Army announces switch to 9-month deployments - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Army announces switch to 9-month deployments

It is official: Nine-month deployments begin January, and the change will be fully implemented by April. The new policy does not affect soldiers who deploy prior to year’s end.

The new rules, announced Friday by Secretary of the Army John McHugh, apply to units at the division-level and below. Corps-level deployments will stay at 12 months “due to their oversight for the entire operation,” though the goal is to get them to nine months, said Army spokesman Lt. Col. Craig Ratcliff.

Augmentees to a Joint Task Force will remain on a 12-month deployment, due to the nature of those missions. Deployments for high-demand, low-density units and individual deployers will also remain at one year, as cutting their tours would require more people in those skill than currently exist.

The change applies to all named operations, which include Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Noble Guardian in Kosovo and Multi-National Forces Sinai in Egypt.

Less time in theater may equate to less time at home, at least at the onset. Most units that deploy for one year have two years or more of dwell time, though some specialized units barely get a year. The Army’s interim dwell goal of 1:2 applied to the new rules means soldiers would have boots on the ground for nine months, followed by 18 months dwell at home station.

The Army’s stated goal is to have 27-month dwell time by 2014.

Ratcliff said the Army “will still grow dwell as demand decreases.”

“The Army is on a glidepath to grow dwell and we believe we will continue to so under the new policy,” he said.

Other highlights of the change include:

• Soldiers on nine-month deployments will not get environmental morale leave, but commanders can grant emergency leave and leave for special circumstances;

• Reserve and National Guard unit tour lengths will also be nine months, though units may still be mobilized for 12 or more months while only spending nine months deployed;

• The decrease in dwell time equates to a decrease in the reset phase, but officials said this would have a minimum effect of repositioning equipment. Most units are able to return and reconstitute to about a 65 percent fill rate within “a short time.” Depots also have sufficient capacity to absorb the increase requirements. And a large amount of reset can be achieved with special reset teams at installations.