About 60 percent of the Army will receive training no higher than squad level — typically nine to 10 soldiers — this year. In fact, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has said that it will be 2020 before the Army, Navy and Marines reach an acceptable level of readiness — combat preparedness of both personnel and equipment. The Air Force won’t be combat-ready until 2023.
The secretary’s disclosure is bad news. The sequester cuts forced on the Pentagon by the Budget Control Act of 2011 are dramatically degrading the combat preparedness of our troops at the small-unit level — the level at which most battles are won or lost.
Why is this reduction in Army training so detrimental? Individual soldier and crew skills, although important, are only the first steps in a lengthy and progressively larger training regimen at the platoon (up to 40 soldiers), company (up to 150) and battalion levels (up to 900) that historical experience has shown to be essential. Extensive training at the unit level builds proficiency, unit cohesion, trust and confidence.
The best example of the importance of such training is the experience of the 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, in July 1950. Most of the 400 soldiers in the group, known as Task Force Smith, hadn’t fired a shot since basic training. The task force had been deployed to Korea within days of the North Korean invasion, and its mission was to delay the enemy advance. Under relentless pressure from North Korea’s infantry and armor, the poorly trained and equipped battalion suffered 40 percent casualties while delaying enemy forces for seven hours. Modern Army training is based on this bitter lesson.
It used to be that a U.S. Army tank platoon leader — exactly what I was trained for — would complete, over two years, one or two exhaustive training cycles, each several months long. That training, in a “crawl-walk-run” progression, would begin with individual soldier and crew skills and move on to field exercises at the platoon, company and battalion levels; day and night tank gunnery; a brigade-level exercise; and, finally, after several months, three weeks of around-the-clock training against the National Training Center’s opposing force, operating across several hundred square miles in the Mojave Desert at Fort Irwin.
The failure to train becomes increasingly dire at higher levels of command. Captains must learn how to maneuver their companies. Lieutenant colonels must learn how to command their battalions and integrate and synchronize mortar and artillery fire, reconnaissance and convoy-like logistical support. Those skills are honed only through extensive field time and years of experience. The Army mantra “Train as you will fight” isn’t rhetorical; it is a moral and practical imperative based on decades of combat experience. Only through extensive field training can soldiers and young leaders learn how to be tactically and technically proficient enough to survive on an increasingly complex battlefield.
Training the officers and soldiers of armor battalions is, however, only one small slice of the Army’s overall training mission. Every branch within the service — infantry, artillery, aviation, all of the support elements — has its own training and leadership development programs. Then there are the Air Force, Navy and Marines. Their roles and missions are different. The common theme across our forces — what makes them the best in the world — is rigorous training. The Budget Control Act undercuts all of this.
Inadequate training is only part of the problem. Modernization is fast becoming a thing of the past. In the past four years, the Army has canceled 20 programs, postponed 125 and restructured 124. Research and procurement funding has been cut by one-third since 2011. In more practical terms, funding reductions are delaying badly needed combat vehicle and aviation modernization, further jeopardizing what remains of the Army’s technological superiority.
Budget reductions are also forcing dramatic cuts to the size of the force. The number of active-duty soldiers in the Army will drop from 570,000 to 420,000 in 2019. This gap cannot be filled by mobilizing National Guard and Reserve forces. Although these forces provide extra depth, the training shortfalls compromising active-duty forces are also affecting the reserves. Army Secretary John McHugh and Gen. Raymond Odierno, the Army chief of staff, have questioned the service’s ability to fight and win even one regional military conflict.
The Army is not alone: The Budget Control Act is substantially compromising every service. By the end of the decade, the Air Force will have lost nearly half of its strike and reconnaissance capabilities. Most of the stateside Marine Corps units are not deployable. The Navy will almost certainly shrink from 275 ships to 250, possibly fewer, becoming a regional force.
Today’s minimalist approach has supplanted yesterday’s moral obligation to provide adequately for troops with a blind adherence to a law passed by Congress and enacted by the president. The spending cuts that many of these leaders now bemoan and adamantly oppose appear to disregard the soldiers who defend the nation.
The budget proposed by then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates in February 2011 was the last defense budget driven more by real-world requirements than politics. As the House and Senate defense authorization committees and defense appropriations subcommittees draft their respective bills for 2016, the funding levels recommended by Gates remain the minimal benchmarks that Congress should adopt if our elected representatives actually want the United States’ armed forces to fight, win and come home the next time they are sent into harm’s way.
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