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Casey: Army strained by current demands

Describing the Army as standing “on the edge of a cliff,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Ike Skelton probed the Army’s top leaders Wednesday on Capitol Hill on their plans to keep the Army together as it heads into its seventh year at war.

Skelton, who held the hearing at the request of Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey and Army Secretary Pete Geren, beseeched the two officials to be forthcoming in what they will need to rebuild the Army, take care of families and the wounded and give deploying soldiers the training, equipment and installations they need.

“The Army’s people are exhausted by repeated combat rotations and your equipment is worn,” Skelton said, warning of the strategic risk posed by an Army that may not be able to react effectively to another world crisis.

Casey, who appeared at the hearing with a truckload of some of the Army’s latest robotic equipment and personal protection gear for soldiers, laid out his plans for addressing the committee’s concerns in what he called his four imperatives: prepare, sustain, reset and transform.

But he also bluntly acknowledged his belief that the stretched-out Army would be hard pressed to go charging into another conflict right now, at home or abroad.

“I am not confident that we could respond as quickly as I would like to,” Casey said. “We have a combat-seasoned force, but it would still take longer than I am confident with.”

Casey predicted a future of persistent conflict and protracted confrontation with a variety of state and non-state actors, in addition to an increasingly complex world in which the benefits of globalization share the stage with its drawbacks, namely the creation of “haves and have-nots” and a growth in population that will include a “youth bulge” and a race for scarce environmental resources.

His job, he said, is to readjust an unbalanced force by tackling the needs of its people, shoring up equipment and growing an agile and adaptable force.

“Our Army today is out of balance for several reasons. The current demand for our forces exceeds the sustainable supply,” he said.

Casey told the committee that by next summer, when a drawdown in the surge forces is expected to take place, the Army might be able to begin a gradual decrease in the number of soldiers affected by stop-loss and that the Army is pumping an unprecedented amount of money into family resources such as child care centers, respite care for parents, fitness centers, chapels and youth centers.

Casey and Geren were peppered by repeated questions about deployment length and dwell time and whether making the Army larger would mean shorter tour lengths.

Shorter tours, Geren told Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., “has to be driven by the demands of commanders on the ground. The decision has to be made based on what’s going on on the ground. Those decisions cannot be made here.”

His job, Geren said, was to help those commanders get the resources they need, not to make policy decisions about operations in Iraq.

A “good portion” of the Army’s pre-positioned stock, he told Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, was sent to Iraq with the five brigades that made up the surge forces a few months ago, all of which will have to be returned and reset.

“I share your concern, but all pre-positioned stocks were not consumed. We have some flexibility,” Casey told Ortiz.

The hearing was Casey’s first before the House Armed Services Committee since he was sworn in as chief in April. He requested the hearing, according to Skelton, to present his assessment of the current state of the Army provide his insight for the future and lay out his plans for moving the Army forward in the next four years.

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Casey’s statement that the Army is “out of balance”