Proposal would cut 10 of Army’s 45 BCTs - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Proposal would cut 10 of Army’s 45 BCTs

The Army has drawn up a plan that would cut 10 of its 45 active-duty brigade combat teams to meet President Obama’s order to cut defense spending by $400 billion over the next 10 years, said an Army official familiar with the budget deliberations.

This is one of many proposals being considered as the Army goes through a series of budget drills. Service leaders are still discussing how many Stryker, heavy or infantry BCTs might get cut and when.

Some defense analysts counter that the proposals are “worst-case scenarios.” One congressional staffer said cuts will be far less severe.

“Is it possible that the Army will see these kinds of cuts? We’re coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan and have a tough economy to deal with. Anything is possible,” said the staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Are such big cuts likely? No, they’re not likely.”

That attitude was reflected in recent hearings on Capitol Hill, where most lawmakers have repeatedly stated the need to minimize defense cuts.

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey said the proposal to cut 10 BCTs is likely worst-case scenario planning.

“I can not imagine that we would cut 25 percent or more of the active battle force,” said McCaffrey, former commander of U.S. Southern Command.

While the fight in Afghanistan is scheduled to wrap up in 2014, McCaffrey said “it’s more likely 2016 or 2018 that we’re completely out of there, so you have an ongoing war and you’ll be taking 25 percent of the fighting force out?”

“A cut of that magnitude would be a strategic change in the capacity of the U.S. Army to project power and fight,” he said. “I think it would completely revamp our strategic ability to project force and to carry on more than one operation against a mid-sized country. I think it would imperil, for example, our ability to fight and defend South Korea and still maintain a strategic capability elsewhere.”

If the Army loses 10 BCTs, it also could lose the combat support and combat service support units that support the BCTs, McCaffrey said.

“My guess is you could unravel the force pretty quickly, but you couldn’t put it back together,” he said.

McCaffrey said it’s premature to question the number of BCTs in the Army.

“With 100,000 troops fighting in combat [in Afghanistan], our allies bugging out, the country under severe stress, we’re still not out of Iraq, and we’re discussing what the right cuts to the size of the U.S. Army are,” he said. “That’s some kind of irresponsible thinking. The debate over resources should take place after Congress and the administration say, ‘Here’s how we intend to defend U.S. national security.’ That’s debate number one, not how many brigades we should cut.”

The Army reached its target of 45 active Army BCTs last year, six years after shifting from the traditional division-centric force to operating around modular brigade combat teams.

The original plan called for 48 active BCTs to support the demand for combat power in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2009, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates killed three of the planned BCTs, halting the growth at 45.

“The Army has trouble filling some of the units that they already have in terms of deployments,” Gates said at the time.

The Army has announced plans to reduce its end strength by 27,000 starting in 2015 and cut by 2012 the temporary 22,000-soldier increase that started in 2009 for the Afghanistan surge.

Subtracting 10 BCTs would fall in line with this plan, said the official, who asked to remain anonymous since discussions are ongoing.

BCT cuts may be more strategic than financial. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, soon to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, studied the idea when he ran Training and Doctrine Command. He ordered a study that found the Army could benefit from adding maneuver units and expanding BCTs while cutting 10 from the total number.

———

Lance M. Bacon contributed to this story.