For over 2 years now I have been blogging at The Command T.O.C.that one of the most devastating impacts of the war in Iraq will be (and now is) the hollowing out of our Army. Generals prior to the war in Iraq were quoted as saying, "Beware of the 12 division strategy when you only have 10 divisions". I have been saying the Army is not resourced nor designed for extensive nation building. Even Rumsfeld tacitly admitted that the Army was not suited for what it was asked to do when he said, "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you wish you had".
Thanks to my readers, I continue to get "inside" information on the state of the Army and this time I received some slide packets from a G-1 Army conference held this month. At this conference, HRC (Human Resources Command) briefed the state of the Army reserve (including the IRR) and it is frightening. The remainder of this article will discuss some key findings.
NOTE: What you see are screenshots of portions of DoD Human Resource Command slides. I have the entire slide packet if you would like to review. Also, see note below for statement on classification of data.
First, let's take a look at the "propensity for people to want to serve" as outlined by the DOD Youth poll below (Remember, these are DOD's own numbers).
What we see now is that it is clear Bush and the Army have lost the Nation when it comes to wanting to serve. When asked the following question, "How likely is it that you will be serving in the military in the next few years" the numbers have dropped from 27% in 2001 for Hispanics to 14% in June of 2006. For Caucasians and African Americans, it has dropped about as much although from a lower starting point. Bottom line: Bush and the Army, with their crazy escapade in Iraq, have lost America's youth. It is not because we are in a war as the numbers stayed high for a while during the war. But, now that they see it is not a War for Terrorism but a War of imperialism, the American youth have tuned them out and turned off. The hollowing begins....
Second, the status of the Army Reserve is appalling when measured by the amount of soldiers available for combat duties. The slide below shows that while the "end strength" shows 188,234 soldiers, only 35,395 are actually eligible for a full call up right now to be deployed! Over 28,000 of the 188,234 soldiers have some kind of "problem" such as medical profile, family care plan etc. This is incredible.
Now we know why Bush's "surge" is such a feeble response. He could call up every person in the United States Army reserve who is eligible to go fight and only get 35,395 soldiers!
What is more incredible is what is on the next slide. On this slide, the presenter points out that over 2/3 of the 35,395 number are brand new, just enlisted, soldiers. Over 24,000 are E-1 to E-4.
Remember the reserves were supposed to be this great force of specialties which do not exist in the active army. Instead, when you look at the deployable force, it really is just a bunch of new recruits right out of AIT.
If that has not scared you, the next slide will. The statement on this slide says, " Completely dependent on voluntarism to support FY06 leadership requirements". Further, they "assume" that the higher leadership ranks will be filled by "re-training". This means that for those who do get called or do volunteer, chances are you will not fill your current skill and MOS but rather will go through a "quickie" course to get trained to whatever they need you to be.
And the IRR, well, what can we say. The IRR is in worse shape than ever. According to the final slide, there are 91,797 IRR soldiers of which only 22,372 are eligible for a mobilization. They caveat this with a statement which says, " But, there are few low density skill/MOS matches".
This can be translated into "We don't have the right people so we are going to retrain and reclass as we call people up.
What we have seen here is proof positive of two things:
- The military if officially "hollowed out". We have nothing left. What is left can't deploy. We are debating whether to stay in Iraq or not but what is really true is that we can't stay there if we wanted to. This is the Army that Bush will turn over to the Country. What a disgrace.
- The Army is digging in for a long war. Look at the tag line of these slides: " Manning the Force while Transforming for the Long War". First, it has the obligatory "Transformation" word. Good job slide maker. Second, it is citing "the" long war. Not a long war or one which may happen but "the" long war. This means we are in BIG BIG trouble.
The Army is hollowed out as evidenced by the slides here. We need to look at this in a larger perspective than Bush is currently able to do. Meaning: If we do not either DRASTICALLY increase the size of the Army and the budget of the Army (which means huge tax increases and sacrifices on the part of civilians), or pull back our soldiers from "lost cause" efforts such as Iraq, we will be in a FAR WORSE SECURITY shape than we have been since the Carter era.
In a perverse sort of way, the President who appears to be strong on national defense because of his visible use of the armed forces has actually made us far less safe due to his hollowing out of the same.
EDITOR'S NOTE: All slides and data used in this presentation are in free domain. I searched high and low for any markings of confidential, "for your eyes only" etc. and found none. This is public domain information.