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US
military begins its 'long march'
By David Isenberg
If the Bush administration made any New Year's resolutions, high on the list
must be the hope that Operation Iraqi Freedom II goes off without a hitch.
As if things weren't already difficult enough for the United States military,
with an overextended force structure committed to regions near and far across
the world - as evidenced by the issuing of stop-move and stop-loss orders to
some 7,000 troops - the Pentagon has now decided to put retirement plans on
hold, and offered big financial inducements (up to $10,000) to troops who
re-enlist. And with the advent of 2004 there has been a massive troop rotation
to the Central Command theater. It officially kicked off on January 8, when
advance teams from the 1st Calvary Division, part of the Army's III Corps, flew
to Baghdad to begin taking over command of ground forces from troops currently
there.
Both active and reserve forces are being deployed in a tightly scripted
movement that puts your ordinary Broadway dance routine to shame. More than
240,000 soldiers and Marines are to move into and out of Iraq from now to May.
During this rotation, about 110,000 fresh troops will deploy to Iraq to replace
125,000 troops there, 20,000 troops will replace forces in Kuwait, and about
11,000 in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom 5) who have been there for
about a year. It amounts to the US military's largest troop rotation since
World War II.
The reasons for the rotation are twofold. First, troops are being sent home
after serving a year or more in Iraq as a way to sustain morale and prevent
reenlistment rates from plummeting. The second aim is to deploy fighting units
together, rather than subbing in new soldiers on an individual basis, a policy
that proved disastrous in Vietnam.
The rotation presents an enormous logistics challenge not only for the army and
Marine Corps, but also for the air force and navy, whose planes and ships are
ferrying the troops to and from Iraq. The rotation coordination is the
responsibility of Atlanta-based Third Army headquarters at Fort McPherson,
Georgia.
Aside from the sheer difficulty of coordinating transportation, housing and
other needs for so many troops, the mass troop movement presents significant
risks for troops traveling across unfamiliar territory before reaching more
secure bases and presents a target for insurgents. Almost certainly there will
be deadly vehicle accidents with such a large movement of forces.
As many troops will be transported by air, commanders are worried about the
security of transport aircraft, given past attempts to shoot down planes with
shoulder-fired missiles, such as the recent reported attack on a US Air Force
C-5 cargo jet, suspected of being hit by ground fire as it took off from
Baghdad international airport. In military jargon, they will represent a
"target-rich environment".
The troops are coming from overseas as well as the United States. The Pentagon
plans to dispatch about 25,000 Marines from the I and II Marine Expeditionary
Forces to Iraq from the United States and other foreign bases, notably Okinawa
in Japan, to replace army troops currently stationed in Iraq. Other units
deploying to Iraq include the 1st Infantry Division from Germany and National
Guard combat brigades from Arkansas, Washington and North Carolina.
A fourth army division will rotate into Afghanistan. The 25th Infantry Division
will succeed the 10th Mountain Division there. Some units will have to fill in
for others at the last moment. The 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division
will fill in for the 81st Infantry Brigade, an Army National Guard unit from
Washington state that had been scheduled to be deployed.
The Pentagon originally planned that some of the replacements would be from
another division of non-US foreign troops. But when that failed to materialize,
the 25th Infantry's brigade, due to go to Afghanistan, was redirected to Iraq.
The incoming units include a larger component of military police and civil
affairs troops compared with the combat-oriented units they are replacing, and
they will carry lighter equipment in order to better carry out the
stabilization mission. Units being sent to Iraq are also designed to be more
mobile than those that captured Baghdad. For example, there will be fewer heavy
M-1A1 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles and more lighter armored
humvees intended to protect against rocket-propelled grenades or roadside bombs
used by insurgents.
Returning home are about 130,000 troops from the army's 82nd Airborne Division
from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment from Fort
Carson, Colorado; the 1st Armored Division from Germany; the 4th Infantry
Division from Fort Hood, Texas; and the 101st Airborne Division from Fort
Campbell, Kentucky.
When returning troops reach the US, the army will face another challenge as it
rushes to muster adequate barracks and medical staff to handle the crush of
soldiers expected to need medical evaluations and treatment.
The troops coming and going amount to more than half of the army's approved
strength of 481,000 active and reserve forces. They will be transported more
than 6,000 miles on ships and planes along with tens of thousands of pieces of
equipment.
The army plans to code the four divisions it will be rotating out of Iraq and
Afghanistan as C-4 (ie, not combat ready for six months, perhaps more). All
together, the shift will involve about eight-and-a-half of the army's 10 active
duty divisions. At that point, should the country need to deploy troops
anywhere else in the world, it will have few to spare.
As part of the rotation, the Pentagon is sending numerous unmanned spy planes
and a new unit of up to 300 explosives experts in order to deal with improvised
explosive devices, which have been responsible for numerous American
casualties.
The operations will further strain the already heavily burdened reserve forces.
The number of reservists called to active duty jumped more than 10,000 in the
past week as part of the replacement of forces in Iraq and Kuwait, the Pentagon
said last week. National Guard and reserve troops will be nearly 40 percent of
the total of 110,000 troops, compared with about 20 percent to 25 percent now.
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