thedrifter
04-17-08, 07:02 AM
The State of America's Ground Forces
Testimony Before the House Committee on Armed Services
By Lawrence J. Korb | April 16, 2008
Chairman Ortiz, Chairman Abercrombie, Ranking Member Forbes, Ranking Member Saxton, and members of the Subcommittees on Readiness and Air Land Forces of the House Armed Services Committee, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you to discuss the current state of the nation’s ground forces. I cannot think of a more critical issue facing the nation at this time.
After more than five years of combat in Iraq and well over six in Afghanistan, America’s ground forces are stretched to their breaking point. Over this time the Army has become severely overstretched and its overall readiness has significantly declined. The Marine Corps is suffering from many of the same strains as the Army and the situation for the Army National Guard is even worse. The deployment of more than 30,000 troops to Iraq in the president’s latest escalation and the dispatch of another 3,200 to Afghanistan have placed an unsustainable level of stress on U.S. ground forces and put their readiness to fight in other conflicts effectively in doubt.
Army and Marine commanders have only been able to provide these additional troops by putting additional stress and strain on those in uniform and by cutting corners on training and equipment. The unprecedented decision by the administration last April—that tours for Army brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan would be extended from 12 months to 15 months—is something that was not even done in Vietnam when we had over 500,000 troops on the ground, or in Korea where we had over 300,000. This only further demonstrates the dire situation that the Army is facing.
Senior military officers have increasingly been warning Congress and the American people about the burden placed on our men and women in uniform. In September of 2007, merely halfway into the administration’s latest escalation, Army Chief of Staff General George Casey made the Army’s situation clear in no uncertain terms: “our Army is out of balance…The current demand for our forces exceeds the sustainable supply. We are consumed with meeting the demands of the current fight and are unable to provide ready forces as rapidly as necessary for other potential contingencies.” This is a polite way of saying that our Army is broken.
Six months after Casey testified and a full 15 months after the administration’s escalation began, General Richard Cody, the outgoing Army Vice Chief of Staff, echoed Casey’s bleak outlook: "I've never seen our lack of strategic depth be where it is today. Our readiness is being consumed as fast as we can build it.” Moreover, the Army no longer has any fully ready combat brigades on standby should a crisis occur.
The Bush administration’s open-ended and unconditional military commitment in Iraq coupled with the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan means that there is no end in sight for relieving the stress on our ground forces. Because our readiness is being consumed in Iraq faster than we can build it, the ability of U.S. ground forces to recover is dependent upon the willingness of Iraqi Security Forces to take over the mission of securing their own nation. Prime Minister Maliki’s ill-prepared raid on rival Shi’a gangs in Basra, which had to be aborted due to mass desertions within Maliki’s own ranks, demonstrates that these forces still do not have the motivation to fight and die for their nation nor will they have it in the foreseeable future. As a result, the overall security of the United States is in the hands of the Iraqis. This is a position a superpower like the United States should never be in.
In the following four sections I will discuss the current structure of the All-Volunteer Force, the misuse of the all-volunteer military in Iraq, personnel challenges confronting the ground forces, and in the final section I will make some recommendations for rebuilding and expanding the ground forces.
I. The All-Volunteer Force (AVF)
The all-volunteer force, particularly the Army component, as General John Abizaid noted in fall of 2006, was not “built to sustain a long war.” The architects of the U.S. All-Volunteer Army intended it to rest on four pillars:
1. A small active duty force made up of well-equipped and highly trained active duty soldiers
2. A large ready reserve that could supplement the active duty force during short wars like the first Gulf War, and during smaller scale operations like Bosnia. This larger reserve force would serve as a bridge to re-instating conscription in the event of a protracted war. This is why we make young men register for the draft when they turn 18
3. In the event of a protracted conflict, the government would reinstitute the draft
4. Private contractors would provide administrative and support services, freeing up soldiers to fight
Because the Bush administration has refused to face up to the manpower implications of its open-ended commitment of forces—particularly in Iraq—by reinstituting the draft, it has been forced to take three disastrous steps. Active duty forces have been deployed and redeployed without sufficient dwell time; the Guard and reserves have been transformed from a strategic to an operational reserve, alternating deployments with active forces; and private contractors have taken on combat missions.
