They're Breaking My Army

The consequences of the Bush administration's restrictions on the Army's end strength are becoming all too clear. All of the active duty Army brigades are either deployed, in training, or in the process of deploying to the Middle East. From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

The Army's 38 available combat units are deployed, just returning home or already tapped to go to Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere, leaving no fresh troops to replace five extra brigades that President Bush sent to Baghdad this year, according to interviews and military documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

That presents the Pentagon with several painful choices if the U.S. wants to maintain higher troop levels beyond the spring of 2008:

• Using National Guard units on an accelerated schedule.
• Breaking the military's pledge to keep soldiers in Iraq for no longer than 15 months.
• Breaching a commitment to give soldiers a full year at home before sending them back to war.

For a war-fatigued nation and a Congress bent on bringing troops home, none of those is desirable.

Especially in an election year, none of these options are good for Republicans (as this is their war). So instead of admitting that it was wrong, the Bush administration would rather stretch the overextended Army further. How, when it's so stretched at the limits? Why, by reducing the training time for young troops and junior NCOs...

The US Army, struggling to cope with stepped-up operations and extended deployments of its soldiers to Iraq, has shortened the duration of several of its bedrock training courses so that troops can return to fighting units on the front lines more quickly, according to senior training officials.

One training course that is considered the "first step" in educating newly minted sergeants -- the noncommissioned officers considered the backbone of Army units -- has been cut in half to 15 days. Meanwhile, an intensive program designed to prepare young officers for advanced leadership has been compressed from eight months to less than five months so that the Army can fill positions in constant demand from commanders in the Middle East.

In a series of interviews in recent weeks, Army training officials expressed confidence that soldiers are able to master the skills they need to perform their jobs, and stressed that their units are gaining invaluable, real-time experience in both wars. But they also acknowledged that it is becoming increasingly difficult to prepare them for all the missions they are assigned, such as tank crews and artillery battalions that are participating in patrols and counterinsurgency operations.

"We are doing everything we can without jeopardizing the quality of the training to make it more efficient and compress it," Colonel Joe Gallagher, chief of plans for the US Army Training and Doctrine Command, said in an interview earlier this month. "The whole intent is to get the soldier into the unit where he can be used faster. Time will tell if something is missing."

Yes, time will tell... in the form of increased U.S. casualties and reduced capability. As much as the Army and DOD leaders talk about the investments in personnel and how important its soldiers are, why shortchange them on the most important issues of leadership training? Oh, what the hell. They can learn on-the-job, right? Or maybe not.

Comments

[belphegor1527]

My experience with Army (and I assume all military) courses is that they've got a lot of extra time built into them and (if you've got good instructors and sharp students) could cut them without reducing your standards.

The soldiers who will really suffer from such a reduction in training time are the marginal soldiers who have difficulty learning and benefit from the extra help from instructors and fellow classmates that the extra time affords. Unfortunately, since the Army has been cutting standards for the past several years, I'd guess we have more of those marginal soldiers than we did 10 years ago.

Of course, I have to admit the courses I took did very little to prepare me for my time in Afghanistan. Even as of 2005 non-commissioned officer courses seemed be be stuck in some mid-1990s time warp with very little practical application to the conflicts we're currently engaged in.

[NVH]

Let me ask this question: Isn't it by definition, the job of the Army and the Armed Forces for that matter, to be either fighting to defend the country, or kill the other guy who would attack ours first, or be in training, or be getting time off from the fighting? I guess the issue is the time off is too little too late for what is, given, the most arduous, dangerous job in the US right now? Granted, they deserve all the time off we can afford, granted, they are doing the most difficult mental and physical job on the planet ( though aren't a LOT of these guys sitting behind the wire doing powerpoint rangering? Or am I reading too much into the jokes we see everyday coming from over there -- I mean not EVERYONE in the 38 combat units sees combat, or am I wrong? Are there 76 Support units behind the combat guys doing the ordering, serving, rangering, etc.?)...but getting back, so granted all that..J., you're saying it's breaking b/c of the tick up in the attrition rate, which should be expected, the down tick in recruitment, which should be expected, and this NY times article, which actually seems like these guys are genuinely frustrated, but know that's what they signed up for, and even I know, never having served, how frustrating it is to have the higher ups not realizing what idiots they look like to the boots on the ground. Granted, they get to complain, but aren't we really trying to change things? It's just not enough right? And guys who know can see it now, and don't want to delay the inevitable...right? Did I just answer my own question? I see the frustration, but what about the duty part of it, change from within, all that shit?

[Galrahn]

I'm going to wait until September 15th. General Petraeus has made it clear he sees the Army stretched too thin, so I think he has this in his calculations.

