The Pentagon will soon release its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) that will include details on the Army’s force restructuring plan. Senior defense officials have resisted calls to permanently increase overall Army troop strength. They have argued that changes in the so-called “tooth-to-tail ratio” will add more combat capability without the need for more troops. But one study prepared for the Defense Department reportedly concludes that the Army’s reorganization plan will decrease overall combat capability. According to InsideDefense.com,
A study prepared for the Defense Department has found an Army plan to reorganize its forces into “brigade combat teams” will reduce net fighting capability rather than strengthen it, contrary to the service’s vision. But the Army is hotly contesting the study’s findings and recommendations. The service was successful in keeping the critique out of the Pentagon’s wide-ranging Quadrennial Defense Review, to be released early next month, according to officials. Under the service’s plan, brigade combat teams — dubbed “BCTs” — are becoming the central Army fighting unit to be deployed globally, drawing minimal support from higher headquarters…. But to increase brigades without boosting overall manpower of the service, officials say they must strip each brigade of one “maneuver” battalion composed of infantry troops or heavy arms. Army leaders say they can field just two such battalions per brigade, rather than the traditional three, in part because each brigade will also have a reconnaissance battalion for support. The move results in a net loss of 40 maneuver battalions, according to analysts. To serve as the essential link between joint commanders and troops on the ground, each brigade headquarters will grow from less than 100 personnel to about 250, Army officials say. Both the newly expanded BCT headquarters and its reconnaissance battalion will employ new information technologies to develop better intelligence about enemy forces, according to service officials. They can act as “force multipliers” to strengthen or “enable” the more sparsely populated combat troops in each brigade, the thinking goes. Yet a series of new reports, written last year by the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) for the Pentagon’s program analysis and evaluation directorate, concludes the Army could provide more valuable combat power to top commanders in Iraq and elsewhere if it beefs up the BCTs with three or even four maneuver battalions apiece. Neither the Defense Department nor IDA has released publicly any of the eight or more reports the organization provided to the Pentagon. “The current Army plan for fielding 43 [active duty] two-battalion [brigade combat teams] does not provide the optimum allocation of scarce Army manpower resources,” according to one of the IDA papers, obtained by ITP . “The essence of land power is resident in the maneuver battalions that occupy terrain, control populations and fight battles, not in headquarters and enablers. Yet the Army plan reduces the number of maneuver battalions by 20 percent below the number available in 2003, while increasing BCT headquarters by 11.5 percent.” …Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s program analysis and evaluation directorate commissioned the analysis as part of its quadrennial review, an end-to-end study of Pentagon programs and policies. But when it became clear the Army would adamantly reject IDA’s findings and recommendations, Rumsfeld’s team declined to stand behind the new analysis, according to officials…. “IDA’s position is that three maneuver battalions is more capable than two maneuver battalions. Guess what: We agree,” says the Army officer, speaking on condition of anonymity. The disagreement comes in assessing the value of other elements of combat power — information and leadership among them — in compensating for the planned cuts in fires and maneuver capability…. The IDA study implies “that emerging technology is [still] emerging,” and thus it is too soon to count on its effects to compensate for a full battalion per brigade, says one official who asked to remain unnamed in this article. Even looking into the future, technology may not prove to be a full substitute for combat “boots on the ground,” according to supporters of the IDA view…. Instead the Quadrennial Defense Review will likely cut the number of active-duty BCTs to 42, according to a draft copy of the Pentagon report. Army officials say the new figure better facilitates rotation plans to deploy active-duty soldiers for one year every three years. Creating 42 BCTs in the active component and 28 in the Army National Guard “equates to a 46 percent increase in readily available combat power and a better balance between combat and support forces,” according to a recent draft version of the quadrennial review report, obtained by InsideDefense.com. That stands in sharp contrast to IDA’s contention that the Army’s BCT plan will “lead to a deployable force that will be 43 percent smaller in terms of total maneuver battalions and companies in 2011 than was deployed in early 2005,” according to one of the papers it provided to the Defense Department. “If the Army is strained today by the current operations in Iraq, would it not be logical to assume that in the future fewer maneuver battalions would exacerbate the strain even further?”
This Los Angeles Times piece, “Pentagon Planning Document Leaves Iraq Out of Equation,” has more on the QDR.
[W]hile some new lessons will be incorporated into the Pentagon review, the spending blueprint for the next four years will largely stick to the script Pentagon officials wrote before the Iraq war, according to those familiar with the nearly final document that will be presented to Congress in early February…. For more than two years, Army officials have been fending off questions about whether they have enough troops to complete their mission in Iraq and racing to get armor plates bolted onto Humvees and supply trucks to defend against homemade bombs. But in the Pentagon blueprint, officials are once again talking about a futuristic force of robots, networked computers and drone aircraft. And they are planning no significant shift in resources to bulk up ground forces strained by the lengthy occupation of Iraq…. The number of soldiers needed to fight ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, meet other foreign commitments and ensure that there is a large enough reserve force to respond to a future crisis has been the subject of intense debate inside the Pentagon.
