Army may shorten combat tours

WASHINGTON — Fearing a sharp decline in recruiting and troop retention, the Army is considering cutting the length of its 12-month combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, senior Army officials say.

Senior Army personnel officers, as well as top Army Reserve and National Guard officials, say the Army's ability to recruit and retain soldiers will steadily erode unless combat tours are shortened, to some length between six and nine months, roughly equivalent to the seven-month tours that are the norm in the Marine Corps.

But other Army officials responsible for combat operations and war planning have significant concerns that the Army, as now configured, cannot meet projected requirements for Iraq and Afghanistan unless active duty and reserve troops spend 12 months in those combat zones.

Officials say it is too early to predict if or when a new deployment policy may take effect or how it will be carried out. But the proposal to shorten combat tours collides with the immediate need to maintain current troop strength in Iraq and Afghanistan. Army planners say they must at least prepare for the possibility that it will be necessary to keep troops at the current levels in Iraq — 138,000 — through 2007.

"All the Army leadership agrees that 12 months is too long," said Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, which oversees 460,000 members of the Air and Army National Guard.

"We need to move to a shorter rotational base," Blum said in an interview last week.

The prospect of lengthy combat tours already appears to be affecting recruitment. For example, the Guard had set a goal of 56,000 recruits for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 but is likely to end up with about 51,000, he said. It would be the first time since 1994 that the Guard had missed its signup goal.

"Twelve months is an awfully long time to be in a hostile environment," said Blum.

Since the end of the Vietnam War, the Army has largely deployed its forces in overseas combat situations in six-month tours of duty. The 12-month deployment was introduced last year after the end of major combat operations in Iraq, when a vigorous insurgency convinced the military that it would need to maintain large numbers.