Posted by: McQ on Friday, February 17, 2006 Another indicator that things are going better in the effort to train up the Iraqi military and police forces is the possibility of shortening the tours of Army units presently in Iraq: The Army will move to shorter tours of duty in Iraq as American forces take on different roles in the months ahead. Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, told U.S. News that the Army intends to move to six-month and nine-month tours for brigades serving in Iraq, as opposed to the customary full year.If we were anticipating "more of the same" of that in which we're currently engaged in terms of a mission I would probably be against such a move. While you can get away with shorter tours for some services, learning their Area of Operations (AO) well often takes 3 to 6 months for a unit. After they learn the personalities, culture and tendencies of their AO they're much more effective within it. However, if, in fact, they're going to be "reserve or reaction forces", then the hard part, the daily patrolling, raiding and policing within the AO, will be done by Iraqis. Our forces would only show up as the cavalry in case the Iraqis get in a situation which is over their head. That would probably mean that we had used our combat multipliers in their behalf (Army and fixed wing aviation assets) and they were still confronted with a dicey situation requiring the committment of a reaction force. I would suggest those scenarios wouldn't be as numerous as one might think (don't forget, other Iraqi units would respond as well and we'd be encouraging that) and, given a little time, such missions might taper off to almost nothing. In essence, the US units would be the "go to h*ll" force, when everything, and I mean everything tried to that point had failed to turn the tide. It would also assume that the future would see some pretty good size battles in the offing (something I don't think we'll see, frankly). Anyway, this is good news for soldiers who have been on a couple of year long rotations and are anticipating another. Most soldiers can stand on their head for 6 months or so. But a year deployment is a heck of a long and lonely time, especially when families are involved. Schoomaker said moving to the shorter rotations will be based on "conditions." But the Pentagon has already said it will be pulling out several brigades from Iraq and instead stationing them as a quick-reaction force in the Kuwait desert. That means it is possible that some Army units deploying to Iraq either later this year or next could see shorter tours.Glad to see they're talking about putting them in Kuwait instead of keeping them in Iraq. That makes much more sense than keeping them in positions in Iraq which will need constant resupply and who's resupply units will continue to be targeted by IEDs. |
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