I don't understand why dropping the Army's end strength to 450,000 means we have to drop below 32 brigade combat teams. But that is what this says:
[Army Vice Chief of Staff John] Campbell did not say exactly how few active-duty brigades the Army could afford to have with the smaller Army, which is being cut from 510,000 soldiers currently.
But he said the number of brigades would have to be reduced to below 32, the number tied to a troop strength of 490,000. The Army had 45 brigades last year.
“That 32 is tied to 490,000 not 450,000. ... At 450,000 or 420,000 we can’t keep the same amount,” Campbell said.
A Feb. 28 report from the Congressional Research Service cited an Army briefing suggesting active-duty brigades could be cut to 24 with an Army of 420,000 soldiers in 2019. ...
It would leave the Pentagon with much fewer brigades to deploy around the world for military and humanitarian work. It would also reduce opportunities for training, and could limit U.S. support for some international missions.
The Congressional Research Service report said a 420,000-soldier Army would also mean reducing National Guard brigade combat teams (BCTs) to 22.
I don't understand how 32 brigades is tied to 490,000. Yes, that's about the size of the pre-9/11 Army of 32 brigades.
But during the Iraq War, we freed up 40,000 Army slots by more efficiently managing troops not in units (for schooling, moving, training, or discipline), by converting Cold War-era units, and by eliminating some jobs done by soldiers in favor of having civilians do those jobs.
By using those slots, the Army expanded by 9 brigades. So dropping end strength by 40,000 doesn't seem like it should mean we must drop below 32 brigades. I know this must take into account three different types of units (pre-9/11 brigades that fought under divisions that provided support functions, Iraq War-era brigade combat teams that abandoned the division as the provider of many support functions, and the proposed larger brigade combat teams going forward), but we also eliminated 10 divisional armored cavalry squadrons (battalions) in making the Iraq War-era BCTs--which we won't have in the new plan. So this doesn't make sense.
General Odierno even said that we could manage 32 of these newest brigade combat teams at 450,000.
I had done some back-of-the envelope calculations and thought we could handle 32 BCTs even at 420,000, but I admitted that this doesn't take into account new types of units we've created (like UAVs). So I'm willing to go with Odierno's judgment.
But losing 30,000 more will kill 8 more BCTs? That's dropping to Rumsfeld pre-Iraq War plans to drop the Army to 8 divisions!
And the Guard will drop to 22 BCTs? Pre-9/11 it had 8 divisions (which normally have 3 brigades each) and 18 independent brigades (including a scout "group")--15 of which were enhanced readiness brigades designed to be mobilized more quickly than the rest. I think the total was 42 brigades.
During reorganization we went first to 35 brigade combat teams and then settled on 28. Now it is to go to 22? When we had 42 brigades the Guard had over 350,000. Just how small is the Guard going to get?
The only way this makes sense is if the Army is desperately (and rightly) prioritizing equipping, training, and readiness at the expense of numbers. If the Army is being told it doesn't have to worry about a land war and keeps numbers as the priority, what happens when an enemy votes for a land war?
What happens is that civilian leaders see 32 brigade combat teams which they remember did pretty well in the post-9/11 wars. They won't listen to the Army when it says these units just aren't ready to fight the way those older BCTs were. So the Army will be sent to war with the Army it has and not the Army the civilian leaders think we have, and the cost will be high.
If the Army is using these caps as an excuse to reduce BCTs in order to keep funds for equipping, training, and maintaining units, I can understand the warning.
At least with 24 brigades that the Army knows are good, it will be easier to explain what missions can and can't be done at whatever level of risk, and civilian leaders won't make decisions based on past performance which cannot be repeated at the then-current funding levels.
And I suppose in case of a prolonged mission, the Army could reorganize again to the Iraq War-era BCTs and add 8 more BCTs to have 32 (smaller) BCTs for rotation purposes.
The budget world is alien to me. So I'm not sure what the Army has to do to make that world apply to the reality the Army faces and will face.
