“Pentagon records show one-fifth of the Army’s active-duty troops have served multiple tours of war duty while more than 40% haven’t been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan,” reports USA Today.
So the Army is “realign[ing] its forces to prevent a small slice of soldiers who are shouldering much of the fighting from wearing out.”
The Army is moving soldiers from specialties such as artillery and air defense to high-demand roles: infantry, engineering, military police and intelligence, Special Forces, civil affairs and psychological operations, said Lt. Gen. Michael Rochelle, deputy chief of staff for Army personnel.
Makes sense to me. What do you guys think? And if the Army is doing this, isn’t the next logical step to ship more — way more — Navy and Air Force types to the Sandbox, too?
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The danger with that is that the troops in the field ultimately cease to be true volunteers. If the military gets a reputation for bait and switch (sign up for the Navy, end up holding a rifle in Anbar), it will hurt recruiting. And justifiably so.
Actually, they are already sending Navy guys over there to fill support roles. A close friend of mine from the service, a young Navy officer, was recently sent to a post just outside of Basra to run a detention facility.
Great idea, as long as you don’t have to fight a conventional war anytime soon.
Then again, you gotta win the war you’re in, so might as well.
Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge
One of the dangers of this practice is that we get people who are operating way outside of their subject matter expertise. I rode in a Humvee with an Army TC, an Air Force driver and a Marine gunner up top. Three different services in one vehicle. Fortunately, we didn’t run into trouble.
Abu Graib happened because we had poorly trained and led personnel doing a job they weren’t trained for.
plus there might be problems with training, i don’t know how long it takes to effectively train special forces or intelligence, but i guess it’s not cheap.
taking “rear echelon” people and putting them on such strenous tasks can get people killed quite fast.
M
Dont forget that the other services deploy, and at the same rate. The Air Force and Navy have responsibilities in the sandbox too.
I’m in the Air Force, and I’ve been in the “sandbox” mutliple times. We are already there.….….…..
it’s a bad idea. for the reasons that everyone here noted. in a perfect world there would be equal danger and duty for all branches, but i can’t see the use in getting a bunch of desk bunnies slaughtered, probably taking a bunch of combat people with them. the leadership we have now…well, let’s just say that i wouldn’t trust them to do this right, given how many other “plans” they’ve botched. it’s the grunts who pay the price for that incompetence.
They already are. The Navy has several programs where they are sending surface sailors to both those locations to mainly work on EW efforts. Furthermore, the Navy as you have already reported on is standing up again its brown water forces in Iraq– a very infantry-like role. But you also have to remember that some people have certain jobs and training for a reason and working on a DDG and conducting infantry patrols are two entirely different things requiring two different skill sets as well.
Right, I understand that there are a few Air Force and Navy units with boots on the ground in Iraq — Seabees, EW experts, etc. What I’m asking is: Does there need to be a much larger deployment? (So far, most of you seem to be saying, “Hell, no!”)
It’s about time the Army rebalances and reshuffles their troops towards the long-term GWOT/COTW. We do need more deployable, field troops and less
Syria, Here We Come!
Interesting read!
Steven Burda, MBA
http://www.linkedin.com/in/burda
I am in partial agreement with McCain on this. We don’t need more troops, we need more combat troops. Asking for 20,000 troops means that far fewer than half of those troops will actually be out working the streets. What we need to consider is how many of the troops are in theater performing paper pushing jobs that technology would allow them to accomplish from state-side bases. Take out the majority of those finance and awards processing people working 9–5’s and let them handle paperwork electronically like it already is done. Pull them out and you don’t need as many soldiers driving PX supply convoys loaded with movies and NA beer. (side note: Saw a truck loaded with pallets of the crap with a big RPG hole in the load.) If we actually considered who is necessary in theater, pulled out the excess or retrained them to competently man a tower then the hard working grunts wouldn’t be running missions short on personnel. In my opinion, and if the stories I’ve had relayed to me over the years are true, then the army needs… NEEDS… to adopt a policy like the Marines, every soldier is a fighter first. Your rifle has a purpose, and it’s not to hold your hat up while you are sitting at your desk.
If anyone knows a forum that discusses this topic please post it, I’d like to see other’s opinions.
