What’s ahead for soldiers in 2010

From Army Times
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/01/army_fivethings3_010310w/



Staff Report


The surge in Afghanistan, evolving missions and tighter budgets will shape the year ahead for the Army. For soldiers, 2010 may mean tougher chances at promotion, a new camouflage pattern for uniforms and better gear and training.

Here is the final installment of our three-part series about things to watch out for in 2010.

GOODBYE, IRAQ

By August, the Pentagon hopes to have pulled out all but 50,000 of the 120,000 troops serving in Iraq.
All U.S. troops must be out of Iraq by the end of 2011, under the terms of the security agreement between the U.S. and Iraq.

President Barack Obama’s plan to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan could make this goal a lot more challenging for Army logistics gurus managing the drawdown in Iraq.

For the past seven months, planners in Iraq and Kuwait have been sorting through millions of pieces of military equipment, identifying what will go home and what will be left behind. Now, the priority will be to pull serviceable engineer equipment, mine-resistant vehicles and communications equipment out of Iraq and ship it to Afghanistan.

There are a lot of nontactical vehicles on forward operating bases. In many cases, it would be too expensive to ship them to the U.S., said logistics officials, who are considering selling them to Iraqi forces or civilians.

CHEATING CRACKDOWN

The Army is looking to stop cheating on correspondence courses with new measures expected to be in place by March.

Cheating for promotion points has been an open secret in the Army since 1999, when correspondence courses were computerized, but has been hard to prove. Training and Doctrine Command is looking to nail cheaters and make it harder for others to cheat in the future.

Changes to the Army Correspondence Course Program include:
• More test-sharing sites will be banned from .mil domains.
• Sub courses in the program have been reduced, and test item banks will be established, creating a pool of more than 30,000 answers that will pop up randomly during tests.
• All courses and tests will be put behind Common Access Card servers by moving the material from the publicly accessible Reimer Digital Library to the Army Learning Management System.
• Soldiers will get credit for taking sub courses in only one course category, and later only for those that align with their military occupational specialty.

NEW CAMOUFLAGE

The Army could select an alternative camouflage pattern for Afghanistan by late January.
Equipment officials have been working on the effort since Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., directed the Army in mid-June to look at new patterns after some sergeants told him the Army Combat Uniform’s pattern is ineffective.

Last fall, the Army sent a team to evaluate six patterns in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan.

More than 1,000 photos of various terrain calibrated for different light conditions have been used to create a photo simulation test that involves identifying individuals wearing different patterns at multiple ranges and settings.

Several hundred soldiers were to take the tests through December. Senior leaders plan to decide by late January whether to select a new pattern for Afghanistan.

M4: REDESIGN OR REPLACE?

The Army is considering a major redesign of the M4 carbine, aiming to make the weapon shoot cleaner and longer.

As the Army awaits Defense Department approval of a competition to find a new carbine, officials have identified six fixes intended to address shortcomings in reliability, durability and handling of the M4:
• Adding a heavier barrel for better performance during high rates of fire.
• Replacing the direct-impingement gas system with a piston gas system.
• Improving the trigger pull.
• Adding an improved rail system for increased strength.
• Adding ambidextrous controls.
• Adding a round counter to track the total number of bullets fired over the weapon’s lifetime.

Even if the Army releases a request for proposal to the small-arms industry, it’s unlikely that the service will complete the competition and select a new carbine before fiscal 2013. While there is no set timeline, the hope is to identify in January what changes could be made to the M4, Army officials say.

COMMUNICATIONS GEAR

The Army plans to outfit a Special Forces battalion this fall with the latest version of Land Warrior gear — the service’s wearable command-and-control kit designed to help small units see through the fog of war.
Equipment officials do not know yet which SF battalion will get the high-tech equipment.

Land Warrior, which allows combat leaders to track the locations of their men and view maps through a helmet-mounted computer screen, is in Afghanistan with 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division.

The latest version of Land Warrior will feature satellite communications to supplement the system’s current digital radio network, officials said. This will allow an over-the-horizon capability, so the system is not restricted to line-of-sight communications.

Reliability will be a challenge. The system will have to function for long periods of time when soldiers are out on multiple-day missions away from having any technical support, Army officials say.

