General: Army's Manpower Maxed
December 1, 2000 9:15 am EST
Top Army General Says Army Needs 40-60K More Soliders
WASHINGTON, NOV. 30, 2000 (CBS News) - The U.S. Army needs up to 60,000 more soldiers to keep pace with growing global missions like peacekeeping and humanitarian aid, a top Army general said Thursday, joining other calls from the U.S. military for more money and troops.
Four-star Gen. John Hendrix, head of the Army's key Forces Command, said the 454,000-member Army of the world's sole superpower will continue to face rising calls for tasks from peacekeeping to humanitarian aid in the decade ahead.
"Don't put these words in the secretary of defense's mouth or the secretary of the Army's mouth," Hendrix told reporters in an interview. "If we were to maintain the level of operations that we have today, probably, I would say, 40,000, 50,000 or 60,000 more soldiers" are needed.
"If you look at what we're doing, we really are stretched," he said, adding that he needed another $800 million on top of his own current budget of $3.5 billion to maintain and equip forces based in the United States ready to supply global missions.
Other military officers from all services have said the U.S. armed forces, shrunk to 1.4 million troops by budget and other cuts after the Cold War, will likely need to grow in the years ahead.
But Hendrix' figures were the first public and concrete estimate of the Army's needed growth.
A major issue facing the next U.S. president is also a rising call from Pentagon military and civilian officials for sharp increases in the current $310 billion annual U.S. defense budget.
America's Forces
Total active duty: 1,353,284
Army: 483,880
Navy: 382,338
Marine Corps: 173,142
Air Force: 367,470
Officers: 223,281
Enlisted: 1,171,148
Cadets: 12,401
Total reserve: 1,353,284
(DoD)
Air Force Secretary Whitten Peters estimated in an interview with reporters that the Pentagon's budget needed to grow by as much as $100 billion a year to maintain fighting readiness while modernizing aging weapons built for the Cold War.
Until increasing slightly for fiscal years 2000 and 2001, U.S. defense spending was cut for 14 straight years.
President Clinton's Fiscal Year 2001 defense budget called for $277.5 billion, an increase of 1 percent over the previous year, according to the Defense Department. Congress passed a $288 billion plan.
Military spending and forces will be a major national security problem facing either Republican George W. Bush or Democrat Al Gore, fighting bitterly over Florida votes in their rival claims to become the next U.S. president in January.
Bush raised the issue of military readiness several times during the presidential campaign.
One issue to be decided in a review planned by the Defense Department in 2001 is whether the U.S. military should maintain its current readiness to fight two major conflicts at virtually the same time while keeping up with growing demands for other non-combat missions.
"The question would be: is the future the same as the last decade?" Hendrix asked rhetorically. "I don't know. But I don't see a quick exit from anything, from the things we are doing. And I see other possibilities out there globally for similar types of action."
U.S. military doctrine requires the armed forces to be prepared to fight two wars at once.
The Defense Dept. said in August that most U.S. combat forces are ready to perform wartime missions, but would have a hard time fighting two major wars simultaneously.
In recent months, a series of events has brought the readiness of U.S. forces into question.
In September, for the first time in more than a decade, every ship and submarine in the United States Navy was ordered to stand down and review safety and navigation procedures. The order came after a series of accidents involving Naval vessels in the past year.
Earlier that month, a report by the Navy's inspector general found that funding shortages are hurting the combat performance of Naval aviators.
In addition to the questions about Navy fliers' readiness, there has been trouble with Marine helicopters and Army aircraft this year as well.
According to the Center for Defense Information, a private think-tank, America's share of global military spending increased from 30 percent to 33 percent from 1985-1996, even though total worldwide spending on defense dropped from $1.6 trillion to $797 billion in that time. |
