Posted on: Monday, August 18, 2003

MILITARY UPDATE
Size of military debated amid new strains

By Tom Philpott

Even before 9-11 and America's global war on terrorism, U.S. military leaders argued that force levels should be increased, or worldwide commitments cut back, to avoid wearing out troops and creating personnel shortfalls.

Two years, two wars and two prolonged U.S. occupations later, the strain on forces is broader and deeper than at any other time since the all-volunteer force began 30 years ago.

The Bush administration has kicked the pace of operations into overdrive with the war in Iraq, on top of Afghanistan, homeland security, peacekeeping in Liberia and rising tensions in Korea.

Still, the administration balks at the cost of expanding active forces beyond 1.37 million. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that before he would endorse taking the step, he wants the services to ease deployment stress through bureaucratic reforms by assigning and rotating troops more efficiently.

At an Aug. 5 news conference, Rumsfeld said that "we can use the stress on the force to get our act together and to do a better job managing the taxpayers' money, managing our force in a way that's more respectful of the Guard and Reserve and their employers and their families."

As the issue simmers inside the Pentagon, a rising chorus outside — of auditors, defense analysts and advocates for military families — suggest the administration is late in pressing Congress for more people, given the dangerous and daunting contingencies U.S. troops now face.

A new General Accounting Office report looks at the strain on U.S. forces just from new domestic missions since 9-11 and criticizes defense officials for delaying changes in force structure to address homeland security needs until the next Quadrennial Defense Review in 2005.

The administration did establish a U.S. Northern Command to coordinate domestic operations, and an office of assistant defense secretary for homeland defense to supervise that responsibility. But because forces aren't tailored to perform missions such as domestic combat air patrols and installation security, training is stunted and readiness is eroding, GAO said.

Meanwhile, the pace of operations for units involved in homeland defense is high enough that thousands of troops are exceeding personnel tempo ceilings set by Congress to protect military morale. As a result, GAO warned, they face "future personnel retention problems."

Michael O'Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution, studied the troop rotation plan for Iraq, which would maintain

force levels using replacement brigades that will serve there for up to a year. Despite that hardship, reminiscent of combat tours in Vietnam, O'Hanlon said the Army's rotation base could be exhausted by late 2004.

"That means we will have to take the unthinkable step of sending back to Iraq people who returned from there a year before," said O'Hanlon. "Many American soldiers, as dedicated as they are, will choose not to re-enlist rather than accept such an unpalatable — and frankly, unfair — demand upon them and their families."

In announcing the Iraq force rotation plan, Gen. John Keane, deputy chief of staff, discussed an Army stretched thin. He said 24 of the 33 active brigades — or 73 percent — deployed overseas in fiscal 2003, along with 15 of 45 Army National Guard enhanced battalions.

In July alone, 369,000 U.S. soldiers were overseas, including 61,000 reservists and 74,000 Guard members. The largest deployments left 133,000 soldiers in Iraq, 34,000 in Kuwait, 31,000 in South Korea, 9,600 in Afghanistan and 5,100 in the Balkans.

Another 29,000 were deployed stateside, away from family, on homeland security missions.

Meredith Leyva, author of "Married to the Military: A Survival Guide" and the wife of a Navy physician, wrote in a recent commentary that "resentment among service members and their families, at the now-unbearable pace of deployments, can hardly be contained by their commanding officers, even though such comments can end their careers."

Politicians opted for back-to-back wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, she said, without taking "the human factor of an all-volunteer force" into account. "Now anecdotal evidence suggests retention problems will increase."

Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff who bumped heads with Rumsfeld over force levels and other issues, said in his June retirement speech: "Beware the 12-division strategy for a 10-division Army."

His successor, Gen. Pete Schoomaker, told senators at his confirmation hearing he was "going to take a little risk here" to say that, "intuitively, I think we need more people — I mean, it's that simple."

Asked to comment on Schoomaker's remark, Rumsfeld at first said he didn't believe that the general had made it. When assured that he had, Rumsfeld said he and Schoomaker and Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, all agreed that stress on the force can be reduced by using a more efficient deployment process, rebalancing missions between active and reserve forces, drawing down forces in the Balkans and shifting as many as 320,000 troops from jobs that civilians can do. Until those initiatives are implemented, Rumsfeld said, it's hard to make a case for a larger force.

"We're absolutely open-minded about how many people we have in the services,"' Rumsfeld said. "We want to have the right number."

But that number can't be known if the force is expanded "the first time you feel the effects of a spike in activity, as we do right now with Iraq."

So Rumsfeld's choice is to "get about the task of really running this place right and seeing that we're respectful of the taxpayers' dollars."

O'Hanlon warned that new efficiencies and force management tools take years to develop. The nation, he argues, needs a larger Army now.

Questions, comments and suggestions are welcomed. Write to Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, VA 20120-1111, or send e-mail to: milupdate@aol.com. Or visit Tom Philpott's Web site.