Nine-month Army Deployments to Begin in 2012

WASHINGTON, Aug. 5, 2011 — Begin­ning Jan. 1, most sol­diers will deploy for nine months, giv­ing them more time at home between deploy­ments, Army offi­cials announced today.
Army Sec­re­tary John M. McHugh signed a direc­tive insti­tut­ing a nine-month “boots on the ground” pol­i­cy for deployed sol­diers, pro­vid­ing more “dwell time” at home for sol­diers and their fam­i­lies.

“Imple­men­ta­tion of this change is based on the pro­ject­ed demand for Army forces, and remains con­tin­gent on glob­al secu­ri­ty con­di­tions and com­bat­ant com­man­ders’ require­ments,” said Lt. Col. Peg­gy Kageleiry, an Army spokeswoman. 

Corps units and above, and indi­vid­ual aug­mentee deploy­ments will remain at 12-month deploy­ments, offi­cials said, adding that the goal for the corps units is even­tu­al­ly to get to nine-month deployments. 

Most aug­mentees — those with par­tic­u­lar skills or those in low-den­si­ty skill sets and grades — will remain on 12-month deployments. 

This change in pol­i­cy, to be imple­ment­ed ful­ly by April 1, will affect sol­diers in all named oper­a­tions, includ­ing Oper­a­tion Endur­ing Free­dom in Afghanistan, Oper­a­tion Noble Guardian in Koso­vo and Multi­na­tion­al Forces Sinai in Egypt. 

Reserve and Nation­al Guard unit tour lengths will be the same as active duty — nine months. In their case, though, offi­cials not­ed, deploy­ment and mobi­liza­tion are two dif­fer­ent issues. Even though these units may still be mobi­lized for 12 or more months, they will spend only nine months of that mobi­liza­tion deployed. 

It is clear to Army senior lead­er­ship that there are still issues tied to Guard and Reserve forces that will need to be worked out, Kageleiry said. 

Sol­diers deploy­ing under the change in pol­i­cy will not be grant­ed envi­ron­men­tal morale leave — known as R&R — but com­man­ders will retain the option of grant­i­ng emer­gency leave and leave for spe­cial cir­cum­stances, accord­ing to Army reg­u­la­tions and local policy. 

“This pol­i­cy will enhance oper­a­tional suc­cess by reduc­ing the fric­tion that comes with hav­ing 10 per­cent of a commander’s per­son­nel being away on leave in the mid­dle of a deploy­ment,” Kageleiry said. “Oper­a­tional con­ti­nu­ity is enhanced, and risk to the indi­vid­ual sol­dier is reduced by not hav­ing to move a war­rior around on the bat­tle­field to go on leave.” 

Also, Kageleiry said, the reduced deploy­ment length poten­tial­ly could improve qual­i­ty of life for sol­diers and their fam­i­lies while con­tin­u­ing to meet oper­a­tional require­ments, and is an impor­tant step in sus­tain­ing the all-vol­un­teer force. 

The policy’s goal, offi­cials said, is to reduce the amount of time sol­diers are deployed and pro­vide more time for them to spend with their fam­i­lies, depend­ing on the needs of the com­bat­ant com­man­der and the poten­tial of decreased oper­a­tions. Units deployed before the pol­i­cy takes effect in Jan­u­ary will con­tin­ue to have 12-month deployments. 

Cur­rent­ly, deploy­ments have been for 12 months, with a goal of 24 months at home. 

Kageleiry said the Army will con­tin­ue to review how to increase the amount of time sol­diers spend at home, depend­ing on the amount of time they are deployed. 

“We are con­stant­ly ana­lyz­ing all range of poli­cies to address the issues of the mis­sion, sol­diers and fam­i­lies,” she said. “We believe that the cur­rent oper­a­tional envi­ron­ment allows us to adjust the deploy­ment pol­i­cy in a way that meets all mis­sion require­ments and bet­ter serve our sol­diers and families.” 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →