Warrior-Mentor
01-02-2007, 08:00
Washington Post
December 15, 2006
Pg. 1
General Says Army Will Need To Grow
Iraq and Afghanistan Are Straining the Force, Chief of Staff Warns
By Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post Staff Writer
Warning that the active-duty Army "will break" under the strain of
today's war-zone rotations, the nation's top Army general yesterday
called for expanding the force by 7,000 or more soldiers a year and
lifting Pentagon restrictions on involuntary call-ups of Army National
Guard and Army Reserve troops.
Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, issued his most
dire assessment yet of the toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on
the nation's main ground force. At one point, he banged his hand on a
House committee-room table, saying the continuation of today's Pentagon
policies is "not right."
In particularly blunt testimony, Schoomaker said the Army began the Iraq
war "flat-footed" with a $56 billion equipment shortage and 500,000
fewer soldiers than during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Echoing the
warnings from the post-Vietnam War era, when Gen. Edward C. Meyer, then
the Army chief of staff, decried the "hollow Army," Schoomaker said it
is critical to make changes now to shore up the force for what he called
a long and dangerous war.
"The Army is incapable of generating and sustaining the required forces
to wage the global war on terror . . . without its components -- active,
Guard and reserve -- surging together," Schoomaker said in testimony
before the congressionally created Commission on the National Guard and
Reserves.
The burden on the Army's 507,000 active-duty soldiers -- who now spend
more time at war than at home -- is simply too great, he said. "At this
pace, without recurrent access to the reserve components, through
remobilization, we will break the active component," he said, drawing
murmurs around the hearing room.
The Army, which had 482,000 soldiers in 2001, plans to grow temporarily
to 512,000. But the Army now seeks to make that increase permanent and
to continue increasing its ranks by 7,000 or more a year, Schoomaker
said. He said the total increase is under discussion.
"I recommend we continue to grow the Army so that we have choices,"
Schoomaker said, cautioning that it is ill advised to assume demand for
American troops overseas will decrease. "Our history is replete with
examples where we have guessed wrong: 1941, 1950, 2001, to name a few,"
he said. "We don't know what's ahead."
In light of such a sober assessment, Schoomaker voiced skepticism about
the idea of an infusion of U.S. ground troops into Iraq, a message
sources said he and the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
delivered to President Bush at the Pentagon on Wednesday.
"We should not surge without a purpose, and that purpose should be
measurable and get us something," he told reporters after the hearing.
Schoomaker's highly public appeal for more troops and reserve call-ups
appeared to be part of an Army campaign to lobby incoming Defense
Secretary Robert M. Gates, who is to be sworn in Monday, to approve the
desired policy changes as well as a significant increase in the Army
budget.
The Army estimates that every 10,000 additional soldiers will cost about
$1.2 billion a year, up from $700 million in 2001 in part because of
increased enlistment bonuses and other incentives. The Army will have to
"gain additional resources to support that strategy," Schoomaker
acknowledged.
Democrats, who will take charge of Congress next month, said yesterday
that they plan to hold hearings on the "urgent" and "critical" readiness
problems of the Army and Marine Corps. "Readiness levels for every unit
must be raised and maintained at the highest possible level," Rep.
Solomon P. Ortiz (D-Tex.), incoming chairman of the House Armed Services
Committee's readiness panel, and Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) said
in an opinion article released yesterday. Two-thirds of Army units in
the United States are now considered not ready to deploy.
The Army's manpower dilemma stems from current Pentagon policies:
Although 55 percent of soldiers belong to the National Guard or the
reserve, the Defense Department dictates that reservists can be
mobilized involuntarily only once, and for no more than 24 months.
As a result, out of the total of 522,000 Army National Guard and reserve
members, only about 90,000 are still available to be mobilized,
according to Army data. "We're out of Schlitz," declared an Army chart
depicting the shortage as a depleted barrel, saying this leaves "future
missions in jeopardy."
Compounding the problem, the Pentagon has restricted repeated
involuntary call-ups, leading to deeper and deeper holes in Army Guard
and reserve units. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, hundreds of
thousands of reserve soldiers have been mobilized for Iraq and
Afghanistan. So when a unit is called to deploy, the only soldiers who
can go are volunteers and new soldiers. The remainder are often drawn
from dozens of units across the United States.
