Army Deployments of OIF and OEF

摘要

In October 2008, the Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army asked the RAND Arroyo Center to assess the demands placed upon the Army by the continuing deployments of soldiers to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In this analysis, numerous questions were addressed. How many soldiers has the Army been asked to maintain in theater over the course of OEF and OIF. How does this demand for soldiers compare with the numbers of troops maintained in theater by the other services. How does the demand for soldiers translate into a rate of soldiers deployed. What has the Army done to reduce the individual deployment ratio by increasing the number of soldiers it can deploy. Of the soldiers on active duty today, how many have deployed. How many have not yet deployed, and for what reasons. The principal source of data for this analysis was the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC). Analyzing deployment data through December 2008, Arroyo found that the Army has provided over 1 million troop-years to OIF and OEF, and most soldiers now deployed to OEF and OIF are on their second or third tour. Those soldiers who have not yet gone to OEF and OIF typically fall into one of two categories: new soldiers, needing to complete training before deployment; and experienced soldiers, needed for missions outside of Iraq and Afghanistan. The demand for active-duty soldiers in OEF and OIF would have exceeded supply under the Army's normal deployment policies, so the Army took several actions to increase supply: it increased the overall size of the active component; it reassigned soldiers from other missions to the pool of soldiers rotating to OEF and OIF; and it greatly increased the rate at which soldiers rotate to and from the wars -- to a rate that the Chief of Staff of the Army has characterized as unsustainable. The Army retains very limited unutilized capacity to deploy additional active-duty soldiers beyond the current troop levels in OEF and OIF.