Official: Long deployments less effective

[unhappycamper]

Official: Long deployments less effective
By Steve Mraz, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Tuesday, December 2, 2008

LANDSTUHL, Germany — The Army has concluded it is very difficult to sustain effective unit deployments longer than 12 months, a top Army official said.

Undersecretary of the Army Nelson Ford was responding to a question Friday about the possibility of reverting to 15-month deployments if a "surge" of U.S. troops is ordered in Afghanistan.

"We’ve found that 15 months is a very long time, very difficult," Ford said. "It’s not just 25 percent more. It seems to have a bigger effect on efficiency, the effectiveness of the unit that goes. It’s the effect of the prolonged absences from home. It’s the effect of missing two birthdays or two Christmases, two Thanksgivings in a row. We have one unit that’s got deployment dates that will currently mean that they’ll miss three out of four Christmases. That’s tough.

"I think the Army will say yes to almost any mission; we’ve done this for 230 years. So we didn’t have a good idea of what the red lines are. I think that we’ve come to the conclusion that it is very difficult to sustain effective deployments more than 12 months long."

Ford was at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center wrapping up a nearly week-long trip from the States that included stops in Heidelberg and Stuttgart, Germany, and Afghanistan. In addition to eating turkey with soldiers, he spent Thanksgiving awarding Purple Hearts and Combat Action Badges to U.S. troops in Afghanistan.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=59157