The Army, After Iraq

[observor 69]

New York Times, Sunday Editorial, food for thought.

http://tinyurl.com/2bvbs5

The New York Times
March 18, 2007
Editorial
The Army, After Iraq
You do not have to look very hard these days to see the grave damage the Bush administration’s mismanagement of the Iraq conflict has inflicted on the United States Army. Consider the moral waivers for violent offenders, to meet recruitment targets. Or the rapid rotation of exhausted units back to the battlefield. Or the scandalous shortages of protective armor. Or the warnings from generals that there are not enough troops available to sustain increased force levels for more than a few months.

Adding 7,000 soldiers a year, as President Bush now proposes, will bring the Army’s overall strength to 547,000 by 2012. That will help, but not much, and not at all in Iraq. America’s all-volunteer military was simply never designed to be deployed as it has been for the past few years: unilaterally, indefinitely, and at peak strength in the middle of a raging civil war.

Exiting Iraq with America’s forces, credibility and regional interests intact is now, understandably, the nation’s most immediate concern. But in the process, crucial lessons need to be absorbed from this unnecessary, horribly botched and now unwinnable war.

The first lesson is the continued importance of ground soldiers in a world that defense planners predicted would be all about stealth, Star Wars, satellites and Special Operations forces sent on short-term missions. Now we know that enemies hunkered down in caves and urban slums can be as dangerous as those in defense ministry bunkers — and that rebuilding defeated nations is crucial to lasting security.

Beyond Iraq, the Army needs to move out of permanent crisis mode — with almost every available division deployed, just returned or preparing to be shipped out. It needs a force large enough to be able to devote time and resources to develop skills it is now chronically short of, and is sure to need in the post-Iraq future: soldiers and translators fluent in Arabic and other languages; military teams able to work with local populations in civic reconstruction, health and education projects; sergeants and officers who can help friendly governments train their own armies to provide security without relying on large numbers of American troops.

America needs to keep investing in military technology. But it needs to stop shortchanging ordinary soldiers. They cannot match the lobbying firepower of high-tech defense contractors, but our security depends on them. Congress needs to heed the lessons of Walter Reed, armor shortages and other scandals and make wiser budgetary trade-offs.

The volunteer military cannot be expanded at will. Nor does it need to be. When not abused as it has been for the past four years — but not the preceding 30 — it provides superior-quality troops and better morale, and is more consistent with the free-choice values of America’s market society.

As long as United States troops are in Iraq, meeting the recruiting quotas of an expanded force will be difficult. The multiple combat tours, the warehoused wounded, the deteriorating Iraqi security situation are a lot to overcome.

Once that is behind us, the Army can be increased substantially, and should be, so long as Congress can assure the country that it will never again delegate away its war powers as carelessly and recklessly as it did in 2002. And so long as the next president understands that the point of having a large Army is to strengthen American diplomacy, not to launch impulsive and unnecessary wars.

Simply legislating a bigger Army will not be enough. The administration and Congress need to offer a better deal — better training, better protective equipment and better family support — to the men and women the Army needs to recruit. And they need to offer soldiers a clear pledge: if the armed forces are asked to fight, it will be only as a last resort, after full and informed Congressional debate, and never just at the whim of a president.

 

[MarkOttawa]

The Army and Marines really are in tough shape right now--Pyongyang, Tehran, Beijing, Khartoum et al. must be feeling good.

Military Is Ill-Prepared For Other Conflicts
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/18/AR2007031801534.html?referrer=email

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...

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."..

In earlier House testimony, [joint chiefs' chairman Gen.] 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."..

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...

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 [emphasis added] 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...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[GAP]

Why are they not increasing the supply orders now in anticipation of this, or are the assuming everything is going to come back once things wind down in Iraq?

 

[MarkOttawa]

More here, also noting Navy and Air Force problems:

Personnel, gear worn by years of war, military says
http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=121368&ran=120111

Mark
Ottawa

 

[geo]

are the assuming everything is going to come back once things wind down in Iraq?

surely you jest.... more likely they do not want to scare the US electorate prior to the appointment of Mr Dubya's successor...

 

[GAP]

surely you jest.... more likely they do not want to scare the US electorate prior to the appointment of Mr Dubya's successor...

