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thedrifter
01-30-04, 06:18 AM
Issue Date: February 02, 2004

Time crunch
With rising demands on Corps, no more deployment ‘routine’

By Christian Lowe
Times staff writer

The old routine is out the window.
Eighteen months between deployments? No more.

Three Marine Expeditionary Units at the tip of the spear to cover the hot spots? Maybe not.

A rotation to Okinawa spent training in exotic countries on the Pacific Rim? That’s gone, too.

Two wars in two years have pushed the pace of operations worldwide to new heights, forcing planners to be creative in assigning units to cover the Corps’ commitments around the globe.

Your life as a Marine will only be more uncertain in the coming years, and Corps officials are adjusting deployment plans to reflect that new reality — plans that mean more uncertainty both during operations overseas and on the home front.

In a major shift in Marine deployment policy, the Corps has formalized what has already become obvious to most leathernecks since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Under a Pentagon initiative dubbed the Joint Presence Policy, the Corps has mapped out what kind of commitment it can make to theater commanders and how that will mesh with the day-to-day training needed to maintain its capability to deploy anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice.

That means a deployment plan that for decades saw three MEUs deployed at any given time — one from the East Coast, one from the West Coast and one forward-based in Japan — is now up in the air. Think you’ll have a good 12 deployment-free months back to get your normal unit training done and work on some career-enhancing courses and schools before the six-month MEU work-up cycle begins?

Times have changed.

“In the past they haven’t had to rotate units overseas quite as frequently because the requirement wasn’t there and we were able to get by with certain commitments to the Unit Deployment Program as well as the Marine Expeditionary Units,” said Lt. Gen. Jan Huly, deputy commandant for plans, policies and operations at Marine Corps headquarters in Washington. “Now, we have an added requirement that’s going on and it’s the global war on terrorism.

“What is the effect of all that? We don’t know yet because we haven’t really been there yet.”

Less time at home

The Joint Presence Policy essentially is a schedule that balances the needs of theater commanders against the availability of troops and equipment from each of the services at any given time. In the past, the commander had to canvass each of the services for their force levels. Now, all that information will be incorporated into one joint plan, officials say.

As part of that plan, the Corps is telling theater commanders it will maintain its capability to respond to contingency operations, contribute to ongoing operations, engage in military-to-military diplomacy and train sharp leathernecks — just differently than it has before.

“Because of Operation Iraqi Freedom, we’re deploying more forces more frequently than we ever have in the past, and as a result we can’t maintain our old rotation ratios,” said Maj. Mike Chambers, a status-of-forces officer with the plans, policies and operations branch. “There are increased requirements on the Marine Corps, and the Marine Corps accepts that.”

That means a lot less downtime for a deployment-weary Marine.

In the past, units typically deployed with a MEU for six months, then came home for 18 months before going back out on deployment.

Now, however, Marines will only be home a maximum of 12 months, with more than half of that time taken up by standard MEU work-ups and qualifications. That means even less time for an individual Marine to participate in career-enhancing activities such as attending joint schools, professional military education courses or college classes.

The current pace of operations has had no ill effects so far on the readiness of personnel or equipment bound for Iraq, other than a slight delay in the full reconstitution of the Maritime Prepositioning Force gear used for the Corps’ first stint in OIF.

But going forward, Corps officials don’t know what effect the high op tempo will have.

“We’re not sure exactly what long-term effects are going to be, but we know for the immediate, foreseeable future, this is an acceptable pace to do this,” Huly said.

In a holiday message to his troops, I Marine Expeditionary Force commander Lt. Gen. James Conway wrote that Commandant Gen. Mike Hagee has ordered that a Marine will be home at least as long as he has been deployed.

That’s cold comfort if you’ve been deployed to Iraq for seven months and are scheduled to chop to a battalion landing team for a MEU pump less than a year after you return home.

Unit commanders and enlisted leaders will have less time to schedule training, such as Combined Arms Exercises, Mountain Warfare Training School slots and officer courses.

