Official: Divisions not ready for battle
Shortage a concern if conflicts emerge
WASHINGTON -- Four Army divisions -- 40 percent of the active-duty force -- will not be fully combat-ready for up to six months next year, leaving the nation short of ready troops in the event of a major conflict in North Korea or elsewhere, a senior Army official said yesterday.
The four divisions -- the 82d Airborne, 101st Airborne, First Armored, and Fourth Infantry -- will be returning from Iraq next spring, to be replaced by three others, with a fourth rotating into Afghanistan. That would leave only two active-duty divisions available to fight in other parts of the world.
Briefing reporters at the Pentagon, the official said the four returning divisions will be rated either C-3 or C-4, the Army's two lowest readiness categories, for 120 to 180 days after they return as vehicles and helicopters are overhauled and troops are rested and retrained.
C-3 means a division is capable of performing only some of its combat missions, and C-4 means a division needs more manpower, training, or equipment to fight a major regional war.
A fifth division, the Third Infantry, which returned from Iraq in August, is still not ready to return to combat, the official said.
While the Army had been using 120 days as its standard for "resetting" divisions returning from overseas deployments, overhauling the divisions returning from Iraq could take as long as 180 days because of extreme weather in Iraq and the unprecedented magnitude of the planned troop rotation.
The four returning divisions will be bringing 650 helicopters, 5,700 tanks, and other tracked vehicles, along with 46,000 wheeled vehicles, the official said
"This is not Hertz rent-a-car where you drive [vehicles] for two years and you get rid of the fleet," the official said. "We have to take good care of our tanks . . . and all the other equipment. Because we don't get to buy new."
Once those divisions return from Iraq, Army readiness will be at its lowest point since the end of the 1991 Gulf War. Since then, Army officials have tried to keep divisions at the highest, C-1 readiness level.
This dip in readiness could have political consequences for President Bush, who sharply criticized the Clinton administration during the 2000 election for having allowed two Army divisions to fall to the lowest readiness category in 1999 because of peacekeeping obligations in the Balkans.
"Obviously, this is much worse in terms of the numbers," said Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who has called for increasing the size of the Army. "This is an indication of the stress the Army is under."
With all Democratic presidential candidates criticizing Bush's handling of the war in Iraq and his overall stewardship of foreign policy, the strategic implications of the Army's low readiness rates also could become an issue during the campaign.
"It's called dangerous," said Representative Ike Skelton, Democrat of Missouri, ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, who has been calling for 40,000 more Army troops -- the equivalent of two divisions -- since 1995. "The purpose of the military is to stand ready, to face dangers as they appear. Afghanistan came out of the blue, and fortunately, we were able to respond. If there were another tragic strike where we had to have a good number of troops, we'd be hurting."
The Army official acknowledged that four divisions rated C-3 or C-4 represented a "risk" in the nation's strategic posture. But he added: "It's a manageable risk. We've looked at this thing several ways from the joint [interservice] perspective. It's a manageable risk."