The result is systematically "broken" and "non-cohesive" units, said
another Army chart titled "OSD-mandated Volunteer Policy Stresses the
Force," referring to the office of the secretary of defense.
For example, Army Reserve units now must take an average of 62 percent
of their soldiers for deployments from other units, compared with 6
percent in 2002 and 39 percent in 2003, according to the Army data. In
one transportation company, only seven of 170 soldiers were eligible to
deploy. The other 163 came from 65 other units in 49 locations, said the
commission chairman, retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Arnold L. Punaro,
who quoted a Marine Reserve officer as calling the policy "evil."
"Military necessity dictates that we deploy organized, trained, equipped
cohesive units -- and you don't do that by pick-up teams," said
Schoomaker, a decorated veteran of the Army's Delta Force who served in
the ill-fated Desert One rescue mission in Iran in 1980.
"We must start this clock again . . . and field fully ready units. . . .
We must change this policy," he said, banging his hand on the table for
emphasis. He said later that he had detected "some movement" by Pentagon
policymakers who have so far rejected a change on the politically
sensitive issue.
In an interview yesterday on C-SPAN, Thomas F. Hall, assistant secretary
of defense for reserve affairs, said that under the current authority
Bush can mobilize up to 1 million reservists for no more than two
"continuous" years, but the Pentagon policy under Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld has been more restrictive, limiting the time to two
"cumulative" years. "The law does say 'continuous,' so you could have a
break and recall them," Hall said.
Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn, chief of the 346,000-strong Army National Guard,
said yesterday that his force is "poised for remobilization."
Vaughn said he thinks state Guard leaders will accept fresh call-ups
sooner than planned as long as the deployments are limited to 12 months
and draw on units that have been home the longest. He said the Guard
could tolerate having units deploy for one year out of every five,
instead of out of every six.
"One year is absolutely critical," he said, explaining that the 18
months it currently takes for a Guard unit to mobilize, train and deploy
means too much time away from jobs and families. Schoomaker indicated
that the Army is working on reducing the duration of Guard and reserve
deployments to one year.
Since 2001, the Army Guard has deployed 186,000 soldiers and the Army
Reserve 164,000 soldiers for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and in
homeland-defense missions.
December 15, 2006
Pg. 1
General Says Army Will Need To Grow
Iraq and Afghanistan Are Straining the Force, Chief of Staff Warns
By Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post Staff Writer
Warning that the active-duty Army "will break" under the strain of
today's war-zone rotations, the nation's top Army general yesterday
called for expanding the force by 7,000 or more soldiers a year and
lifting Pentagon restrictions on involuntary call-ups of Army National
Guard and Army Reserve troops.
Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, issued his most
dire assessment yet of the toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on
the nation's main ground force. At one point, he banged his hand on a
House committee-room table, saying the continuation of today's Pentagon
policies is "not right."
In particularly blunt testimony, Schoomaker said the Army began the Iraq
war "flat-footed" with a $56 billion equipment shortage and 500,000
fewer soldiers than during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Echoing the
warnings from the post-Vietnam War era, when Gen. Edward C. Meyer, then
the Army chief of staff, decried the "hollow Army," Schoomaker said it
is critical to make changes now to shore up the force for what he called
a long and dangerous war.
"The Army is incapable of generating and sustaining the required forces
to wage the global war on terror . . . without its components -- active,
Guard and reserve -- surging together," Schoomaker said in testimony
before the congressionally created Commission on the National Guard and
Reserves.
The burden on the Army's 507,000 active-duty soldiers -- who now spend
more time at war than at home -- is simply too great, he said. "At this
pace, without recurrent access to the reserve components, through
remobilization, we will break the active component," he said, drawing
murmurs around the hearing room.
The Army, which had 482,000 soldiers in 2001, plans to grow temporarily
to 512,000. But the Army now seeks to make that increase permanent and
to continue increasing its ranks by 7,000 or more a year, Schoomaker
said. He said the total increase is under discussion.
"I recommend we continue to grow the Army so that we have choices,"
Schoomaker said, cautioning that it is ill advised to assume demand for
American troops overseas will decrease. "Our history is replete with
examples where we have guessed wrong: 1941, 1950, 2001, to name a few,"
he said. "We don't know what's ahead."