“All those things will happen — there’s just not that much time to do it,” Chambers said. “And what it means at the division level is a bigger juggling exercise on assigning school quotas.”

Asked for comment on how Marines might gain relief from the time crunch, officials with Training and Education Command at Quantico, Va., declined an interview request through a spokesman. But in a written statement, TECOM officials said, “entry and career progression training continues within the Marine Corps in a manner that ensures the combat readiness of the force.”

Tell that to the staff NCO who has to hustle his Marines off to school just days after returning from Iraq.

“I’m sure there is a giant press out there to make sure that no moment or no opportunity is wasted. That’s the hidden bill in op tempo,” Chambers said. “It’s going to be like, ‘Hey, you’re getting back, go take five days off and then get over to NCO school.’”

From Oki to Iraq

Things won’t be business as usual overseas, either. A Unit Deployment Program rotation to Japan might not be spent protecting America’s Asian interests — and pulling liberty in exotic ports. Already, the Corps is taking three infantry battalions from UDP on Okinawa for duty in Iraq, and Marine officials are keeping open the option of using III MEF forces to support theater commanders elsewhere in the world, Chambers said.

But the same cannot be said for MEU presence around the world. For the second time in two years, the Mediterranean Sea is without a MEU. The 26th MEU returned to Camp Lejeune, N.C., in November after a seven-month deployment, but its relief, the 22nd MEU, isn’t expected to deploy until February. The 31st MEU remains forward-deployed to Okinawa as always, but the 13th MEU from Camp Pendleton, Calif., is the only stateside MEU at sea.

It’s a scenario that likely will happen again in the future, Chambers said.

“Will there be times where a coast doesn’t have a MEU deployed? Yes,” he said. “That’s built into the schedule.”

So what happens, for example, if there’s a flare-up in restive Liberia and the U.S. Embassy needs to be evacuated? Well, the Corps will have to get creative. Maybe it’ll pull a West Coast-based MEU away from its usual routine to help, or form a special-purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force to execute a noncombatant evacuation. It all depends on who can get ready and be there the fastest.

“Both the Navy and Marine Corps are looking at how we can be better prepared to do that, and at what point in a MEU’s work-up it’s ready to go,” Hagee said in an interview last fall with Marine Corps Times reporters and editors. “A lot depends on what the mission is. In many cases, if you are going to surge a force, it does not require an entire Marine expeditionary unit.”

Such was the case during the most recent period of unrest in Liberia last summer. When the call went out for a peacekeeping force there, the Corps considered sending a special-purpose MAGTF from Camp Lejeune for the mission, Hagee said, but instead opted to bring the 26th MEU over from the Persian Gulf region.

“Sure there’s always risk,” Huly said of the force gaps. “If you’ve got a unit that’s forward-deployed at a location for a specific purpose or a specific region and it’s no longer there, obviously you’re probably taking a little bit of risk.

“In this case the risk was considered and we can absorb this, we’ve got other ways to offset this … at the Joint Staff level with other efforts and other forces and other capabilities. So I think it’s more than acceptable.”

With more than 40,000 Marines — nearly a quarter of the active-duty force — on tap to deploy to Iraq over the next 14 months, it’s clear that this is going to be the way life goes in the foreseeable future. Officials say they’re not planning any major reduction in training or overseas exercises such as the West African Training Cruise and Unitas, so the high op tempo isn’t going to decrease any time soon.

In fact, the Corps already is working out the details of how it will contribute to yet another Iraq rotation, should it be called to keep contributing forces to relieve the overburdened Army.

So plan on more time away and less time at home, and don’t have your heart set on that next assignment. With the world situation still uncertain and the demand for Marines continuing to exceed supply, life’s going to be a lot busier than before.


http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=0-MARINEPAPER-2578883.php


Sempers,

Roger
:marine:

kentmitchell
01-30-04, 06:21 PM
There's a phrase--for the good of the Corps. There hasn't been a day when that wasn't the main determining point of any action.
So be it.