http://www.armytimes.com/issues/stories/0-ARMYPAPER-3173352.php

Army IDs 37,000 soldiers who have not gone to war — and could spell relief for the heavily deployed

Soldiers who haven’t been downrange yet had better hone their warrior skills because the Army wants to see more combat patches in the ranks.

The Army has targeted 37,000 active-duty soldiers who have yet to serve a combat tour after more than six years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Over that period, 59.4 percent of some 515,000 active-duty soldiers have deployed to the Central Command area of operations at least once, according to data compiled by Human Resources Command. Many of them have served three or four tours — some even more.

Another 33.4 percent have not served a war tour but are assigned to units with pending deployments; are not in deployable status because they are at basic training, school or other Army training; have medical or legal issues that keep them out of rotation; are serving as instructors, recruiters or drill sergeants; or are in transit or otherwise on hold.

But 7.2 percent, roughly 37,000 active-duty soldiers, have been identified by HRC as available for deployment and are facing transfer to operational units.

Soldiers charged with combing through the rolls at HRC indicated that many troops yet to deploy have been ready and willing to go, and many have volunteered but haven’t had the opportunity. But the assignments officers also acknowledged that some homesteading and deployment-ducking have taken place.

"Certainly in a population of 37,000 you’ll have soldiers who say, ‘I’ll avoid this at any cost,’" said Col. Louis Henkel, deputy director of the Enlisted Personnel Management Directorate at HRC.

"Does that mean the Army will give them cover? No," Henkel said.

But while some soldiers may not move toward the sound of the guns, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Dick Cody says he thinks they are in the minority.

"This far into the war, I think that is more of a perception than a reality," Cody said, explaining that it has taken this long to get every soldier an opportunity to go downrange while simultaneously creating cohesive leadership in deploying units and in units that are being stood up.

"I think you could go to any post, camp or station and you could probably find someone who’s been in the Army four years and hasn’t deployed and that would be the exception, not the rule. Because when you look into it, that may be the best trainer for our medics down at [Brooke Army Medical Center]," Cody offered as an example. HRC officials were unable to provide a breakdown by major command of soldiers being considered for first-time deployments.

Of the Armywide 7.2 percent being looked at for first deployments, the highest number without combat tours, 27.1 percent, work in health services, a field in which the need for specialists on the home front makes rotations less frequent.

The next largest group at 7.1 percent is considerably smaller and comprises soldiers who work in operations support in branches and career management fields that include space operations, foreign area officers, nuclear and counterproliferation, signal, telecommunication systems engineering, strategic plans and policy, simulation operations and information systems management.

Soldiers who work in transportation, ordnance quartermaster, logistics, adjutant general, finance, human resources and acquisition make up 4.1 percent of the undeployed.

And the smallest group of undeployed soldiers, 3.5 percent, is in the maneuver, fires and effects category, which includes all combat-arms specialties, special operations and public affairs.

Many of these targeted soldiers work in places such as the Pentagon, Installation Management Command, HRC and other units in the Military District of Washington.

The long haul

Army leaders long have described what they believe will be persistent global conflict in which the Army will continue to play a major role.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have continued longer than projected, requiring active-duty troops to serve back-to-back deployments and reservists to serve as operational forces.

The relentless operations tempo has been the source of wide dissatisfaction inside the ranks and among family members, creating a stiff and ongoing challenge to recruiting and retaining troops.

To help ease the deployment strain, the Army has accelerated by two years, to 2010, its goal of growing active-duty end strength to 547,000, from the current 519,000. Also, the service is putting more money into addressing family support issues and looking for places where soldiers who are tired from relentless rotations can sit the game out for a while.

The Marine Corps embarked on a similar campaign close to a year ago with a Corps-wide message from the commandant ordering all hands into the fight and specifically targeting 66,000 leathernecks who had not deployed.

the Army has not issued any such message. Rather, the hunt for fresh warriors has evolved as repeat deployments have become standard for much of the force and others have been reassigned to non-deploying billets before it was obvious the operations tempo was not going to slacken any time soon.

"Everybody wants to go downrange and be part of this because they know the importance of this war," Cody said, adding, "At the same time, there’s a demand to make sure we have the right noncommissioned officer leaders and officer leaders at our training bases that are training up these young men and women to go to these units."

The need to get combat vets into training bases forced HRC to look deeper into the ranks for soldiers who could deploy and have not.

To help rotate people into those jobs, Gen. William S. Wallace, commander of Training and Doctrine Command, said he has asked the Army G-1, the TRADOC command sergeant major and HRC to see "where we can accept two-year assignments in TRADOC and to codify those assignments to the point where we can start moving people in and out without doing damage to our organizational structure in the process."

"I don’t want to create so much turbulence in TRADOC that it becomes inefficient in terms of moving people around, but there is great value, in my judgment, in having combat veterans wearing the TRADOC patch because they bring credibility and they bring life, they bring energy into the organization," he said in a recent interview.

Wallace said he doesn’t expect it to be a blanket policy across the command because of the turbulence it could cause in training the force.

But, where it makes sense, he said, he’d "like to move people in and out of TRADOC in a more rapid fashion because I need the combat experience, and I think our combat veterans in some cases need a break."

Henkel said people who have been in TRADOC billets for six years will "be the first in the queue."

Some targeted TRADOC positions, Cody noted, won’t be able to move into operational units until replacements whose deployments have been pushed to 15 months can return and get to the assignment.

"Obviously when job one is to fill fully trained, best-led units into combat, with 20 brigades in Iraq, and three brigades in Afghanistan plus another 4,500 senior leaders on military training teams, just that demand alone has driven us to make sure that we’re balancing this force in terms of getting the right people in the right positions so we have trained and ready forces in this fight," Cody said.