Europe drawdown can expect speed-up - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Europe drawdown can expect speed-up

Soldiers are likely to begin coming home from Europe next year, sooner than the planned drawdown in 2015.

About 40,000 soldiers — and about 100,000 dependents — are currently stationed in Europe, most of them in Germany. Among them are four brigade combat teams, three in Germany and a fourth in Vicenza, Italy.

The long-term plan calls for bringing one of those brigades home — leaving Europe with three BCTs. It’s up to the Army to choose which of the four brigades will come home and when.

“I have made an offer on which brigade that should be to the Department of the Army,” said Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, the commanding general for the U.S. Army in Europe. “I have also made an offer in terms of the timing of it, which could be sooner than they were asked for, 2015.”

The smart thing to do, Hertling told Army Times, would be to begin the drawdown process as the units come home from deployments. The 170th is in the process of redeploying and the 172nd will redeploy in late spring.

Hertling said he did not know whether the chosen brigade would be moved, deactivated or reflagged. That, too, he said, is up to the Army.

Hertling won’t say which brigade he proposed removing, but all signs point to either the 170th or 172nd. Both brigades were scheduled to begin conversion to the modular heavy brigade combat team upon redeployment.

Initially, both conversions were delayed. But in December, the Army announced that the 172nd would go ahead with conversion in 2013.

The 170th conversion remains on hold.

Whichever unit is taken out of Europe, Hertling said, the reduction of force should be synchronized “with deployments but also the least amount of turmoil to families,” he said.

Hertling said the best way would be to work with Human Resources Command to slow down refilling slots as soldiers leave these units.

Cutting troops in Europe is not as easy as back in the states, where people can be easily reassigned to another unit on the same post, Hertling said.

“Would you want to start building up brigades that are coming out of theater … bring them home, go through the whole regeneration, redeployment process, build them back up again, get people assigned over here and then inactivate them in two years, three years?” Hertling said. “No. We think it would be prudent to do it sooner rather than later, just so we don’t have a regeneration requirement over here that we know is going to go away.”

He hopes that budget pressures don’t lead to removing two brigades from Europe. And if that happened, he would not want to lose his heavy capability.

The number of soldiers in Europe has been on a steady decline from the more than 200,000 who were posted there at the height of the Cold War.

Reducing the force in Europe has been proposed — and postponed — before. The base realignment and closure plan of 2005 called for two, rather than four, brigades to remain based in Europe, and until 2007 the Army was on track to reduce the number of soldiers in theater from 62,000 to 28,000.

That drawdown was put on hold at the request of senior commanders who cited a resurgent Russia, and a requirement to train and work with NATO allies.

USAREUR officials project that command strength will be about 37,000 when the fourth brigade is withdrawn or deactivated. As of early December, 38,360 soldiers are stationed in Europe.

Other units may go, too

Hertling has also recommended that some other units now based in Europe be moved because they do not necessarily support his mission in Europe.

“I don’t want a unit over here that is just stationed here. I want a unit that is doing something and that has a mission. And there are units, frankly, that are just stationed here that are waiting for the Army to say hey, deploy somewhere else,” he said. The lighter, more deployable Europe-based BCTs are the result of a major reform of the Army’s force structure in the past decade and number about 3,500-strong, compared with the 10,000-12,000 soldier divisions they replaced.

The Army in Europe, like the service overall, is geared toward the primary mission of preparing its forces to deploy, Hertling said. Since 2001, 20 percent to 40 percent of Europe-based soldiers have been deployed on any given day, with about 11,000 now on missions out of theater, he said.

Another idea for Europe cuts was to save money on family support programs by having troops sent to Europe on one-year tours unaccompanied by dependents, instead of the current three-year accompanied tour.

Hertling vehemently opposes that idea, saying it would “be devastating for quality of life” of soldiers in Europe.

“I think it would actually cost you significantly because you are talking about changing a three-year tour to multiple one-year tours, but it also significantly affects readiness which was the argument for going away from it in Korea, because the commanders in Korea were basically saying we can’t train a force in a year and expect any teamwork in that period of time.”

Those opposed to reducing the force in Europe point to the value of U.S. forces training with their NATO counterparts and their role in supporting other commands. And they point to the recent conflict in Libya as one benefit of having forces stationed in Europe.

“The mission over here is critically important for the national security of the United States. It is critically important for the support of not just the EUCOM commander but the [Africa Command] commander, the [Cyber Command] commander, the [Strategic Command], [Transportation Command] and [Special Operations Command] commander that have forces over here and are doing the bidding of the United States,” Hertling said. “I mean none of those combatant commands could accomplish their mission without elements of USAREUR contributing.”

Senior writer Jim Tice contributed to this story.