Ops Tempo May Require Larger Marine Corps, Commandant Says

American Forces Press Service ^ | Jim Garamone

[SandRat]

WASHINGTON, Nov. 22, 2006 -- The Marine Corps may have to grow to keep up a tempo of operations that has caused individual and institutional stress in the force, the service's commandant said here today.

At a roundtable discussion with the Pentagon press corps, Gen. James Conway said working to alleviate the individual and institutional strain on the Marine Corps is his major goal as commandant.

Marines spend seven months deployed to Iraq and seven months home. In 2003, the general told reporters, he said the stress would show by the third deployment. “I was wrong,” he said today. Turnover in the units has bought the Corps some time, he explained. By the time a unit makes its second deployment, only about 40 to 50 percent of the unit’s Marines had served in the unit’s the first deployment. By the third deployment, that percentage drops to about 10 percent, he said.

Some units are preparing for their fourth deployment. “Virtually no one in those units went the first time,” he said.

If the current deployment trend continues, Conway said, Marines and their families may leave the service. “The young families, Marines (and) sailors may say it’s more than they are willing to bear,” he said.

The Marine Corps would like to see a seven-month deployment followed by 14 months at home station, the commandant said. In peacetime, the deployment tempo is six months deployed, 18 months at home.

In addition to the stress on individual Marines and their families, Conway said, the Marine Corps as an institution is also strained. “Progressively over time, our Marine Corps has become a good counterinsurgency-capable force, but we’re not providing to the nation some of the other things we should be able to do,” he said. “We are not sending battalions like we used to for mountain warfare training, the jungle training. We’re not doing combined arms exercises that we used to do for the fire and maneuver. (These are) activities that we have to be prepared to do.”

Conway said the Marine Corps mission includes these contingencies, but the training time is not available. He said the Corps could do whatever mission it is assigned, but there is an increased risk. “We may not deploy as quickly as we once did, we may not have quite the training that we once had, but we would be able to do the mission,” he said.

The Corps can ease these stresses and strains two ways, Conway said. “One is reducing the requirement,” he said. “The other is growing the force for what we call the Long War.”

The Marine Corps currently has 180,000 troops. Conway would not say how much the service would have to grow to make the 1-to-2 ratio for deployment/home station time possible.

Yet even in Iraq, the Corps could surge troops in if called upon, he said. “If that requirement is levied on us, we will provide,” the commandant said. But that, Conway said, would affect the Corps in the long term. “Anything that increases that requirement simply has long-range consequences on that rotation scheme and force generation model,” he said.

Turning to the war in Iraq, Conway said Marines in Anbar province are seeing some successes. The province is still a dangerous place, he acknowledged, “but there are still some positive things that we see happening out there.”

Tribal leaders in the far west around the Syrian border city of Qaim are stepping up and taking on al Qaeda in Iraq, he said, and it is relatively peaceful in that area. In other areas of the province, he said, 400 local Sunni Arabs have volunteered for the police force. Even in Ramadi, local Iraqis want to “exorcise al Qaeda from the city,” the general said.

[SandRat]

FR WAR NEWS!

WAR News Without the MSM Misleading Headline SPIN!

[SaltyJoe]

LOL!

That reminds me of a conversation I had with a seriously concerned SNCO. I say "seriously concerned" because "worry" isn't something that ordinary Marines do.

The old argument is that the Army would swallow us up and make us the 41st Amphibious Regiment (because they're only half as good as the 82nd Airborne) or something ridiculous with purple uniforms to replace our sacred Dress Blues.

I corrected him by stating the facts that the US Marine Corps is usually the only branch to increase in size while all the other services have to the trim the fat (pun intended). Yes, we're more likely to take over the Army than the Army would know what to do with a Marine Corps mission. Furthermore, even if there was the blasphemy of the Navy losing it's Marines to the Army, the sea soldiers doing a maritime mission would immediately separate themselves from common soldiers, and they would call themselves "marines". Heck, these hypothetical sea soldiers would probably burn their fancy purples and with a great deal of swagger adopt their own Dress Blues.

[2nd Bn, 11th Mar]

Man-oh-Man!
For the first time in my life the Commandant of the Marine Corps is a contemporary. As Captains, Jim Conway relieved me as the Director of the Sea School at MCRD San Diego, and we went fishing a few times on the Rappahannock while stationed at Quantico when we were Colonels.
He is a heckuva Marine and I am truly getting old.

Semper Fi,

[Criminal Number 18F]

Interesting. Unlike some services, the Marines were barely cut during the Clinton era (the Navy was halved, and the Army, which lost 8 of its 18 divisions, and AF, which sacrificed 11 of 24 combat wings, were right behind). The Marines were cut some, but nothing like that.

It seems like this is in the news to build support for a Dem initiative to add bodies to the military. The Dems generally prefer to add more (even unneeded) people because it makes the military a means for delivering social welfare, experimenting with social engineering, or just a big nanny-state jobs program. It also sucks up money needed for weapons (which Dems usually oppose) and operations (which Dems always oppose, unless it's dredging the ocean for the carcass of a Kennedy).

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[SaltyJoe]

Hmmm, do you recall that the Marine Corps refused homosexualization when other services caved more willingly to Pres. Clinton? The Corps remains very traditional as I understand it. I doubt it goes limp wristed especially in war.

I suspect that the USMC will win more DoD money because they've saved taxpayers the most and have given Uncle Sam a higher rate of return...IOW, more bang for the buck.

[Rodentking]

It's all down hill from here. Now all the Commandants are people who are younger and soon, way younger, than you! It isn't like it used to be, but in truth it never was. It does seem like the new kids complain about being deployed more than we did. On the other hand, society is far from what it was.

Semper Fly!

[A.A. Cunningham]

In peacetime, the deployment tempo is six months deployed, 18 months at home.

Since when? Used to be you deployed for six months then returned to the States for six, then deployed for six then returned for six, then deployed for six, then ...