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In 2006, Stratfor argued that the number of military units committed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so consumed the United States’ deployable forces that a “window of opportunity” for other global players — like Russia — had emerged. This window gave these other players a chance to move more aggressively to achieve their goals abroad. This dynamic certainly held through the U.S. troop surge in 2007 and into 2008. Stratfor re-examines this dynamic in light of several emerging trends — namely, the reduction of troop levels in Iraq and the expansion of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.
This window has an important psychological component. Especially in 2006, the situation in Iraq looked quite bleak, and the U.S. military looked particularly stretched. But while this psychological perception has widely persisted, at its core the window is simply arithmetic — how many combat troops the United States has, how many it can deploy (logistically speaking) and how many are committed to operations and missions abroad. The number of troops that Washington either bases permanently overseas or sustains there through rotating deployments is enormous. This has left the United States with few “employable” combat troops and associated logistical capacity. But the tide may be turning.
Measuring the U.S. Army and Marine Corps
Rather than raw troop numbers, the most useful unit of measure for U.S. ground forces is the Brigade Combat Team (BCT) — a deployable formation of approximately 2,500 to 4,500 U.S. soldiers with its own organic support capabilities. This is the basic building block of U.S. Army deployments. The Army has moved to standardize some eight different brigade architectures into three basic units of action: armored, infantry and Stryker (built around the wheeled light armored vehicle of that name). All three types are deployed to Iraq, but the terrain of Afghanistan forces a heavier reliance on helicopters and infantry. For the purposes of this analysis, Stratfor will refer only to BCTs, but with the caveat that not all BCTs are created equal and that mission requirements can favor one type or preclude the employment of another.
The shift toward these brigade-sized units of action has been under way for more than four years now. Previously, the Army focused on a larger division-level organization, which left individual brigades more heavily reliant on support from their parent divisions. Through the transition, the Army hopes to make its units highly deployable at the smaller brigade level. Though implementation continues unit by unit, the transition is well advanced. In other words, the Army has been seeking to optimize itself for deployment while creating a modular force capable of quickly being tailored to fit a variety of mission profiles — from peacekeeping to counterinsurgency to fighting a conventionally armed peer competitor. Concurrent with the Iraq drawdown, the Army will be increasingly reaping the benefits of this optimization as it is moves toward complete implementation. The BCT will become increasingly customizable.
Through this reorganization and optimization, the Pentagon has already succeeded in reshaping the Army from some 33 brigades in 2004 to 42 BCTs. It has also accelerated the completion date by several years, to 2010, for the ongoing expansion of 65,000 active-duty troops — for a total of 547,000 soldiers. By this point, the U.S. Army plans to have 48 active-duty BCTs in addition to the 28 Reserve or National Guard BCTs — 76 total by 2010. This growth of the active force includes associated supporting formations (everything from civil affairs to air defense) and combat service support units (tailored more toward supply and logistical considerations).
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