They're Breaking My Army

This NY Times article says that, for the first time in decades, the 82d Airborne Division doesn't have a Division Ready Brigade on stand-by for deployment to crisis situations. This is not good.

Today, the so-called ready brigade is no longer so ready. Its soldiers are not fully trained, much of its equipment is elsewhere, and for the past two weeks the unit has been far from the cargo aircraft it would need in an emergency.

Instead of waiting on standby, the First Brigade of the 82nd Airborne is deep in the swampy backwoods of this vast Army training installation, preparing to go to Iraq. Army officials concede that the unit is not capable of getting at least an initial force of several hundred to a war zone within 18 hours, a standard once considered inviolate.
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“We are fully committed right now,” said Col. Charles Hardy of the Forces Command, which oversees Army training and equipping of troops to be sent overseas. “If we had a fully trained-up brigade, hell, it’d be the next one to deploy.”
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In effect, the Army has become a “just in time” organization: every combat brigade that finishes training is sent back to Iraq or Afghanistan almost immediately. Equipment vital for protecting troops, like armored vehicles, roadside bomb jammers and night vision goggles, is rushed to Iraq as quickly as it is made, officials say.

This is really bad news. I've never heard of the 82nd Airborne Division not having a DRB on standby. These are grim days.

Comments

[NVH]

Never having been active duty military, this still seems like a bad thing to me too J. Knowing a thing or two about JIT logistics, the third thing I know is that you can't apply the principles to HUMAN assets, unless you call up USR for the next gen robot assistant Nestor Class fives. Then we're all set.

[cl]

I understand that this article, and many like it, spell all measures of doom and gloom...but it is sort of out of context.

Yes, the 82nd Airborne Div (in which I served a decade ago) has always had a DRB ready force. And yes, it has always in recent memory had a DRF, Division Ready Force, going through support, training, and mission cycles, but that was in a different Army...which was apart of a different DoD.

That load is shared more now. Other Airborne qualified brigades are out there. Other light infantry brigades are considered rapid deployable.

It is cause for alarm, but I would suggest that we do not quite have to worry about our 4th point of contact...just yet.

cl

[CBH]

cl - So, do we have constantly have brigades that are rapid deployable, or is it a hit and miss thing? Just wondering.

[J.]

In general, the 82nd ABN DIV has been the only Army unit that kept a deployable brigade on an 18 hour deployment call. Intent was that if there was any crisis, they would be the first there within a day, to be followed by the rest of the 82nd and other divisions later. Because they're airborne and light, they can move quicker than deploying armor and mech assets.

Everyone else in the active Army is pretty much either training, deploying, or going to schools. It takes up to 6 months to really get up a large force such as the one which invaded Iraq in March 2003 (or which liberated Kuwait in 1991).

[NVH]

You know good on CBH for asking, this is the kind of stuff our politicians need to know and convey to the general public. Yeah, we've the 82nd or whoever it is these days, to ground and pound in 18 hours, but the actual limitations they have just aren't understood by our civilian leadership. I can imagine what the JCS goes thru putting slides together for the HASC schleps about why we can't do this and do that, and all they get back from the poly-ticks is "But we're the greatest military in the world!"
Yes we are, and it takes time to get that way, and takes time and money to stay that way, and takes time and resources to project that way...god love 'em...

[Retired Army Guy]

"That load is shared more now. Other Airborne qualified brigades are out there. Other light infantry brigades are considered rapid deployable."

Uh, no. Read the post. The Army FORSCOM spokesman didn't say that. He said: “We are fully committed right now.” “If we had a fully trained-up brigade, hell, it’d be the next one to deploy.” He didn't say what cl and NVH are saying. What he said was just what J said: we are hurting.

I don't know if these posters are pollyannas or enablers of the current approach. Either way, they seem to have a version of reality that more closely fits some politicians than it does the military.

[NVH]

I'll give you outside looking in on this RAG, but what the hell is a pollyanna. Look, I agree the Armed Forces are strapped. The fact is though, that if we increased Defense spending by 3%, we'd still be below the levels in the 80s when everyone was bitching at Reagan about it. And if we had that, a lot of these problems go away, other than the time needed to train up the force. It's not that simple, but money solves a lot of problems on this one. That's where the fight is...

[Retired Army Guy]

Pollyanna: the heroine of novels written by Eleanor Porter in the 19th century. Common usage: a persistently optimistic person. Usage in this context: a supporter of the current national security approach who persists in seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, not realizing it's an onrushing train.

Defense spending now exceeds $600 billion per year, with many Homeland Security and Iraq expenses in other budgets. How much is enough? IMO, never has so much been spent with so little to show for it. We should also consider that there would be far fewer defense readiness and spending concerns if we refrained from elective warfare.

[NVH]

I can be both persistently optimistic and pessimistic, but at least I'm persistent. Thanks for the vocab lesson.
How much is enough? Enough is when the job is done, don't quote me dollars, give me the equivalent spending in defense budgets over the last 60 years for all the military actions we had and tell me we've hit enough yet. IMO, you aren't looking for or finding all the good things and only want to see what is on the surface of what the media is reporting. And suggesting that concerns would be fewer b/c we aren't at war is naive. Our BEST offense, especially after 9/11 should be our BEST defense. I'm not talking about pre Desert Storm numbers here but we've got to get to a point of balance between what Bush cut, Clinton didn't help, and where we are headed. Period. Either that or you get politicians with balls that say if you F with us, I'm sending in assassination teams to take you out. Clinton started this with UBL and couldn't follow thru, EVER, worried about the politics of it all, and getting head. THINK where we would be. You'd have your Army all nice and shined up waiting around with their dicks and tits in their hands. So at least my support for the politicians in favor of elected warfare are using your nice and shiny Army to do SOMETHING that should have been done almost TEN years ago. IMO, never has so little been spent on something so worth it.