That's not a warplan it's a...

[pecunium]

Looking at the present planning for the use of the National Guard, I'm worried.

There has been a lot of talk about the need, or lack of it, for more active duty troops. I was mentioned, but not enough, in the campaign. Kerry said we needed two-more divisions, at a total of 40,000 more troops (which really is more on the order of three divisions, but I digress).

The Administration said nonsense (but has been working to actually add 30,000 troops, as Acting Secretary of the Army Brownlee said to the October issue of Soldiers Magazine.

At present the Active Army can't meet the obligations it has. Some of this is systemic. It isn't just numbers, it's organization. The decision was made, under Bush Pere, to reorganise the force, putting a lot of the support elements in the reserve component. This was done to reduce the end strength, save money and keep the crucial services, for a major war, in the service. The idea was, in part, line units need extensive, regular, training to stay in top form. Support can be done with less than perfect peformance, for the a while, as the troops get back up to speed.

It also took advantage of the longer time the average reservist stays in the service.

But it was expected that going to the reserves would be saved for last resorts. The basic model, that the reserves were to fill immediate need, in time of grave emergency, while the country spooled up for full-scale war, wasn't changed.

Until now. Availability Model and Goals

Look at the red quadrant. It says twenty five percent of the Guard will be deployed at any given time.

The Guard. They say it will be one deployment of about 18 months) evey six years. Which means some people will be held past the time their contract expires (deployment stop loss). It means lives on hold, businesses that fail (both the ones owned by Guardsmen, and those which have important people who are in the Guard). Families that suffer.

How they intend to keep the deployments down to one every six years, and keep 25 percent of the troops deployed, I have no idea.

But the seed corn is being eaten fast. People will look at this, and decide to not extend (and the need for MPs, Intel and IS/commo means those, dificult to enlist, slow to be trained; much less skilled, MOSs will get deployed more often, esp. as they were very heavily moved to the Reserves).

Retention will fail, so more of the IRR will be called back to the colors.

And the war, well the war is, unless a whole lot of things change, not going to get any better.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I'd bet long odds that the officers who put that together know it's a bad plan too. It's just the best they can come up with given the parameters they've been given.

Yeah, it still sucks.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

To me, this looks worse than the military planning which went into the Vietnam war.

I'm not sure how it compares with the USSR's military planning for Afghanistan.

[sergeant3.livejournal.com]

I've got 13 years in, and I'll probably have 15 by the time I get back, just got my E-7. I'm seriously thinking about getting out when I get back. It's been too hard on my sons, and I don't wan to deploy again back to this place in few years. A friend of mine is a SSG, she's got 8 years in, she's getting out to.

So much for the seed corn, right?

*sigh*

[soldiergrrrl.livejournal.com]

Looks like I'll have about eight months with John in Germany before his AD unit rotates in. I'm not sure that I want to have a marriage that consists of back to back to back deployments. I'd like to see my husband more often than once every two years.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I have 12 in, and barring a guarantee the Army probably can't give me, I can't stay in.

I have a business to get off the ground, a relationship to keep, a better half whom I can't ask to go through my being deployed to Iraq again, a health problem I don't want to see return and I am in a high-demand MOS.

When you add my lack of belief that the war in Iraq is good idea, much less my thought that we have gone past the point of it being winnable, I am gonna have to hang it up.

Ad it's hard. I like the Army. I love the unit I'm in. But I can't give them 18 months every three years, much less the 24 every 36 they seem to be about to ask for.

So, come February, for the first time in 12 years, I'll probably be a civilian again. It's hard, but I can't see any way around it.

The well is running dry.

TK

[soldiergrrrl.livejournal.com]

I don't know what I'll do, to be honest. The Army is so much a part of who I am.

I may stick it out, but we'll see.

I *want* to stick it out, but God only knows how many nore deployments we're going to end up on.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Tell me about it dear. I just spent the past month taking classes, because they would be good for the unit, and my career.

I'm torn, but inaction isn't an option. My ETS is 28 Jan.

TK

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Is there anyone who does not, in their heart of hearts, see the draft looming?

That said, if the government took all the money that it would cost to reinstate and then run the draft and put it into better benefits for military people and their families, would the enlistment and retention rates increase sufficiently?

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I'm about as far from The Military Mindset as is possible short of being a Totally Pacifist Quaker -- a bookish person, though drafted c. 1950, put into a newly-Activated Guard outfit (40th Div.), served in Japan & Korea -- who doesn't like the Military, but realizes that it's necessary and important. It seems to me that the function of the National Guard should be to ...errr... guard the nation in case of invasion, attack, or domestic emergencies. If the President wishes to initiate foreign wars for political or economic reasons, that's what the Regular Army is for. The Guard is for emergencies, and our military expansion into the Middle East is calculated Policy, not any kind of Emergency. If there are problems retaining volunteer RA troops, increase their pay until it attracts enough. This bit about turning Guard troops into what amounts to Draftees is /b/u/l/l/ obviously not going to work well. You understand this, I understand this, the Commander In Chief should understand this.