This re-balancing of the force is already in the works to some degree. Not only are the high demand slots being filled from the ranks of artillery and the like, but they are also coming from the reserves and gaurd, which have have been alloted the slots for a lot of support positions. These slots in the gaurd and reserves are being moved to the active component. Many of the high demand roles like military police, civil affairs, etc., were embedded in the reserve component and simply could function better as part of the active component. Also, many of the support slots, particularly adminsitrative ones, are being converted to combat arms slots when they are moved from the reserve compnent to the active component. Lastly, it makes more sense to have your high demand roles in the active forces, both politically and practically.
Good Morning Guys,
The days of more U.S. troops making a difference are long gone. The old al Zarqawi terrorists group sometimes know as al Qaeda Iraq own al Anbar provance and are watching what happens between the Shitte and Sunni Civil War that is now rageing.
It must be noted that this organization did not exist under Saddam and only came about after the U.S. took Iraq and attempted to run the country with to few troops and the like of Amb. Paul Bremmer III, the man that Gen. Tommy Franks called: “…the dumbist son of a bit** who ever lived.“
The number of troops that would be need to retake Iraq and bring about some sort of stableization would be in excess of a million. This unlike the fictious numbers that are put out by the DoD and Generals on out the door is based on historical evidence.
In the 1920’s whe the Bitish were in a simular position they had a 140K “Tommy’s” on the ground in what became Iraq, the population of the area at the time was about 2.5 million. Today the U.S has about the same number of troops but the population is about 27 million or an increase of ten times.
The simple math says the U.S. would need over 1.4 million troops, but my estimate of a million takes into account advances in communications and techologically that are force multipliers that the Brits of 85 years ago didn’thave.
In short the elephant is eating up the U.S. military.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
So, I’m just an old airborne infrantry guy and no real subject matter expertise on global force structuring or military logistics. I was stationed in Panama from 1986 — 1989 where a similar situation evolved.
During that time frame, while 10,000 troops were stationed in Panama, only 900 were combat ground troops — two infrantry battalions. The remainder supported humanitarian missions throughout SouthCom. (Not ignoring 7th Group, but they were devoted to counter-drug/counter-insurgency ops and not closely involved with the Panama adventure.)
Given the number of installations to protect (50+) and the few combat troops quickly wearing thin on non-stop deployments, support element troops were brought in to protect some critical installations — Arraijan Tank Farm in particular I remember and some ammo dumps whose name I have forgotten. This included male and female troops moved from support roles to combat roles. The command attempted to augment the support troops with limited numbers of infrantry troops (think 2 for every 100).
It wasn’t a sterling success. The support troops’ morale was very low and at critical times (perimeter incursions) the support teams suffered from confusion, panic and poor leadership.
That’s not a generalization. I was in a sand-bag bunkered, trenched hilltop at the tank farm during one of these incidents. A group of truck mechanics whose NCO’s had no idea what instructions to give during the excitement. An English-as-a-second language NCO operating the radio got so worked up he literally forgot how to speak English. Flares were shot over OUR position. Soldiers running every direction. Complete chaos.
Without proper re-training and leadership vetting, moving non-combat troops into combat roles greatly increases the risks for those troops. The Army is not the Marines — not every soldier is a combat tool.
More MOS qualified combat troops are needed, not more bodies.
Yeah I just got back and I got to tell you that I am an Artillery Officer and spent the last year doing a transportaion mission. This is nothing new. Wake Army we got to many REMF’s running around! Oh and in responce to the AnBar is over run comment your full of crap its possibly the safest area in theater now. Thank some tribal chiefs and a marine commander willing to listen to SF troops for that.
Noah asked an interesting question. The Army is definitely throwing everything and the kitchen sink into OIF operations. Heck, an average Army office at the Pentagon is so devoid of uniforms you could mistake it for the defense contractor offices down the street in Crystal City.
Byron has a good point about some places in Iraq. Our presence in Baghdad, for example, has been inadequate for so long that the situation may have passed a tipping point. Any sort of troop increase there may have little or no effect on the sectarian strife or local order. Even if you could throw another 100,000 boots on the ground, a reversal of U.S. fortunes in Iraq would be far from clear. We shouldn’t completely close the issue, but it is really out of the Army’s hands at this point.
I know the regulars disparage REMFs who are sent up — sometimes for good reason. They aren’t the same as the REMFs from back in the 1970s and 80s, so at least give them the benefit of the doubt. Most will work just as hard as you if you give them a chance.