10th Mountain, 1st Infantry Are Combat Ready, Pentagon Officials Say
WASHINGTON - Defense officials say although two Army divisions now deployed to the Balkans reported lower personnel readiness levels last month, that doesn't mean they aren't combat ready.
Recent media reports, said DoD officials, have mistakenly tagged the Army's 10th Mountain Division, which is now in Bosnia; and the 1st Infantry Division, now pulling duty in Kosovo, as being not ready for combat because they reported a "C-4," the lowest state of readiness rating, in October.
Officials pointed out to reporters during a Nov. 10 Pentagon "background" briefing that the 1st and 10th were indeed combat ready and the rating merely reflects the fact that in the case of a "two-war" scenario, both units would be hard-pressed to disengage from their Balkan assignments to deploy elsewhere.
"Current concerns about readiness are the result of two of the Army's 10 combat divisions reporting a lower-than-normal readiness level for the month of October in the category of personnel availability," said a senior DoD official at the briefing. "These divisions have deployed fully ready forces to the Balkans. The issue is not resource inadequacies - that is, training, manning, or equipment shortfalls.
"Instead, it reflects the fact that the Army's current readiness reporting system requires commanders to assess and report their unit's level of readiness based upon their ability to deploy ready forces to a major theater war within time lines established in the war plans."
The 10th Mountain Division, headquartered at Fort Drum, N.Y., and the 1st Infantry Division, based at Wurzburg, Germany, currently have soldiers assigned in Europe, in the Balkans, and stateside. Consequently, officials said, it would be difficult to quickly reintegrate the units, which would be necessary in time of war - especially in a two-war scenario.
Under current readiness reporting procedures, Army division commanders report the readiness level of their units as a whole - and do not report separately for their forces split between home station and the Balkans, said officials.
The 1st and 10th commanders "have lowered readiness assessments out of concern that they may be unable to disengage from the Balkans, retrain, and re-deploy forces in time to meet their major theater war requirement deployment dates, as specified in current war plans," according to the senior DoD official.
"We have a force structure capable of winning two near-simultaneous major theater wars, not two wars plus a small-scale contingency," the official said. "We've made that clear that in the event of a two major theater war scenario; all of our forces will be required, therefore we will be required to withdraw these units from the Balkans in the event of such a scenario."
To facilitate redeployment of warfighting divisions in case of war, officials said the Army, European Command, the Joint Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense have taken a series of steps: **The establishment of a detailed redeployment plan and Army-led re-training initiative will speed up the time required for retraining and redeployment so units can get to the war fight more quickly; **Other units would be substituted for those earmarked as "early deployers" in the initial phases of a major conflict; **Army National Guard units would be used more frequently in the Balkans to free up active units to prepare for their principal wartime mission; **The Army is modifying readiness reporting procedures to better reflect division readiness for units with dual missions, for small-scale contingencies and major theater war requirements.
Additionally, a task force assigned by the chief of staff of the Army and the Army secretary will rewrite warfighting unit readiness-reporting procedures "to better reflect ... the geostrategic landscape we're now facing," said the senior DoD official.
"The readiness reporting system worked very, very well in the Cold War and bipolar world that we had. But now that we're faced with a continuum presence and small-scale contingencies, as well as the MTWs, we're having to go back and relook it," said the official.
(by Gerry J. Gilmore, Army News Service)
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10th Mountain, 1st Infantry Are Combat Ready, Pentagon Officials Say