The Department of Defense has belatedly approved a plan to increase the size of the ground forces by 92,000 troops. However, it should be noted that these small end strength additions will not be finalized until 2012—a full three years into the next president’s administration—and will not be able to relieve the current stress and strain of our ground forces. If the president or his successor wants to continue this mindless, needless, senseless war in Iraq he or she should call for reinstating the draft. That would be the responsible path.
In my view, however, this would be a mistake on par with the initial invasion of Iraq. Instead, I believe the United States should set a firm timetable for the gradual redeployment of U.S. forces and their equipment. At the Center for American Progress we developed a plan that demonstrated how this could be done safely in 10 to 12 months.
During that time the United States should work to train and support Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi government while gradually handing over responsibility for security to the Iraqis. This action should be backed up with a diplomatic surge in which the United States would engage all countries in the region. There is no guarantee that this approach will be effective in stabilizing Iraq or the region. In fact, given the misleading justifications for the initial invasion and the way in which the Bush administration has conducted the war, there are no good options left. But I believe that this course, a strategic redeployment and a diplomatic surge, provides the best chance for stabilizing the region as well as mitigating the impact of Iraq on the ground forces and U.S. national security. As General Maxwell Taylor, Army Chief of Staff, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Ambassador to South Vietnam, noted some three decades ago, “we sent the Army to Vietnam to save Vietnam; we withdrew the Army to save the Army.” Or as the late William F. Buckley noted, if we had not left Vietnam we would not have won the Cold War. If we do not leave Iraq, we will not win the War on Terror.
II. Overstretched Ground Forces
Today there is little doubt that the ground forces are overstretched. A recent survey of 3,400 active duty and retired military officers found that 88 percent of respondents believe that the Iraq war has stretched the U.S. military dangerously thin while 60 percent of the same officers believe that the U.S. military is weaker today than it was five years ago.
Since the attacks of September 11, nearly 1.7 million U.S. servicemen and women have been deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan. Of those 1.7 million, nearly 600,000 have been deployed to either theatre more than once. In early March 2007, we at the Center for American Progress released a study chronicling the effects that sustained deployments in Iraq are having on the Army. By analyzing every active Army Brigade Combat Team (BCT) we were able to convey the strain and fatigue placed on the force and illustrate its implications for our nation’s national security. The facts that we compiled were troubling but in the subsequent year, these strains have been exacerbated.
Of the Army’s 44 combat brigades, all but the First Brigade of the Second Infantry Division, which is permanently based in South Korea, have served at least one tour. Of the remaining 43:
Five brigades have had one tour in Iraq or Afghanistan
Thirteen brigades have had two tours in Iraq or Afghanistan
Nineteen brigades have had three tours in Iraq or Afghanistan
Six brigades have had four tours in Iraq or Afghanistan1
The task of not only sustaining but increasing troop levels in Iraq has forced the Army to frequently violate its own deployment policy. Army policy holds that after 12 months of deployment in a combat zone, troops should receive 24 months at home for “dwell time”—time at home between deployments to rest, recuperate, reconnect with family, integrate new unit members, train, and prepare to deploy again—before returning to combat. Even before the surge, the Army had reduced dwell time to one year. Since April of 2007, all Army combat brigades have been on a 15-month deployed to 12-month dwell time ratio before deploying again. Similarly, Marines have been on a 7-month deployment cycle for every 6 months at home.
Equally disturbing, both militarily and morally, is the fact that several units have been sent to either Iraq or Afghanistan who are not fully combat ready. Three units that are part of the president’s latest escalation are glaring examples of inadequate dwell time:
With only nine months at home between its first and second deployments to Iraq, the Third Brigade, First Armored Division from Fort Riley, KS experienced one of the shortest dwell time periods of any unit in the Army.
The Fourth BCT, 10th Mountain Division was activiated in January 2005. It is currently on its second deployment of its three-year history. There were nine months of dwell time for the new unit, after 15 months deployed, between its first and second tours.
