If their heavy / light divisions are too broke to be used - get rid of them and use the savings to stand up active duty regiments. Efficiency and accountability are not bad things. |
| Posted by: JP 2004-3-13 4:38:53 PM |
| #8 Hiryu: Some one should explain to Rummy that you can blather all you want about "efficiency" but there has been no war I've ever read of that has been efficient in the accountant's sense; just win baby. The additional money won't just materialize from thin air. It carries with it a steep political price. Look at how Kerry felt he could get away with voting against the $87B appropriation for Iraq. Asking for more defense money is a loser with the voters. Should Bush risk his political capital to get a permanent appropriations increase? Not if it's going to jeopardize his chances of getting re-elected - a President Kerry would raid this appropriations increase to fund his socialized health care scheme, saying that there would be no net increase in federal spending. This is what Clinton did repeatedly throughout the '90's. This is why the budget deficit is through the roof, as it was in the '80's. Defense spending is a mere 20% of the total federal budget today, but was 27% during the '80's. And yet we have roughly the same deficit. Why? Because in the '90's, Congress conducted repeated raids on military expenditures to pay for social spending. Instead of drawing down the Cold War military and cutting taxes, Congress left taxes the way they were and increased social spending. This is why we're at this juncture - with bloated social spending and a downsized military machine* during a time of war. * Reporters commonly talk about the record size of the military budget, without mentioning the fact that these are not inflation-adjusted dollars - social programs have increased by much more, just to keep up with inflation. By contrast, the military equipment budget is at the lowest level it has been in a while. The 600-ship navy has been halved, the Air Force hasn't fielded a new fighter in over 2 decades, programs have been repeatedly shelved for lack of funds, et al. And concurrent with this downsizing of the equipment budget, military manpower has been cut in two. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-3-13 12:04:21 PM |
| #7 42ID Headquarters is the one going, AFAIK |
| Posted by: ElRealistico 2004-3-13 11:51:38 AM |
| #6 "plus a division headquarters from the New York National Guard" -- Hope it is the 77ID. Back in WWII, the 77ID fought in the Pacific, often with the Marines. It did so well that it was requested by the Marines in Guam (I believe). The Marines nicknamed it the "77th Marine Division". |
| Posted by: Highlander 2004-3-13 11:28:15 AM |
| #5 I am a vet so I kind of understand the 'wanting to go home' the units have when they booted Hussein. Lets remember that for 50 odd years the Army has been in Germany and Japan. If they don't form a pemanant Armed presence in Iraq, units have to rotate in and out. It won't be until the Iraqi Army is reconstituded and civil police force installed that the Army can think of permanantly leaving Iraq. Rummy understands this but how many politicians that claim to be experts on foregn policy understand this? I think we stay until the job is done right. If that means that my son (17) may have to pull a tour in Iraq in 2007 so be it. |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2004-3-13 10:31:39 AM |
| #4 I've ever read of that has been efficient in the accountant's sense; just win baby. Yep, done. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-3-13 10:22:21 AM |
| #3 Meanwhile, Hiryu, Congress has offered to increace the authorization for the number of troops the Army can handle, but not the budget. The funny thing is, if the DoD and Rummy say it's a temporary increace, they can actually get the money to pay for things like ceramic inserts for the extra troops, but if they say it's a permanent increase, Congress won't fund it. So what do they do? They go ahead and say the former, because that way they actually get the money to pay for the extra troops. |
| Posted by: Phil Fraering 2004-3-13 10:22:13 AM |
| #2 This is one of the things that ticks me off most about the administration. Whatever you think about the whys and wherefores of this war, on 9/12 army expansion should have been on the table and the new units would have been available right now. Some one should explain to Rummy that you can blather all you want about "efficiency" but there has been no war I've ever read of that has been efficient in the accountant's sense; just win baby. |
| Posted by: Hiryu 2004-3-13 9:20:59 AM |
| #1 I disagree. We need 3 more Armored Cav (light) Regiments. Essentially Stryker Brigades with more integral support (Air, Engineers, logistics). Those are oriented towards patrolling, counter insurgency, and are trained to operate with initiative and considerable elan. Add in Col Hackworth's old idea about a platoon (or better, a company) of Rangers for every brigade, and you have the force mix set up to do exactly what you need, and at just the right size to do it. 2ACR has done a bang up job - you dont hear much about them, and thats because they are winning and doing it with low casualties and good will from the locals. Thats what we need more of. Well, that and a couple MP brigades: basically 3 battalions of Armored HMMV's equipped for mobile and dismounted patrolling and a battalion sized "Heavy Team" to back them up - heavy team consisting of 3 combined arms teams [each team = 1 or 2 tank platoon, 2 or 1 APC Mech Infantry platoons, HQ elements in tracks] for urbanized areas. And mabye a company of combat engineers for EOD and such. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2004-3-13 1:56:58 AM |