Issue: The grinding pace of operations to support today's global war on terrorism continues to stress armed forces that were already overworked before 9/11. Significant force increases are required to forestall considerable long-term retention and readiness problems.
Background: Years of budget cuts and strength reductions have cut military manpower by one-third since 1986, while deployments to support the global war on terrorism and other contingency, peacekeeping and humanitarian operations have dramatically increased.
More deployments spread among fewer people have sharply increased frequency and length of family separations. Service leaders testified to Congress before 9/11 that troops were overstressed. Now, our forces must meet vastly more long-term deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, with many making repeated deployments to these combat zones.
Compensation gains of recent years addressed one aspect of the retention equation. But servicemembers now are working far longer hours for their compensation, and enduring considerably more family separation. After years of resisting MOAA's and Congress' calls for larger ground forces, Defense leaders acknowledged the need for growth in late 2006, and proposed growing the Army by 65,000 (to 547,000) by FY2013.
The FY09 Defense Authorization Act increased Army and Marine Corps manpower levels by 7,000 (to 534,400) and 5,000, respectively, while reducing Air Force strength by about 13,000 and the Navy by about 3,000. The Secretary of Defense reinstated the Air Force cut later in the year.
Last year, in the wake of the nation's dramatic economic problems, the Chairman of the House and Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittees have both stated publicly that planned Army end strength increases will likely be slowed to fund weapons needs.
MOAA Position: MOAA supports sustaining at least the planned increase to Army end strength (with associated resource increases for recruiting and training) to meet mission requirements, and that failure to do so poses unacceptable risks to national security. The defense budget should fully fund both manpower and weapons requirements.
Key Bills/Status: The FY 2010 defense bill included increases to the all Services above the 2009 levels with additional authority to increase Army manpower by 30,000 starting in FY 2010 through FY2012. The Administration has submitted their 2011 Budget and it includes the temporary increase to the Army end strength, an increase to the Air Force end strength, no change to the Marine Corps end strength and a slight decrease in Navy end strength. We are awaiting more details on the what Congress will recommend once we see the House and Senate mark-ups to the Defense Bill.