Some soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division, Second Brigade Combat Team (Fort Drum) had six months dwell time between its second and third post-9/11 deployments.
On April 11, President Bush announced that he would be following U.S. Army General David Petraeus' recommendations to withdraw 25 percent of American combat forces from Iraq by the end of July. Despite the president’s assertion that the withdrawal of these troops represents a “return on success” for his “surge” policy, the president is merely making a virtue out of necessity.
The fact of the matter is that these five brigades, or about 20,000 combat troops, were scheduled to be withdrawn after their 15-month tours came to an end—whether Iraq witnessed a temporary decline in violence or not. It would have taken extraordinary measures such as an extension of these soldiers’ deployments to 18 months to maintain current levels beyond this time.
Moreover, the 8,000 support personnel that deployed along with the surge’s additional combat brigades will remain in Iraq after the surge draws down. This means that even with the current reduction in force levels, there will be more soldiers and Marines in Iraq after the surge runs its course in July than when it began in January of 2007. The president also announced that Army units would begin a one-to-one deployment-to dwell-time ratio, or 12 months deployed in combat followed by 12 months of dwell time.
These decisions are inadequate for two reasons. First, this change will have no immediate effect on relieving the stress and strain on our soldiers because it will not reduce the tours of any soldier currently deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan—and will only affect soldiers deploying after August 1, 2008. In fact, tens of thousands of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will remain there under the 15-month cycle until their deployment is over.
Second, even with this modest reduction in deployment length, the president will still be forcing the Defense Department to violate its own deployment policy. U.S. Department of Defense policy calls for a one-to-two ratio of deployment to dwell time. Dwell time is critically important to maintaining high levels of readiness in our armed forces.
President Bush also made no mention of the Marine Corps in his remarks. Though smaller than the Army, the Marine Corps, too, is feeling the effects of frequent repeated deployments.
Marine Corps
Just like the Army, the Marine Corps has also been under serious strain due to the increased operational tempo required to sustain the engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Marine Corps, our nation’s premier expeditionary force, has over the past few years seen its capacity to quickly respond to contingencies around the world diminish. Currently, the Marine Corps has been able to limit its deployments to seven months. However, the constant cycle of deployments and demand for Marines in Iraq has meant that for all practical purposes, the Marine Corps has had to abandon its role as an expeditionary force, something that the Commandant James Conway has said needs to be reversed. In effect, the Marines have become a second land Army. With the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit currently augmenting our forces in Afghanistan, we do not have an expeditionary presence capable of responding in event of contingencies in the Mediterranean and North Africa. This exemplifies the strain on our forces, and how other areas critical to our national security interest have been left vulnerable.
While the majority of Army units comprising the surge in Iraq will return in July, the Marine Corps will remain deployed overseas in large numbers until October, when 3,200 Marines are scheduled to return from their temporary deployment to Afghanistan. The need for more troops to fight in Afghanistan, the central front against Al Qaeda, is clear. However, the United States does not have the troops to send. The fact that the Pentagon could only muster 3,200 Marines to send to Afghanistan this spring exemplifies the strain the Marine Corps is under. The Commandant of the Marine Corps recently commented, “give us some relief (in Iraq), and we’ll go to Afghanistan in force.” Marines are ready to take the fight to Al Qaeda, but can’t because there aren’t enough of them to go around.
Lack of sufficient dwell time has also hindered Marine units’ ability to effectively train for the “full spectrum” of operations required of the Marine Corps as an expeditionary force. There has been an emphasis on counter-insurgency training, the primary type of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, at the expense of thorough training for other types of contingencies to which the Marine Corps is often the first responder—humanitarian assistance, non-combatant evacuation operations, or other operations of a non-counter-insurgency nature. Additionally, as is the case for the Army, units needing to train here at home are unable to do so as efficiently as is needed. This is in part because of equipment shortages resulting from equipment normally used to train at home having been sent to forward deployed units to use in Iraq and Afghanistan. The importance of dwell time cannot be overstated. Gen. Conway recently commented that sufficient dwell time is “critical to success in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
To continue reading...
