/.../ Todd Harrison, senior fellow for budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, called the fixation of Army leaders on protecting end-strength, “misguided.”
After Vietnam, the Army resisted downsizing as much as they could have and kept a force it could argue was undermanned and undertrained, a “hollow Army,” Harrison said. Today, the Army is in danger of making similar choices.
“You can get smaller and be ready or stay larger and be hollow,” Harrison said. “There is a counter-argument that you get so small that you can’t regrow and execute war plans, and that’s fair. But what are those plans?”
The albatross of personnel accounts make up nearly half of the Army’s budget. Even as soldiers are cut, the service does not immediately reap the savings, and the accounts themselves are an “immovable object,” a bill that must be paid, Cheek said.
Congress has prevented measures that would free up funding for the Army, including base closures and compensation reforms, Harrison noted. The Pentagon has proposed changes in the rate of growth for pay and housing allowances, as well as a restructuring of its medical benefits — to no avail.
“The number one thing the Army needs from the Hill right now is compensation reform, and that would translate into fewer people they have to let go,” Harrison said.
Will there be a groundswell of popular support for bigger military budgets, or even a national debate about national security? It is an important topic, Harrison said, but the American people won’t be interested after 13 years of war.
“We’re a war weary nation, especially when it comes to large scale, protracted wars in the Middle East,” Harrison said. “We are very weary of that kind of warfare right now. So I don’t think Gen. Odierno will find a receptive audience in the American people.”