Army to shorten deployments
The Stars & Stripes reports that next year they’ll shorten deployments to nine months;
The deployment announcement is not a result of impending troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, said Army spokesman Lt. Col. Craig Ratcliff. Rather, he said, it’s the result of studies showing how to effectively deploy forces while making the wellbeing of soldiers a priority.
The shortened deployments won’t effect troops deploying before the first of the year, though. Even though the order didn’t mention dwell times, Col. Ratcliff thinks it’s only a matter of time, given the shortened deployments;
“Over the long term we’re on a glide path to increasing dwell times,” he said.
Thanks to Jeff Schogol for the link.
Category: Military issues
Gee that would have been nice 5 GOD DAMN YEARS AGO! After everybody did 15 month deployments back to back ya THINK that might have had an effect captain obvious?
The flip side of this of course is more units getting put into the funnel for deployments. As long as the Army can keep pace with the increased turnover I don’t see a problem.
Long overdue. For troops not embedded with locals deploying twice as much for half as long is far superior. It increases logistical costs but its more than made up for in retention and the mental and physical health of the force.
Way overdue.
P.S. One more point. I could have sworn that General Casy the last CSA mentioned that they wanted to do this begining sometime in 2010(last year). Especially since there are units not scheduled to deploy at all. Wonder what took so long?
The 9 month cycle still isn’t going to happen for “high demand/low density” units like MPs and Aviation. FYI.
This will have a significant effect on the ARFORGEN process for reserve component units, particularly the NG. They are already stacked backed to back on a 12 month cycle and are not able to train to standard on collective tasks due to the overwhelming number of required, but not critical individual requirements such as FOO Money and other classes. This has resulted to key leaders being absent for Battalion FTXs. Case in point: the 45th BCT (OKARNG) was diverted from OEF to the OND SECFOR mission after their dismal performance at their JRTC CERTEX. In other words, they are unqualified. Now the RA component has been pushed into the Guards predeployment training cycle. Unfortunately in the case of the 45th, all of the key leaders from battalion and above were absent during platoon lanes due to the scheduling of their PDSS. Bottom line, don’t plan on using these Guard troops for OEF under this model.
But one thing I am reading in my local paper is that because of the time that there would not be mid-tour leave.
I wonder how SOF deployments might be affected.
I’ll believe it when I see it.