In light of such a sober assessment, Schoomaker voiced skepticism about
the idea of an infusion of U.S. ground troops into Iraq, a message
sources said he and the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
delivered to President Bush at the Pentagon on Wednesday.
"We should not surge without a purpose, and that purpose should be
measurable and get us something," he told reporters after the hearing.
Schoomaker's highly public appeal for more troops and reserve call-ups
appeared to be part of an Army campaign to lobby incoming Defense
Secretary Robert M. Gates, who is to be sworn in Monday, to approve the
desired policy changes as well as a significant increase in the Army
budget.
The Army estimates that every 10,000 additional soldiers will cost about
$1.2 billion a year, up from $700 million in 2001 in part because of
increased enlistment bonuses and other incentives. The Army will have to
"gain additional resources to support that strategy," Schoomaker
acknowledged.
Democrats, who will take charge of Congress next month, said yesterday
that they plan to hold hearings on the "urgent" and "critical" readiness
problems of the Army and Marine Corps. "Readiness levels for every unit
must be raised and maintained at the highest possible level," Rep.
Solomon P. Ortiz (D-Tex.), incoming chairman of the House Armed Services
Committee's readiness panel, and Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) said
in an opinion article released yesterday. Two-thirds of Army units in
the United States are now considered not ready to deploy.
The Army's manpower dilemma stems from current Pentagon policies:
Although 55 percent of soldiers belong to the National Guard or the
reserve, the Defense Department dictates that reservists can be
mobilized involuntarily only once, and for no more than 24 months.
As a result, out of the total of 522,000 Army National Guard and reserve
members, only about 90,000 are still available to be mobilized,
according to Army data. "We're out of Schlitz," declared an Army chart
depicting the shortage as a depleted barrel, saying this leaves "future
missions in jeopardy."
Compounding the problem, the Pentagon has restricted repeated
involuntary call-ups, leading to deeper and deeper holes in Army Guard
and reserve units. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, hundreds of
thousands of reserve soldiers have been mobilized for Iraq and
Afghanistan. So when a unit is called to deploy, the only soldiers who
can go are volunteers and new soldiers. The remainder are often drawn
from dozens of units across the United States.
The result is systematically "broken" and "non-cohesive" units, said
another Army chart titled "OSD-mandated Volunteer Policy Stresses the
Force," referring to the office of the secretary of defense.
For example, Army Reserve units now must take an average of 62 percent
of their soldiers for deployments from other units, compared with 6
percent in 2002 and 39 percent in 2003, according to the Army data. In
one transportation company, only seven of 170 soldiers were eligible to
deploy. The other 163 came from 65 other units in 49 locations, said the
commission chairman, retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Arnold L. Punaro,
who quoted a Marine Reserve officer as calling the policy "evil."
"Military necessity dictates that we deploy organized, trained, equipped
cohesive units -- and you don't do that by pick-up teams," said
Schoomaker, a decorated veteran of the Army's Delta Force who served in
the ill-fated Desert One rescue mission in Iran in 1980.
"We must start this clock again . . . and field fully ready units. . . .
We must change this policy," he said, banging his hand on the table for
emphasis. He said later that he had detected "some movement" by Pentagon
policymakers who have so far rejected a change on the politically
sensitive issue.
In an interview yesterday on C-SPAN, Thomas F. Hall, assistant secretary
of defense for reserve affairs, said that under the current authority
Bush can mobilize up to 1 million reservists for no more than two
"continuous" years, but the Pentagon policy under Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld has been more restrictive, limiting the time to two
"cumulative" years. "The law does say 'continuous,' so you could have a
break and recall them," Hall said.
Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn, chief of the 346,000-strong Army National Guard,
said yesterday that his force is "poised for remobilization."
Vaughn said he thinks state Guard leaders will accept fresh call-ups
sooner than planned as long as the deployments are limited to 12 months
and draw on units that have been home the longest. He said the Guard
could tolerate having units deploy for one year out of every five,
instead of out of every six.
"One year is absolutely critical," he said, explaining that the 18
months it currently takes for a Guard unit to mobilize, train and deploy
means too much time away from jobs and families. Schoomaker indicated
that the Army is working on reducing the duration of Guard and reserve
deployments to one year.
Since 2001, the Army Guard has deployed 186,000 soldiers and the Army
Reserve 164,000 soldiers for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and in
homeland-defense missions.