Clinton Legacy Watch # 22: More Evidence of A Hollow Military⁽¹⁾

(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday’s Washington Times published a
chilling snapshot of the
deplorable — and worsening — condition of elements of five of the U.S. Army’s 10 divisions. The
data cited from a recent General Accounting Office study by Ernest Blazar, editor of the
newspaper’s valuable “Inside the Ring” feature (see the attached)
should be grounds for urgent
corrective action even if they prove to be unrepresentative of wider trends throughout the Army
or the military more generally. If, on the other hand, these data offer an accurate picture
of
the overall condition of the armed forces, nothing less than an effort comparable to recent
congressional action on the highway bill may be in order to restore the military to its
required levels of combat readiness.

In the Danger Zone

The GAO report presented to a 20 March hearing of the House National Security Committee
revealed that significant numbers of units are seriously undermanned. For example:

• “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.”
• “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.”
• “At the [1st Armored] 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.”

Scarcely less worrisome than the shortfalls in personnel in these combat units is the fact
that
the Army is experiencing serious undermanning of non-commissioned officer
positions. As
one commanding officer put it: “We are in danger of becoming an ‘Army of Privates.'” Such an
Army is unlikely to be able to fight — let alone prevail in — the Nation’s future wars.

The Bottom Line

The concluding paragraphs of Mr. Blazar’s column should be a wake-up call for those
responsible
for assuring that America’s military is prepared to provide, as the Constitution requires, for the
“common defense”:

“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.”

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1. See two previous Center Decision Briefs in the
“Clinton Legacy Watch” Series: # 2: The
Re-Emergence of a Hollow U.S. Military (No.
97-D 105, 25 July 1997) and # 17: Dangers of a
‘Hollow Military’ (No. 98-D 23, 5 February 1998).