Planned drawdown may delay Hood deployment

[unhappycamper]

About 70 soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division’s band and the 15th Sustainment Brigade’s Detachment B, 15th Personnel Services Battalion are greeted Oct. 15 by division rear detachment commander Col. Larry Phelps, and Sgt. Maj. Brad Wallace. Approximately 70 troopers returned to Fort Hood Oct. 15 from Iraq.


Planned drawdown may delay Hood deployment
By Gina Cavallaro - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Oct 17, 2007 20:08:15 EDT

The 4th Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team may get to delay its next deployment if an Army plan to shuffle areas of responsibility in Iraq as part of an initial drawdown is approved.

The 1st BCT’s 4,000 soldiers, headquartered at Fort Hood, Texas, have deployment orders for a 15-month rotation to Iraq, and are scheduled to ship out beginning next month.

The brigade was slated to replace the 1st Cavalry Division’s 3rd BCT in Diyala province, a turbulent area north of Baghdad. But an Army spokesman confirmed Wednesday that the 3rd BCT, which is redeploying to Fort Hood in December after 15 months in theater, will not be replaced. Instead, soldiers from another unspecified brigade working in neighboring Salahuddin province will expand their area of operations into Diyala province.

The spokesman also confirmed the possible deployment delay for 1st BCT, 4th Infantry, but could not say how long that delay might be.

The decision not to replace 3rd BCT, 1st Cavalry Division, signals the beginning of a downsizing in the surge of five additional brigades that began pouring into Iraq in the spring.

The troop strength in Iraq is around 160,000, of which about 130,000 are soldiers.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/10/army_diyalarotation_071017w/



uhc comment: :wtf: ". . of which about 130,000 are soldiers." Who are the other 38,000 US troops?

[tinymontgomery]

1. Marines, Seabees, Navy

and Airforce personnel I would think.