Army chief talks new deployments; 'grave' readiness concern

By Michelle Tan

Oct. 2, 2014 

http://www.armytimes.com/article/20141002/NEWS/310020078/Army-chief-talks-new-deployments-grave-readiness-concern

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno talks with Army Times on Sept. 25 at the Pentagon. Maintaining readiness is a 'grave concern' if drastic budget conditions continue, he said. (Mike Morones / Staff)

A Liberian policeman calls for calm as citizens wait for a second consignment of food from the Liberian government. Soldiers will soon be sent to Liberia to assist in the humanitarian aid mission to combat the Ebola outbreak. (Abbas Dulleh / The Associated Press)

Soldiers show Ukrainian marines proper procedures for clearing a room Sept. 16 during Rapid Trident 2014. The Army has reduced its footprint in Europe, but rotations will continue to help meet growing missions there. (Spc. Joshua Leonard / Army)

The Army has confirmed it will soon begin rotating brigades to South Korea for unaccompanied tours. (Pfc. Woo-Hyeok Yang / Army)

Soldiers will soon see new deployments and rotations to hot spots around the world, even as the Army slashes its active-duty force to fit a tightening budget.

“Today we have soldiers deployed on missions in Europe, in Asia, in the Middle East, in Africa, all doing very important missions simultaneously,” said Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno in an exclusive interview Sept. 25 with Army Times.

One of Odierno’s top concerns is making sure these soldiers are ready and properly trained before they deploy, he said, but that’s getting tougher and tougher. Heavy and rapid budget cuts are steadily chipping away at the force, and readiness is the next victim.

Russian aggression, the increasing threat of the Islamic State group and the impending deployment of “probably thousands of soldiers” to fight Ebola has Odierno worried.

“What I worry about is the readiness of these forces and our ability to meet these demands if the readiness starts to decrease in ’16, ’17, and ’18,” he said. “For me, that’s a grave concern.”

In the last several months commitments have only risen, Odierno said.

“One of the things that’s changed in the world is the velocity of instability and the necessity to deploy our capabilities simultaneously to several different continents at the same time.”

That increasingly common trend is reflected in the new Army operating concept, which the service will roll out in the coming weeks.

“In the past, we maybe focused on one big fight somewhere,” Odierno said during a recent meeting with defense reporters. “We believe, with the new Army operating concept, we have to be able to do multiple small-scale things simultaneously. We might have to be able to operate with smaller capability on four different continents at the same time because that’s the way the world is developing.”

Odierno reinforced the concept during his Sept. 25 interview with Army Times.

The future of warfare likely will call on the Army to deploy in smaller formations and operate in joint, multinational and inter-organizational environments, Odierno said.

“We have to be more tailorable and scalable. We have to have smaller footprints. We have to operate in environments that are austere,” he said. “We need an Army that can be adaptive, innovative, exploits the initiative, and can solve problems in many different ways.”

This is critical as the Army is poised to drop to 490,000 soldiers by the end of 2015, and 450,000 by 2017. It’s expected that Congress will force more cuts in 2016 and the reduction of the Army to 420,000 by 2019.

“I’ve got to downsize while we actually meet these commitments that are increasing, while also trying to take care of the young men and women who serve,” Odierno said.

In addition to its commitment in Afghanistan, which includes a corps headquarters, two division headquarters and multiple brigades, here’s an overview of where the Army is going today:

Iraq

The 1st Infantry Division headquarters will deploy to Iraq in late October as the U.S. steps up its war against the Islamic State group, the Pentagon announced Sept. 25.

The Big Red One, of Fort Riley, Kansas, will be the first division headquarters to go to Iraq since the U.S. withdrawal in 2011. About 500 soldiers will deploy, with about 200 of them going into Iraq and the rest remaining somewhere in the Central Command area of responsibility.

The soldiers are preparing for a one-year mission.

Odierno said the soldiers, at least for now, will be focused on a support mission.

“We’re going to train and advise and help develop Iraqi security forces, [and] begin to train some Syrian elements,” he said.

Asked whether the mission could expand beyond these roles, Odierno said, “We constantly assess how it’s going, and based on that, we’ll provide recommendations. But for right now, that’s the mission.”