Oh, let the democrats take the blame.....

 

[tomahawk6]

Army makes plea for more supplemental funding help
By Gina Cavallaro - Staff writer
Posted : March 26, 2007

A hearing for Army leaders before the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, part of a round of Capitol Hill meetings on the proposed $130 billion 2008 Army budget, was marked by tough questions, sentimentality and a bit of entertainment.

But loudest of all at the March 14 hearing was the sound of a looming deadline to get what’s left of 2007 supplemental funds before the end of April. Failure to get those funds, said Acting Army Secretary Pete Geren, would mean a repeat of last year’s massive reprogramming of operations, civilian jobs, services and maintenance that affected many posts.

“If we don’t have it by the end of April, we are going to have to start pulling levers, making adjustments and reprogramming plans,” Geren said.

Last summer, he noted, Congress failed to approve the supplemental funds, and cuts were made across the Army to make ends meet.

Big-ticket items in the supplemental include $8.3 billion for active-duty personnel, $3.4 billion for tracked vehicles and $627 million for aircraft. If Army leaders do not get requested funding, they have to cut programs to pay for others.

Geren also testified on his intention to see that the National Guard is equipped on par with the active component.

“We’re one Army and this budget puts our money where our mouth is,” he said. Geren told lawmakers that over the next five years, the Army will spend $38 billion on equipment for the Guard. He said that will include earmarking 40 percent of the helicopters purchased during that time for the Guard.

In one of his last appearances before Congress as Army chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker took the opportunity to push the Army’s $3 billion pet program, Future Combat Systems, with a demonstration.

Rolling out into the middle of the hearing room, a mini robot on tracked wheels stopped, and in a puppy-like gesture, propped itself up, extended its neck and slowly spun its square camera-head 360 degrees, displaying everyone’s curious faces on a monitor.

The robot, known as the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle, is part of FCS and could be used by soldiers at the squad level to view an area before moving into it, Schoomaker explained.

Addressing the Army’s shortage of midcareer officers, Schoomaker acknowledged the officer corps “will be short for quite some time” because of the need for majors in the modular brigade combat teams.

The Army, he said, is accelerating promotions for officers with high performance ratings. Captains are being promoted at 36 months instead of 42. Still, the Army is looking at a shortage of 3,700 midcareer officers in the next fiscal year.

“In Vietnam, you were a captain in two years. We were making staff sergeants in six months in what was called the ‘Shake ’n Bake’ program. We’re not going there,” Schoomaker said.

Geren began his testimony by punching through what he knew everyone wanted to hear first: a situation report on Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

“We did not live up to our obligation to the soldiers and have been taking steps every day to make corrections,” said Geren, a former congressman whose appearance before the committee marked the first time in his official capacity as acting secretary.

The problems, he said, lie in two distinct areas: fixing the facilities for medical holdover soldiers and the treatment they receive, and taking action on correcting any other deficiencies in the Army’s broader medical system.

Geren took over as secretary on March 9 following the resignation of Francis J. Harvey, who was forced to step down amid revelations that soldiers in medical hold at Walter Reed faced intolerable delays and poor living conditions.

Geren noted that soldiers and family members at Walter Reed soon would be able to tap into a toll-free hotline to report problems.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., asked Geren to guarantee that no service member would face retribution for calling the hotline or for testifying in Congress about struggles with the Army bureaucracy.

“I can assure you that any form of retribution against any � discussion that permits a family member or soldier to come forward will not be tolerated,” Geren said. “This 800 number is not going to go to some message, it’s going to come straight into the Army operations center.”

Meanwhile, all soldiers who were living in Building 18, a rundown training barracks across the street from the Walter Reed hospital where many of the soldiers complained of squalid living conditions, have been moved out while repairs are being made.

The most important changes at Walter Reed have been in leadership, he said, including a new deputy commanding general position appointed to Brig. Gen. Michael Tucker, who Geren described as his “bureaucracy buster.”

