Let the bashing of the Post begin. But notice the real quotes from named sources. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/18/AR2007031801534_pf.html Military Is Ill-Prepared For Other Conflicts By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, March 19, 2007; A01 Four years after the invasion of Iraq, the high and growing demand for U.S. troops there and in Afghanistan has left ground forces in the United States short of the training, personnel and equipment that would be vital to fight a major ground conflict elsewhere, senior U.S. military and government officials acknowledge. More troubling, the officials say, is that it will take years for the Army and Marine Corps to recover from what some officials privately have called a "death spiral," in which the ever more rapid pace of war-zone rotations has consumed 40 percent of their total gear, wearied troops and left no time to train to fight anything other than the insurgencies now at hand. The risk to the nation is serious and deepening, senior officers warn, because the U.S. military now lacks a large strategic reserve of ground troops ready to respond quickly and decisively to potential foreign crises, whether the internal collapse of Pakistan, a conflict with Iran or an outbreak of war on the Korean Peninsula. Air and naval power can only go so far in compensating for infantry, artillery and other land forces, they said. An immediate concern is that critical Army overseas equipment stocks for use in another conflict have been depleted by the recent troop increases in Iraq, they said. "We have a strategy right now that is outstripping the means to execute it," Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, Army chief of staff, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. The Army's vice chief of staff, Gen. Richard A. Cody, described as "stark" the level of readiness of Army units in the United States, which would be called on if another war breaks out. "The readiness continues to decline of our next-to-deploy forces," Cody told the House Armed Services Committee's readiness panel last week. "And those forces, by the way, are . . . also your strategic reserve." Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked last month by a House panel whether he was comfortable with the preparedness of Army units in the United States. He stated simply: "No . . . I am not comfortable." "You take a lap around the globe -- you could start any place: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Venezuela, Colombia, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, North Korea, back around to Pakistan, and I probably missed a few. There's no dearth of challenges out there for our armed forces," Pace warned in his testimony. He said the nation faces increased risk because of shortfalls in troops, equipment and training. In earlier House testimony, Pace said the military, using the Navy, Air Force and reserves, could handle one of three major contingencies, involving North Korea or -- although he did not name them -- Iran or China. But, he said, "It will not be as precise as we would like, nor will it be on the timelines that we would prefer, because we would then, while engaged in one fight, have to reallocate resources and remobilize the Guard and reserves." Pace said the unexpected demand for more troops in Iraq -- from the 10 brigades that commanders projected last year they would need by the end of 2006, to the 20 brigades scheduled to be there by June -- prompted him to recommend permanently adding 92,000 troops to the Army and Marine Corps, saying it would "make a large difference in our ability to be prepared for unforeseen contingencies." Indeed, the recent increase of more than 32,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has pushed already severe readiness problems to what some officials and lawmakers consider a crisis point. Schoomaker said last week that sustaining the troop increase in Iraq beyond August would be "a challenge." The Marines' commandant, Gen. James T. Conway, expressed concern to defense reporters last week that it would bring the Marine Corps "right on the margin" of breaking the minimum time at home for Marines between combat tours. U.S. commanders in Iraq say they may need to keep troop levels elevated into early 2008. The troop increase has also created an acute shortfall in the Army's equipment stored overseas -- known as "pre-positioned stock" -- which would be critical to outfit U.S. combat forces quickly should another conflict erupt, officials said. The Army should have five full combat brigades' worth of such equipment: two stocks in Kuwait, one in South Korea, and two aboard ships in Guam and at the Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean. But the Army had to empty the afloat stocks to support the troop increase in Iraq, and the Kuwait stocks are being used as units to rotate in and out of the