Some highlights:
- 100,000 troops will be moved from Cold War-type units to units needed now.
- 10,000 troops will be freed up in 2004-05 by moving some functions to civilians. I'd once read that maybe 300,000 could be freed up by this method but as time goes on I doubt my memory on this one. I'm assuming far less until I see otherwise.
- We are going from 33 active Army brigades to 43 and perhaps to 48 after 2007. O'Hanlon calls them smaller than current brigades but when we are going from 3-battalion brigades to a two-battalion brigade (with each battalion having 4 instead of 3 companies) plus a super recon battalion, that looks like more strength to me. Plus, I thought we'd added another separate brigade by beefing up our parachute units to create 173rd AB brigade. Perhaps I'm mistaken here.
- The National Guard is the bigger surprise to me. I'd read that the Guard was losing 2 of its 8 combat divisions, converting those 2 lost into support divisions. I'd read that the Guard was too politically powerful to take away the divisions. But O'Hanlon reports that the Guard will be reorganized into 33 brigades (including 1 Stryker unit) which is down two brigades from the current structure. The divisions are gone. This is fine with me since the divisions are becoming the new corps in essence. We didn't have Guard corps before and Guard divisions were to be plugged into active corps. Now Guard brigades will be added to active divisions.
