Army foresees doubling up tours
Mon Aug 25, 8:51 AM ET
Add Top Stories - USA TODAY to My Yahoo!
By Dave Moniz, USA TODAY
For the first time since the all-volunteer Army began in 1973, significant
numbers of U.S. combat soldiers may have to start serving back-to-back
overseas tours of up to a year each in places such as Iraq (news - web
sites), Afghanistan (news - web sites) and South Korea (news - web sites),
top Army officers say.
Grappling with large, simultaneous deployments
around the world, Army planners are trying to
determine how many troops will have to serve
extra tours. Based on the forces they must keep
in place overseas, planners have concluded they
will have no choice but to force thousands of
troops to return to new overseas assignment after
only a short time at home. Currently, troops can
deploy with their families for years to places such
as Germany or Japan, but they go to war zones
or potential war zones such as Iraq or Korea
without their families and typically serve there no
more than a year.
"The Army is monitoring the situation," says Maj.
Steve Stover, an Army spokesman at the
Pentagon (news - web sites). "But we will do
everything in our power to prevent back-to-back
deployments."
Army officials are worried that the added tours
will lower morale and cause a wave of exits
throughout the Army. A key concern is that the
deployments will cause an exodus of
experienced, mid-career veterans such as
sergeants, staff sergeants and captains, who are
harder to replace than younger soldiers.
Privately, two officers familiar with the Army's deployment needs but who
asked not to be identified say that keeping force levels up will almost
certainly require extra overseas assignments. Preliminary estimates
suggest that 15% to 25% of the nearly 180,000 troops now overseas in Iraq,
Korea and Afghanistan may have to do consecutive tours. The estimate is
based on the Army maintaining a force of about 130,000 troops in Iraq,
about 10,000 in Afghanistan and about 40,000 in Korea for the foreseeable
future. Though the Army has some 490,000 active-duty troops, the soldiers
in Iraq, Korea and Afghanistan comprise more than 60% of its combat
forces.
If the prediction is accurate, as many as 45,000 soldiers would have to
double up. Some of the second tours would be for six months, but those in
Iraq and Korea could require a second full year during which soldiers would
be separated from their families. An officer says the Army would attempt to
allow troops rotating home to have at least three months before heading
back for a second overseas tour.
David Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland, says there
is a growing awareness among the Army rank-and-file that large numbers of
troops will likely serve back-to-back assignments outside the United States.
"I know a number of officers from the 4th Infantry Division who are
scrambling to find assignments that will take them out of the running to be
re-deployed," Segal says.
Says one high-ranking Pentagon official familiar with the math: "Looking out
three years, it is not unreasonable to expect that within a two-year period, a
guy will have to do a year and a half outside the United States." |