The Army will continue to refine the system as it develops the next generation of digital soldier kit, known as the Ground Soldier System.

GSS is scheduled to be ready for fielding to an infantry brigade combat team by 2012.
he surge in Afghanistan, evolving missions and tighter budgets will shape the year ahead for the Army. For soldiers, 2010 may mean tougher chances at promotion, a new camouflage pattern for uniforms and better gear and training.

More medevac

Medical evacuation crews working in the war zone are about to get some assistance.

Beginning this year, the Army will expand the size of its medevac companies from 12 to 15 UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. This will help boost the capacity of medevac crews headed to Afghanistan, where more casualties are expected as the troop presence grows.

“From this point on, every medevac company introduced to theater will have 15 ships,” said Lt. Col. Ricky Ortiz of Army G-3 aviation.

The Army is also considering options to grow more combat aviation brigades, but in the meantime its current 28 medevac companies will in crease to 37 in the active and Reserve components.
Medical evacuation in Afghanistan is done by the A model Black Hawk helicopters, which underwent engine upgrades to make them as powerful as the new M models, said Col. Stephen Burns, director of current operations for Army G-3.

“It requires more power for an aircraft to operate at higher altitude, and some of the peaks and operating bases [in Afghanistan] are well above 6,000 or 8,000 feet,” he said.

Pay raises
For 11 straight years, service members have received a Jan. 1 increase in basic pay that is slightly larger than average private-sector raises. But that could end when Congress takes up the 2011 budget.

Bigger raises have been part of a congressional effort, largely opposed by the Pentagon, to close a perceived gap in pay that grew in the 1980s when military raises were capped. After the 3.4 percent Jan. 1, 2010, increase, the pay gap, which peaked at 13.5 percent in 1999, will be reduced to 2.4 percent.
Whether there will be a 12th consecutive year of raises will depend on the economy and whether election-year politics make lawmakers more interested in cutting federal spending.

Military advocates are urging Congress to keep chipping at the pay gap by providing raises through 2013 that are 0.5 percentage points greater than private-sector raises.

But a new analysis by the Congressional Budget Office says the pay gap doesn’t actually exist.

The nonpartisan CBO notes that calculations of the gap have been based on average yearly increases in military basic pay and private-sector wages. CBO said a more realistic measure of military compensation would also include tax-free food and housing allowances, which make up a considerable portion of troops’ income.

The CBO report is sure to add further fuel to the debate over the adequacy of military pay in 2010.
Troop levels

Deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq forced military leaders to reverse plans for significant personnel cuts and to temporarily expand the active-duty ranks.

A combination of the Afghanistan “surge” and completion of the Quadrennial Defense Review will lead to some careful thinking about whether the services, especially the Army and Marine Corps, are big enough to handle national security threats.

While having more people will spread the burden and cut stress, it also means a bigger payroll. That could pose a risk of its own to the military, because money spent on pay, benefits and support is money not available to buy weapons and continue modernizing the force, which is certain to be a significant aspect of the QDR.

‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’
President Barack Obama’s promise to repeal the law barring open service by homosexuals was moved to the back burner in 2009, due to economic concerns and the war in Afghanistan.

That will change in 2010. Congress in the coming months will face a long-delayed review of the law and policy that bans homosexuals from openly serving.

Extensive hearings are planned in the House and Senate, with testimony from current and former troops, and military leaders.

In June, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he and Obama had discussed the issue, with a focus on whether “there’s at least a more humane way to apply the law until the law gets changed,” as Gates put it.
Most Americans — 69 percent — favor allowing gays to serve openly, while 32 percent are opposed, according to a May Gallup poll.

According to the latest figures available — through 2008 — 10,507 troops had been discharged under “don’t ask, don’t tell” since the Pentagon began tracking such discharges in 1997, according to spokeswoman Cynthia Smith.

The fight will come to a head when lawmakers try to pass the 2011 defense authorization bill, which likely will happen in early spring in the House of Representatives.

Those who want to repeal the ban will try, and probably succeed, in getting an amendment attached to the bill that would allow gays to openly serve. It appears they will have enough votes to get the measure approved by the full House, especially if Obama gets involved in selling reluctant members on the idea.

