I am probably displaying my ignorance of the military, but, with 2.6 million soldiers (1.4 million on active duty and 1.2 million in the reserves), why aren't there any more available for Iraq? Why are we "tapped out"? Even including support forces in the area, we've got substantially less than 10% of our total forces in Iraq today.
Well, I hope this will enlighten you as to current force structure:
armedservices.house.gov
Note that the Army has a total of 480,000 men, down from the 751,000 servicemen it possessed in 1990 (Desert Storm).
Yet its number of missions has increased, as well as the intensity of those missions..
Of those forces, the overwhelming majority are support and service personnel in non-combat related MOSs (cooks, clerical, supply, mechanics.. etc).
The actual number of combat MOSs is probably somewhere around 25-30% of total manpower (if that).. I tried to find some actual MOS breakdowns but didn't have any luck finding that info.
The Marines are the only force that has properly trained all of its personnel to be "infantry first", technician second..
Hawk |
