The State of Defense 2017

Thanks for sharing a link to "The State of Defense 2017" SSgt Robert Marx which provides an overview of Army, Navy, UAF and Marines. Below is the information listed under Army:

President-elect Donald Trump will take over a U.S. Army that’s adding 28,000 soldiers over the next nine months, including 16,000 active duty troops. There’s no shortage of places or hotspots to put those extra soldiers. More than ten thousand troops are already deployed to combat zones around the world, most in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But there are other big questions facing the Army in the year ahead: Will Trump send thousands of soldiers to Syria to help establish and protect the safe zones he promised to create? Will he send more troops to join the nearly 5,000 already in Iraq to enact his promised quick victory over the Islamic State? Will the 7,000-soldier presence in Afghanistan (a topic Trump has largely avoided) decline in 2017? And with Russia’s military still operating from annexed Crimea, how long will American soldiers continue to train troops in non-NATO member Ukraine?

The Army began the year with its customary global presence: at least 100 troops are stationed in more than 20 countries across the world (see map below), and there’s at least one American soldier in nearly 175 countries. More than 35,000 are stationed in South Korea and Germany, as has been the case for decades.

But U.S. soldiers rotating throughout Central and Eastern Europe—many on Russia’s doorstep—could pose one of the more defining questions for the Army in 2017.

“Things very much resemble the early ’60s right now,” one U.S. military official said. “Russia is being belligerent and we are going down a lot of the same paths. We don't have symbolic cities like Berlin anymore, but we are in Poland and Ukraine.”

Some 4,000 troops from Fort Carson, Colorado — the 4th Infantry Division’s 3rd Brigade — began routing hundreds of tanks and heavy equipment from Germany to points east in early January for the Army’s Atlantic Resolve mission. The unit spent a year training for “full-spectrum operations” and will soon be training near the Polish and NATO air bases at Wrocław. The rest of their nine-month rotation in Europe will see them train with the armies of Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia.

“The arrival of [the 4th Infantry Division] in Europe is a strong statement of our recognition of the seriousness of the current state of affairs,” the military official said. “We are sending troops and equipment not to fight, but to enhance readiness with our NATO members and partner nations.”

Others in the Army have wider concerns as well. “I’m concerned with the alliances we’ve had and strengthened around the world” including “the U.S.-Republic of Korea partnership,” one first sergeant said. “Comments by the U.S. president-elect don't help the [U.S.-Korean] alliance. Koreans are not quick to forget slights by others, and I doubt Mr. Trump's statements will be forgotten anytime soon.”

Europe. Iraq. Afghanistan. South Korea. And another 2,000 or so troops are rotating throughout Africa again this year. “History continues to repeat itself with the fights we are in,” one senior NCO said. “We pull an armored division and corps headquarters from Europe only to find a few years later we need to now start deploying armored units on rotation to fill that void. We get rid of a permanent party brigade in Korea only to deploy a stateside brigade to Korea on a rotational basis. The ‘rotational’ concept may sound good in the theory of readiness, but in actuality, it’s gross mismanagement of resources and puts an additional strain on families and soldiers.”

And back stateside with those soldiers, the extra 16,000 active duty troops due to be added in this fiscal year are actually more a trick of math. The service will retain 15,000 billets that had been slated to be cut, and add just 1,000 new recruits. And that means the “strain” on personnel from yesteryear isn’t likely to go away very soon.

“Commanders are expecting the same level of mission accomplishment from a force roughly 15 percent smaller than what it was in 2014, with some units or sections or offices in particular [Military Occupational Specialties] taking 40 percent or more in cuts,” one senior NCO said. “Although the president-elect’s platform of bolstering the military is somewhat heartening, for those of us who have been around a while, the changes from having just cut the forces haven’t fully sunk in and aren’t complete yet. Now we want to reverse that course? Change can be and is good for organizational and business culture. Constant change as we’ve had the last few years is tiring and puts a strain on all of us. The strain is just as profoundly seen in morale...People are working longer and harder to try and keep up and fill the void.”

Elsewhere across units, Army NCOs can expect a mild shake-up of weight standards and possibly even the sight of beards on troops who aren’t special operators. The bottom line there, another senior NCO said, is that the Army “has to grow by 28,000 no later than 30 September—a lot of work to do there. As of now, recruiting and retention policies are being looked at. Force structure is also being looked at.”

There may even be units that had been scheduled to fold (“casing their guide-ons,” as it's called), but who could stay on for another year or more. Many of those details will be worked out in the months ahead as the services present their budgets for the next fiscal year—to say nothing of President Trump’s hard-to-predict guidance for the military beyond 2017.

One change coming to the Army is already leaving soldiers with a number of questions. “I'm interested to see the actual accession of transgender soldiers this coming summer,” the first sergeant said. “We just completed the Army-mandated training here in our unit and there were many, many questions. Some of these items could not be answered, mostly because they were ‘what if’ questions. I think most understand that we need to respect each other, but the policy change is no less repugnant to some within the ranks.”

Looking ahead, soldiers are somewhat nervous about what 2017 holds. More than a few are concerned about, as one put it, “the lack of a cogent strategy and commitment in combating ISIS.” And the president-elect’s recent statements toward China have others anxious as well. “On one hand, we have U.S. Army images of soldiers working with the Chinese army in the name of partnership,” a senior NCO said, “yet it seems we are hell bent on getting in a tussle with them.”

“And,” he continued, “we are still in Iraq and Afghanistan. I wish we could just—as has been proverbial said in a number of contexts—‘finish the fight.’”

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a Most informative and in-depth study or report ...
it looks to portray the Military in a good light kinda like Bragging then Up...

SSgt Robert Marx Super article. I've just got past the Army - working on the Navy - Still Reading. Thanks for the post Robert!