Army of privates

By Ernest Blazar
The Washington Times, 06 April 1998

The Army’s got big problems, Congress’ investigatory arm found in a recent study.

The General Accounting Office looked at five of the Army’s 10 divisions that would deploy
in
a second wave to an overseas war.

These divisions – the 1st Armored, the 1st Infantry, the 4th Infantry, the 10th Infantry and
the
25th Infantry – are kept at a slightly lower level of readiness than the Army’s first five divisions,
which form the Army’s quick-deployment force.

This second batch of five Army divisions is key to fighting and winning the second of two
nearly simultaneous wars. Even considering their planned lower level of readiness, the five
divisions’ actual shortages are alarming. The GAO report was delivered to Congress during a
March 20 hearing of the House National Security Committee.

Many of GAO’s findings were backed by testimony from Army officers and soldiers.

The study and testimony suggests that, if not reversed, half of the active duty Army may go
hollow.

Among the examples:

• 10th “Mountain” Infantry Division – Only 138 of 168 infantry squads in this division were
  fully
  or minimally filled, investigators found. Of those, 36 of the filled squads were not qualified to
  execute their wartime tasks, investigators found. An infantry squad is supposed to have nine
  or 10 soldiers, but many have only four or five.

Col. William B. Caldwell, who commands the 1st Brigade of the 10th Infantry
Division,
confirmed for Congress that one-third of his infantry squads and all his anti-tank units are
unmanned. There are three brigades like Col. Caldwell’s in a division.

• 25th Infantry Division – In the 2nd and 3rd brigades of this division, 52 of 162 infantry
  squads
  were “minimally filled or had no personnel assigned,” the GAO report found.
• 1st Infantry Division – The division’s 1st brigade had only 56 percent of the infantrymen it
  needs to fill its Bradley armored vehicles. Overall, the brigade’s top enlisted soldier, Command
  Sgt. Maj. Michael L. Gravens, calls his unit’s overall strength “satisfactory.” But he told
  Congress recently that not having enough soldiers with the right training “clearly takes a toll on
  our readiness.”

Within the 1st Infantry Division’s 2nd brigade, located in Germany, 21 of its 48 infantry
squads had no personnel assigned. From the remaining 27 squads, the brigade sent five squads’
worth of soldiers outside their jobs to do maintenance, supply or office work. That means instead
of having 48 squads with nine soldiers, or 432 troops, the brigade instead has only 22 squads with
seven soldiers each, totaling 154 infantrymen. Moreover, the brigade suffers from a shortage of
226 noncommissioned officers, 17 percent below what the unit requires.

NCOs are the senior enlisted soldiers that make up the Army’s backbone. Most of the
Army’s
enlisted shortage is in the rank of sergeant, the first-line supervisor for junior troops.

• 1st Armored Division – At the division’s 3rd brigade, only 16 of the unit’s 116 MI1A1 tanks
  had full, four-man crews qualified to meet their wartime tasks. In one of that brigade’s two
  armor battalions, 14 of 58 tanks had no crew members assigned because all were deployed to
  Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the division’s German-based engineer brigade, 11 of its 24
  bridge-building teams had no personnel assigned.
• 4th Infantry Division – No fewer than 13 of 54 squads in this division’s engineer brigade had
  either no personnel assigned or fewer personnel assigned than required.

Col. Edwin W. Chamberlain III, a fourth-generation professional soldier who
commands
this division’s 3rd brigade at Fort Carlson in Colorado, told Congress there are problems.

“We are already seeing a trend in the brigade … recently where we have a shortage of
NCOs
and an abundance of privates,” he testified March 20, referring to the junior-most enlisted
soldiers.

That is a dangerous sign.

“The adverse readiness impact, should this trend continue, will be real on the battlefield and
will be evidenced by higher casualties due to a lack of junior leader experience. We saw this
happen at the beginning of the Korean War, and near the end of the Vietnam War,” he said,
relying on the memories of his father and grandfather who served the Army before him.

“We are in danger of becoming an ‘Army of Privates’ in the line units.”

When GAO investigators compared what they found in these five Army divisions against
official Army readiness reports, they found that in many cases, Army officers overstated their
units’ readiness.

In one example, an engineer battalion commander told investigators “his unit had lost the
ability
to provide sustained engineer support to [his] division.” That reflected what the GAO suspected
because all company and battalion-level training had recently been canceled for four months and
because the unit had only between 33 percent and 55 percent of its positions filled.

Nevertheless, the commanders rated his battalion ready to go to war if given only 20 days
to
train his troops. “This does not seem realistic,” the GAO reported, “given the shortages we
noted. We found similar disconnects between readiness conditions as reported … and actual unit
conditions at other armor, infantry and support units.”

The Army is trying to fix these problems.

Acting Army Secretary Robert M. Walker acknowledged to Congress on March 26 that
“we
face readiness challenges.” But as for infantry shortages, he said, “We have been able to begin
turning that around … We are refilling those squads today.”

But he may be swimming against the tide.

The Pentagon’s plan today is not to spend more money on units like these five Army
divisions.
It’s to squeeze more money – more than $10 billion – from them over the next four years to buy
new, high-technology planes, radar, computers and helicopters.

That means things may get worse, not better.