The Army announced yesterday it will add about 1,680 additional soldiers at Schofield Barracks and about 300 more soldiers at Fort Shafter as part of a "grow the force" initiative and realignment of troops around the globe.

The new soldiers will serve in combat support roles, and the plan requires the construction of garrison facilities at Schofield and Wheeler Army Airfield. Schofield now has more than 11,000 soldiers.

The Army previously decided against stationing a "maneuver enhancement brigade" of 567 soldiers in Hawai'i, and instead is routing the soldiers to Fort Drum in New York.

In January 2007, President Bush announced he would increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps to provide for current and future needs and to reduce stress on deployable personnel.

The Army is expected to grow by 74,000 soldiers to a force of 547,000, and the Marine Corps is being expanded from 180,000 to 202,000, to meet needs in Iraq and Afghanistan and the larger war on terror.

Scheduled to be completed by 2013, the Army and Marine Corps additions are expected to cost $17 billion, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

The Army in 2007 also announced it was moving units out of Europe and back to the United States as part of a realignment of forces.

The decision announced yesterday also means about 2,200 more soldiers will be stationed at bases in Alaska.

The Army said it evaluated the potential environmental and socioeconomic effects connected with the basing decisions and proposed mitigations for those impacts as a part of implementing the growth and realignment decisions.

The Pacific theater is a "critical theater" for U.S. national security, covering more than 50 percent of the earth's surface and including more than 39 countries on and around the Pacific Rim, the Army said.

The environmental group Earthjustice previously said the troop additions would put greater pressure on cultural sites and endangered species, and on families looking to rent.

U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawai'i, had said the Army had to evaluate base capacity everywhere as the number of soldiers is increased.