 

[tomahawk6]

Another Army Times article. Essentially readiness will be improved with funding. Iraq has been very hard on our equipment and alot of it either will be upgraded or replaced. When the process is complate we should be in better shape than before we went into Iraq in 2003. As for the USAF/USN the RIF both services are undergoing is long overdue. The problem I have with the USAF and USN is that they gold plate their procurement programs and just dont seem to be able to control costs. The LCS was supposed to be a relatively inexpensive program now its running twice as expensive as projected. A DDG now costs between $1.5b - 2b a copy. The major USAF aircraft programs all have cost overruns. To top it off the decision to replace the KC-135 fleet was completely botched.

Readiness concerns prompt calls for probe
Two congressional agencies to look at armed services
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : March 26, 2007

Two key lawmakers are seeking independent investigations of military readiness after service officials said extended operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have left shortages of war stocks that could limit the military’s ability to respond to a crisis.

After Army and Marine Corps officials talked about exhausting pre-positioned stocks of weapons and supplies to keep deployed forces fully ready, two House Armed Services Committee leaders asked the Congressional Budget Office and Government Accountability Office — nonpartisan congressional agencies — to take a closer look.

Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, the committee’s readiness panel chairman, said he is worried about whether the military is prepared for another conflict.

“After five-and-a-half years of sustained operations in two theaters of war, I am greatly concerned about the declining readiness of the services in terms of personnel, equipment and training,” Ortiz said. “I believe that we, as a nation, are at risk of mission failure.”

Fixing readiness problems has not been easy, he said.

“Congress has provided significant funding beyond what has been requested by the Department of Defense to try to mitigate the decline, but the high tempo of operations and the constraints of the defense industrial base are making it difficult for the service to turn the decline around,” Ortiz said.

“When readiness levels fall, our level of strategic risk goes up,” added Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., the committee chairman.

Ortiz said readiness problems are “most evident in the ground forces of the Army and Marines, but we also see it in the effects on the Air Force and the Navy.”

The Army and Marine Corps have been diverting equipment and supplies from nondeployed units so deployed units have all they need — the biggest reason for readiness concerns.

The Air Force and Navy have had their own problems, he said.

The Navy is cutting its number of steaming days per quarter from 24 to 22 for nondeployed units to save money, hoping that simulators and other shore-based training will replace the lost time at sea, Ortiz said.

Because of higher use, the Air Force reports aircraft readiness has dropped by 17 percent below the level prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Ortiz said.

Skelton and Ortiz are asking for reports about the state of readiness, the cause of any declines and how long it might take to fix any shortfalls.

The Bush administration is not necessarily helping, said Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., who noted that the $235.3 billion for operations and maintenance requested in the 2008 defense budget is not enough.

“According to the estimate provided to this subcommittee, this increase is only half of what is needed to cover inflation and rising energy costs, and provides no room for program growth,” leaving a budget that is $2.7 billion short after adjusting for inflation, Rogers said.

Rogers blamed “years of underfunded procurement” for the bulk of the problems because the services have been left with old ships, aircraft and tracked and wheeled vehicles.

AGREEMENT FROM THE ARMY

Gen. Richard Cody, Army vice chief of staff, said Rogers has a point.

“Readiness continues to decline [in] our next-to-deploy forces,” Cody said. “We must aggressively buy back equipment shortages to restore the strategic depth of the Army.”

Cody said there are shortages in light, medium and heavy tactical vehicles, as well as spot shortages in weapons, radios and night-vision devices.

The Army and Marine Corps have similar problems, although the Army’s situation appears to be worse, Ortiz said.

“Extended combat operations have severely tested our materiel,” acknowledged Gen. Robert Magnus, the Marine Corps’ assistant commandant. “While a vast majority of our equipment has passed the test of combat operations, it has been subjected to a sustained usage rate far exceeding planning factors.”

Like the Army, the Marine Corps has been equipping deploying units with gear from nondeployed units and pre-positioned stocks, which Magnus said is helping sustain readiness rates of deployed units — at the expense of the nondeployed units.

The nondeployed units left struggling include amphibious, jungle, mountain and combined-arms units, he said.

Adm. Robert Willard, vice chief of naval operations, said current Navy readiness “remains excellent,” although he said the Navy’s construction battalions, known as Seabees, are having some of the same problems as Army and Marine ground forces.

But Ortiz raised another issue — the cut in steaming hours.

