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Army restructure effort needs additional troops through 2007

Army News Service

Release Date: 1/29/2004

By Joe Burlas

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Jan. 29, 2004) - A day after Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker told Congress the Army needs almost 30,000 more Soldiers than the 482,000 currently authorized for the next few years, another senior Army leader briefed the Pentagon media pool why the temporary increase is needed.

Speaking on background, the official said Jan. 29 the extra troops are about building capabilities that meet ongoing deployment requirements and new manpower needs as the Army restructures into a more modular, responsive, joint, expeditionary, relevant and responsive force.

"One of the benefits of being an Army at war is that war focuses us," the official said. "As the Army moves to rebalance and reset the force, we are provided a window of opportunity to reset to where we need and want to be."

A major component of the restructure effort is changing the composition of the Army's 10 active-duty divisions. Instead of a division having three brigade combat teams, it will have four, the official said. Growing the fourth includes taking much of the division-level support elements -- such as engineers, military intelligence, supply and maintenance units -- and making them organic to the brigade structure.

The 3rd Infantry Division, based at Fort Stewart, Ga., moved to four brigades as the Army's modularity test bed shortly after it returned from Iraq this past year. The Army plans to stand up an additional two division brigades within a year and grow from 33 active-duty brigade combat teams to 48 by 2007. The plan includes for the National Guard to grow from 15 enhanced separate brigades to 22 in the same period.

The restructure effort means a need for more infantrymen than the current Army force structure allows, about 3,000-4,000 more per division on the active-duty side, the official said.

Some of the new infantry positions will be filled by Soldiers in units the Army plans to disband.

Hardest hit will be the Army's field artillery community, which recently lost a brigade's worth of National Guard artillerymen who are currently being trained to serve as military police officers. The Army plans to disband an additional 39 artillery battalions in the active force and the National Guard. With joint fires available from the Air Force and Navy, the Army must divest itself of much of the Cold War-era heavy fires structure, the official said.

Additionally, the Army will disband 10 air defense artillery battalions. Many of these positions will migrate down to each brigade's reconnaissance, intelligence, surveillance and target acquisition unit, the official said.

"We haven't had any Soldiers hit by enemy airpower in years that I know of," the official said. He added that the Army's remaining air defense artillery structure will mainly focus on the cruise missile threat.

In Army aviation, the Army plans to create four aviation brigades as part of the restructure effort. Each of those brigades will include two attack battalions with 24 Apache helicopters each, a battalion of 30 Black Hawk helicopters, an unmanned aerial vehicle section and organic maintenance company.

The official stressed the additional 30,000 Soldiers requirement is a temporary one as plans to convert about 10,000 Army positions to civilian ones and efficiencies created by restructuring within the Army and the Department of Defense will lower Army end strength over the next four to five years.

The Army is currently about 11,000 Soldiers over its congressionally-mandated end strength of 482,000 Soldiers, the official said. The Army may be over strength in times of national emergency when approved by the president. President Bush has annually renewed the authority for the Army to have more troops since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The Army will grow to 510,000 over the next year or so using a mixture of Stop-Loss measures that keep selected Soldiers in the Army beyond their contract dates and a higher recruiting mission for new accessions, the official said. He said he anticipates Stop-Loss being lifted sometime in 2005.

A total of more than 100,000 Army positions will be impacted by the restructuring effort.

"This is the biggest internal restructuring we've done in 50 years, but it must be done to make us relevant and to allow us to meet the real threat to the United States," Schoomaker told members of the House Armed Services Committee Jan. 28.