The U.S. Army is going to reduce its combat tours from 12 months to nine. This will not be fully implemented for another two years. After that, the army will try to increase dwell time (how long troops are at their home base, between combat tours) to three years. While all this is great for morale, it has also been found to reduce PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or combat fatigue) losses. ...
The math works like this. The army, marines and reserves can muster about sixty combat brigades. During 2004-7, there were 19 brigades deployed to combat zones (15 in Iraq, three in Afghanistan and one in South Korea.) That's when the army began working to get active duty troops two years dwell time for every year in a combat zone. For reserves, the goal was home for four years, overseas for one. It was believed that, with a little help from the marines, the army can just about make that. The increase in troops sent to Afghanistan will delay this dwell time plan for a few years.
This requires some clarification.
We have 45 active Army brigades and 8 active Marine regimental combat teams (or perhaps 9 now, after the Marines got an increase in end strength along with the Army), making for 53 active brigades or brigade equivalents. Add in 3 Marine reserve regiments. Now we are at 56. So the Army National Guard can add 4 more brigades to reach the 60 Strategypage notes?
Not exactly. The Guard has 28 brigade combat teams, total. The plan for the Guard combat brigades is to plan for 4 to 5 brigades available to be mobilized in any given year. That is what gets us to 60.
It would be better to think of the Guard providing 4-5 brigades per year, the Marine reserves providing 1 regiment, the active Marines providing 2-3 regiments per year, and the Army providing 13 per year--or 10 if we get dwell time up to 3 years instead of 2 between deployments. So we could deploy on a sustainable basis when dwell time is at maximum, of 17 to 19 brigades per year.
This is a bit complicated by the fact that Marine tours are 6 or 7 months. In the past they were 7 but the Strategypage post says 6. And the Army and Guard are aiming at 9 month tours. So hack off a couple brigades from the total to account for shorter terms and more rotations during a given year.
So we could deploy 15 to 17 brigades in the field continuously. If we are talking about waging war in Afghanistan, stabilizing Iraq, and standing in South Korea on guard, this should be fine.
Of course, it all goes out the window if we have to fight another war. One can only plan so much. The enemy ultimately gets a say in what we need to do, too.
If that happened, the Army would respond by hiking tours up to a year, or more, as was done during the surge when Army tours went up to 15 months. At some level of deployments, it gets too tough to rotate troops too often, given limited transportation assets and the capabilities of ports and airfields.
Still, it is good that the stress on the Army is going to go down in the near term. Take what we can get when we can get it.
