A Familiar Strain Is Felt In Stateside Guard Unit

[trancepriest]

A Familiar Strain Is Felt In Stateside Guard Unit

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 19, 2004; Page A01



The trouble began Labor Day weekend, when 13 members of the 1st Battalion of the 178th Field Artillery Regiment went AWOL, mainly to see their families again before shipping out. Then there was an ugly confrontation between members of the battalion's Alpha and Charlie batteries -- the term artillery units use instead of "companies" -- that threatened to turn into a brawl involving three dozen soldiers, and required the base police to intervene.

for more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Sep18.html

[saintjohn]

thanks for link. here's more on the general subject of overdeployment from parameters, the "united states army's senior professional journal," which is published quarterly by the army war college:

After criticizing the Clinton Administration for overdeploying and overusing the US military in the 1990s, the Bush Administration is now doing exactly the same thing—except on a much larger scale. Having made the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and having badly underestimated the difficulty as well as the force requirements of accomplishing the post-Saddam stabilization effort successfully, the Bush Administration or its successor now needs to get serious about making ends match means. At present, the latter are insufficient.

The possibility exists that large numbers of active-duty troops and reservists may soon leave the service rather than subjecting themselves to a life continually on the road. The seriousness of the worry cannot be easily established. So far the problem has not become acute. Stop-loss orders that prevent some military personnel from leaving the service at the scheduled end of their tours, together with a surge of patriotism after 9/11, together with limited awareness to date of just how long the Iraq mission is likely to last, have limited the fallout of overdeployments. But there can be no assurance that this state of affairs will continue. Avoiding a personnel crisis in the all-volunteer military has become the chief force management challenge for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld or his successor, much more so than transforming the armed forces or relocating overseas bases.

conclusion:

Despite all the above laudable and promising initiatives, the Army— and perhaps the Marine Corps as well, but particularly the Army—needs an immediate increase in active-duty troop levels. In fact, the decision is overdue. At the latest, it should have been made as soon as it became obvious in mid-2003 that the post-Saddam Iraq stabilization mission would be difficult and long. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), it would take five years to fully train and recruit an additional 80,000 troops.

source:

http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/P...mn/ohanlon.htm