Expanding the Force

Army, Mar 2007 by Kroesen, Frederick J

Right after I wrote last month's article, predicting a spate of opposition opinions on increasing the size of the Army, The Washington Post published "Don't Grow the Army" by Gordon Adams and John Diamond.

The argument begins with the statement, "This proposal is a bad idea," and goes on to say it is "irrelevant to the stresses the Army is experiencing in Iraq," "would build enormous longterm costs into the defense budget,", cannot be supported with volunteer manpower, and "presumes a role ... for the U.S. military that the voters emphatically opposed in November." The introduction ends with: "Plainly put, it is bad national security policy."

My counterargument maintains that growing the Army is not only good national security policy, it is absolutely essential to meet the long-term demands of national security.

The revelation, noted last month, that an Army brigade's dwell time between combat tours is less than a year is, I believe, confirmation that the Army is too small. That kind of rotation with the current force guarantees that soldiers already on their third tour will be expected three years from now to be on their sixth. Sustaining that pace is a stressful demand, not only on soldiers but on their equipment, their families and the sustaining institutions of the Army.

The Army's educational system has been denuded, the training base is in constant overtime, the Recruiting Command has drained thousands of NCOs and officers from the operating forces and our depots and maintenance facilities are overwhelmed with a backlog of materiel requiring repair. The rebuilding of these parts of the Army is equally as important as increasing the operating force strength. Providing a more reasonable rotation base without a parallel improvement in the sustaining base is just another plan for inadequacy.

I can agree that solving the immediate problems of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is the job of the forces in being. Only if today's demands persist into future years will Army expansion begin to play a role in these two countries, but if those problems have not been solved, the failure to expand will be disastrous. And if those problems are resolved, the expansion will be restoring our historic capability to cope with two wars, two contingencies, two international crises or whatever we are calling a need for which today's Army is incapable.

That an expansion cannot be supported by volunteer manpower is refuted by the fact that we now have more than 100,000 contract employees in Iraq and Afghanistan. When the reward is worth the risk, manpower is available for the task. Acknowledging that fact will be germane as Congress fulfills its responsibility to raise the Army. There is an American manpower pool far exceeding the one that built an eight million man Army in World War II and the one that sustained a 780,000-man volunteer Army from the 1970s to the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Congress has long almost abrogated this responsibility by requiring the Army (and the other services) to recruit for themselves, but that does not relieve that body of its ultimate responsibility when the demand is appropriately demonstrated.

The cost increase in the Defense budget will be a large sum in dollars, but it will be a minor percentage of the gross national product or even the annual federal budget which now totals trillions of dollars. It is a rather amazing transition to one who remembers when one administration was politically determined to keep the federal budget below $100 billion while engaged in the Vietnam War.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has now proposed increases for the Army and Marine Corps, and his proposal has been endorsed by the President. That is a welcome recognition of a longtime need, and while the recommendation does not reach the AUSA goal of 100,000, it is enough of a start upon which the Army can build towards its ultimate needs.

So far my prediction of a spate of opposition opinions has been an exaggeration. Instead, it seems to me there has been a lack of comment, an ignoring of the proposal. It will be interesting to see how Congress responds in the coming months to what should be acknowledged as an absolute requirement for our future national security. The war on terrorism is a multiyear effort that will require well trained, versatile forces for worldwide offensive strikes before our security is again assured.

By Gen. Frederick J. Kroesen

U.S. Army retired

GEN. FREDERICK J. KROESEN, USA Ret., is a former commander in chief of U.S. Army Europe and a senior fellow of AUSA's Institute of Land Warfare.