Army Cuts 10 Combat Brigades — Or 11, Or 13 — And That’s Just The Beginning

http://breakingdefense.com/2013/06/25/army-cuts-10-combat-brigades-or-11-or-13-and-thats-before-sequester/



Army Cuts 10 Combat Brigades — Or 11, Or 13 — And That’s Just The Beginning
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on June 25, 2013 at 6:04 PM

PENTAGON: The Army’s widely publicized decision to cut 10 brigade combat teams from bases in eight states is just part of the story of the incredible shrinking armed services. To start with, it’s not actually 10 brigades: It’s 11, the 10 announced this afternoon and a player to be named later. Or, if you count two brigades being eliminated at bases in Europe, an announcement made months ago, it’s 13.

In fact, the Army isn’t actually eliminating 13 entire brigades but rather disbanding 13 brigade headquarters while keeping many of their subunits. As a result, the brigade cuts account for less than half of the 80,000 regular active-duty soldiers the Army is shedding by 2017.

Most of the cuts are coming from other parts of the Army. 8,300 are simply coming from units that aren’t part of combat brigades, such as supply and transport units. Some are soldiers who don’t count as part of any unit’s official and permanent manpower. That category includes, most notably, the 22,000 of “temporary end strength increase” (TESI, pronounced “Tessy”) and 10,300 “Wartime Allowance” (WTA) personnel that Congress authorized at the height of the Iraq war, when the Army had to man many units at well above 100 percent of their official authorized strength to make up for casualties and for veterans so injured by prior tours that they were ruled medically unfit to deploy.

By cutting 32,500 soldiers not permanently assigned to any unit, the Army was able to minimize the number of units it had to cut. But that cushion is gone — and sequestration is just beginning.