Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno said his greatest fear is to receive an order to deploy thousands of troops. And with good reason.

The Army has only two combat-ready brigades right now, he said. Even the ones headed to Afghanistan are qualified for the trainer and adviser mission, not combat.

Odierno said he hopes to get the number of trained and equipped brigades to seven by June 2014.

“There is going to come a time when we simply don’t have enough money to provide what I believe to be the right amount of ground forces to conduct contingency operations,” he said. “We’re not there yet, but it is something we are going to continue to review.”

Army Secretary John McHugh said he and the chief are committed that “whatever the Army’s end strength and its budgets may look like, we will never send a soldier into war unprepared, untrained or improperly equipped.” But he acknowledged that there are unprecedented uncertainties with which the service must contend.

The cost of sequestration is being covered by readiness and modernization dollars. That is why there are so few brigades trained and equipped for the combat mission. Service leaders look to accelerate the drawdown to help free up some money and balance training, modernization and end strength.

One step in this endeavor is an effort to cut 25 percent of overhead in headquarters. The Pentagon only required a 20-percent cut, but Odierno said the larger slice “can achieve some significant savings” — thousands of soldiers that could instead help fill a Brigade Combat Team, for example.

But many problems are beyond Army control. Leading that category is a gridlocked Congress’ habit of passing “continuing resolutions.” These force the military to operate on the previous year’s budgets — which are several billion shorter than the president’s current budget proposals.

“By the time any budget is developed through the services, cleared through the Department of Defense, goes through the [Office of Management and Budget], goes through the administration, goes to Capitol Hill, gets through the House and Senate and is passed and is signed by the president, by the time we are executing that budget it is almost three years old,” McHugh said. “So a budget that locks us through a [continuing resolution] into last year’s budget is really a three-year-old budget. You can’t run the most important military on the face of the earth with three-year old budgets.”

These resolutions, combined with the crippling effect of sequestration, have had a negative impact on 485 programs, McHugh said. As a result, the service can’t start new contracts “which is enormously problematic” for an Army trying to evolve into a new era of technology.

And that means every program is in jeopardy.

“What do we need? We need to make sure our soldiers have the best equipment possible,” Odierno said. “We need to make sure our individual soldiers have protective equipment, they have the right sights, they have the right weapons. … We need something to replace the Humvee, we need to replace the Bradley. We need to invest in our aviation systems — our UH-60s, our Apaches, our CH-47s. We need to make sure that in the complex environments we are going to operate in that we have a network that enables us to pass information very quickly down to the lowest element. We need all of it. The bottom line is we can’t afford all of it. So we’re going to have to make some tough decisions.”

Some programs will be reduced, others will be eliminated, Odierno said, though neither he nor the secretary was willing to name specific programs.

Some of those answers will likely emerge later this year. The chief currently is leading Quadrennial Defense Review meetings where future strategies and budgets are balanced, as best they can be.

 CptJake wrote:
I would say Odierno and other leaders confuse 'need' with 'want'.

I would also say the statement "but Odierno said the larger slice “can achieve some significant savings” — thousands of soldiers that could instead help fill a Brigade Combat Team, for example. " is very misleading. To think you can fill infantry squads and tank crews in BCTs with whatever he is taking out of HQs (at what ever level, we have to assume higher than BCT so division and above) is just silly. Those folks will be a completely different set of ranks and MOS than what you need to fill the BCTs, AND it does not address the training issue at all, instead exacerbating it. Compounding the problem is a lot of the functions done at higher HQ will still need to occur. You gut the logistics planning or intel analysis sections for example, the work still needs to be done or the BCTs which were supported by the work have a rougher time. Pushing the work down to the BCT level increases the requirement for people doing those functions (if a section at a Div supported 4 BCTs, now each BCT will need the personnel and gear to do those functions on their own).

We are already seeing functions previously done no lower than BN being pushed to companies, and this has increased the size of what a company deploys with, and increases the logistic support and low density MOS training burden as well as personnel requirements.

Not an easy problem to solve.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
I would say Odierno and other leaders confuse 'need' with 'want'.

