As the Senate Armed Services Committee recommends growth in the Army's active-duty end strength, a senior DOD official is stressing that the Pentagon will find money within its budget to support a temporary increase.
At the same time, the Senate panel is calling for two independent studies on Army force structure and the decision to cap the number of brigade combat teams at 45, according to a report accompanying the committee's version of the fiscal year 2010 defense authorization bill.
The committee provides an increase of 30,000 "above 2010 levels during fiscal years 2011 and 2012 if sufficient funding is requested in the budgets for those fiscal years," according to the report.
During a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Army faces stress in 2010 and 2011.
"During '10 because of execution, during '11 because of coming back, refilling and trying to retrofit, you're going to have stress on the Army in a significant way," he said at the July 9 hearing. "At the same time, the Army is trying to get out of the stop-loss construct. And so all of these things are occurring in '10 and '11."
Consequently, he added, the Pentagon believes "there is a case for something between about 15,000 and 25,000" soldiers, and a 30,000-soldier increase "would give us the range in which to work to allow us to do that.
"Resourcing is going to be a challenge, but we believe . . . we'll find that money, if it's necessary to find it internally, to do that," Cartwright continued. "We'd like the help, probably, but again, we've got to make a decision inside the department. We've got to work that through. But the case for the additional forces is clearly there."
The House, in its version of the FY-10 defense authorization bill, approved a 15,000-soldier increase in active-duty end strength for the Army -- down from the 30,000 backed by the House Armed Services Committee.
Meanwhile, the Senate is calling for two reports on the Army's size and structure, the first of which would study the Army's current and planned modularity structures.
In 2004, the Army began its shift from a large division-based structure to smaller brigade combat team units. Modular brigade combat teams were designed to operate more independently by relying on embedded combat support capabilities, such as military intelligence, reconnaissance, logistics and civil affairs.
In its report, the Senate committee expresses concerns about the initiative's cost growth and effectiveness, citing two reports -- from the Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office -- that called attention to these issues.
A June 2009 CBO report states the program "has cost more and yielded fewer benefits than were originally estimated." In particular, it cites a dramatic growth in the effort's price tag (Inside the Army, June 8, p2).
"The costs to carry out the initiative have grown beyond the initial estimate of $21 billion and may total more than $140 billion through 2013," states CBO.
A November GAO report cites the effort's progress, but also notes the Army lacks a detailed plan for the modular units' future (ITA, Nov. 17, 2008, p14).
Although the Army will have established "over 80 percent of its modular units by the end of 2008," the service still "does not have a results-oriented plan with clear milestones in place to guide efforts to equip and staff those new units," reads the GAO report.
According to the report accompanying the authorization bill, Senate authorizers are concerned by "these wide differences between the CBO, GAO, and Army and their assessments of the analytical basis, performance, and cost of the Army's modular unit transformation."
These "unresolved questions about the operational capabilities and personnel and equipment requirements of the Army's modular unit structure makes it difficult to reliably estimate requirements for end-strength and equipment modernization and procurement," the authorizers write.
The committee specifies that an "independent, federally funded research and development center" should carry out the study.
The Senate panel also recommends a separate study on the impacts of Defense Secretary Robert Gates' decision to limit Army active component growth to 45 BCTs instead of the planned 48.
The committee says it is particularly concerned about the effect of the decision on soldiers' dwell time.
To address these concerns, the committee asks the Army secretary to deliver by March 1 an unclassified report that provides analysis, comparison and the projected impacts of staying at 45 BCTs rather than growing to 48 through 2012.
The committee asks that the report include details on the dwell time to deployment ratio for the Army's BCTs, as well as for the 30 military occupational specialties in high demand in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Within 30 days of the completion of this report, the Secretary of Defense shall submit to the congressional defense committees a report describing steps that the Department of Defense has taken and plans to implement that will improve the time-deployed to time-at-home ratios for the Army active component," states the congressional report. -- Kate Brannen