Sequestration Cuts Leave Army With Only 2 Brigades Ready To Fight: CSA Odierno

http://breakingdefense.com/2013/10/21/army-of-two-sequesters-training-cuts-leave-only-2-brigades-combat-ready/



An Army M2 Bradley trains at the National Training Center in California in January. Since then, budget cuts have forced the Army to cancel most such exercises, leaving just two combat brigades ready to deploy outside Afghanistan.

Sequestration Cuts Leave Army With Only 2 Brigades Ready To Fight: CSA Odierno
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on October 21, 2013 at 1:19 PM

WASHINGTON: The Army has had to cancel so much training that only two of its 42 combat brigades are ready for combat, Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno told reporters at the Association of the US Army conference here today. It’ll take until June to get a solid force of seven brigades ready for any unexpected contingency — and that’s assuming no further budgetary disasters.

While the service has been able to protect funding for brigades headed for or deployed in Afghanistan, Odierno explained, those units aren’t available for a contingency elsewhere — and they’re not properly trained for one. “They are trained as advisors,” he said. “They’re not trained as brigades to conduct combat operations because that’s not their mission in Afghanistan.”

Training a unit to fight as a unified, brigade-sized force against high-firepower adversaries is very different from training it to disperse into small training and support teams assisting someone else’s army. So when it comes to readiness to deploy to an unexpected contingency for all-out combat, “right now in the Army, we have two brigades that are trained,” Odierno said. “Two.”

It’s not clear whether these two brigades include the “ready brigade” of the 82nd Airborne, the so-called “Global Response Force” that’s always on call to airdrop into crisis zones. Since the Army has said previously they were able to protect GRF funding, it’s likely that the two brigades Odierno mentioned are in addition to the Airborne — which would make three brigades available in a crisis — but we’re still checking that with the Chief of Staff’s aides. Last we heard, the brigade in South Korea was fully funded as well, so it’s also possible that Odierno is also omitting that unit and perhaps other units permanently stationed overseas.