Army to announce another 30k reduction in troops
Yesterday, we talked about the Army drawing down to four hundred and fifty thousand troops in the next two years, but according to the Associated Press, that’s just the beginning. If the administration and the Congress can’t dismount from the sequestration pony, strength will fall another thirty thousand to 450,000 in the next few years;
If a new round of automatic spending cuts, known as sequestration, goes ahead, the Army says it will have to reduce even further, to 420,000 soldiers.
Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, has said he can accept the planned reduction of 40,000 soldiers over the next two years, which the Army plans to implement by trimming the size of numerous units. The biggest cuts would be to an infantry unit at Fort Benning, Georgia, and an airborne infantry unit at Fort Richardson in Alaska. Each would shrink from about 4,000 soldiers to about 1,050, defense officials said Wednesday. Those details were first reported Tuesday by USA Today. The full plan for specific cuts is expected to be made public by the Army on Thursday.
The brigade (the 193rd Infantry Brigade) at Fort Benning was used as the round-out 3rd Brigade of the 24th Infantry Division when they deployed to Desert Storm, so reducing it to the size of a Battalion takes that out of the Army’s toolbox in case of an unplanned excursion, like Desert Storm where many units were cobbled together at the last minute.
The Army complains that they can’t train and retain the force given the year-by-year funding from Congress, but it’s really not Congress’ fault entirely;
It may not get any smoother anytime soon. Congressional Republicans are proposing to give President Barack Obama the extra billions he wants for defense in the budget year starting Oct. 1. But Obama says he can’t accept their plan because it maneuvers around spending caps in a way that does not also provide spending relief in non-defense areas of the budget. This portends a September showdown between Congress and the White House.
So the White House, is going to hold defense spending hostage to fund the domestic spending, you know, like they always do. Of course, this gives our enemies hope. I’m sure ISIS thinks that these domestic political maneuvers are the light at the end of their tunnel, much the way that they thought that they could win in Iraq in 2006 when Congress changed hands because of the anti-war rantings of Reid and Pelosi.
When are Congressmen going to contribute their salaries and operating costs to the sequestration process?
Thanks to Bobo for the link.
Category: Army News
Minor correction: It was the 197th, not the 193rd at Benning (Kelly Hill.)
The story I’d heard (and I think it’s correct) is that at the time of DS the plan was for stateside divisions to have to active brigades and one “round out” brigade from the ARNG. Well, when the 24th ID’s ARNG “round out” brigade was mobilized and evaluated, they were found to be in bad shape and so the 197th was pulled from Benning to round out the 24th.
As someone who was in the National Guard in the 1980’s I can tell you most of the stories you hear are likely true. The Guard was a joke back then, prior to DS. I think it was DS that really gave them the wake-up call that they might have to actually, you know, fight in a real war.
I rejoined the guard after leaving AD in 1996 and the difference was like night and day from the mid 80’s.
The pre-DS round-out for 24th ID was the 48th Brigade, Georgia National Guard. They were OPFOR in some of our big field exercises, and my opinion at the time (mid eighties) was that they had their (stuff) together.
When Desert Shield was thrown together, I think someone realized what the likely political result would be, in getting a large chunk of the population of Georgia wiped out if Saddam got frisky before we were fully deployed. (say from a chemical barrage.)
Suddenly, a rather competent NG unit was sent to Fort Irwin, for “train-up”. (As were others.) “Competence” for the NG was declared as soon as Regular forces were in place to make the NG not needed.
Purely a coincidence, I am sure.
A regular Combat Arms unit is rarely over-represented by one state, thus mass casualties will be well distributed.
This was the flaw in the “NG Roundout” plan. It looked good on peace-time paper, but but failed the “political will” test when the dogs of war began growling. (My speculation, and I have seen this line of thought elsewhere.)
“Honey, we need a new roof.”
“That’s fine dear. We can get a new roof when we get a new car and after we return from a vacation to Tahiti.”
“But, honey, a new roof is essential. It’s critical!”
“Call it what you will but those are my terms.”
Meh. What does Obama care? He’ll be out of office in 18 months and after that, anything that goes wrong will be blamed on the new guy (gal? Shudders instinctively )
oBaMa is what he is and this is nothing new. The last time I looked, the House was in control of appropriations but, clearly, that means nothing to the Republicans, least of all Bonehead, whose slacks are all worn out at the knees and whose noggin has a wound that won’t heal from continually banging it on the underside of oBaMa’s desk.
