PENTAGON Military lacks sufficient number of troops, advisory board says

The secretary of defense disagrees, saying there are enough soldiers.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military lacks sufficient personnel to meet the nation's war and peacekeeping demands throughout the world in coming years, despite steps taken by the Army to stretch its ranks and increase the number of soldiers available for combat, according to a Pentagon advisory board.
The report by the Defense Science Board, a panel of outside advisers to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, argues that "inadequate total numbers" of troops means that the United States can "not sustain our current and projected global stabilization commitments." Army initiatives to create more combat brigades out of its 10 active divisions are "important, but partial, steps toward enhanced stabilization operations," the panel said.
The report offered several options for easing the burdens on a U.S. military straining from the demands of missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the options are adding substantial numbers of troops to the force and scaling back the number of peacekeeping missions. The advisory board did not specify troop numbers.
The advisory board's findings first surfaced last week when Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., cited the report during a congressional hearing and questioned Rumsfeld about it.
Rumsfeld called it an "excellent piece of work," but he said the advisory panel probably had not been briefed on the Army's plans to squeeze more out of forces before reaching its conclusions.
Rumsfeld has argued that the military has enough troops and that initiatives under way at the Pentagon will create more front-line combat forces. A key change at the Army is creating additional deployable combat brigades in part by eliminating headquarters staff, a process known as "modularity."
"I don't know if they were briefed on ... all the things we're doing in the department. I doubt it," Rumsfeld said last week, dismissing the criticism implied by the findings.
However, a copy of the panel's findings obtained by the Los Angeles Times indicates that the advisory group did account for the Army's "modularity" plans. Yet the panel found the plans insufficient to deal with the burdens that combat and peacekeeping missions are placing on the U.S. military.