" In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing this morning on Army and Marine Corps preparedness, retired Maj. Gen. Robert Scales testified that two thirds of regular brigades and "virtually all of our reserve brigades are not combat-ready"......
The active duty Marines and Army have 51 ground combat brigades [8 USMC, 43 Army], and the current combat deployment plans have twenty two brigades in combat, with twenty designated for Iraq and two in Afghanistan. This number is once the complete escalation is in place, but the last brigade is not due into Iraq until early May, so the current deployment patterns have twenty one brigades in combat. Right now the National Guard is contributing two or three brigades to these combat deployments, so the active duty formations are responsible for at least eighteen brigades deployed in combat.
Math is not my strongest point, but 2/3rds of active duty brigades not combat ready means that 17 brigades are combat ready. Even giving a reasonable latitude towards language, the statement made by Major General Scales (ret) strongly implies that every brigade that is combat ready is in Iraq or Afghanistan, and it could be read as saying some brigades are in combat that are not ready.
This is not a new story. USA Today reported in August 2006 that 2/3rds of the National Guard's and active duty Army combat brigades were unready. The trend has just gotten worse and the combination of a larger baseline force in Iraq, longer tours of combat duty and shorter dwell times for both active and reserve component combat formations will only continue to worsen these trends.
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