Army, Marine Corps To Ask for More Troops
BOLUDOVSKY
Army, Marine Corps To Ask for More Troops
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 13, 2006; A01
The Army and Marine Corps are planning to ask incoming Defense Secretary
Robert M. Gates and Congress to approve permanent increases in personnel,
as senior officials in both services assert that the nation's global
military strategy has outstripped their resources.
In addition, the Army will press hard for "full access" to the 346,000-
strong Army National Guard and the 196,000-strong Army Reserves by asking
Gates to take the politically sensitive step of easing the Pentagon
restrictions on the frequency and duration of involuntary call-ups for
reservists, according to two senior Army officials.
The push for more ground troops comes as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
have sharply decreased the readiness of Army and Marine Corps units
rotating back to the United States, compromising the ability of U.S.
ground forces to respond to other potential conflicts around the world.
"The Army has configured itself to sustain the effort in Iraq and, to a
lesser degree, in Afghanistan. Beyond that, you've got some problems,"
said one of the senior Army officials. "Right now, the strategy exceeds
the capability of the Army and Marines." This official and others
interviewed for this report spoke on the condition of anonymity because
they were not authorized to talk publicly about the matter.
The Army, which has 507,000 active-duty soldiers, wants Congress to fund
a permanent "end strength," or manpower, of at least 512,000 soldiers,
the Army officials said. The Army wants the additional soldiers to be
paid for not through wartime supplemental spending bills but in the
defense budget, which now covers only 482,000 soldiers.
The Marine Corps, with 180,000 active-duty Marines, seeks to grow by
several thousand, including the likely addition of three new infantry
battalions. "We need to be bigger. The question is how big do we need to
be and how do we get there," a senior Marine Corps official said.
At least two-thirds of Army units in the United States today are rated as
not ready to deploy -- lacking in manpower, training and, most
critically, equipment -- according to senior U.S. officials and the Iraq
Study Group report. The two ground services estimate that they will need
$18 billion a year to repair, replace and upgrade destroyed and worn-out
equipment.
If another crisis were to erupt requiring a large number of U.S. ground
troops, the Army's plan would be to freeze its forces in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and divert to the new conflict the U.S.-based combat brigade
that is first in line to deploy.
Beyond that, however, the Army would have to cobble together war-depleted
units to form complete ones to dispatch to the new conflict -- at the
risk of lost time, unit cohesion and preparedness, senior Army officials
said. Moreover, the number of Army and Marine combat units available for
an emergency would be limited to about half that of four years ago,
experts said, unless the difficult decision to pull forces out of Iraq
were made.
"We are concerned about gross readiness . . . and ending equipment and
personnel shortfalls," said a senior Marine Corps official. The official
added that Marine readiness has dropped and that the Corps is unable to
fulfill many planned missions for the fight against terrorism.
Senior Pentagon officials stress that the U.S. military has ample air and
naval power that could respond immediately to possible contingencies in
North Korea, Iran or the Taiwan Strait.
"If you had to go fight another war someplace that somebody sprung upon
us, you would keep the people who are currently employed doing what
they're doing, and you would use the vast part of the U.S. armed forces
that is at home station, to include the enormous strength of our Air
Force and our Navy, against the new threat," Marine Gen. Peter Pace,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a briefing last month.
But if the conflict were to require a significant number of ground troops
-- as in some scenarios such as the disintegration of Pakistan -- Army
and Marine Corps officials made clear that they would have to scramble to
provide them. "Is it the way we'd want to do it? No. Would it be ugly as
hell? Yes," said one of the senior Army officials. "But," he added, "we
could get it done."
According to Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander for the
Middle East, the Army and Marine Corps today cannot sustain even a modest
increase of 20,000 troops in Iraq. U.S. commanders for Afghanistan have
asked for more troops but have not received them, noted the Iraq Study
Group report, which called it "critical" for the United States to provide
more military support for Afghanistan.
"We are facing more operational risk than we have for many, many years,"
said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed Services Committee.
He called it "shocking and scandalous" that two-thirds of Army units are
rated "non-deployable." He said the country has not faced such a
readiness crisis since the aftermath of the Vietnam War.
The U.S. military has more than 140,000 troops in Iraq and 20,000 in
Afghanistan, including 17 of the Army's 36 available active-duty combat
brigades. When Army and Marine Corps combat units return from the war
zone, they immediately lose large numbers of experienced troops and
leaders who either leave the force, go to school or other assignments, or
switch to different units.
The depletion of returning units is so severe that the Marines refer to
this phase as the "post-deployment death spiral." Army officials describe
it as a process of breaking apart units and rebuilding them "just in
time" to deploy again.
Training time for active-duty Army and Marine combat units is only half
what it should be because they are spending about the same amount of time
in war zones as at home -- in contrast to the desired ratio of spending
twice as much time at home as on deployment. And the training tends to
focus on counterinsurgency skills for Iraq and Afghanistan, causing an
erosion in conventional land-warfare capabilities, which could be
required for North Korea or Iran, officials say.
If a conflict with North Korea or Iran were to break out and demand a
medium to large ground force, the Army would be forced to respond with
whatever it had available.
The U.S. military today could cobble together two or three divisions in
an emergency -- compared with as many as six in 2001 -- not enough to
carry out major operations such as overthrowing the Iranian government.
"That's the kind of extreme scenario that could cripple us," said Michael
E. O'Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings Institution.
Unable to count on a significant troop withdrawal from Iraq, the Army
seeks to ease the manpower strain by accelerating plans to have 70
active-duty and National Guard combat brigades available for rotations by
2011. Next year, for example, the Army intends to bring two brigades on a
training mission back into rotation. It is investing $36 billion in Guard
equipment in anticipation of heavier use of the Guard.