The US Army is far more heavily engaged around the world than projected when it began reducing the size of its force several years ago, and its commitments would be hard to maintain in the long run as troop numbers shrink, US Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno said on Friday.
Odierno said decisions about cutting the size of the force from 570,000 to the current 490,000 were made several years ago when US Pentagon planners expected a peaceful Europe, a declining commitment in Afghanistan and no return to Iraq.
Instead, he said, the army is regularly using three brigades in eastern Europe because of concerns about Russia’s support for rebels in Ukraine. It has another three brigades in Afghanistan, a brigade in Iraq, a brigade in Kuwait and is rotating a brigade to South Korea, Odierno added.
“These are all pretty significant requirements. If they do not reduce, it will be hard for us to maintain that over a long period of time,” he told reporters.
Odierno, who is due to leave office in a few weeks, said he thought insecurity in eastern Europe and the fight against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria were both long-term problems.
He predicted defeating Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, could take between 10 and 20 years, far longer than the administration has projected. However, without some relief, either in budget cuts or the breadth of commitments, the army might not be able to sustain the pace.
“At some point we’re going to have to say what we’re not going to do because we’re not going to be able to do everything we’re being asked to do right now,” he said.
Odierno said he had been warning for two years that tight budgets would require the army to cut the active-duty force to 450,000 troops from the current 490,000. He said he was surprised by the recent outcry when the service specified which bases would be hit in the coming years.
“We’ve been very clear that the Army will have to move down to 450,000 with the current budget we have,” he said, adding that a further reduction to about 420,000 could be required if spending reductions continue.
The Pentagon is currently trying to absorb nearly US$1 trillion in projected cuts to spending over a decade. The reductions were ordered as part of the US’ Budget Control Act passed in 2011.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS