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Gates wants to grow force by 92,000 troops

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that he will seek an end strength increase of 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines over the next five years.

In announcing a long-term complement to President Bush’s Wednesday unveiling of a near-term troop surge in Iraq, Gates said he is recommending that recent temporary end strength increases of 30,000 for the Army and 5,000 for the Marine Corps be made permanent. In addition, he wants the Marine Corps to grow by another 5,000 people a year and the Army by another 7,000 people a year, bringing total end strength at the end of the plan to 202,000 Marines and 547,000 soldiers.

The Corps’ authorized end strength now is 175,000 and the Army’s, which is already growing, is at about 508,000 troops.

“We should recognize that while it may take some time for these new troops to become available for deployment, it is important that our men and women in uniform know that additional manpower and resources are on the way,” said Gates, speaking alongside Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Condoleezza Rice, secretary of State, at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building near the White House.

Gates also announced that reserve mobilizations will be handled on a unit basis rather than an individual basis, allowing the Pentagon to achieve greater unit cohesion and “predictability” in how National Guard and Reserve units train and deploy, he said.

Also, Guard and Reserve members will be voluntarily mobilized for no more than one year at a time — a change from the current mobilizations, which can go from 16 to 24 months.

The Pentagon’s plan is to have the Guard and Reserve units mobilized for a year, followed by five years of demobilization. “However, today’s global demands will require a number of selected Guard and Reserve units to be remobilized sooner than this standard,” Gates said. “Our intention is that such exceptions be temporary.”

The goal, he said is for active forces to be deployed for one year and then stay at home for two years of so-called “dwell time.” Most active Army units now deploy for a year and Marines units for seven months, and then return home for an equal amount of time, a “1:1” deployment-to-home ratio.

Gates’ announcements come on the heels of President Bush’s announcement that he would “surge” more than 20,000 troops to Iraq in the coming weeks and months, with about 80 percent of the new forces falling in on Baghdad in an effort to quell the ongoing sectarian violence in and around the capital city.