The Army is set to reduce its end strength by an additional 40,000 troops over the next two years, including the elimination of 17,000 civilian employees, according to reports.
The service is in the midst of a force reduction as a result of budget cuts and the winding down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Plans are to shrink the Army from a peak of 570,000 soldiers to 450,000, rather than bottoming out at 490,000 as originally planned. The service’s pre-9/11 end strength was about 490,000 soldiers.
Plans to draw the Army down to 450,000 soldiers or less have been floating since at least 2014, when then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made the pitch as part of the Pentagon’s effort to swallow $1 trillion in budget cuts over the next 10 years.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno has repeatedly said that an Army of less than 450,000 active duty soldiers would amount to a “hollow force.” The cuts were originally included in the fiscal year 2015 budget request to Congress. The Army is expected to announce later this week which units will be affected by the reductions.
Backlash from some members of Congress came swiftly, citing the ongoing efforts to bolster the Iraqi army in its fight against Islamic State (IS) militants, a sabre-rattling Russia and other unforeseen contingencies with which an already-overstretched Army has had to contend in past few years.
About 10,000 US troops are still in Afghanistan regardless of plans to end the war there and another 3,500 have been sent to Iraq as advisers to the Iraqis battling IS.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)., chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, called the move “another dangerous consequence of a budget-driven strategy.”
“Any conceivable strategic rationale for this cut to Army end-strength has been overturned by the events of the last few years from the rise of ISIL, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Ebola crisis, and more,” McCain said in a statement. “Worse, if mindless sequestration cuts are allowed to return, the Army will shrink to 420,000 troops, increasing the risk that in a crisis, we will have too few soldiers who could enter a fight without proper training or equipment.”