WASHINGTON — The Army's top general on Tuesday vigorously opposed calls for expanding his branch of the military, saying the current force of roughly 500,000 is big enough to fight wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for at least the next three years.
At a time when the Army has doubled the length of deployments, temporarily prevented thousands of soldiers from leaving the service and called up more than 100,000 reservists, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, acknowledged that the war in Iraq was "stressing" the Army. "I don't think that's a secret," he said at a breakfast with reporters.
But Schoomaker predicted that the need for additional troops would be temporary and said that permanently increasing the Army's size would bleed money from programs to improve the equipment soldiers need to fight successfully.
Schoomaker said the June 30 transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis would not shift the military's focus from defeating insurgents and stabilizing the country.
Schoomaker came out of retirement last August to replace Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, who said that far more troops would be needed to fight in Iraq than the Pentagon ended up sending. This year, at Schoomaker's request, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld invoked emergency powers authorizing the Army to temporarily add 30,000 troops to its congressionally mandated force of 482,000.
To date, the Army has added about 13,000 of the extra troops by redoubling recruiting efforts and introducing a variety of bonuses and mandates to retain troops nearing the end of their enlistment.
There are at least three initiatives in Congress that could make that increase permanent. But Schoomaker said that over the long term, he hoped to eliminate the need for the extra troops by making the Army more efficient. By increasing the proportion of combat troops and farming out support jobs to civilians, "we can sustain the current level of effort indefinitely," Schoomaker said.
That premise is controversial. With some commanders in Iraq complaining publicly that they need more soldiers, lawmakers have been exerting pressure for troop increases. Those calls were intensified by the Army's announcement this month that it will prevent soldiers whose units have been tapped for Iraq duty from leaving the service, even if they are due to be discharged.
The House last month approved a $447-billion defense bill for fiscal 2005 that includes a provision by Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, to expand U.S. forces by 39,000 by 2007.
