By Ann Roosevelt
The Army is stretched in areas such as aviation, logistics and military police, and the service is looking at its options to ensure it can provide those enablers and the combat forces as needed by combatant commanders, according to the vice chief of staff (VCOS).
“Everybody concentrates on combat brigades, but the enablers are what keep me awake at night,” Gen. Peter Chiarelli, Army VCOS, told the Defense Writers Group yesterday.
Technically, enablers are combat service and combat support service soldiers, to include troops in aviation to logistics to military police, he said.
“They’re very stretched and as you look at Afghanistan, the infrastructure in Afghanistan is not as robust to support additional forces that on the surface would look like you need additional enablers to do some of the things you want to do in Afghanistan,” Chiarelli said.
For example, to meet training requirements in Iraq and Afghanistan, “the requirement for military police is off the charts, from the standpoint they are in demand in both theaters,” he said. The same is true for Combat Aviation Brigades.
There are deliberate plans in place and being executed to increase those soldiers in areas such as military police, civil affairs and other areas, he said.
Conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan would be top discussions for the new administration and its military leaders.
The Army continually looks at its current inventory, what it can and can’t do, and what has to happen in Iraq before additional forces are provided to Afghanistan, he said.
The Army Forces Generation model (ARFORGEN) helps the service do the calculations, and brings the service in line with what the Navy and Marines have been doing for some time, he said.
ARFORGEN is not unlike an aircraft carrier, Chiarelli said. To replace one carrier with another in the Persian Gulf essentially means two units are doing the job of one for about a 40-day period.”We call that friction,” he said.
Since Chiarelli deployed to Iraq in 2005 with 1st Cavalry Division, the Army has moved to the ARFORGEN model, and deployments are done by brigade, not division.
However, the need for enablers is just one of the myriad issues on Chiarelli’s plate. That list would include such things as increasing the time soldiers spend at home between deployments, keeping an eye on the increase for non-deployable soldiers, the need for lighter equipment for individual soldiers and concerns over better protocols for treating soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.