Despite talk of needing more soldiers in Afghanistan, the Army remains committed to reducing deployments from 15 to 12 months starting in August, said Army Chief of Staff Gen. George William Casey Jr., who Saturday toured Fort Bliss.
I can't see any reason we can't do this. And I think we are in range of going to 2:1 home-to-deployed time.
You need 1.15 brigades to keep one brigade in the field for one year (to account for overlap and movement). We have 42 Army brigades (moving to 48 in a few years) and 9 Marine regimental combat teams as the base force in the active components.
Subtract 1 Army brigade in South Korea from the mix and subtract 3 brigades (heavy, infantry, airborne) as a strategic reserve. Subtract 2 Marine regiments for MEU rotations and 1 in the Western Pacific, leaving 6 Marine regiments. That's 44 brigades (going up to per year for next three years).
Multiply those 44 brigades by 0.87 (that 1.15 ratio) and you get 38 brigades deployed for one year. So for 1:1 deployment, we could field 19 brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan. With 2 years home and 1 deployed, we could field close to 13 brigades.
This doesn't include 28 Army National Guard brigades and three reserve Marine regiments. Assuming we deploy these only once every six years, these get us up to 5 brigades extra per year. These would serve only 9 months rather than a year so multiply 5 by 0.75 and round down to 3 brigade-equivalents deployed for a year that can be added right to the numbers above (19 and 13) for up to 22 brigades in the field while keeping active deployments one year deployed with one year home or 16 with a 2:1 home:deployed ratio. Although it is more likely that we'd be talking a couple combat brigades per year from the reserves at any one time.
Even as we speak of having perhaps 5 combat brigades in Afghanistan, we could easily see our forces in Iraq down to 10 brigades by the end of next year. Barring complications, the 1:1 ratio will be short-lived as we move to 2:1 home-to-deployed time.
The strain on our ground forces has peaked without breaking them. They will emerge not as battle scarred but as battle tested. Our enemies have reason to fear our ground forces for another generation at least.
