New Afghan War Headache: Not Enough Troops Available?

Beneath Washington's political squabbling over a new war strategy for Afghanistan is a deeper concern, this one among the Pentagon's war planners: not enough troops to go around. It's easy to overlook in Washington, but the Army still has almost 100,000 soldiers deployed in Iraq, and it's becoming less clear when they're coming home. With the growing demands of the Afghanistan war and other global commitments, the Army currently has more soldiers deployed overseas than it had at the height of the Iraq "surge'' in 2007.

At that time, it was widely predicted that the strain on soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen and their families was so severe that the military would simply "shatter.'' That was nonsense, of course. The troops, wives, mothers, kids, simply sucked it up and kept on driving. Why? The grunts I've lived with in Afghanistan and Iraq love what they're doing (you gotta ignore the usual and constant griping), they know they're good at it, and their families honor that service. But there has been a cost, and they are paying it.

Here's what worries the planners: The Army has 44 brigade combat teams (BCTs), its basic deploying unit of between 3,500 and 4,500 soldiers. Of those, 19 brigade combat teams are already committed, including 11 in Iraq and five in Afghanistan. One BCT is stationed in Korea, one trains deploying soldiers at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., and one BCT is on strategic alert for potential crises.

There is a relentless and punishing logic to this pace. Maintaining one brigade combat team in the field requires two others on standby. So, for every unit in combat, planners keep a second one in training and a third one in "reset" after a long combat deployment – time when the Army can send its soldiers off for advanced schooling, absorb new replacements, receive new gear. Thus, a total of three BCTs are tied up.

Just to maintain the 16 current brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan is, let's see, three times 16 is 48 and – oops! We're already out of BCTs! And here's the White House blithely batting around numbers like 40,000 more troops. That's roughly eight BCTs, which do not exist. And you wonder why the open-air courtyard in the middle of the Pentagon is full of colonels striding around waving their arms and muttering to themselves?

Here's how they hope to scrape by:

-- Defense Secretary Gates got permission from Congress to hire 22,000 more soldiers, temporarily, over the next three years. They won't form new BCTs, though; they'll be assigned to existing BCTs to bring them up to full strength as they deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan.

-- The Iraq War is over! By mutual agreement, the United States is to withdraw its forces from Iraq at an accelerating rate starting next spring. Maybe. First, Iraq is supposed to have smooth elections go off as scheduled in January, but that looks increasingly iffy. Recent bombings and political squabbling in Baghdad seem certain to delay the elections . . . and keep American troops there longer than anticipated.

Here's Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell on this issue: "The [troop withdrawal] schedule is predicated on the elections taking place in January. . . . So the plan is -- is contingent upon that. Obviously, we'll make judgments and assessments based upon how far it's delayed and whether or not we need to retain this certain force level for longer. But the idea is we want a certain force level to provide security leading up to the elections, clearly on the election day, or to assist the Iraqis in doing so, and also to provide a certain level of security in the wake of the elections during a transfer of power that would take place in the weeks following. That's what -- that's why we are hanging on to as large a force as we are in Iraq.''

-- Lash the troops to run faster. You can squeeze a little more performance from that formula of three BCTs to keep one deployed. One way is to give a BCT just back from combat 10 months to recover instead of 12 months. A BCT training to deploy again can have its 12 months of preparation and training cut to 10. Also in this category: deploy the BCTs for 12 months -- and then stretch out their deployment. The Pentagon recently extended the 1st Cav in Iraq for 23 days; a Marine regiment got extended for 79 days.

In practice, of course, compressing the deployment cycle means all the stuff the troops used to get 12 months to do, they now have to do in 10 months. That means they get a few weeks of leave when they return from 12 months in combat, then they go back into intense training and equipment maintenance, working nights and weekends, and soon they're doing field training for a week or two at a time, and that family discussion, Isn't-it-time-to-quit, honey? gets postponed, once again.

To keep tabs on this kind of stress, and to allow soldiers and families to vent, the 10^th Mountain Division commander keeps an open blog.

Get an earful here.

(Sample: ". . . My husband is . . . currently serving in Afghanistan. This is his third combat tour. Like many other people posted before me, our morale as a family has been steadily declining for the past few years. It's not that our family unit is not strong. It's the fact that no matter how strong and how much love and tolerance we have for each other, we are separated far too often. Separation is one thing and then add to that the fact that your spouse is in a hostile environment makes it near impossible to bare.'')

Speaking of stress, Army headquarters recently put out a directive that caught my eye from the suicide task force run by Peter Chiarelli, the four-star general who is the Army's vice chief of staff. It seems there is growing concern that some combat officers turning in poor performances may be suffering from psychological trauma or brain injury due to repeated exposure to bomb blasts. Problem is, some of them are being dismissed without being offered proper mental health examinations, becoming potential suicide risks.

Tragically, and despite an all-out prevention effort, the Army is experiencing another record-setting year for suicides. From January through September this year there were 117 reported suicides among active duty soldiers, up from 108 reported during the same period in 2008.

The new Army directive orders all commanders "to seek behavioral health support for officers if appropriate before considering separation action.''

Such costs of sustaining the pace of today's military deployments (let alone an increase) are not often weighed in the government's high strategic councils, and may not be on the minds of those arguing passionately for one course of action or another in Afghanistan. Whatever decision eventually emerges, let's do keep in mind that we are imposing a heavy cost on those who go, and the families they leave behind.