But House passage may be as far as the effort goes because advocates for repeal have not come up with a strategy to produce the 60-vote majority that would be needed for approval in the Senate if opponents in that chamber try to filibuster the issue.

Battle training
After eight years of war in which battle training was ramped up for every soldier, the pendulum is about to swing back to the basics for the Army’s newest soldiers.

The changes will begin during the first half of 2010, said Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, deputy commanding general of Training and Doctrine Command for Initial Military Training.

Tops on his list is the physical fitness of new recruits. He also plans to cut down the list of 32 warrior tasks and 12 battle drills that were identified in 2003 as the core things every soldier must know.

Hertling said the list is too long, the number of hours to teach them too short, and that commanders have a responsibility to continue soldiers’ training once they arrive at their first unit.

Teaching ethics and values is another challenge Hertling planned to address.

The surge in Afghanistan, evolving missions and tighter budgets will shape the year ahead for the Army. For soldiers, 2010 may mean tougher chances at promotion, a new camouflage pattern for uniforms and better gear and training.

DISMOUNTED MISSIONS
Get ready to do some walking — a lot of walking.

For many deployed soldiers, Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain and lack of serviceable roads will mean lots of dismounted patrols in high altitudes.

A soldier who’s been there offers this advice: “The best thing you can do is PT every day,” said 2nd Lt. Ryan Pike, who served as a specialist in A Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team.

“We thought we were in as good a shape as anybody, but you get over there and it’s a whole different kind of shape,” Pike said.

Some soldiers don’t a see a vehicle during their deployment, he said, and they carry an average of more than 100 pounds of gear.

“I don’t know if there’s anywhere that really compares to the mountains over there, just with the elevation and the amount of weight you carry,” he said. “It’d be really hard to get the guys in the right kind of shape.”

To prepare for Afghanistan, “running and rucking has got to be the biggest focus. If you’re lucky enough to be in a place like [Fort] Carson [Colo.] that has mountains, any chance you can get to find some kind of elevation, it helps,” Pike said.

NCO PROMOTIONS
The huge force expansion of the past five years is over, and along with it an NCO promotion bonanza that has seen nearly 270,000 soldiers advanced to the ranks of sergeant through sergeant major.

Personnel officials predict there will be 45,669 NCO promotions in 2010, some 4,400 fewer than last year and 7,700 below the annual average of the past five years.

The number of NCO advancements has been unusually large in recent years to support the addition of 65,000 soldiers and 12 brigade combat teams to the active component.

NCO promotion authorizations are tied to requirements in units, which means the plan to add 22,000 soldiers over two years will not generate a promotion surge.

That is because the buildup is temporary, is not designed to create additional units and primarily will be achieved through the accession of junior enlisted soldiers.

The service’s 2010 promotion plan calls for slight increases at the ranks of sergeant major and master sergeant, and cuts of 780 at sergeant first class, 2,131 at staff sergeant and 1,553 at sergeant.

The battlefield promotion program that generated nearly 700 promotions to the ranks of specialist through staff sergeant will be retained in 2010.

The second-half of 2010 also will be crammed with preparations and training for a new cutoff scores system that launches Jan. 1, 2011.

The new system will include separate point scales for promotions to sergeant and staff sergeant, a strong link between military education and promotions, and a new scoring system that will award points for combat deployments.

STOP-LOSS
Some Regular Army enlisted soldiers are being told to either deploy or leave service as the Army weans itself from the stop-loss policies that have applied over the past eight years.

Stop-loss will not apply to active-component units that deploy to Iraq, Afghanistan and other contingency areas after Jan. 1.

Stop-loss was lifted for Reserve units that deployed after Aug. 1, and for the National Guard Sept. 1.
About 9,000 active and Reserve soldiers whose terms of service expire within the next 12 months are serving with units that deployed before the stop-loss cutoff dates. These soldiers must stay on active duty until their units come home. They will receive pay of $500 for each month they are retained beyond their expiration term of service.

Special compensation also is available to certain short-timers who are on orders to units that deploy after Jan. 1. Soldiers who sign an extension agreement six months or more before their unit’s arrival in theater will receive $500 for each month they serve beyond their enlistment contract. Soldiers who extend less than six months before their unit’s deployment will receive $350 per month.

