Nearly 40,000 Troops to Be Deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan: Soldiers Will Be Replacements for Those Coming Home

By David Wood, The Baltimore Sun

May 19–WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has alerted nearly 40,000 active duty and National Guard soldiers that they will be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan starting this fall, in a sign that it expects hard fighting to continue on both fronts in what Pentagon officials call “the long war.”

The Pentagon suggested that the troops will deploy for not more than 12 months rather than the 15-month rotations that have become the rule in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The units will deploy beginning in late fall and will continue through the end of the year, Army officials said.

They are replacements for units slated to rotate home from the war. There are 155,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 33,000 in Afghanistan now.

The Defense Department agreed this spring to limit combat tours to 12 months of “boots on the ground,” meaning that pre-deployment training, staging and redeployment could add weeks to the 12-month tour. The 25,000 troops alerted for deployment to Iraq include soldiers of the headquarters of the 25th Infantry Division, and brigade combat teams from the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colo.; the 25th Infantry Division of Honolulu; the 1st Infantry Division of Fort Riley, Kan.; the 82nd Airborne of Fort Bragg, N.C.; the 1st Cavalry Division of Fort Hood, Texas; the 172nd Infantry Brigade of Schweinfurt, Germany; and the 25th Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade of Fort Wainwright, Alaska.

National Guard units alerted for Afghanistan include about 14,000 soldiers from Texas, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Tennessee. In addition, the Vermont National Guard was alerted to deploy on a training mission to Afghanistan in the spring of 2010.

The Army said today that it is “increasingly a challenge” to provide troops for the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and to reach its goal of allowing soldiers at least 12 months at home between combat tours.

The experience of the 25th Infantry Division is typical. It just returned last October from a 15-month deployment in Iraq and will spend barely 12 months at home before its new deployment. The division served a 12-month deployment in Afghanistan in 2004 and 2005.

In a speech last week, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, acknowledged that U.S. ground forces, including the Army, Marines and National Guard, are struggling to meet the demands of the two-front war.

“We would be hard-pressed to launch a major conventional ground operation elsewhere in the world at this time,” Gates told reporters in Colorado Springs, Colo.

“The risk of over-extending the Army is real,” he said. “But I believe the risk is far greater — to that institution, as well as to our country — if we were to fail in Iraq.”

david.wood@baltsun.com

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