Citizen-soldiers face combat

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, November 25, 2003

WASHINGTON — The National Guard and reserves will take on more of the combat burden in Iraq next year, replacing some Army troops with a smaller, lighter and more mobile force equipped with fewer tanks and more Humvees.

Nearly 40 percent of the American forces in Iraq will be from the National Guard and reserves after the Pentagon completes a massive switch of troops starting in January. Three National Guard infantry brigades will go, at least two of them slated for combat duties.

Overall, the Pentagon’s plan for replacing the 130,000 American troops in Iraq with a fresh contingent will shrink the force by 20 percent and result in a more mobile force, perhaps better suited to the guerrilla war that has been taking a sobering toll in U.S. deaths and injuries.

The first changes will be seen even before the newly designated replacement force gets there. A contingent of 5,000 soldiers in the Stryker Brigade combat team from Fort Lewis is training in Kuwait in preparation for duty in Iraq. They are equipped with a new, speedier, lightly armored troop carrier and sophisticated communications tools to enable soldiers to quickly locate guerrilla threats.

The Stryker Brigade is likely to see action in the so-called Sunni Triangle, the area between Baghdad, Ramadi and Tikrit where the resistance to U.S. forces has been deadliest.

"It is absolutely optimized for this kind of fight," said Lt. Gen. Richard Cody, the Army’s deputy chief of staff for operations, who oversees the Army’s provision of fresh forces.

Nearly 40 percent of the 105,000 troops in the new force will be National Guard and reserves by April. That compares with about a 20 percent share in the current force of 130,000 troops. And it won’t be just Army reservists; the Marines plan to use about 6,000 of their citizen-soldiers.

The main replacement force will arrive over a period of about four months, from January through April. They will be lighter and more agile than the units they replace; they will have two-thirds fewer tanks and Bradley armored troop carriers, trading firepower for mobility.

The switch away from heavy armored forces has created such demand for Humvees that the Army is pulling every available one — fortified with add-on armor — out of the United States and Europe, Cody said.

Not just vehicles are in heavy demand. The Army is so stretched for soldiers that it is imposing "stop-loss" on all units designated for duty in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan — meaning those troops cannot leave the service even if they planned to retire.

The clamp will remain during their duty in Iraq and three months beyond, Cody said.

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