Well… shit.
It won’t be just the Army, you know.
Is this what happened prior to WWII? I know there was a drawdown of the military after WWI, but I’ve never seen any numbers on it.
The US military expanded to over 4M personnel in uniform during World War I. In 1939, the US military had less than 335k people in uniform – just short of 190k in the Army (including Army Air Corps), a bit over 125k in the Navy, and about 19.4k in the USMC.
I’m pretty sure that the numbers for 1939 are as of either 30 June or 1 July (1 July was the beginning of the Federal fiscal year prior to 1976). The US military began a dramatic expansion in late 1940 and throughout 1941. By Pearl Harbor, the US military had expanded to over 5x its 1939 strength.
http://www.nationalww2museum.org/learn/education/for-students/ww2-history/ww2-by-the-numbers/us-military.html
Yeah, ‘cept the Air Force tops say that we “won’t be doing any more force shaping”. Right, and I’m Lawrence of fuckin’ Arabia.
Yep. Gotta keep funding that F35!
And Tops in Blue. What a fucking disgrace…
If they’ll start with all the Colonel Lock types from the previous thread it would help. She counts for 3 herself.
Hell, no. Are you mad? That is not PC.
What we need to do is drastically reduce our Infantry and Special Operations. Replace them with social workers and yoga instructors.
The Army as a whole is just to damn aggressive.
I am disappointed in you!
You forgot job placement professionals too.
They aren’t finding jobs for the green suiters getting kicked out, they’re finding them for all the terrorists who need jobs so they don’t have to be terrorists anymore…
Yep. Who needs triggers pullers at a time like this. This is peace time.
Im disappointed in you, Yoga is too much like a martial art, and those are dangerous. We need non-religious meditation gurus. You never know when that yoga will go off and hurt some body
I know it would be purely symbolic, but in every period they are thrashing around trying to pass a budget, and in every year we don’t have a balanced budget: no one in Congress including staffers (we all know who does or doesn’t do the heavy lifting, right?) gets no pay. Let’s see how fast a budget gets passed then…
“Those who do not learn from history. . . ” (etc)
See: the Carter years, hollow army, 1 ea.
Can’t wait for Lars to stop by here and explain that reducing the troop levels is a good thing and that we should be spending the money saved on the public universities and professor salaries. Also, we’re just a bunch of knuckle dragging morons.
Yet the AF is getting an airplane that cannot dogfight, kills pilots and doesn’t do air to ground anywhere near as well as the airframe its replacing, at a cost of $80 gazillion each…makes sense to me.
But seriously…I could get behind downsizing if it meant that-
1. The remainder of the troops are better trained, equipped and cared for.
B. They are deployed into conflicts only after careful consideration of the ramifications, both short and long term, of said conflict.
— Conflicts they are utilized in are in the best interests of the country and the Earth itself…not multi national corporations.
No surprises here, either. The Army will e lucky to stay above 400K when all is said and done. As soon as the Fed gets off of 0% interest boondoggle, we will be paying more each year in interest on the public debt than we pay for all of DoD. With the new Zero-Care subsidies locking in and placed on the mandatory side of the budget, it’s all over but the rioting and looting.
Evidently this is causing some problem with motivation in the Army. This is one commanders solution. They might need to take up the crotch a bit or they will be baggy.
http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/07/co-soldiers-will-wear-marine-corps-uniforms-improve-morale/
Its okay, as long as they don’t cut any positions from HRC or from the Pentagon, since those are the only commands that seem to matter.
They’ll do all this cutting and still spend obscenely and on the flag officer and SES “comfort items” like bloated staffs and nice furniture.
But, the military isn’t really established to fight wars or defend the nation anyway. We’re the backdrop for politicians doing campaign speeches and their marketing tools to get re-elected to jobs they don’t deserve to have.
Green Suiters at Division and below are there so bean counters and bureaucrats at HRC and the Pentagon can justify their jobs. (If there weren’t ANY uniformed personnel, they “might” not get a promotion.)
Will bet that Hondo has T.R. Fehrenbach’s “This Kind of War” in his library.
My Citadel roommate gave it to me at our graduation in ’63. It is a devastating critique of what the US did to the military after WW2 that led to near disaster in Korea.
We can be be sure that President Valerie B. Jarrett (i.e., the only one in the oval office that has balls) hasn’t read it. History repeats itself.
I commend the book to TAH’ers. Good read…even after all these years.