OK, over in this Indymedia/Fallujah thread, we started talking about troop numbers, where I got the idea from a few places (including this thread here) that we might be actually running out of troops.
One of the numbers that came up was that the active Army consisted of 480,000 troops, which was currently 34 percent of "our total fighting force."
That works out to 1.2 million soldiers.
The around 130,000 currently active in Iraq represents around one fifth of that. And that's getting close to some nerves, judging by the fact that generals are calling for more troops and extending tours/not letting the reservists or regular army soldiers go home once their initially agreed-upon time is up.
I just found this Oregonian article which has a nice breakdown of troop numbers, and confirms that "about a million" estimate up there.
Here's what seems to be the pertinent parts:
But the request Monday also revealed the Pentagon's lack of options for finding reinforcements.
(In other words, yes, we *are* running out of soldiers.)
The U.S. force in Iraq peaked during the invasion last year at roughly 155,000. And despite the addition of approximately 200,000 Iraqi police, army and other security troops since then, the U.S. number has dropped by only 25,000.
(Because the Iraqi forces have been oddly reluctant to shoot other Iraqis just because the Americans tell them to, in essence.)
The number of non-U.S. troops, currently 24,000, is unlikely to increase soon. Like Spain, some NATO members are waiting for a possible new U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq before committing troops. They also want to complete more of their mission in Afghanistan.
(I want to know more about troop numbers in Afghanistan, because I have a strong belief there are more American soldiers there than you might expect there to be.)
That leaves the U.S. Army, which has nearly 1 million soldiers overall, including National Guard and Reserve troops. But many already have been put on active duty, and lengthy tours strain the system by putting retention and recruitment at risk.
At that, the 10 regular Army divisions, about 10,000 to 15,000 soldiers each, have troops tied up in South Korea, Bosnia, Japan and Afghanistan, and all have sent troops to Iraq.
(According to information I pulled from a "Soldiers For The Truth" website in the other thread, only four of the 10 divisions are currently ready to fight -- the others are all either fixing equipment, retraining for combat after months of being cops in Iraq, or else are busy in other parts of the world.)
In the United States, the Fort Campbell, Ky.-based 101st Airborne Division has served in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Fort Drum, N.Y.-based 10th Mountain Division is on its second tour in Afghanistan.
As commanders cast about for fresh troops, one option is to send back a brigade from the 3rd Infantry Division, which led the siege of Baghdad last year, sooner than its expected deployment early next year. The 82nd Airborne Division, too, always has one brigade ready for rapid deployment and could leave its base at Fort Bragg, N.C., within days.
The numerically smaller Marines could add some troops. A combination of an Army division and a Marine regimental combat team is most likely, Nash said.
But the Camp Pendleton, Calif.-based 1st Marine Division, which joined the 3rd Infantry Division on the road to Baghdad, is in its second tour and taking some of the heaviest casualties of U.S. troops in Fallujah.
The article finishes with the depressing analysis that the more troops there are in Iraq, the bigger the perceived American presence, and the greater risk they'll all be at by basically pissing the people off. So we should be downsizing, but because we're in the middle of a fight/intifada, we can't.
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OK, to augment that, after a bit of looking, I found these Department of Defense figures for troop strengths, just to get an idea of how the various branches stack up against one another.
As of fiscal year 2002, the active duty rosters for the...
Army = 486,000
Navy = 385,000
Air Force = 368,000
Marines = 174,000
If you'd like to see where those troops were, as of Sept 30, 2003, here's a pdf with the exact breakdown. There are a lot in Germany, Spain, Japan and South Korea.
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Numbers for Afghanistan are officially unavailable, but recent press reports put it at "2,000 Marines being deployed to bolster the 11,000 troops already there."
Since, uh, they're being ambushed more frequently and they still haven't found Osama bin whatsisname, the guy who did that thing that must've had something to do with Iraq, right? Right? |
