Deciding who goes, where and when - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Deciding who goes, where and when

FORT McPHERSON, Ga. — The basement of Forces Command headquarters looks like any other basement in the Army.

But visitors to this basement must turn in their cell phones and laptops. Signs at the door tell employees to use their access cards; no tailgating is allowed. And if you sneak in a cell phone, the big voice on the speakers warns: “An unauthorized cell phone has been detected.”

This is a top-secret area occupied mostly by lieutenant colonels, majors and Army civilians. Their work is one of the most important and delicate in the Army.

In this basement, these officers and civilians figure out how to fill requests for troops to meet the needs of U.S. Central Command and other combatant commands.

Who deploys next? Where should they go? Will they be able to fulfill the mission outlined in the request?

The answers to these questions are mapped out in this basement, the work space of about 60 soldiers and Army civilians of Forces Command’s plans division, under the G-3/5/7.

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan drag on and the demand for troops grows by the day, the plans division, led by Col. Edge Gibbons, is focused on how to meet global requirements while increasing dwell time for troops and decreasing the length of deployments.

“There are competing demands for Army resources. You have to be a very agile Army,” Gibbons said. “Every combatant commander has his priorities. Whose priorities come first? We have a supply-demand disconnect. That’s why we’re at 15 months [boots on the ground].”

Twenty Army brigade combat teams are overseas in war zones — 18 in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. That doesn’t include troops who don’t belong to a BCT. They make up about 37 percent of the soldiers in those two countries.

On average, Forces Command receives a new request for forces every two and a half days.

Active Army soldiers now serve 15-month deployments and 12 months at home.

At the current level of forces, to include the time needed to move brigades in and out of theater and the overlap that takes place when the outgoing unit trains its replacement, the Army needs 48 BCTs to sustain a 1-to-1 ratio for boots on the ground and dwell time. The Army has 42 BCTs, and it is building toward 48.

To help organize whose needs should come first and how to meet those needs with an Army that is already stretched thin by long and repeated deployments, Gibbons and his boss, Maj. Gen. Tom Miller, the FORSCOM G-3/5/7, are advocating a Joint Integrated Requirements and Priority List.

The JIRPL, which would have to be approved by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would prioritize the list of demands.

“A JIRPL will formalize the priorities,” Gibbons said.

Lt. Col. V.J. Tedesco, a plans officer who recently commanded a 1st Armored Division battalion in Iraq, agreed.

“The ethos is, whatever the war fighter wants, the war fighter gets,” he said.

“The tension is meeting the requirements of the war fighter and the stress on the force. The JIRPL will help prioritize what should be sourced and not.”

Having a JIRPL also will be good for soldiers, Gibbons said.

“As force providers, we recommend the utilization of Army forces, which could benefit from more detailed guidance,” he said. “We know every [brigade] patch represents 4,000 soldiers with lives and families.”

When a requirement comes in from CentCom or another combatant command, the request for forces finds its way to Joint Forces Command. That command then sends the request to Army Forces Command or, depending on the request, force providers for the other services.

The plans division at Forces Command then works to figure out who’s available to deploy and which units fit the requirement. Sometimes, if no one is available, the officers will offer in-lieu-of options — for example, a field artillery company instead of a military police company — to fill the need.

Every year, all combatant commands submit their force requirements for the next fiscal year, and Forces Command personnel work to propose units suitable and able to deploy, said Lt. Col. Rebecca Carter, a plans officer who manages Iraq rotations. The proposals are submitted to Joint Forces Command, and they must be approved by Gates.

If requirements cannot be met, Army Forces Command works with Joint Forces Command to determine which requirements have priority.

Gibbons said his division has briefed senior leaders in other services on the JIRPL. All of them seem to agree that a JIRPL is a good idea, he said.

“If I had a No. 1 priority today, it would be the JIRPL,” Gibbons said. “It can potentially make deployments more predictable.”

Gibbons said a JIRPL is going to be hard work because it’s very difficult to prioritize among many critical needs.

Another concern Gibbons has is the increasing demand for what he calls designer units, which are units that are built based on a requirement from theater for a specific mix of military specialties.

“As theater has matured, the additional capabilities required often don’t match existing Army inventory for certain niche capabilities that are required based on the operating environment,” he said. “It decreases readiness for the Army because it’s breaking units. For every designer unit we make, that’s one or more units that we break to meet that requirement.”

Of the units in Iraq today, excluding transition teams, 39 percent are designer units. In Afghanistan, 75 percent are designer units.

“The Army is flexible, but we’re still left with the second- and third-order impacts of [partial units],” Miller said.

Commanders in theater are trying to move away from these types of units, Miller said. He said he and his staff understand the strain on the force.

“It’s obvious that we’re soldiers, too, so I look at this as a soldier so you can try to understand and get a feel for what this means for them,” he said.

“These aren’t just pieces of paper you throw around. These are our soldiers. You try to give them as much notice as you can. You try to give them as much dwell as you can. At the same time, you try to meet the demand on the ground.”