Gen. John D.W. Corley, Air Force vice chief of staff, said lawmakers are right to be concerned.

“We can expect to be engaged in this conflict and others for the foreseeable future, perhaps another decade or more,” Corley said. “And we see no end to either the high operations tempo for our airmen or the aging and the deteriorating of our air and space inventories.”

C-130 transports, for example, are “are doing great work on intratheater airlift, both in Iraq and Afghanistan. They're getting hundreds of convoys off the roads, and, better, they're getting thousands of our other forces off the roads and not exposed to improved explosive devices.”

But the cost, he said, is that C-130s are flying too much.

“Some of our C-130Es can no longer deploy to combat because we have literally flown the wings off them,” he said, referring to center wing boxes that are cracked.

“In fact, we have five C-130s at Ramstein Air Base [in Germany] alone with major structural issues. One is so hard-broken, it has not flown in four years.”

 

[geo]

Geren also testified on his intention to see that the National Guard is equipped on par with the active component.

“We’re one Army and this budget puts our money where our mouth is,” he said. Geren told lawmakers that over the next five years, the Army will spend $38 billion on equipment for the Guard. He said that will include earmarking 40 percent of the helicopters purchased during that time for the Guard.

Interesting perspective.  Money where the mouth is?.... instead of being all mouth - or no mouth at all

Addressing the Army’s shortage of midcareer officers, Schoomaker acknowledged the officer corps “will be short for quite some time” because of the need for majors in the modular brigade combat teams.

While we appear to have tons of Captains... they don't appear to be available at deployment level.... we are in the same boat - at a time when the CF is ramping up trying to grow ?!?!?  ???

new deputy commanding general position appointed to Brig. Gen. Michael Tucker, who Geren described as his “bureaucracy buster.”

Brig. Gen. Michael Tucker, 1st Armored Division's assistant division commander for maneuver,  Combat arms .... Hoo ahh!

The problem I have with the USAF and USN is that they gold plate their procurement programs and just dont seem to be able to control costs. The LCS was supposed to be a relatively inexpensive program now its running twice as expensive as projected. A DDG now costs between $1.5b - 2b a copy. The major USAF aircraft programs all have cost overruns. To top it off the decision to replace the KC-135 fleet was completely botched.

Isn't it nice to know that we aren't the only ones on the block that go thru SNAFU & BOHICA

The Army and Marine Corps have been diverting equipment and supplies from nondeployed units so deployed units have all they need — the biggest reason for readiness concerns.

The Air Force and Navy have had their own problems, he said.

The Navy is cutting its number of steaming days per quarter from 24 to 22 for nondeployed units to save money, hoping that simulators and other shore-based training will replace the lost time at sea.

Because of higher use, the Air Force reports aircraft readiness has dropped by 17 percent below the level prior to Sept. 11 2001.

Rogers blamed “years of underfunded procurement” for the bulk of the problems because the services have been left with old ships, aircraft and tracked and wheeled vehicles.

C-130 transports, for example, are “are doing great work on intratheater airlift, both in Iraq and Afghanistan. They're getting hundreds of convoys off the roads, and, better, they're getting thousands of our other forces off the roads and not exposed to improved explosive devices.”

But the cost, he said, is that C-130s are flying too much.

“Some of our C-130Es can no longer deploy to combat because we have literally flown the wings off them,” he said, referring to center wing boxes that are cracked.

“In fact, we have five C-130s at Ramstein Air Base [in Germany] alone with major structural issues. One is so hard-broken, it has not flown in four years.”

Oh yeah - I think we can certainly relate to that...

 

[retiredgrunt45]

Some of the US military's highest ranking staff told the joint chiefs, before they went into Iraq that it wouldn't be a slam dunk and that they would have the problems we're seeing right now. But it was dismissed outright by the administration. Rumsfeld flatly stated that this wouldn't turn into another vietnam, well there almost 1/2 way there.

What happens if it gets upto the 6-7 year mark, is the US going to see the draft again?

 

[tomahawk6]

The war was a slam dunk. The nation building is where the problems lie.

 

[career_radio-checker]

The nation building is where the problems lie.

That's what we are all learning. The US is by no means the only one in this classroom.