Pentagon Board Finds U.S. May Need More Troops

One has to wonder if something is coming apart in the Administration. Fellow Republicans, public supporters of the President, and now the Pentagon are releasing information contrary to the "official" line coming directly from the Whitehouse. Is some of the Administration's unequivocal support is crumbling in the face of the election? Perhaps people have heard the official line a few too many times to believe it anymore and are begining to speak honestly to retain their own credibility. Or is the Administration back peddling in an attempt to shore up waning support?
One can only hope.
Pentagon Board Finds U.S. May Need More Troops
The U.S. military lacks sufficient troops for post-combat "stability and reconstruction'' operations, and should consider adding "significant'' numbers, a review by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board found. The report lists four main options for addressing what it calls an "enduring shortfall'' of troops: enlarging the military, shifting combat troops to post-combat duties, turning to the United Nations or allies for assistance, or scaling back "the number and/or objectives of stabilization missions.''
"We simply don't have enough forces for our overseas commitments,'' said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst and vice president of the Lexington Institute, a Washington research center, who was briefed by the Pentagon on the report. "The implication is that money will have to be taken out of Navy and Air Force investment accounts to increase the size of the force.''


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Pentagon Board Finds U.S. May Need More Troops
Oct 21 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. military lacks sufficient troops for post-combat ``stability and reconstruction'' operations, and should consider adding ``significant'' numbers, a review by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board found.
The report lists four main options for addressing what it calls an ``enduring shortfall'' of troops: enlarging the military, shifting combat troops to post-combat duties, turning to the United Nations or allies for assistance, or scaling back ``the number and/or objectives of stabilization missions.''
``We simply don't have enough forces for our overseas commitments,'' said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst and vice president of the Lexington Institute, a Washington research center, who was briefed by the Pentagon on the report. ``The implication is that money will have to be taken out of Navy and Air Force investment accounts to increase the size of the force.''
In Iraq, slow progress on reconstruction has helped fuel discontent with the U.S. occupation. Former U.S. administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer said earlier this month that the U.S. committed too few troops after the fall of Baghdad to maintain order and stop looting. President George W. Bush, who has been criticized by Democratic nominee John Kerry for failing to adequately plan to ``win the peace in Iraq,'' has said the all-volunteer military is sufficient to meet current and future needs.
Global Missions
The U.S. Army has 482,000 troops, of which 255,000 are serving abroad in 120 countries, including 15 of the service's 34 combat brigades. These numbers include about 138,000 troops in Iraq and 17,000 in Afghanistan and the biggest call-up of Reserve and National Guard troops since the Vietnam War.
Bush also has identified Iran and North Korea as countries the U.S. may have to confront over their efforts to build nuclear weapons.
The review was commissioned in January to determine how well the military was structured to make the transition from combat to more complex post-conflict operations. The Defense Science Board is a board of independent experts set up in the Department of Defense.
The study assumed the U.S. would embark on new operations abroad approximately every 18 months, which has been the trend since the U.S. sent troops to Bosnia in 1998.
Balkans Force
About 4,000 U.S troops remain in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia as part of the ongoing multinational force enforcing UN resolutions guaranteeing the safety of Muslim refugees. They perform vehicle searches and reconstruction work such as road repairs and landmine clearance, for example. They also participate in searches for suspected war criminals such as Radovan Karadzic.
The review concludes the ``current and projected force structure will not sustain our current and projected global stabilization commitments,'' according to Science Board briefing charts obtained by Bloomberg News.
Pentagon officials are being briefed on the report today before its public release, the Board said in a statement.
Details of the Science Board report were first disclosed by Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, during a Sept. 23 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and subsequently reported on by the Los Angeles Times.
The report is undergoing a security review that normally takes one month before release but ``we are pressing to expedite the process and it appears we have cooperation,'' the Science Board said in an e-mail statement. The report will be release ``very shortly after it comes out of security review,'' it said.
`Pace of Operations'
``It is not clear that our capabilities will suffice if we maintain the current pace of stabilization operations'' which ``can be as resource-intensive as major combat operations and last much longer.''
The Pentagon must treat these operations as ``an explicit mission in force planning and not as a lesser-included case.''
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in a Congressional hearing in September that ``the study was a good one and I thought it was sufficiently interesting that I have had it briefed to the chiefs, and I believe the combatant commanders.''
At a subsequent press conference, Rumsfeld said, ``We have the capabilities of fulfilling the missions that the United States military is called upon to perform and likely to be called upon to perform.''
In its current issue, the magazine The National Review, which had supported the war in Iraq, criticized the post-war planning.
``The U.S. military has to take a more lively interest in-post combat stability operations, if problems of the first year-and-a- half in Iraq are to be avoided elsewhere,'' wrote editor Richard Lowry in a piece entitled ``What Went Wrong.''
Overall, ``the Bush administration didn't know what it was getting into in Iraq and then found itself stumbling into exactly the sort of heavy-handed occupation many American officials wanted to avoid,'' he wrote.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Tony Capaccio acapaccio@bloomberg.net">acapaccio@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Rob Urban in New York robprag@bloomberg.net">robprag@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: October 21, 2004 17:05 EDT