Pentagon Unveils Plan to Bolster Forces in Iraq

The Pentagon unveiled its long-awaited plan yesterday for maintaining troop strength in Iraq that involves the rotation of virtually every remaining active duty unit in the Army plus the activation of National Guard brigades and the creation of three divisions of multinational forces.

The plan assumes that 156,000 U.S. forces battling a stubborn Baathist insurgency will have to remain in Iraq well into next year, showing that defense officials have now abandoned an earlier belief that they could begin to withdraw some U.S. forces this fall.

But the plan is built upon the arrival of a third multinational division in February or March to replace the 101st Airborne Division, even though the Bush administration is trying to complete deployment of the first two multinational divisions later this year.

With more than 60 percent of the Army's active-duty combat force deployed in Iraq, Army planners were forced to abandon six-month tours for most overseas deployments in favor of year-long assignments to sustain a force of that size. The last time the Army used year-long deployments was Vietnam, except for one peacekeeping rotation in the Balkans in 1995.

But defense officials said the year-long tours at least will give soldiers and their families predictability in terms of how long they will be away from home. The lack of such predictability recently became a contentious issue for soldiers in the 3rd Infantry Division, who fought their way into Baghdad in April. They were led to believe they would soon be going home, only to have their tours repeatedly extended without a specified end date.

Under the plan, the division would be out of Iraq by September and replaced by soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division. At the same time, the remaining Marines from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force would be replaced by a multinational division under Polish command.

Beyond the activation of at least two "enhanced" National Guard brigades, other measures have been adopted to create a large enough rotation base. One is the inclusion of the 1st Cavalry Division, which has traditionally been held in reserve as a hedge against possible hostilities involving North Korea.

Another is inclusion of the Army's new Stryker Brigade at Fort Lewis, Wash., built around the new eight-wheeled Stryker combat vehicle, which has just been certified in training exercises as combat-ready.

Three Army divisions under the plan will not have seen action in Iraq by the middle of next year: the 2nd Infantry Division, which is based in Korea and focused exclusively on the North Korean threat; the 10th Mountain Division, which is redeploying to Afghanistan after serving there in 2002; and the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii, which is to replace the 10th Mountain Division next year.

Given the Army's standard peacetime three-to-one rotation policy — in which three divisions are home training, refitting and reconstituting for every one deployed overseas — the 10-division army would have to double in size to maintain force levels in Iraq on a sustained basis.

"Is the force stressed? Yes, the force is stressing hard to meet its challenges," Maj. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, vice director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon. "Is it overstressed, can it not meet its challenges? We don't have any indication of that at this point."

Gen. John M. Keane, the Army's acting chief of staff, who joined McChrystal at the briefing, acknowledged the strain but said that force levels in Iraq can be maintained well into next year as long as the required multinational peacekeeping forces arrive as planned. "If the coalition divisions did not materialize and we had to go back to Army divisions, clearly, that would stress this force."

But Keane, having recently returned from Iraq, insisted that morale remains high because U.S. soldiers, having lived through the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, understand that their service in Iraq is related to the well-being of the American people. "They get it," he said. "There really is something different in terms of their intensity and this dogged determination to succeed."

The war in Iraq and the lengthy overseas deployments it has necessitated, he added, have not harmed recruiting. "Our recruiting is very good," he said. "Our retention is very high right now," he said. "Obviously, this is something we watch carefully. Are we concerned about it? Sure, we're concerned about it with a commitment like that" in Iraq.

After the 3rd Infantry and 1st Marines leave Iraq in September, the plan calls for the Stryker Brigade to arrive in Iraq in October to augment the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is to leave in March. The 1st Armored Division will be replaced by elements of the 1st Cavalry, plus an enhanced National Guard brigade, between February and April. The 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment will be replaced by a brigade from the 1st Cavalry Division in March or April.

The remainder of the plan calls for the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division to leave Iraq in January, with no replacement, and the 173rd Airborne Brigade, also with no replacement, to leave in April.