Army foresees doubling up tours

[NNN0LHI]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=676&ncid=716&e=22&u=/usatoday/20030825/ts_usatoday/11690083

For the first time since the all-volunteer Army began in 1973, significant numbers of U.S. combat soldiers may have to start serving back-to-back overseas tours of up to a year each in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan and South Korea, top Army officers say.

Grappling with large, simultaneous deployments around the world, Army planners are trying to determine how many troops will have to serve extra tours. Based on the forces they must keep in place overseas, planners have concluded they will have no choice but to force thousands of troops to return to new overseas assignment after only a short time at home. Currently, troops can deploy with their families for years to places such as Germany or Japan, but they go to war zones or potential war zones such as Iraq or Korea without their families and typically serve there no more than a year.

"The Army is monitoring the situation," says Maj. Steve Stover, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon. "But we will do everything in our power to prevent back-to-back deployments."

Army officials are worried that the added tours will lower morale and cause a wave of exits throughout the Army. A key concern is that the deployments will cause an exodus of experienced, mid-career veterans such as sergeants, staff sergeants and captains, who are harder to replace than younger soldiers.

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[arcane1]

1. venture capital

or as Goff says, Tyson's chickens

[MrBenchley]

2. You would think...

....that if the unelected drunk were as popular as the right wing blowhards pretend he is, the recruitment booths would be clogged with eager young folk, newly converted to conservativism, and these desperate steps wouldn't be necessary....but right wingers are all chickenhawks, and this turd's popularity is a flat-out lie...

[WillyT]

4. Good Point... Does The Military Post Its Recruitment Statictics ???

I know a whole bunch of folks were signing up after 9\11, but I wonder how the recruiting offices\officers are doing now???

:shrug:

[trogdor]

5. I really have no idea how it is at Recruiting Command lately.

But I do know that the "end strength" of the Armed Forces is regulated by Congress. Thus, regardless of how many people are lining up at the recruiting offices to join up, the services have a limited pool of troops to do these missions. Asking for increases in authorized strength is a politically touchy subject, to say the least, because it would constitute an admission on the part of the Bushies that we're in over our heads.

Nonetheless, apart from the usual propaganda from Army Times and such, all I hear is bad news for recruiting and retention. Conservative or no, I doubt many people are signing up for this fight.

[TahitiNut]

9. Rumsfeld was trying an end run on this.

In April Rumsferatu submitted an omnibus proposal (power grab) entitled "Defense Transformation for the 21st Century Act" to Congress. In the Chicago Tribune story, it was noted:

According to David Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and
readiness, the U.S. armed forces are 31,400 over authorized strength
because a "stop loss" hold was put on members preparing to retire or
otherwise leave the service during the Iraq emergency.

Rumsfeld is proposing to keep uniformed strength at about 1.5million
but turn over as many as 300,000 jobs now performed by military
personnel to outside civilian contractors.

Rumsfeld's plan also would:

- Authorize the secretary of defense to spend $200 million to
"assist foreign nations whose support is critical to
counterterrorism efforts";

- Empower the secretary to waive laws that require the use of
American-made products if they interfere with national security;

- Enable the Pentagon to award contracts on the basis of quality as
well as low cost;

- Remove limits on the defense secretary's office staff;

- Streamline the defense secretary's ability to spend money on the
missile defense program;

- End a requirement for the Defense Department to periodically
report to Congress on many issues--the list covers about 100
pages--including the B-1 bomber, which Rumsfeld says has proved
itself in combat.

IOW, they've been operating over strength and Wehrmachtsfuhrer Rumsfeldstein wants to 'privatize' (more crony capitalist dollars) part of the military (at huge cost increases) and use the 300,000 'freed up' personnel in other (combat) operations. In essence, it's a 30% military manpower increase for probably more than a 50% increase in associated costs.

[alcuno]

3. "will cause an exodus"

I thought they were already unable to get out.

[PartyPooper]

8. And, it will trigger more divorces by frustrated and angry spouses.

Plus, there will be a myriad of chronic mental health issues associated with these long, stressful deployments.

[beanball]

6. More troops

in order to retain and recuit more troops the current chickenhawks in this misadministration will with misgivings raise the low pay of their beloved troops and cut more social programs for the poor.

[FloridaPat]

7. I'd like to see all the troops pull a "bush" - just walk off the job.

Refuse to serve. Like they said in the 60's: "What if you had a war and no one showed up to fight it?"

[legin]

10. Yup

Now they are looking at the rotation system.

This is an abstract example.

You have two jobs that require troops, job A and job B, job A started six months before Job B, both jobs require 100,000 troops.

With a one year on, one year off system Job A requires 100,000 in the field and 100,000 having their year off. The same for job B. So the total number of troops needed is 400,000.

With a one year on, six months off system you only need 300,000 troops.

Job A started 6 months before job B, so that when the original troops from job A have been rotated out they have six months off and are then ready to releive the job B troops.

Not very well explained sorry.

Basically I think the mechanism is first use up all your reseves, then tinker with the rotation, and then assuming they havn't got another resource they can pull, then it's the draft.