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Home » Polmar's Perspective » The Downside of End-​​Strength Increases

The Downside of End-​​Strength Increases

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The Bush administration’s plan to add 92,000 troops to the ranks of the Army and Marine Corps is com­ing under increas­ing scrutiny from defense ana­lysts and con­gres­sional staffers. When President George W. Bush pro­posed the increase — 65,000 men and women for the Army and 27,000 for the Marine Corps — in his State of the Union mes­sage last January, he gar­nered sup­port from both sides of the aisle in Congress. While most Republicans offered sup­port for the buildup out of party loy­alty or belief in the president’s goals in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Democrats applauded for fear of being labeled soft on ter­ror­ism, espe­cially the dozen who had pres­i­den­tial aspirations.

The pro­posed increases would bring the Army to almost 550,000 troops and the Marine Corps to 202,000. Senior offi­cers of both ser­vices have strongly sup­ported the increases. Officials say that the addi­tions would per­mit a slow­down of the hec­tic pace of troop rota­tions in com­bat in Afghanistan and Iraq. When Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates unveiled the planned increase, he assured troops in the war zones — some of whom have served two or more com­bat tours since the wars began — that “help is on the way.”

The Army would like to keep active-​​duty sol­diers at their home base for at least two years for every one year they deploy, eas­ing the home-​​front prob­lems with fam­i­lies and loved ones. Today many troops are forced to under­take another tour of duty after only a year at home. This sit­u­a­tion has also pre­vented many Army and Marine Corps units from main­tain­ing their train­ing sched­ules for dif­fer­ent mis­sions. An increase in active-​​duty strength could also ease the bur­den on reserve units, the 346,000 mem­bers of the Army National Guard (ARNG) and the 196,000 Army reservists (USAR).

But increas­ingly crit­ics of the buildup point out that in the next few years, pos­si­bly before the addi­tional troops are added by 2010–2012, the United States will have with­drawn com­bat troops and pos­si­ble all mil­i­tary forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. Even today, they note, the U.S. com­mit­ment of ground troops in the two wars is just over ten per­cent of the total active Army-​​ARNG-​​USAR and Marine Corps strength.

Frank Hoffman, a retired Marine offi­cer and lead­ing defense ana­lyst, has observed that the global war on ter­ror­ism and the Iraq con­flict are being used as “lame ratio­nales” for enlarg­ing the mil­i­tary. Hoffman, a senior researcher at the Marine Corps Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities in Quantico, Virginia, con­tin­ued, “Unless you think we will have more than six brigades in Iraq in 2012, I don’t see how this is rel­e­vant.” Other ana­lysts and some con­gres­sional staffers have pri­vately echoed Hoffman’s views, as have a few mil­i­tary offi­cers in off-​​the-​​record conversations.

The troop buildup has an esti­mated ini­tial cost of nearly $100 bil­lion with a sub­se­quent cost of $15 bil­lion per year to main­tain the addi­tional forces. These costs are being incurred at a time that sev­eral new air­craft and ship pro­grams are far above pre­dicted costs, vir­tu­ally all U.S. Army and Marine Corps ground vehi­cles except for M1 tanks are in need of replace­ment, mil­i­tary health costs are sky­rock­et­ing, and the increased costs of fuel are play­ing havoc with oper­at­ing budgets.

While some troop increases tran­scend the cur­rent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, espe­cially increases in spe­cial oper­a­tions forces and, to some extent, in Marine units. After with­drawal from Afghanistan and Iraq — as after the Vietnam War — U.S. national lead­ers will be very reluc­tant to com­mit ground forces to sus­tained com­bat sit­u­a­tions. Rather, spe­cial oper­a­tions and forward-​​deployed Marine units afloat will be the more likely to be used in future crises and con­flicts. Along with forward-​​deployed Navy ships, they will be the “forces of pref­er­ence” for the fore­see­able future.

The cur­rent crises in Africa that have led to the recent estab­lish­ment of the U.S. Africa Command, the con­fronta­tions with the lead­ers of Venezuela and Iran, com­pe­ti­tion with China and India for resources in sev­eral parts of the world, and other prob­lem areas will demand that the United States main­tain flex­i­ble and rapidly deploy­able pres­ence and com­bat forces. It is unlikely that those will be large Army or Marine Corps ground com­bat formations.