Soldiers who do not extend are subject to the rules of a new program, the Enlisted Involuntary Early Separation Program.

The major provisions are:
• Soldiers who will have at least six months in service when their unit arrives in theater will deploy with the unit.
Unless they re-enlist or extend, they will be returned to their home station at least two months before their contracted ETS for transition processing. They will leave service as previously scheduled.
• Soldiers with ETS dates that fall less than six months after their unit’s arrival in theater will stay at their home station and be involuntarily separated no earlier than 30 days, and no later than 90 days, before their contracted ETS.
• The involuntary separation program applies to Regular Army enlisted soldiers who have at least 36 months of active service, but no more than 71 months of total service, at the time their unit arrives in theater.
The program does not apply to officers and career NCOs.

RE-ENLISTMENT BONUSES
Like NCO promotions, the re-enlistment bonus program will experience sharp reductions in 2010.

The Army began putting the brakes on its re-enlistment efforts early last year after recruiting and retention efforts, apparently helped by the national economic crisis, put the service beyond its annual end-strength goal of 547,400 soldiers several months ahead of schedule.

The Army ended fiscal 2009 with 552,000 soldiers, 5,000 more than called for in the budget.

A partial freeze on re-enlistment bonuses was lifted in October, but the bonus rates are smaller than those previously available and probably will be cut again before the end of 2010, according to personnel officials.

“The budget is about 13 to 14 percent smaller” than last year, when the average payout for a bonus was nearly $10,000, said Maj. Gen. Sean Byrne, commander of Human Resources Command.
The Army plans to spend $400 million on bonuses in 2010, which compares with annual levels of $500 million to $700 million for the past several years.

The Selective Re-enlistment Bonus rates now in effect are displayed in new eligibility charts, called the Tiered SRB Program, that are easier to use than the Enhanced SRB charts of the past two years, and the multiplier system that required a mathematical formula to determine payment levels.

Personnel officials note that the Army has expanded the re-enlistment eligibility window so that soldiers whose current enlistments expire before April 1, 2012, can re-enlist for any one of five options, if otherwise qualified.

The options are:
• Needs of the Army
• Current station stabilization
• Training
• Overseas assignment
• Stateside station of choice

TREATMENT IN COMBAT
Exposure to a blast downrange could automatically get you pulled off line for 24 hours under a new set of treatment protocols for diagnosing and treating traumatic brain injury earlier.

The Army vice chief of staff and Office of the Army Surgeon General have identified four sets of circumstances that will mean an automatic post-blast stand-down of 24 hours and evaluation using the set of questions on the Military Acute Concussion Evaluation, or MACE, card.

• Mounted. Soldiers mounted in a vehicle that is damaged during a blast are required to be evaluated. If there is no damage to the vehicle, there’s no required evaluation.
• Dismounted. Soldiers standing or walking within 50 feet of a blast or those who were inside a building or structure that was struck by an explosive device.
• Anyone who sustains a direct blow to the head or suffers a loss of consciousness in an explosion.
• A commander can use discretion to direct a soldier to be evaluated.

Medics will administer the questions on the MACE card, which now comes in six different versions after soldiers were found to be gaming the system by memorizing the answers.

The MACE card is a tool to evaluate soldiers’ orientation, memory, concentration and neurological condition, such as motor skills, speech and pupil response. After 24 hours off line, soldiers will be medically re-evaluated before being returned to duty.

Soldiers diagnosed with a concussion or those who were unconscious for less than five minutes will get a more detailed neurological evaluation at a Level 1, or first aid, station.

Soldiers unconscious for more than five minutes and anyone who has been exposed to three concussive events will be pulled out to a Level 3 treatment facility, or combat support hospital, in theater for a more thorough evaluation.

Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli said research shows that the response following a traumatic event can factor significantly into whether a soldier develops post-traumatic stress disorder, though early treatment for both ailments, he said, can be successful if the soldier has a good deal of time to recover.
In addition, he said, the first 24 hours after even a mild brain injury, the brain goes into a rest period. If a soldier were to return to duty and undergo another explosive event before the brain is ready, the damage would be compounded.