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Dwell time may increase to 30 months by 2011

Defense Secretary Robert Gates forecasts Army units will have 30 months of dwell time between deployments by fiscal 2011.

In his Jan. 27 testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gates outlined the most specific timeline to date regarding dwell time for a force that has endured repeated deployments and, for parts of 2007 and 2008, 15-month tours with 12 months at home.

“The estimates that I’ve been given are that by the end of fiscal year ’09, we should be in a position where our brigade combat teams have a year deployed and 15 months at home,” Gates said. “In FY10 a year deployed, two years at home, and by FY11, a year deployed, 30 months at home. So I think we’re on the right track. The next few months will continue to be hard.”

Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said Jan. 14 that he projects a slight increase in the number of soldiers deployed between now and mid-2010. He didn’t provide details, but he said the increase would be a temporary measure that should not disrupt the progress the Army is making to provide soldiers with more dwell time.

Soldiers traditionally have served 12-month combat tours, but in April 2007, Gates announced that active Army soldiers would begin serving 15-month deployments to support a surge of five brigades to help quell the growing violence in Iraq. At the height of the surge, 20 Army brigade combat teams were deployed at once — 18 in Iraq and two in Afghanistan.

The flood of troops into Iraq, particularly Baghdad, succeeded in reducing the violence there, and on Aug. 1, 2008, as the last of the surge brigades returned home, the Army moved back to 12-month tours. However, stretched by commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, Army leaders continue to struggle to give soldiers more time at home with their families, away from the war zone.

A senior Army planner said he was surprised when he heard Gates’ remarks on Capitol Hill, adding that 30 months of dwell time is possible but difficult to guarantee.

“It’s possible only with the reduction in demand or a growth in the available supply [of troops], both of which are potential things that could happen, neither of which I have any control over,” said the senior Army planner, who asked not to be identified.

“I think in the long term, the things that the chief [of staff of the Army] and others have described [is] as we grow the force and demand declines, dwell will grow,” the senior Army planner said. “Those demands are achievable, but we don’t know how far we are from achieving that.”

He also added that when Army leaders talk about dwell time, they are referring to units, not individual soldiers.

“Dwell is experienced by individuals,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how long your flag has been home. A visceral reality for soldiers and their families is that they experience dwell, but the complexity of the situation is such that Army leaders can only talk about dwell in [unit] flags.”

It is impossible, given the size of the Army and the countless moves soldiers and their families make throughout their careers, to ensure every single soldier receives a specific amount of dwell time, the senior Army planner said.

“[And] it takes a long time for decisions made today to produce the effects that individual soldiers and their families experience in the future,” he said.

The Army has 43 BCTs and the goal is to build to 48 by fiscal 2013, Maj. Gen. Sean Byrne told Army Times in December.

“We have made good progress with building these units, and they will go a long way toward reaching the Army Force Generation goal of a 1 [year deployed] to 3 [years of] dwell time,” he said.

Gates didn’t offer any details on how the Army could achieve 30 months of dwell time by 2011, and he cautioned that any reduction of troops in Iraq must be done carefully.

The Status of Forces Agreement between the U.S. and Iraq, which went into effect Jan. 1, calls for American combat troops to be moved out of Iraqi cities by the end of June and all troops out of Iraq by the end of 2011, Gates said.

“Though the violence has remained low, there is still the potential for setbacks, and there may be hard days ahead for our troops,” he said. “As our military presence decreases over time, we should still expect to be involved in Iraq on some level for many years to come, assuming a sovereign Iraq continues to see our partnership.”

Gates added that numerous options are being examined to determine the best way to reduce U.S. military presence in Iraq.

It’s difficult to know how the SOFA will be implemented, the senior Army planner said.

“We’re in this position where we’re not clear where the future is,” he said. “What’s clear is the demand now and the demand in Afghanistan.”

Gen. David McKiernan, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has asked for up to 30,000 more troops to help defeat an increasingly complex insurgency in a country larger in size and population than Iraq and notorious for its rugged and unforgiving terrain.

So far, soldiers from 3rd BCT, 10th Mountain Division, have been sent to boost the number of troops in Afghanistan, and the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, will deploy there later this spring. In February, soldiers from 4th BCT, 25th Infantry Division, also will deploy to Afghanistan, but officials said their deployment is part of the regular rotation of troops, not an addition.

There are now 15 BCTs in the Central Command area of operations, 12 in Iraq and three in Afghanistan, the senior Army planner said, adding that he and his staff continue to plan for that level of demand four or five years into the future.

In addition to the BCTs, about half the Army’s force in Iraq and Afghanistan is made up of enablers, soldiers who don’t belong to brigade combat teams but who carry out essential support functions in theater. Also, the Army National Guard has five brigades conducting security force missions in the Central Command area of operations.

“We’re only supposed to get them once every four years,” the senior Army planner said about Guard brigades. “We’re turning them faster than that right now.”

He added that he doesn’t anticipate an increased reliance on Guard brigades to enable the Army to implement more dwell time for active-duty soldiers.

Gates said Jan. 27 that the Defense Department could have two more BCTs in Afghanistan by late spring and a third by the middle of the summer.

“I am prepared to support the requirements that General McKiernan has put forward,” Gates said. “I think it’s necessary, but I would be very skeptical of any additional American force levels beyond what General McKiernan has already asked for. [The] secret to success from a security standpoint is the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police, and I might add, a more effective, Border Control Police.”

The top priority for the U.S. and its NATO allies should be growing the Afghan army, Gates said.

“The Afghans have just agreed to an increase in the size of the Afghan army from ... 80,000 to 134,000,” he said. “I’m not sure that even that number will be large enough. ... Ultimately, a strong Afghan National Army and a capable, reasonably honest Afghan National Police represents the exit ticket for all of us.”

The Afghan army’s current end-strength is 80,397, said Navy Cmdr. Jeff Bender, a spokesman for Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, which is responsible for all Afghan army and police training.

In 2008 alone, the Afghan army grew by 42 percent, adding 23,273 new soldiers to its ranks, Bender said. The desired end-strength is 134,000 soldiers by 2011, he said.

Afghan forces may need to grow to an end-strength of 300,000 to be effective, retired Gen. Jack Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff, told Army Times.

“Central to the solution in Afghanistan is a significant increase in Afghan security forces,” he said.

However, it will be impossible for the Afghan government to pay for the growth on its own, Keane said.

“This is a significant issue inside Afghanistan, having the financial resources to develop that force level and to be able to sustain it,” he said.

The cost to grow the Afghan army to a 134,000 end-strength likely is going to be $4 billion in the first year or two and about $2.5 billion in the years to come, Gates said Jan. 27, as he called on NATO countries to help defray those costs. In comparison, the Afghan national government’s income in 2008 was “probably $800 million,” he said.