The 1st Infantry Division headquarters will join its 1st Brigade Combat Team in the region; the brigade deployed to Kuwait in June as part of a regular rotation of forces.

In recent months, the division has remained busy even as it has been downsizing as part of the Army’s ongoing drawdown.

The division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team was the first brigade to be aligned with a geographic combatant command under the Army’s regionally aligned forces concept. The 2nd BCT was aligned with Africa Command and spent more than a year sending small groups of soldiers to AFRICOM’s area of operations for military-to-military engagements, exercises and other theater security cooperation activities as needed by the AFRICOM commander.

The brigade recently handed off the mission to the division’s 4th BCT.

Meanwhile, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, at Fort Knox, Kentucky, was inactivated this summer, and the division’s 1st BCT remains in Kuwait for its nine-month tour.

Africa

About 1,400 soldiers will head to Liberia this month to help support the fight against the Ebola virus that is spreading across West Africa.

The Army’s 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, will provide about 700 of those soldiers, while the other 700 will be mostly combat engineers culled from Army units across the force.

The soldiers will be among the total of 3,000 U.S. troops whom the Pentagon plans to send into West Africa this fall.

The deployments are expected in the next 30 to 60 days, Odierno said.

The plan is for U.S. troops to provide capability and infrastructure for non-governmental agencies as they treat patients, Odierno said. Aviation assets will probably be important as “infrastructure is pretty poor, especially in the rainy season.”

He does not expect soldiers to interact with Ebola patients. Army medical personnel also aren’t going to treat Ebola patients.

“One of the important things we’re working is the protection and training of the people going there, making sure they understand how you protect yourself in that environment,” Odierno said.

Europe

The Army has cut about 10,000 soldiers, including two brigade combat teams, from its footprint in Europe, a “pretty significant reduction,” Odierno said. These plans were determined prior to the recent aggressions in the area.

“What we’re doing is ensuring we continue to provide what’s necessary,” he said, especially in light of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine. “We’re going to have to provide a rotational capability there, both ground and aviation.”

This month, 1st BCT, 1st Cavalry Division, of Fort Hood, Texas, is on its way to Europe for three to four months of training and exercises, Odierno said.

“We’ll continue to rotate based on exercises and what we want to do with our NATO and other allied partners,” he said.

The Army also is waiting for the outcome of a NATO proposal to stand up a quick-reaction force for the region.

NATO leaders decided to stand up the force during their September summit in Wales. The intent is for the 4,000- to 5,000-strong force to be able to respond to a crisis in Eastern Europe within two to three days. Plans call for the force to be up and running with initial capabilities in less than a year.

“We still don’t know how we’re going to be involved yet,” Odierno said.

This force is in addition to the NATO Response Force, which was created in 2002 to respond to contingencies including disaster response, humanitarian relief, stabilization operations and combat operations. Last year, the Army for the first time committed a brigade combat team to participate in the force.

The newly announced quick-reaction force likely will have a faster response time than the NATO Response Force, Odierno said.

The Pacific

With the violence in Iraq and Syria, the Pacific has taken a backseat, at least in the headlines. But the Army remains “completely committed” to the Pacific, with more than 80,000 soldiers dedicated to the region, Odierno said.

“We have not yet pulled anybody outside of [Pacific Command],” he said.

The Army is midway through its first iteration of Pacific Pathways, which employs a single unit through what officials call a “training pathway.” This unit spends two or three months in the region participating in a series of already approved, consecutive bilateral and multilateral exercises and engagements with foreign militaries.

This eliminates the need to have multiple single units traveling to an exercise for 10 to 30 days and returning home after a single trip.

During this cycle, more than 800 soldiers from the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, are slated to spend three months participating in three separate exercises.

The soldiers were in Indonesia for Garuda Shield and Malaysia for Keris Strike in September, and they will finish their tour in Japan for Orient Shield in late October.

Pacific Pathways will help the Army “develop relationships, build partner capacity, [and] continue to do engagements,” Odierno said. “We’re going to see that continue.”

Odierno is not ruling out diminishing the mission somewhat if conditions in other combatant commands worsen.