country. Only the South Korea stock is close to complete, according to military and government officials. "Without the pre-positioned stocks, we would not have been able to meet the surge requirement," Schoomaker said. "It will take us two years to rebuild those stocks. That's part of my concern about our strategic depth." "The status of our Army prepositioned stock . . . is bothersome," Cody said last week. Democratic and Republican lawmakers who received classified briefings last week on the stocks and overall Army readiness voiced alarm. "I'm deeply concerned," said Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who last week asked the Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office to investigate the stocks "as a matter of vital importance to national defense." Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz (D-Texas), chairman of the committee's readiness panel, said: "I have seen the classified-only readiness reports. And based on those reports, I believe that we as a nation are at risk of major failure, should our Army be called to deploy to an emerging threat." Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), who attended the briefing, said, "We are at a crisis point across the board." And Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.), said, "This nation has got to replenish and fix what is soon going to be broken." Equipment is also lacking among Army units in the United States, the vast majority of which are rated "not ready" by the Army, based on measures of available gear, training and personnel, according to senior military officers and government officials. Active-duty Army combat brigades in the United States face shortages of heavy, medium and light tactical vehicles such as Humvees; radios; night-vision goggles; and some weapons, Cody said. The shortages have deepened as scarce equipment and personnel are funneled to those units next in line to deploy overseas, creating ever bigger holes in the units that will leave later. "It's like a hurricane drawing everything into the center of the eye," said a senior Army officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. "For the National Guard, those shortages are even more," Cody said. Army National Guard figures show that 88 percent of its units are "not ready." Yet National Guard combat brigades -- four of which have been notified already -- will be increasingly called upon next year to relieve the active-duty troops in Iraq, with the Army Guard and Reserve expected to grow from 20 percent of the force to 30 percent, officials said. And unlike before the Iraq war, the Army does not currently have a brigade ready to deploy within hours to an overseas hot spot, officials say. The increasingly rapid tempo of rotations into Iraq and Afghanistan is also constraining the length and focus of training as active-duty Army combat brigades and Marine combat battalions spend at least as much time in the war zone as at home. As a result, all the training is geared toward counterinsurgencies, while skills important for other major combat operations atrophy. The Marine Corps is not training for amphibious, mountain or jungle warfare, nor conducting large-scale live-fire maneuvers, Conway said. "We've got a little bit of a blindside there," he said. The Marine Corps and Army both lack sufficient manpower to give troops a break from the combat zone long enough to complete their full spectrum of training, senior officials said. "We're only able to train them . . . for counterinsurgency operations," Cody told the House panel last week. "They're not trained to full-spectrum operations." Under current Army and Marine Corps plans, it will take two to three years after the Iraq war ends and about $17 billion a year to restore their equipment levels. It will take five years and at least $75 billion for the Army to increase its active-duty ranks to 547,000 soldiers, up from the current 509,000, and for the Marine Corps to increase its numbers to 202,000, up from 180,000. "Boots on the ground matter," the senior Army officer said. "If they are tied down, your ability to terminate a conflict on your terms, earlier, may not be there."
In the grand scheme of wars ~ the conflicts in Iraq/ Afghanistan right now are relatively small. How could these wars possibly be putting our military in such jeopardy? Perhaps it’s the duration -- (ie) never ending timescale/ poor initial and ongoing planning.
The United States military is a fraction the size that it was at the Vietnam War when they ended the draft. I also read somewhere that when Iraq started, the US Army was 1/3 as large as it was during the 1st Gulf War. They have been tilting the balance from quantity of soldiers to quality of soldiers for many many years. This limits 'staying power'. The size of the standing Army (500,000) is nearly equal to the total number of American casualties in WWII (slightly more than 400,000).
