About 700 more soldiers may be moved to Fort Shafter and a similar number to Schofield Barracks under a plan to increase the size of the U.S. Army by 74,000 troops within three years.

The more than 1,400 new Hawai'i-based soldiers would be in addition to previously announced buildups for the Army's Stryker brigade at Schofield and new units at Fort Shafter. The Marines also are considering expanding their Hawai'i ranks from 6,500 to 7,500.

The U.S. military is turning to Hawai'i and Guam because of their strategically important forward locations in the Pacific, home to the world's six largest armed forces.

The Army had about 18,000 soldiers based on O'ahu in 2006.

The Army's additions in Hawai'i were mentioned in a new 707-page environmental impact statement that primarily focuses on Mainland troop changes.

The boost in Hawai'i numbers drew concern from the group Earthjustice, which has in the past brought suit on behalf of community groups against the Army over the Stryker brigade and training in Makua Valley.

"Due to Hawai'i's limited land mass and fragile cultural and biological resources, any military training in the Islands inevitably results in significant impacts that the Army must seek to avoid or minimize by shifting training — particularly live-fire training — to locations outside Hawai'i," Earthjustice attorney David Henkin said in comments filed on the plan.

Col. Wayne Shanks, spokesman of U.S. Army, Pacific, said the Army plan is part of an ever-changing basing picture in the Pacific for all services, and it's hard to gauge the impact the proposed Army increases would have in Hawai'i. The number of service men and women in the state is always fluctuating with unit changes, deployments and the return of troops from deployments.

"Is that (the planned Army addition) going to mean a longer line at the PX or at Wal-Mart? I can't tell you," Shanks said.

NUMBERS ON THE RISE

Earthjustice's Henkin said the increase in personnel would mean more family members and the need for additional housing and schools.

The number of Hawai'i-based service men and women and family members is again on the upswing. It peaked in 1988 at about 134,000 and began a sharp decline in the 1990s. In 2002, the number was 81,610, according to the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

In 1988, there were 21 surface ships based at Pearl Harbor, compared with about half that today.

A renewed strategic focus on the Asia-Pacific region has led to an increase in military personnel in the state.

Thirty-eight percent of U.S. trade is conducted within the region, amounting to more than $1.1 trillion in 2006. By contrast, 14 percent of U.S. trade is with the European Union, 18 percent is with Canada, and 19 percent is with Latin America.

More than 1,000 extra soldiers were brought to Schofield Barracks in the past couple of years for the Army's 4,000-soldier Stryker brigade, which is preparing to deploy to Iraq after Thanksgiving.

An environmental assessment in 2006 said there would be a 1,650-soldier increase at 589-acre Fort Shafter as part of a reorganization to a war-fighting headquarters with rapidly deployable subcommands.

Additionally, a top-ranking Marine commander in the Pacific earlier this year said the Marine contingent on O'ahu could grow by up to 1,000 to a total of 7,500 at Kane'ohe Bay.

The Army worldwide is expected to grow to 547,000 soldiers, and the Marine Corps is being expanded from 180,000 to 202,000 to meet war needs in Iraq and Afghanistan and other global requirements.

The Army, in its final programmatic environmental impact statement for what it's calling the "Growth and Force Structure Realignment" of the service, said it looked at 17 Mainland installations for the troop increases.

The installations analyzed would receive more than 1,000 soldiers. The report said stationing locations in Hawai'i and Alaska were included "for the purposes of full transparency of Army planning activities," but were not studied in detail.

Henkin, in his comments, argued that such an analysis should have been included because the proposed additions of 722 soldiers at Schofield and 716 at Fort Shafter are at posts on the same island and relatively close to each other.

STRYKER ALTERNATIVES

The Army said that any increase of less than 1,000 soldiers is below the level of growth at which significant impact would occur, but Henkin noted that taken together, the Hawai'i increase totals 1,438.

Henkin also said the Army "improperly" assumed that a supplemental environmental impact statement for the stationing of the Stryker brigade in Hawai'i would determine that the fast-strike unit of 328 eight-wheeled armored vehicles would remain in Hawai'i.

In October 2006, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Army violated federal environmental law when it did not consider locations other than Hawai'i for the Stryker brigade, and ordered the Army to conduct the analysis.

A draft report that is due out in late December looks at Alaska and Colorado as possible alternative locations.

The Army, in response to Henkin, said its growth plan does not "preclude reasonable stationing alternatives" for the Hawai'i brigade.

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.