– Norman Polmar

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December 3rd, 2007 | Polmar's Perspective | 269120 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2007/12/03/the-downside-of-end-strength-increases/The+Downside+of+End-Strength+Increases2007-12-03+17%3A40%3A42Ward You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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  1. SSG Yankee Medic says:
    December 3, 2007 at 7:13 pm

    WHOOPS !
    When the Secretary of Defense refuses to lis­ten to bat­tle hard­ened senior lead­er­ship @ the Pentagon, the result is chill­ingly famil­iar. Shinseki warned the Bush Administration about the num­bers needed to PACIFY Iraq, not just con­quer it. He was forced to resign. So much for respect­ing exper­tise.
    The think tankers wanted a force that could fight two wars in dif­fer­ent places simul­ta­ne­ously back in the 1980’s. They now have that in spades and look what its cost the mil­i­tary.
    Time for a com­plete over­haul ala George Marshall class of 1940 where all of the “unfit for com­mand” gen­er­als, senior colonels etc were retired or asked to resign. Start with that
    and begin the painstak­ing process of reward­ing com­pany & bat­tal­ion com­man­ders with more than TWO tours of Iraq & AFGN to the Army War College for fast track pro­mo­tions and get rid of all the “non-​​deployable” dead weight.

    Reply
  2. Solomon says:
    December 3, 2007 at 7:19 pm

    I agree with the arti­cle but would like to point out that if the premise is cor­rect about future force needs then we’re sim­ply back to the world view prior to 9/​11. If that’s the case then the Army’s Stryker Brigade con­cept was sup­pose to make the reg­u­lar Army a viable player in con­tin­gency oper­a­tions world wide. As ver­sa­tile as the Marine Expeditionary Units are, as capa­ble as Special Ops might be, they would still need the logis­ti­cal sup­port and armored forces that the reg­u­lar Army brings to the table. I just would hate to see the Air Force exam­ple spread DOD wide…cutting peo­ple in order to pur­chase weapon systems.

    Reply
  3. AK says:
    December 3, 2007 at 7:44 pm

    No mat­ter what the num­bers, don’t for­get any force deployed post-​​2012 will have 10000 unused but slightly rusty MRAPs to help out ;)

    Reply
  4. Margie Mac says:
    December 3, 2007 at 9:21 pm

    Great. We have known ter­roist cells here in America and we want to keep send­ing our men an women over to Iraq. Who in the heck is going to pro­tect us here when “Our troops are mak­ing grounds against the Insurgents” in Iraq? Bring our troops home, slowly, and let them use those excep­tional skills to find insur­gents in America before we have ANOTHER 9/​11 incident.

    Reply
  5. Drew says:
    December 4, 2007 at 1:59 am

    While we need spec ops as well as light anti piracy naval assets, a build up of con­ven­tional forces wouldn’t hurt. Future heavy com­mit­ments of land forces may be just over the hori­zon. Further it’s not right for so few troops to bear the bur­den of a 300 mil per­son nation that only spends 4% of GDP on defense, com­pared with 15% in the 1950’s.. Get off the check­book and let’s act like a super­power again…

    Reply
  6. Foreign.Boy says:
    December 4, 2007 at 10:16 am

    I don’t think it’s fair that they count the national guard as part of the over­all fight­ing strength. Not only have they been over deployed in the last 20 years, but they are peo­ple who are not as com­mit­ted to sol­dier­ing as the reg­u­lar forces are. These peo­ple mostly sign up to help with nat­ural dis­as­ters at home. People who are trained to kill but have no inten­tion to do so. I know maybe my por­trayal of the Guard maybe be wrong.. but I do know that they aren’t sup­pose to be deployed over­seas more than once every 20 years. I think it’s longer cause I remem­ber read­ing that cause the guard was used in Vietnam, they shouldn’t be used in Iraq.

    Reply
  7. ohwilleke says:
    December 4, 2007 at 12:08 pm

    Foreign Boy: While you have the right gen­eral idea, your his­tory is wrong. The main rea­son that the National Guard is now avail­able to the extent that it is for for­eign deploy­ment in Iraq and Afghanistan is that the National Guard was a way of avoid­ing ser­vice in Vietnam, at a time when the United States was draft­ing sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of peo­ple.
    I am in full agree­ment with the pol­icy that says that the National Guard, made up of trained peo­ple who have vol­un­teered for mil­i­tary ser­vice should be deployed before the nation resorts for a draft. But, there was an over­re­ac­tion.
    There is room for mid­dle ground between cur­rent pol­icy which treats National Guard sol­diers as fun­gi­ble alter­na­tives to active duty sol­diers and sends them on mul­ti­ple tours of duty in a five year old war with no end in sight, and the Vietnam era pol­icy that deployed con­scripts before deploy­ing mem­bers of the Guard.
    It wouldn’t be unrea­son­able, for exam­ple, to limit National Guard deploy­ments to one for­eign tour of duty in the absence of a draft. The National Guard should be the last line of defense that allows us time to train cit­i­zen sol­dier con­scripts, not a crutch for gen­er­als who have trou­ble plan­ning troop requires that are obvi­ous far in advance.