Pace said the unexpected demand for more troops in Iraq -- from the 10 brigades that commanders projected last year they would need by the end of 2006, to the 20 brigades scheduled to be there by June -- prompted him to recommend permanently adding 92,000 troops to the Army and Marine Corps, saying it would "make a large difference in our ability to be prepared for unforeseen contingencies." Indeed, the recent increase of more than 32,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has pushed already severe readiness problems to what some officials and lawmakers consider a crisis point. Schoomaker said last week that sustaining the troop increase in Iraq beyond August would be "a challenge." The Marines' commandant, Gen. James T. Conway, expressed concern to defense reporters last week that it would bring the Marine Corps "right on the margin" of breaking the minimum time at home for Marines between combat tours. U.S. commanders in Iraq say they may need to keep troop levels elevated into early 2008. The troop increase has also created an acute shortfall in the Army's equipment stored overseas -- known as "pre-positioned stock" -- which would be critical to outfit U.S. combat forces quickly should another conflict erupt, officials said. The Army should have five full combat brigades' worth of such equipment: two stocks in Kuwait, one in South Korea, and two aboard ships in Guam and at the Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean. But the Army had to empty the afloat stocks to support the troop increase in Iraq, and the Kuwait stocks are being used as units to rotate in and out of the country. Only the South Korea stock is close to complete, according to military and government officials. "Without the pre-positioned stocks, we would not have been able to meet the surge requirement," Schoomaker said. "It will take us two years to rebuild those stocks. That's part of my concern about our strategic depth." "The status of our Army prepositioned stock . . . is bothersome," Cody said last week. I bolded a couple of items of particular concern, and something that was yet another case of blatant incompetence on the part of the Bush Administration. For years now, prominent military experts (several who were top brass, until recently) have been calling for increasing the size of the United States military. Many prominent politicians have done the same. To every call for a buildup in numbers for the Army and Marines, the Administration has replied that an increase was unwarranted, unneeded, unnecessary. It takes years to build up a volunteer military, once the decision is made. Without a draft (something I ardently oppose), it simply takes time. Now that years have been wasted because of either stupidity, or political calculations of the basest kind, or both, we now see a call to increase the Armed Forces. Finally, with our superb instrument of national policy on the edge of disaster, which is what we face should another major conflict arise, the Administration makes a decision that it's a good idea after all. Meanwhile, we are running out of equipment for the military we have. That this could be allowed to happen at the same time there were annual calls for yet more tax cuts, during a war, is gross incompetence. It takes years to replace what is being worn out or destroyed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Such incredible stupidity by the Administration that it boggles the mind. And it doesn't address another crisis in our military, the strip-mining of the National Guard of it's equipment, something not mentioned in the article, but another very grave concern. So... where is the defense of the bungling by the Bush Administration? Bungling that is jeopardizing our national security right now? How about it, Bush Defenders? Are you going to defend your hero, yet again? Going to parse some more words? (and that wasn't aimed at Hayes) Come on... it would be amusing to see, if the situation weren't so grave. D&D. Bungling Bush.
On this particular point, I think tax receipts have actually increased since the tax cuts went into effect, so I am not sure that tax cuts have any bearing on this issue. Unrestrained spending in pretty much every facet of government is a much bigger hurdle for the budget problems. Even if every spending item was of absolute necessity, and there was no possible way to increase tax receipts, there are still ways to produce more equipment. I think they have just not done all that they can to get it done, and that is certainly a failure in both the administration and the legislature.
I heard an interesting point of view from a soldier who just returned. He was the first person I had talked to who had seen combat in the sand box. (I have friends who went to Iraq, but they were mechanics and communications personell.) He was over there for the invasion, and was doing police action in Baghdad over the past year. He was behind the surge completely. He said that the steps that the Iraqi police and the people of Baghdad had made in security were dramatic. He said they were even better now at identifying who the insurgents in the police force were. His opinion was that with a little help, Baghdad could be secured. The problem: far too few infantry and MPs. The Army (I have no clue about the Marines.) have more support personnel than they need, but don't have nearly enough combat soldiers. And for the surge, the Army is sending whoever is available. Most of the surge soldiers are getting there and have nothing to do. His brother is in Baghdad there right now, and is in the infantry. That is just one soldier's perspective, but I thought it was worth sharing.
