Those disappearing brigades
So after I wrote the piece yesterday about the Army cutting 12 combat brigades, General Ray Odierno announced the exact location of the units that will disappear. From Stars & Stripes;
Odierno said 10 BCTs would be cut from 10 Army installations: Fort Bliss, Texas; Fort Bragg, N.C.; Fort Campbell, Ky.; Fort Carson, Colo.; Fort Drum, N.Y.; Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Knox, Ky.; Fort Riley, Kan.; Fort Stewart, Ga.; and Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash. Another two BCTs used for soldier training will also be cut, officials said.
An eleventh BCT in a location still undecided will be cut in the future, Odierno said.
In other words, everyone is losing a trigger-pulling brigade. But luckily, there aren’t fewer flag officer spots, so we have that bright spot – the generals saved all of their jobs and lost only a few (comparatively) sergeant major positions. But there are still plenty of staff positions where everyone can hide out from those pesky command assignments. We’re going to need those staff positions since, in the middle of a war, our priorities have shifted to more important issues, like helping gays find their place among regular people, combating sexual assault committed by staff officers, and lowering the standards for the fewer combat soldiers so women can join their ranks.
The Washington Times reports that Congress is promising that this castration of the combat forces is just the beginning;
Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, California Republican and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said his panel will review the Pentagon’s decision.
“We will carefully examine the implications of this initial restructuring, but we all must understand that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Much deeper cuts are still to come,” he said.
Yeah, because there still might be some people left after this round of cuts who might have the necessary experience to fight our next war in leadership positions, so we need to nip them in the bud. I sure hope or next enemy has the courtesy to give us a nine-month advance notice so we have time to build the ranks of combat soldiers from the empty shell this Congress and Administration is leaving the next generation.
Category: Big Army
We still have hundreds of GoFo’s whose jobs could (and should) be nixed. So much for “Leadership by Example”.
Totally misread that, Jonn. When I read that the number of maneuver battalions in a BCT was going from two to three I assumed they’d reduce the number of BDE HQs in inverse proportion. Yeah, I know, assume at my own risk.
As a former jarhead though, I’m stuck on operational units having three maneuver subordinates, so I kind of like.
The money to pay the turds who never work has to come from somewhere. No one expected entitlements to be reduced by a democratic administration did they?
It’s just too bad the republicans in the house don’t just oppose this nonsense and insist that any troop reduction be mirrored by a factor of 2 or 4 in reduction to entitlements. Funding generational welfare has destroyed a significant portion of the minority population in America. Emphasizing work, self-discipline, and earned rewards might be a step in the right direction in ending these generational welfare recipients.
Stigmatizing men who leave bastard children for others to care for would be a good start as well, seizing any current and future assets to cover child care would send a message that when you stick your pecker in some whore’s reproductive canal the result could be 18-24 years of financial pain. Why do these 4ssholes think I should help raise their useless turd kids? Raise your own f$cking kids you lazy bastards and stop expecting the government to do it for you.
Once again the solution is to f$ck the military instead of the people who’ve never done a useful thing for society since they were born….no wonder our “culture” looks as it does.
At times I’m puzzled by the comments on officers. I personally think this is the wrong time to be cutting any military units. I’m probably wrong but the world seems like its about ready to explode in a big way. When these cuts are made, we will need a experienced group of officers and senior NCO’s to put this back together in a hurry. I have a son in the service (officer)I told him when he joined the worse thing that happens when Democrats are in office, is the military suffers…..we have dumbed down our military in the past 5 years, from DADT, crappy ROE’s, “and some senior leadership who can’t control their hardon’s”, I read yesterday that our military is much better now that we have gays serving……….I’m ready to tell my son its time to leave this mess before he becomes a statistic. Some where in the future there is going to be one hell of a lot of apologizing to families because of this cluster fuck!
For those interested in which brigades are slated to be cut, I posted this link in the other thread:
http://theadvocate.com/home/6347563-125/fort-polk-cuts-not-as
It’s just too bad the republicans in the house don’t just oppose this nonsense and insist that any troop reduction be mirrored by a factor of 2 or 4 in reduction to entitlements.
Why,VOV, you say that as if the Pubbies had an actual spine or something. The Pathology party has been successful in foisting their worldview on the larger culture and now the traditional virtues are commonly thought of as “mean” or “hateful”. NRO had an interesting article last night that basically said that once upon a time San Francisco was seen by the rest of California as a quaint oddity-peculiar, but harmless-but now all of those who hold statewide office in the Golden state come from the SF machine. As California has gone, so too the rest of the country soon-it’s subsidized indolence all the way to the bottom.
Scary but sooooo f&%$#@g true!!!!
@3 — my son is out when he returns from Afghanistan — roughly January.
