Getting back into action

I know, I know...I've been gone for way too long. I had intended to write a blog post for Veteran's Day, but I backed off, mostly because I wasn't satisfied with how it was turning out or what I had to say on the topic (here comes my perfectionist side again). Then I got really busy with my hopefully soon-to-be-published paper for work, and then I was off on Thanksgiving break. I told myself I'd catch up on reading and writing over the break, but I lied to myself. There was a lot I wanted to cover during my hiatus. But for now, I am going to briefly touch on the debate over force readiness.

Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno has been lamenting for quite some time that the Army is at "the lowest readiness levels I’ve seen within our Army since I’ve been serving for the last 37 years", as he did again earlier this month. This warning comes on top of the Army's move towards Progressive/Tiered Readiness earlier this year, which was itself controversial.

Some of my immediate thoughts on this topic:

1. Readiness is based upon fulfillment of troop strength, budgetary allocation, and training (among other things). As the article cited above mentions, Larry Korb over at the Center for American Progress has blamed the mechanism of sequestration for the Army's financial difficulties: "The Pentagon’s problems are not caused by the amount of money that is available under sequestration but by the process that requires them to cut all items in the budget, other than military personnel, by an equal amount."
2. Defense News had a really interesting article pointing out that this is not the first time we've heard the force readiness siren from top brass; indeed, I recall that in 2006, the Democrats even tried to use the detrimental effect on readiness to argue against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
3. Gauging force readiness is not the same now that the Brigade Combat Team replaced the division as the primary deployable unit in the Army; this makes me wonder whether we should  re-visit the criticisms of Lt. Col. Stephen Melton from 2005 during the force transformation process. Among other things, Melton complained about the larger staffing/C2 requirements for BCTs; one can imagine how much readiness will suffer in an austere fiscal climate if there are more people to train/mentor, more technology to master, and fewer resources by which to do it all. And since, as Larry Korb points out, the budget cuts do not affect actual military personnel, it should follow that BCTs have created more soldiers who get more entitlements - which leaves less money for equipment and training and anything else that a BCT needs that might affect its readiness for combat.
4. Bottom line: Yes, the Army might very well have far lower readiness on paper, and it might even be the "lowest in 37 years". But from where I'm standing, the real issue here is that the Army is suffering from an unanticipated side effect of the modular force transformation, rather than budgetary constraints per se.