StupidMoniker, good to see you in the thread. A few months back you said that we coud simultaneously invade and occupy Iran (twice the size of Iraq geographically and population wise) while maintaining our current presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. This article seems to suggest a different reality.
the article makes the startling point that fighting a major overseas engagement has an impact on the number of available troops and their equipment, as well as that available for other possible engagements. Sacre Bleu!, who'd have thunk such a thing were possible? As Ottoman noted above, the military is dramatically smaller than it was in 1991, much less during the vietnam war. in 1991 we had 500k men and women in iraq and kuwait, yet now we can muster barely 150k. sounds like we need a bigger military if we're to be adequately prepared for multiple wars on multiple fronts.
We could also use our troops more economically, and not send them off to fight in wars we started, and weren't necessary.
I still think that we could, but some other measures would need to be taken in support of that (eg a draft, forcing manufacturers to produce war material, etc.) The article surely paints a grim picture of the readiness of our current all-volunteer military, but look at what America was able to accomplish after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Had such an article been written in 1940, would you think it would have said the military was well prepared to fight a war on 2 fronts across 3 continents?
You completely ignore my point. No surprise there. Your hero and his minions refused to increase the size of the military after 9/11, and after the invasion of Afghanistan, and after the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Now, years later, and after countless calls to do so, they respond. What complete idiots. What have you to say? That Bush and company were right to ignore a problem that was glaringly obvious? That they waited until our armed forces were in a crisis from lack of men and material? Go ahead. Give us your excuse. You seem to have one for every act of stupidity on Bush's part, or you just ignore what you can't respond to without hammering Bush for his incompetence. D&D. Wake Up and Smell the Coffee.
re afghanistan, they purposefully went with a small force, in part because that was what they could get there and support quickly, in part because they had seen other large armies come to grief in the local terrain. and it worked. a small quick force also worked in iraq. we can argue about whether more troops were needed after saddam had been toppled, but it's hard to argue it took additional troops to kill the iraqi army. but increasing the size of the military, even through the draft, is not something that can happen overnight. so i'm not sure i understand what you're exorcised about here. they seem to recognize the problem, and are acting to remedy it. is your complaint that they didn't act early enough?
Truthfuly, I think we can chalk this one up to Donald Rumsfeld. He was the guy who thought he knew better than the professionals what would work and what wouldn't. As a Secretary of Defence he is the 'gift' that keeps on giving. I really don't know that much about many SecDef's throughout history, but he really reminds me of some of the stuff that I've read and seen about the way Robert Mcnamara tried to impose his vision on the military, instead of working with it. Mcnamara, too, throught he could do a better job than the professionals, by applying efficency techniques that he learned when running Ford, and we ended up measuring relative success in Vietnam by body count alone. I could be wrong but I can't remember even our crazy old man VP having that sort of 'I know better than you' attitude when he was Secretary of Defense. I went back and looked over the old Secretaries back to WWII and while think Caspar Weinberger pimped the heck out of 'Star Wars', that was more an adjunct to the traditional military, not superceding it. I think Mcnamara and Rumsfeld are unique in their 'controling dilettante' managerial style.
it's pretty hard to argue that rumsfeld had insufficient knowledge of the military. take a look at his bio, among other things he was US ambassador to NATO. moreover, he did not become SecDef until 1975, and the US wasn't measuring success in Vietnam at all after april of that year.
We can still mobilize and draft. The generals' contention is that their contingency plans wouldn't be as perfect and tight as they'd want. After Clinton reduced troop levels, isn't this expected of future crises? I never saw the fascination with a permanently immense military industrial complex, but then again, I receive its benefits in principle.
I speak of the recent term of Rumsfeld, not the one 30 years ago. I don't know enough about him during that term to comment. The issue isn't amassed knowledge, and in fact belief in one's knowledge is part of the problem. Both Mcnamara and Rumsfeld acted as if they already had all the answers and the Joint Chiefs exist to actualize their will. Others, like our current Mr. Gates (most strikingly because of the contrast of appearing right after Rumsfeld), speak and act as if they are facilitating managers who run an office of technical specialists.
I have trouble believing our military is in such a dire situation, but if it is we should probably blame 'toys' like this...