If the army is cutting like they say they are then this is not the end of the world. we lose 10 BCTs sure but the maneuver BNs from them go to other BCTs, so all we really lose are BSBs and BSTBs plus HQs. seem to me this is what we have been wanting, less HQ types. Plus the BCTs will get more Fires and Engineering assets, a real problem with the original BCT design. sure any cuts are bad, but we all knew this was coming like it does at then end of all wars. it could have been a hell of a lot worse. of course all this is predicated on the army actually cutting like they say they are.
This is pretty much par for the course for DoD as a whole, apparently. God forbid they lose “leadership!”
In my agency, folks who are “in the trenches” are getting furloughed. Meanwhile, an SES has left the organization for another agency, and to replace her, they hired TWO SES-types, ostensibly because “she had such big shoes to fill.”
In fact, what this really means is that God and Goddess forbid an SES gets affected by these cuts!
Those Infantry Battalions aren’t going to be deactivated, just dissolved into other Brigades, right? What’s the issue here?
Nicki, that sounds a lot like my agency. We are bombarded with various species of “Program Analysts” and other efficiency experts trying to figure out how to shave another few FTEs from the frontline workforce. However, our HQ office staff just keeps growing, growing, growing. Because we need fewer frontline workers, but more program analysts, management analysts, HR specialists, etc.
Are the maneuver Bn.s being reintergrated back to the other brigades? So will we be going back to 3 Infantry Bn.s within a brigade now instead of 2? If so, you have to move some of those support assetts back with them also…
80,000 troops will be out of the service as a result of this action….this quote is from the International Business times :
Thousands of others across the service, including those in support units of the brigades, as well as two overseas brigades located in Germany, also are slated for elimination. The downsizing of 80,000 soldiers, which will reduce the army’s strength to 490,000, stands for a 14 percent reduction, the department said.
Army officials said more cuts were in the pipeline, and as many as 100,000 more active duty, National Guard and Reserve soldiers could be downsized, if Congress approved the fiscal restraints to continue to next year, Associated Press reported.
The link to that article is here: http://www.ibtimes.com/us-army-cut-80000-soldiers-2017-scrap-400-million-worth-construction-projects-massive-restructuring#
Yep, thank God we are not balancing the budget at the expense of the military. (sar/off)
Just like the good ole Clinton days… gutted the military thinking we would never fight another war. POOF, 9/11 happened and we were caught with our pants down with poor equipment and bare bones units. Hey, retirement is just a few months away. Its been a great 23 years!
@12. Each brigade we’re retaining gets another maneuver battalion, presumably one from a deactivated brigade. We’re also retaining the cav squadron, which is desperately needed if the brigade is operating independently. The FA battalion will get a third firing battery, and the engineers will get plussed up (though I’m not sure by how much). It resembles in some way the BCT of the late 90s minus the ADA battery and a bigger scouting element.
My husband saw this list yesterday and he served & deployed with two of the units being cut. He is dissapointed that one he helped stand up will now be gone. All these jobs lost into the economy that already stinks.
What is this going to happen to the backlog at the VA now? It will only get worse. God help our country.
@15, yup, and the Liberals love to blame Bush for having to go to war with inadequate equipment.
@18 Twist, Roger your last. Oh, the hypocrisy of the Left. Of course, it’s never their sons who bleed and die, so why should they even give a flying fig?
Each BCT will gain an infantry battalion plus a support company and artillery battery to round it out. The STB will become an Engineer Bn with the MI Co, Signal Co, and two Engineer companies. The 170th and 172nd were already slated for elimination (172nd is already gone). What surprises me is that the 1st ID will lose two brigades. Are they going to reflag a 25th ID brigade or will we have a division with only two brigades?
What was old is new again. The Pentagon shuffles numbers like a Mafia Banker launders money. Ask Penny Pritzker, one of Obama’s coterie – the Pritzkers were the Chicago mob’s bankers.
The problem with the 90s Army: numbers proved meaningless when they were unprepared for the enemy they fought. The 90s Army defeated the Iraqi Army easily, but lacked the basic capabilities to fight the Saddam Fedayeen and later AQI. Billions were spent regaining the basics over 6 years, but it will take less than a year to return us to a position incapable of defeating the Big 2 Superpowers of China and Russia, and even those Obama is surrendering to now: POS tribesmen who have to have their hands marked L and R so they know which hand to eat with.
#9 I completely agree with you if the Army does what its says it’s going to but don’t know if it has the fortitude.
#5 Will that Polk Brigade still be part of the 10th Mountain or spun off? Since we’re going to a three Battalion brigade you’d think they would pick up one.
I’m with Jonn though. The cuts coupled with the massive politicking going on concurrently is going cripple us. The resistors/trouble makers who fight will be the first to be axed, decapitating the organization. This is exactly what happened in the early 90s, the sages and thinkers will be eliminated and all that will be left are the rump conformers. Then when there is another contingency, we can all ponder why most Flag officers all seem unable or incapable of any sort of adaption or innovation to meet the challenge.