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/04/military_readiness.html
Ellie
Testimony Before the House Committee on Armed Services
By Lawrence J. Korb | April 16, 2008
Chairman Ortiz, Chairman Abercrombie, Ranking Member Forbes, Ranking Member Saxton, and members of the Subcommittees on Readiness and Air Land Forces of the House Armed Services Committee, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you to discuss the current state of the nation’s ground forces. I cannot think of a more critical issue facing the nation at this time.
After more than five years of combat in Iraq and well over six in Afghanistan, America’s ground forces are stretched to their breaking point. Over this time the Army has become severely overstretched and its overall readiness has significantly declined. The Marine Corps is suffering from many of the same strains as the Army and the situation for the Army National Guard is even worse. The deployment of more than 30,000 troops to Iraq in the president’s latest escalation and the dispatch of another 3,200 to Afghanistan have placed an unsustainable level of stress on U.S. ground forces and put their readiness to fight in other conflicts effectively in doubt.
Army and Marine commanders have only been able to provide these additional troops by putting additional stress and strain on those in uniform and by cutting corners on training and equipment. The unprecedented decision by the administration last April—that tours for Army brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan would be extended from 12 months to 15 months—is something that was not even done in Vietnam when we had over 500,000 troops on the ground, or in Korea where we had over 300,000. This only further demonstrates the dire situation that the Army is facing.
Senior military officers have increasingly been warning Congress and the American people about the burden placed on our men and women in uniform. In September of 2007, merely halfway into the administration’s latest escalation, Army Chief of Staff General George Casey made the Army’s situation clear in no uncertain terms: “our Army is out of balance…The current demand for our forces exceeds the sustainable supply. We are consumed with meeting the demands of the current fight and are unable to provide ready forces as rapidly as necessary for other potential contingencies.” This is a polite way of saying that our Army is broken.
Six months after Casey testified and a full 15 months after the administration’s escalation began, General Richard Cody, the outgoing Army Vice Chief of Staff, echoed Casey’s bleak outlook: "I've never seen our lack of strategic depth be where it is today. Our readiness is being consumed as fast as we can build it.” Moreover, the Army no longer has any fully ready combat brigades on standby should a crisis occur.
The Bush administration’s open-ended and unconditional military commitment in Iraq coupled with the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan means that there is no end in sight for relieving the stress on our ground forces. Because our readiness is being consumed in Iraq faster than we can build it, the ability of U.S. ground forces to recover is dependent upon the willingness of Iraqi Security Forces to take over the mission of securing their own nation. Prime Minister Maliki’s ill-prepared raid on rival Shi’a gangs in Basra, which had to be aborted due to mass desertions within Maliki’s own ranks, demonstrates that these forces still do not have the motivation to fight and die for their nation nor will they have it in the foreseeable future. As a result, the overall security of the United States is in the hands of the Iraqis. This is a position a superpower like the United States should never be in.
In the following four sections I will discuss the current structure of the All-Volunteer Force, the misuse of the all-volunteer military in Iraq, personnel challenges confronting the ground forces, and in the final section I will make some recommendations for rebuilding and expanding the ground forces.
I. The All-Volunteer Force (AVF)
The all-volunteer force, particularly the Army component, as General John Abizaid noted in fall of 2006, was not “built to sustain a long war.” The architects of the U.S. All-Volunteer Army intended it to rest on four pillars:
1. A small active duty force made up of well-equipped and highly trained active duty soldiers
2. A large ready reserve that could supplement the active duty force during short wars like the first Gulf War, and during smaller scale operations like Bosnia. This larger reserve force would serve as a bridge to re-instating conscription in the event of a protracted war. This is why we make young men register for the draft when they turn 18
3. In the event of a protracted conflict, the government would reinstitute the draft
4. Private contractors would provide administrative and support services, freeing up soldiers to fight
Because the Bush administration has refused to face up to the manpower implications of its open-ended commitment of forces—particularly in Iraq—by reinstituting the draft, it has been forced to take three disastrous steps. Active duty forces have been deployed and redeployed without sufficient dwell time; the Guard and reserves have been transformed from a strategic to an operational reserve, alternating deployments with active forces; and private contractors have taken on combat missions.