“There could be a time in the future, if we increase the number of deployments we’re doing. We’ll have to take a look at that, but right now we’ve shielded anything coming out of the Pacific,” he said. “Right now, we can handle it.”

Korea

After starting with two battalion-sized units, the Army plans to begin rotating brigade combat teams to South Korea in late summer 2015, Odierno said.

The move could mark the end of an era as the Army moves to replace individual tours to Korea with deployments of trained and equipped combat units.

The plan is to rotate one BCT at a time into South Korea “like we’ve done in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last 13 years,” he said. “There’ll always be a brigade in Korea, but they’ll rotate from the United States.”

What’s important to note is that these plans are tentative, and Army officials are still working closely with South Korean officials. Meanwhile, the 2nd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team remains stationed in Korea, and its soldiers are there on individual tours.

At this time, there is still no decision whether to move 1st BCT’s flag back to the United States, said Brig. Gen. Ron Lewis, director of Army public affairs.

The Army began shifting to rotational forces in Korea last fall when 4th Squadron, 6th Cavalry Regiment, from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, was sent to Korea for a nine-month tour. In February, the Army deployed 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment to Korea. The combined-arms battalion from Fort Hood, Texas, deployed with M1A2 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles.

Officials have said rotating whole units — instead of deploying soldiers on individual tours — will result in formations that are more ready and trained to higher levels.

The Army has about 19,000 soldiers stationed in South Korea, including the 2nd Infantry Division headquarters. Other major units include the 19th Expeditionary Sustainment Command, the 1st Signal Brigade, the 35th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, the 65th Medical Brigade, and Eighth Army.

'Severely out of balance'

With all these demands placed upon it, the Army must walk a fine line between shrinking the force and keeping it properly trained and ready, Odierno said.

If sequestration returns in 2016, it will be a “breaking point” for the Army, which will see a “significant cut” to its budget, he said.

“As I look at that, it’s end strength, it’s modernization, it’s readiness,” he said. “I can’t go any faster on end strength, so that means you have to take further reductions in readiness and modernization.”

The Army already has cut its modernization budget by 46 percent, Odierno said.

That leaves readiness.

“Readiness means training, it means equipment, it means family readiness,” Odierno said. “What’s going to happen is we’re going to become severely out of balance.”

The Army received money in fiscal years 2014 and 2015 to boost its readiness, which allowed the Army to get 12 brigade combat teams trained and ready for potential contingencies, up from just two a year ago, but in 2016 “we’ll no longer be able to do that,” Odierno said.

“We’ve not had consistent readiness funding,” he said. “So we’ll have to reduce our ability to train, we’re going to have to reduce more family programs, and we’re going to have to look at how well we’ll be able to maintain our equipment.”

At this rate, only a small portion of the Army will be ready if needed, he said.

“The rest will not be until we can get back into balance, and that won’t be until 2019,” he said. “What makes this more serious in my mind is what’s happened in the last six or eight months.”

Odierno said the nation must have a security debate.

“We have to have a serious debate about what we’re going to be expected to do,” he said. “The velocity of instability is increasing and yet we’re talking about continuing to decrease our budget and the budget we need to sustain the force. If we’re not worried between now and ’19 about what’s going on in the world, we’re OK. If we are, then the risk has increased significantly because of these potential readiness shortages.”

His worst fear, Odierno said, is the possibility of deploying soldiers who aren’t properly trained and ready.

“What I worry about is not how soldiers feel if they don’t have the greatest stuff,” he said. “It’s that I may have to use them even if they don’t have the readiness and we have not resourced them enough.”

The Army must take care of soldiers, he said.

“The No. 1 way to take care of soldiers is making sure they’re trained and ready and have the equipment to do their job, and I worry we’re not going to do that in the future if we don’t adjust what the funding level is going to be,” he said.

And when it comes time to deploy, Odierno may not have a choice.

“If we get a mission, we’re told to do something, we will do it,” he said. “That’s how it works, and we’ll respond. What I have to do is provide my best military advice to those making the decision, and tell them I’m concerned about our readiness levels. We have to be cognizant of the decisions we make to deploy our soldiers.”