Every month or so around here (Oregon) it seems that there’s another news story about such-and-such reserve unit being called up and sent to Iraq.
So I’m wondering;
do we not have enough regular Army troops to send over there?
What is the size of the standing army these days?
What percentage of troops in Iraq are RA vs. reservists?
No I’m not in the reserves, and I’m way to old to get drafted. I’m just curious, and a little surprised that we don’t have more people under arms considering our country’s size and the militaristic zeal of it’s leaders.
From watching the Jessica Lynch stories, it also seems to me that many of the people sent over there are ill-prepared to be put in harm’s way.
One reason is that the new plan for the armed forces is to have the regular, standing army be mostly operational types; infantry, armor, artillery etc. Most of the logistic support when operations like Iraq come around are then furnished by reserves.
I think the posts only brush the surface of the situation.
The US has more than enough enlisted people in the service. But since WWII, it has become very top heavy. So a lot of enlisted people are really just keeping the Generals and such happy. The actual number of “ready to go” combat troops has shrunk dramatically.
Ergo, they’ve been “scavanging” for troops from reserves and the NG units.
There has been no “viable” method figured out over the last 50 years on how to have a large standing (usually) peacetime US military and not have so many freakin’ Generals.
The regular US Army has a little bit of everything, but is heavy on combat and logistical elements.
The reserves are generally specialized units that are highly specialized and aren’t generally trainable quickly- water purification, public affairs, etc… These are usually higher HQ type units- Corps, Army, etc…
The National Guard is the primary combat strength of the US, in terms of numbers, and is made up primarily of combat units(tank battalions, infantry companies, etc…)
The reason that there are lots of Guard and reserve units going to Iraq is because in some cases, there aren’t enough active-duty units of that type to go around- i.e. if the Army has 5 water purification companies, and 3 are in Iraq at any given time, then they’ll have to call up a reserve unit when it’s time to rotate them back stateside, or else leave them in Iraq longer than they should.
In the case of Guard units, they’re probably replacing larger units like brigades wholesale.
This isn’t anything new- they’ve had rapid mobilization Guard units for a long time now- for a while there, they even had round-out components of active divisions come from the National Guard.