The Department of Defense has belatedly approved a plan to increase the size of the ground forces by 92,000 troops. However, it should be noted that these small end strength additions will not be finalized until 2012—a full three years into the next president’s administration—and will not be able to relieve the current stress and strain of our ground forces. If the president or his successor wants to continue this mindless, needless, senseless war in Iraq he or she should call for reinstating the draft. That would be the responsible path.
In my view, however, this would be a mistake on par with the initial invasion of Iraq. Instead, I believe the United States should set a firm timetable for the gradual redeployment of U.S. forces and their equipment. At the Center for American Progress we developed a plan that demonstrated how this could be done safely in 10 to 12 months.
During that time the United States should work to train and support Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi government while gradually handing over responsibility for security to the Iraqis. This action should be backed up with a diplomatic surge in which the United States would engage all countries in the region. There is no guarantee that this approach will be effective in stabilizing Iraq or the region. In fact, given the misleading justifications for the initial invasion and the way in which the Bush administration has conducted the war, there are no good options left. But I believe that this course, a strategic redeployment and a diplomatic surge, provides the best chance for stabilizing the region as well as mitigating the impact of Iraq on the ground forces and U.S. national security. As General Maxwell Taylor, Army Chief of Staff, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Ambassador to South Vietnam, noted some three decades ago, “we sent the Army to Vietnam to save Vietnam; we withdrew the Army to save the Army.” Or as the late William F. Buckley noted, if we had not left Vietnam we would not have won the Cold War. If we do not leave Iraq, we will not win the War on Terror.
II. Overstretched Ground Forces
Today there is little doubt that the ground forces are overstretched. A recent survey of 3,400 active duty and retired military officers found that 88 percent of respondents believe that the Iraq war has stretched the U.S. military dangerously thin while 60 percent of the same officers believe that the U.S. military is weaker today than it was five years ago.
Since the attacks of September 11, nearly 1.7 million U.S. servicemen and women have been deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan. Of those 1.7 million, nearly 600,000 have been deployed to either theatre more than once. In early March 2007, we at the Center for American Progress released a study chronicling the effects that sustained deployments in Iraq are having on the Army. By analyzing every active Army Brigade Combat Team (BCT) we were able to convey the strain and fatigue placed on the force and illustrate its implications for our nation’s national security. The facts that we compiled were troubling but in the subsequent year, these strains have been exacerbated.
Of the Army’s 44 combat brigades, all but the First Brigade of the Second Infantry Division, which is permanently based in South Korea, have served at least one tour. Of the remaining 43:
Five brigades have had one tour in Iraq or Afghanistan
Thirteen brigades have had two tours in Iraq or Afghanistan
Nineteen brigades have had three tours in Iraq or Afghanistan
Six brigades have had four tours in Iraq or Afghanistan1
The task of not only sustaining but increasing troop levels in Iraq has forced the Army to frequently violate its own deployment policy. Army policy holds that after 12 months of deployment in a combat zone, troops should receive 24 months at home for “dwell time”—time at home between deployments to rest, recuperate, reconnect with family, integrate new unit members, train, and prepare to deploy again—before returning to combat. Even before the surge, the Army had reduced dwell time to one year. Since April of 2007, all Army combat brigades have been on a 15-month deployed to 12-month dwell time ratio before deploying again. Similarly, Marines have been on a 7-month deployment cycle for every 6 months at home.
Equally disturbing, both militarily and morally, is the fact that several units have been sent to either Iraq or Afghanistan who are not fully combat ready. Three units that are part of the president’s latest escalation are glaring examples of inadequate dwell time:
With only nine months at home between its first and second deployments to Iraq, the Third Brigade, First Armored Division from Fort Riley, KS experienced one of the shortest dwell time periods of any unit in the Army.
The Fourth BCT, 10th Mountain Division was activiated in January 2005. It is currently on its second deployment of its three-year history. There were nine months of dwell time for the new unit, after 15 months deployed, between its first and second tours.
