Page 2 of 2 An army popping at the
seams By David Isenberg
level of C-1, or ready for the full
wartime mission, and at least one year to become
C-3 or even marginally combat ready.
Of
the 20 army combat brigades in or on their way to
Iraq or Afghanistan, none has been home for two
years and four have not been home for a year. One
unit, the 4th Infantry Division Headquarters from
Fort Hood, Texas, will return to Iraq after about
seven months at home. None of
the units was rated fully or even substantially
combat ready (C-2) when deployed.
Writing
last week in the Boston Globe Korb wrote:
Looking at the situation for three
units that are part of this surge shows what
happens when units do not receive what the army
calls the proper dwell time between deployments.
The 1st Brigade of the army's 3rd Infantry
Division based at Fort Stewart became the army's
first brigade to be deployed to Iraq for the
third time, when it was sent over in January
2007 after about a year at home. But, because of
its compressed time between deployments, some
150 soldiers joined the unit right out of basic
training, too late to participate in the
training necessary to prepare units to function
effectively in Iraq. Unfortunately one of the
18-year-old soldiers who joined the unit on
December 18, 2006 has already been killed.
Or take the 4th Brigade of the army's
1st Infantry Division, based at Fort Reilly, which
was sent to Iraq in February, about a year after
it was reactivated. More than half of the
brigade's soldiers in the grade E-4 and below are
right out of basic training, and the bulk of its
midlevel non-commissioned officers in the ranks of
E-5 and E-6 have no combat experience.
The
3rd Division's 3rd Brigade was sent back to Iraq
this month for the third time, after less than 11
months at home. To keep its numbers up it has had
to send some 75 soldiers with medical problems
into the war zone.
Putting aside the
politics of the deployment for a moment, an
equally important issue is whether the guard units
will be ready for deployment by the end of the
year. There is reason to think not.
The
war in Iraq has already badly depleted the
National Guard's domestic store of vehicles,
weapons, and communications gear, leaving units
with one-third of the equipment needed to meet
requirements for homeland security, its primary
mission. In the past few years equipment taken to
Iraq by National Guard units has been worn out,
blown up, lent to US forces rotating in-country,
or given away to newly mustered Iraqi units.
In July 2006, Lieutenant General H Steven
Blum, the chief of the National Guard Bureau,
testified to Congress that more than two-thirds of
the army National Guard's 34 brigades were not
combat-ready, largely because of vast equipment
shortfalls that will take as much as $21 billion
to correct. His comments came after disclosures
that two-thirds of the active army's brigades were
not rated ready for war. And September 2006
testimony by a Government Accountability Office
official before Congress said that army National
Guard units have less than one-third of their
repaired equipment.
On April 11 the other
shoe dropped. Gates announced that active army
units now in the Central Command area of
responsibility and those headed there would have
their deployments extended three months, from 12
to 15 months, and will return to home stations for
not less than 12 months. The policy does not apply
to marine units which are on a different rotation
schedule - seven months over, six back.
The extension, which White House officials
claimed Bush was unaware of, will affect more than
100,000 active-duty soldiers and will result in
the longest combat tours for the army since World
War II. It will also mandate for the first time
that active-duty soldiers spend more time at war
than at home.
Lost in much of the press
coverage is that this step will enable the US to
prolong its "surge" in Iraq, as the following
exchange in the press conference announcing it
illustrates:
Q: Mr
Secretary, can you tell us how long this measure
allows you to sustain the surge now? Previously
with the previous measures which were announced,
you're looking at being able to maintain that
20-brigade level until August, I believe. How long
does this allow you to maintain that level in
Iraq?
Gates: Probably at
least a year.
Q: A year from
now, or -
Gates: A year from
now.
Of course, whether the surge will be
successful is open to question. According to Ivan
Eland, director of the Independent Institute's
Center on Peace and Liberty in Washington, DC,
"The surge is unsustainable." He added, "This is
just another indication of the army popping at the
seams. You're staying longer and getting less time
between deployment and you are getting crunched at
both ends."
David Isenberg is a
senior research analyst at the British American
Security Information Council, a member of the
Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, a
research fellow at the Independent Institute, and
an adviser to the Straus Military Reform Project
of the Center for Defense Information, Washington.
These views are his own.
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