    Reply
  8. WG says:
    December 4, 2007 at 12:34 pm

    “the Democrats applauded for fear of being labeled soft on ter­ror­ism“
    Right.
    It couldn’t be because they see our Army stretched to the break­ing point by repeated deploy­ments.
    Did you lift that line from Fox “news”?

    Reply
  9. Marvin L Mobley says:
    December 4, 2007 at 1:07 pm

    I agree 110% John Schiller.….Even with all the hi-​​cost con­tracted civil­ian sup­port, Air Force and Navy, cooks, clerk typ­ist, etc have been sent to fill in as truck dri­vers, machine gun oper­a­tors etc.That smaller and meaner group have served 2,3,4 and more tours in Iraq and AFghanistan . Lets do this, Have noth­ing but ground troops on active duty, and con­tract all the rest sup­port jobs. But have half a mil­lion grunts, army and marine so there will be enough to rotate in and out in any con­flict one time…Don’t send our sons and daugh­ters time and time again till they even­tu­all all get killed.….…

    Reply
  10. Pappy says:
    December 4, 2007 at 2:58 pm

    What most peo­ple fail to grasp is the ratio of com­bat ele­ments, aka “trig­ger pullers” to logis­ti­cal and sup­port ele­ments, aka “paper push­ers”. Whether the “paper pusher” is a tractor-​​trailer dri­ver, water point oper­a­tor, medic or admin­is­tra­tor each one has a spe­cific job to do that ulti­mately sup­ports the “trig­ger puller”. It pre­vi­ously was referred to as the “tooth to tail ratio” which has risen con­tin­u­ously from 1–10 in WWII to 1–15 in Vietnam to 1–19 in the present. Technology has expanded the abil­i­ties of the mil­i­tary to sup­port it’s actual com­bat arms –Infantry, Armor, Artillery, fighter-​​bombers, subs, destroy­ers and such. The rest only exist to insure the bul­lets and bombs deliv­ered to the “trig­ger pullers” get, in turn, deliv­ered to the enemy. Expanded mis­sions are given to “trig­ger pullers”. Now they must be politi­cians, lawyers, traf­fic cops, gov­ern­men­tal inter­ceed­ers and per­form so many com­plex duties that have never been trained nor even thought of in prior wars. It would be nice if all those thou­sands of sol­diers and marines were “trig­ger pullers” but it will never turn out that way. If even 25% of them are actual com­bat troops that would be a sur­prise to me.

    Reply
  11. Max says:
    December 4, 2007 at 3:46 pm

    This is so stu­pid. I may be repeat­ing some of the other posts, but this is exactly the same kind of think­ing that we heard after 1990 “Hey the Soviet Union is no longer around, so let’s dis­arm and get a peace div­i­dend!” What hap­pened is obvi­ous: we cut our Army and Marines down so much that only ten years later, we badly needed the num­ber of troops that we had in the First Gulf war, but there were only half as many around as before. Don’t we ever learn? We are engaged in a world-​​wide fight against Al-​​queda; while Iraq is look­ing a lot bet­ter, we still have a big prob­lem in and around Pakistan with Bin Laden, and only God knows what else is stir­ring ten years from now. We need dou­ble or triple the num­ber of troop increase pro­posed by Bush and the sooner the better.

    Reply
  12. matt hood says:
    December 5, 2007 at 6:39 am

    Dear Sir: President Bush is a hyp­ocrite. He will give his life for the free mar­ket sys­tem that screws us; but he refuses to prac­tice what he preaches. If America will pay them, our future pro­fes­sional sol­diers will come. America needs to stop giv­ing col­lege schol­ar­ships to bribe our young peo­ple to serve our coun­try. We need to make being in the mil­i­tary a life time career for both the enlisted men and the offi­cers in our mil­i­tary. We must stop retir­ing peo­ple in the mil­i­tary if they can still work, who want to stay! The use of Blackwater in Iraq is a dis­grace to this nation, who should pay our full time sol­diers the same kind of money to sever all their life in the mil­i­tary; know­ing that if they achieve, they con­stantly through out their life, they will get a raise. America needs life time well paid career mil­i­tary per­son­nel who are pro­fes­sional sol­diers who want to devote their entire lives to the national defense of this coun­try. A well paid mil­i­tary will cause our young men to flood to the mil­i­tary. We must stop the his­tor­i­cal dis­grace of this nation, who has a long his­tory of cheat­ing our sol­diers on their pay and under fund­ing them; while our politi­cians, they take all they can get from the American tax­pay­ers. Stop pay­ing our sol­diers min­i­mum wage! Pay them a pro­fes­sional wage!

    Reply

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