Army study: U.S. facing hard choices (About Troop Levels)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/chitribts/20...NlYwMlJVRPUCUl
By Michael Kilian Washington Bureau
Tue Jul 12, 9:40 AM ET
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has consistently rejected any contention that the Army is stretched too thin in fighting simultaneous wars in
Iraq and
Afghanistan. But a new Army study has concluded the service is so strained that the U.S. will soon "need to decide what military capabilities the Army should have and what risks may be prudent to assume."
Numerous critics and outside defense policy groups have warned that the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has taxed the Army so badly that it will have difficulty meeting any new crises elsewhere, but the new assessment comes from an in-house undertaking prepared by the RAND Corp.'s Arroyo Center, the Army's federally funded research institute.
"The challenge the Army faces is profound," senior RAND analyst Lynn Davis, lead author of the report, said in a statement accompanying the study. "Any approach is fraught with risks and uncertainties, along with significant costs and some possible changes in the Army's long-term goals."
Afghanistan deployment
Even as the Army was studying the report, it announced Monday that it is augmenting its troop strength in Afghanistan this month with a battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division that just returned from Iraq in March. And the Army's latest monthly recruitment figures released Monday show the service and its reserve components likely will not meet recruitment goals for this fiscal year.
The report--"Stretched Thin: Army Forces for Sustained Operations"--was to have been released Monday, but a RAND spokeswoman said it had been postponed to allow "further review" by the Army. Nonetheless, Davis indicated the report raises significant questions about the Army's future and the burdens the
Pentagon and taxpayers will have to bear to field adequate forces.
The study further calls into question the Pentagon's ability to carry out its policy of maintaining the capacity to fight two major regional wars simultaneously while also providing troops for national security at home and the war on terrorism.
This policy is being re-evaluated as the Pentagon prepares its congressionally mandated
Quadrennial Defense Review--a four-year survey of the military's status, resources, strategies and needs that must be submitted in February.
According to the RAND study, the strain on the Army is so great that combat units are spending one of every two years deployed on overseas battlefields, instead of one of every three years, as called for in troop deployment guidelines.
These frequent absences from the U.S. and the exposure to combat not only have a negative effect on recruiting but interfere with the Army's ability to train troops in new skills or have them available to deal with contingencies elsewhere.
The RAND report is expected to detail some possible solutions, though each carries a price. One would be increased use of the Army National Guard, though that service has been experiencing serious recruiting problems, and Guard units are supposed to be deployed overseas no more than one year out of six.
Another would be expanding the number of brigades in the Army and reserves, though that would cost billions of dollars beyond current appropriations.
Recruitment shortfall
On the recruiting front, with only three months to go in fiscal 2005, the Army is 40 percent short of its goal of recruiting about 80,000 new troops for the year. To meet that threshold, it would have to exceed its recruiting goals by an average of 2,600 individuals in each month.
In June it exceeded its monthly goal by 507 recruits--and the goal was just 5,650 new troops, the second-lowest total for the year. The Army failed to meet its recruiting goals in each of the preceding four months.
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the Army's June recruiting figures "a bit of good news," though the same could not be said for the Army National Guard, which missed its 5,032 target by 695 recruits. Navy Reserve recruiting also was down, but that service is downsizing.
The 700-person 82nd Airborne detachment is being sent to Afghanistan to provide additional security for that country's National Assembly and provincial council elections scheduled for Sept. 18--a role the unit performed earlier this year in Iraq.
Its mission is to permit offensive operations against Taliban and Al Qaeda forces while enhancing local security.