Some soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division, Second Brigade Combat Team (Fort Drum) had six months dwell time between its second and third post-9/11 deployments.
On April 11, President Bush announced that he would be following U.S. Army General David Petraeus' recommendations to withdraw 25 percent of American combat forces from Iraq by the end of July. Despite the president’s assertion that the withdrawal of these troops represents a “return on success” for his “surge” policy, the president is merely making a virtue out of necessity.
The fact of the matter is that these five brigades, or about 20,000 combat troops, were scheduled to be withdrawn after their 15-month tours came to an end—whether Iraq witnessed a temporary decline in violence or not. It would have taken extraordinary measures such as an extension of these soldiers’ deployments to 18 months to maintain current levels beyond this time.
Moreover, the 8,000 support personnel that deployed along with the surge’s additional combat brigades will remain in Iraq after the surge draws down. This means that even with the current reduction in force levels, there will be more soldiers and Marines in Iraq after the surge runs its course in July than when it began in January of 2007. The president also announced that Army units would begin a one-to-one deployment-to dwell-time ratio, or 12 months deployed in combat followed by 12 months of dwell time.
These decisions are inadequate for two reasons. First, this change will have no immediate effect on relieving the stress and strain on our soldiers because it will not reduce the tours of any soldier currently deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan—and will only affect soldiers deploying after August 1, 2008. In fact, tens of thousands of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will remain there under the 15-month cycle until their deployment is over.
Second, even with this modest reduction in deployment length, the president will still be forcing the Defense Department to violate its own deployment policy. U.S. Department of Defense policy calls for a one-to-two ratio of deployment to dwell time. Dwell time is critically important to maintaining high levels of readiness in our armed forces.
President Bush also made no mention of the Marine Corps in his remarks. Though smaller than the Army, the Marine Corps, too, is feeling the effects of frequent repeated deployments.
Marine Corps
Just like the Army, the Marine Corps has also been under serious strain due to the increased operational tempo required to sustain the engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Marine Corps, our nation’s premier expeditionary force, has over the past few years seen its capacity to quickly respond to contingencies around the world diminish. Currently, the Marine Corps has been able to limit its deployments to seven months. However, the constant cycle of deployments and demand for Marines in Iraq has meant that for all practical purposes, the Marine Corps has had to abandon its role as an expeditionary force, something that the Commandant James Conway has said needs to be reversed. In effect, the Marines have become a second land Army. With the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit currently augmenting our forces in Afghanistan, we do not have an expeditionary presence capable of responding in event of contingencies in the Mediterranean and North Africa. This exemplifies the strain on our forces, and how other areas critical to our national security interest have been left vulnerable.
While the majority of Army units comprising the surge in Iraq will return in July, the Marine Corps will remain deployed overseas in large numbers until October, when 3,200 Marines are scheduled to return from their temporary deployment to Afghanistan. The need for more troops to fight in Afghanistan, the central front against Al Qaeda, is clear. However, the United States does not have the troops to send. The fact that the Pentagon could only muster 3,200 Marines to send to Afghanistan this spring exemplifies the strain the Marine Corps is under. The Commandant of the Marine Corps recently commented, “give us some relief (in Iraq), and we’ll go to Afghanistan in force.” Marines are ready to take the fight to Al Qaeda, but can’t because there aren’t enough of them to go around.
Lack of sufficient dwell time has also hindered Marine units’ ability to effectively train for the “full spectrum” of operations required of the Marine Corps as an expeditionary force. There has been an emphasis on counter-insurgency training, the primary type of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, at the expense of thorough training for other types of contingencies to which the Marine Corps is often the first responder—humanitarian assistance, non-combatant evacuation operations, or other operations of a non-counter-insurgency nature. Additionally, as is the case for the Army, units needing to train here at home are unable to do so as efficiently as is needed. This is in part because of equipment shortages resulting from equipment normally used to train at home having been sent to forward deployed units to use in Iraq and Afghanistan. The importance of dwell time cannot be overstated. Gen. Conway recently commented that sufficient dwell time is “critical to success in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
To continue reading...
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/04/military_readiness.html
Ellie