I would also say the statement "but Odierno said the larger slice “can achieve some significant savings” — thousands of soldiers that could instead help fill a Brigade Combat Team, for example. " is very misleading. To think you can fill infantry squads and tank crews in BCTs with whatever he is taking out of HQs (at what ever level, we have to assume higher than BCT so division and above) is just silly. Those folks will be a completely different set of ranks and MOS than what you need to fill the BCTs, AND it does not address the training issue at all, instead exacerbating it. Compounding the problem is a lot of the functions done at higher HQ will still need to occur. You gut the logistics planning or intel analysis sections for example, the work still needs to be done or the BCTs which were supported by the work have a rougher time. Pushing the work down to the BCT level increases the requirement for people doing those functions (if a section at a Div supported 4 BCTs, now each BCT will need the personnel and gear to do those functions on their own).

We are already seeing functions previously done no lower than BN being pushed to companies, and this has increased the size of what a company deploys with, and increases the logistic support and low density MOS training burden as well as personnel requirements.

Not an easy problem to solve.

CptJake, I think the idea is he is cutting the size of HQs by cutting those personnel, and using the money saved on all them officers to hire more grunts.

 djones520 wrote:
That is where the early retirement push has come in of late Jake, and RIF'ing is the new thing again.

 Jihadin wrote:
I thought we were about to start the process of removing a BCT from each divisions? Leaving at least a RCT element of some sort. CAP cycle coming towards the end of this year. Our two Combat Ready Brigades from the sound of it is slotted for rotations into the "Box". Are they counting the "Ready" Brigade from the 82nd into the two or leaving that out?

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Now it is the time to invade, wait everyone owns a gun

'A' gun? Some of us could equip an infantry squad.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
And this is a problem because?

 Seaward wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
And this is a problem because?

Because military power is still relevant.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
My point was that it shouldn't be a problem from the view that the USA has a marine corps of 100,000 men (and women)

 Seaward wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
My point was that it shouldn't be a problem from the view that the USA has a marine corps of 100,000 men (and women)

And? Not every last one of those Marines is in a rifle company somewhere. It takes a lot of support staff to keep combat arms guys running, and 100K is a pretty small number no matter how you slice it.

We also continue to keep the two wars/two fronts scenario at the forefront of our planning, for very good reason.

 Frazzled wrote:
Compare the size of the Corps to the miltiaries of most nations and you'll say "why do they need an army too."

Unless we're going Empire building - in which case I want a gladius too!- you don't need more in a post nuke non-threat environment.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Seaward wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
My point was that it shouldn't be a problem from the view that the USA has a marine corps of 100,000 men (and women)

And? Not every last one of those Marines is in a rifle company somewhere. It takes a lot of support staff to keep combat arms guys running, and 100K is a pretty small number no matter how you slice it.

We also continue to keep the two wars/two fronts scenario at the forefront of our planning, for very good reason.

Compare the size of the Corps to the miltiaries of most nations and you'll say "why do they need an army too."

Unless we're going Empire building - in which case I want a gladius too!- you don't need more in a post nuke non-threat environment.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Leaving aside my jokes about UN invasion, who in the name of Dakka is going to invade a country with a $600 billion dollar defence budget? (more than the next 20 nations combined)

 Seaward wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Compare the size of the Corps to the miltiaries of most nations and you'll say "why do they need an army too."

Unless we're going Empire building - in which case I want a gladius too!- you don't need more in a post nuke non-threat environment.

Turns out unquestioned conventional supremacy's a pretty good way of guaranteeing a 'non-threat environment.'

And, just for the record, everyone who's ever predicted the world had seen its last major conflict ended up batting .000.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
If you stopped invading everywhere you wouldn't even need one combat ready brigade and you could spend those extra trillions of dollars on something that is beneficial to mankind

Frazz, to be a global empire, you need a suitable beverage. We had tea. What's the American equivalent? Don't say beer, because that is not beer you guys drink

 scarletsquig wrote:
When you can drone strike any square metre of dirt on the planet you want, there isn't much need for boots on the ground.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Frazz, to be a global empire, you need a suitable beverage. We had tea. What's the American equivalent? Don't say beer, because that is not beer you guys drink