The need to increase the size of the deployable army

Parameters, Autumn, 2004 by Michael O'Hanlon

After criticizing the Clinton Administration for overdeploying and overusing the US military in the 1990s, the Bush Administration is now doing exactly the same thing--except on a much larger scale. Having made the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and having badly underestimated the difficulty as well as the force requirements of accomplishing the post-Saddam stabilization effort successfully, the Bush Administration or its successor now needs to get serious about making ends match means. At present, the latter are insufficient.

The possibility exists that large numbers of active-duty troops and reservists may soon leave the service rather than subjecting themselves to a life continually on the road. The seriousness of the worry cannot be easily established. So far the problem has not become acute. Stop-loss orders that prevent some military personnel from leaving the service at the scheduled end of their tours, together with a surge of patriotism after 9/11, together with limited awareness to date of just how long the Iraq mission is likely to last, have limited the fallout of overdeployments. But there can be no assurance that this state of affairs will continue. Avoiding a personnel crisis in the all-volunteer military has become the chief force management challenge for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld or his successor, much more so than transforming the armed forces or relocating overseas bases.

The problem is most acute for the US Army, which numbers only a half million active-duty troops, though it is also significant for the Marine Corps. The Air Force and Navy have benefited considerably from not only the end of the Iraq invasion but also from the end of the no-fly zone and sanctions enforcement operations that characterized the 1991-2003 period. However, US ground forces still have about 140,000 personnel in Iraq, another 30,000 or so in Kuwait and other parts of the Persian Gulf region, and nearly 20,000 in Afghanistan. More than 25,000 soldiers remain in Korea (even if several thousand of those are now slated to go to Iraq); nearly 2,000 are still in the Balkans; several thousand marines are on Okinawa; dozens here and hundreds there are on temporary assignments around the world. Virtually all of these soldiers, most of them married, are currently separated from their home bases and families. (1)

This total of some 225,000 deployed troops must be generated from an Army of just over one million and a Marine Corps of just over 200,000 total personnel. The strain is greatest on the Army, with about 190,000 soldiers deployed out of its million-soldier total strength.

As noted in Figure 1, the active-duty Army numbers just under 500,000, of which only about 320,000 soldiers are easily deployable at any given moment. The Army Reserve and Army National Guard together include 550,000 troops, a quarter or more of whom typically have been activated in recent times. For example, in late 2003, 156,000 Army reservists were mobilized out of a total of 558,000, and in June 2004 the number stood at 130,000. Cumulatively since 11 September 2001,213,000 Army reservists had been mobilized at least once by the end of the 2003-04 winter, just under 40 percent of the total. Roughly 30 percent of Air Force Reserve or National Guard personnel have been mobilized as well, just under 25 percent of Navy reserve personnel, and more than 50 percent of the Marine Corps' small reserve. But by now the reserve activations of those other services have dropped quite substantially, whereas the Army's remains at a high level. (2)

Deployment demands are likely to remain great, even if Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush hope otherwise. Foreign coalition partners in Iraq continue to provide about 25,000 troops, but that number is not trending upward. That makes it likely that US troop strength there will have to remain substantial for a long time to come. Indeed, the US military is preparing for the possibility that its current strength in Iraq of just over 140,000 may have to remain at that level for years. The history of recent stabilization missions suggests that even a favorable scenario might see the number decline to about 100,000 in 2005, 75,000 in 2006, 50,000 or so in 2007-08, and perhaps half that latter number for a period thereafter. (3) It is entirely possible that these estimates could prove wrong--and even that the United States could be asked to leave Iraq rather suddenly in the coming year or two. But planners cannot assume such an outcome.

As a result, the typical active-duty US soldier in a deployable unit could literally spend the majority of the next three to four years abroad. In 2004 alone, even before the problems in Iraq in the spring led to an increase in planned force levels there, 26 of the Army's 33 main combat brigades in the active force were to deploy abroad at some point during the year. Over the course of 2003 and 2004 together, virtually all of the 33 brigades will have been deployed.

The typical reservist might be deployed for another 12 months over the next couple years. As one example, all 15 of the Army National Guard's enhanced separate brigades are to be deployed at some point by 2006. (4) But the greater problem is with units that have to be mobilized more than once. Through the winter of 2003-04, somewhat fewer than 40,000 reservists had been involuntarily mobilized more than once since 9/11, not an enormously high number, but one that is continually growing. (5) The overall pace of Army overseas deployments on tours away from home base (and families) is more than twice what it was during the 1990s, when overdeployment was blamed for shortfalls in recruiting and retention on several occasions. (6)