The real challenge for rebuilding the Army isn't Iraq or Afghanistan, it is running a high military tempo for war by only spending around 4.5% of the GDP on the military.

That is a political problem. If you are in a war, you either go all in or don't go at all. No nation fights a serious war with such a small percentage of the GDP, not without a major blowback, which is what we are seeing with the state of the Army.

Unfortunately, we are seeing the same thing with Great Britain as well, the MoD won't even buy enough mine resistant equipment for all their deployed troops, which has led to high casualties as of late in Southern Iraq. No wonder they want to pull out, their government is too busy buying toys like carriers and eurofighters to fight the Russians via cold war to give their troops engaged in war today the equipment they need to survive IEDs.

[Lurch]

Thanks for putting this theme forward once again. You'll be pleased to know the US Army has officially noted your column, and disseminated it to upper command levels.

[Sven Ortmann]

Is it really about breaking or is it about wasting?

The loyalty deficits in Iraqi army and police as reported again and again turn the whole Irak mission a pointless waste in my opinion.

@Galrahn; maybe the British MoD just knows that Iraq will never invade Europe and that the UK will pull out of Iraq sooner than it can buy new gear for its troops there?

[Galrahn]

@Sven Ortmann

When you can tell me what that has to do with protecting British troops in Afghanistan, I'll buy into your theory.

[Brian Hart]

Historically Bush has not used National Guard troops in a year with a November election. The Pentagon has however used them heavily immediately after the election.

[Brian J. Dunn]

We must certainly remain concerned over maintaining quality, but as anybody who has sat through a 4-hour block of instruction knows, you could cover the material in an hour.

And when I was in, training had a lot of frills that in war time you could easily eliminate (anyone remember check writing courses and beware of the transvestites in the enlisted club?) Indeed, our drills told us that in war the Army would put you through basic in the morning and afternoon and run you through AIT in the evening to save training time. We aren't even doing that yet, to my knowledge.

So watch this issue, surely; but don't panic quite yet.

As for the idea that the Guard is only used in non-election years, hogwash.

"The total number currently on active duty in support of the partial mobilization for the Army National Guard and Army Reserve is 78,355; Navy Reserve, 5,616; Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve, 6,117; Marine Corps Reserve, 5,912; and the Coast Guard
Reserve, 308. This brings the total National Guard and Reserve personnel who
have been mobilized to 96,308, including both units and individual augmentees."

From the most recent announcement of mobilized troops at http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=11235

You can go to this page and go to the list of units to see NG units on duty right now.

[Charles Bowery]

When people talk about the time NCOs and officers spend in school, they don't often discuss a key benefit of that time- a period of decompression, a chance to study one's profession and refresh on doctrine, and a chance to reconnect with family. Even in garrison, especially now, you're not really "home." You are at gunnery, on an FTX, doing a mission rehearsal, away at the NTC or JRTC, or frantically preparing for the next deployment. When you are attending an Army school, especially CGSC (for Majors), you get to actually go to the gym, take your family grocery shopping, go home regularly before 9 pm...stuff that you can't put into a metric, but that is vital for combat veterans.

I've been trying to get my mind around this concept of a "broken Army," and exactly what it means. What will happen when or if the Army is actually "broken?" I don't think we'll see an out and out mutiny a la the Continental Army of 1780/81 or the French Army in 1917, so what then? Will we suffer a Task Force Smith-style defeat on the battlefield? Not likely in the current fight. I think it probably has more to do with a gradual, constant decline in the quality of the force- caused first by the relaxation of enlistment standards, and also by the constant attrition of experienced NCOs and company/field grade officers, the really good ones who have had enough. Plus, factor in some promotion numbers- I recently came out on the list for LTC, and the selection rate to that rank for my year group was 94%. 94%!!!!! Unheard of in my time in service. Hell, in 1992 we were boarding Lieutenants out of the Army. You can't tell me that 94% of a given group of Majors are ready/deserving to move into the senior officer ranks. Maybe we'll end up, at the current rate, with a 1970s-style "hollow Army," if we aren't there already.

[J.]

Charles, I haven't talked much about what "broken" means, but I think you're on to something. Our Army may be more "hollow" due to the lack of top quality, fatigue, and broken equipment than the raw numbers game. I've seen similar promotion rates in the Chemical Corps, and it's worrisome.

I like your comment about the down time side of training, too. Yes, there are BS courses in military training. But at least you were in a school, relaxing, taking time to get professional academic courses, etc. Shortening the training time may be more "efficient" but it's not necessarily in the best interests of the individual.