This article is provided
courtesy of Stars & Stripes, which
got its start as a newspaper for Union troops
during the Civil War, and has been published
continuously since 1942 in Europe and 1945
in the Pacific. Stripes reporters have
been in the field with American soldiers,
sailors and airmen in World War II, Korea,
the Cold War, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Bosnia
and Kosovo, and are now on assignment in the
Middle East.
Stars and Stripes has one of the widest distribution
ranges of any newspaper in the world. Between
the Pacific and European editions, Stars
& Stripes services over 50 countries
where there are bases, posts, service members,
ships, or embassies.
Related Links:
Current
Archive
Stars
& Stripes Website
Sound
off in our Discussion Boards
Have an opinion on the issues discussed in
this article? Sound off.
Get
Breaking Military News Alerts
|
|
|
|
September 29, 2004
[Have an opinion about the issues discussed in this article?
Sound
off in our Discussion Boards.]
By Jon R. Anderson,
Stars and Stripes European Edition
HEIDELBERG, Germany — The Army
is drawing up plans for a new Black Sea-based Eastern European Task
Force built along the same lines as the rapid-reaction Southern
European Task Force now based in Italy.
That’s just one of the items offered Tuesday by the commander of
Army forces in Europe as he opened the Land Combat Expo with the
most-detailed glimpse yet of what his command will look like in
the years ahead as the Army withdraws tens of thousands of troops
while redistributing others to new outposts to the south and east.
In what Gen. B.B. Bell dubbed a “10-year march in the future,”
the Army in Europe will shrink from 62,000 troops to about 20,000,
while returning 1st Armored and 1st Infantry Divisions to the United
States and merging his headquarters with V Corps.
That much was already known.
Opening the expo, Bell filled in several new details including:
- The 20 existing separate brigades under Bell’s U.S. Army Europe
and V Corps will be consolidated into seven brigade-size “units
of action.” Meanwhile, the Army’s current finance, support and
personnel commands will merge into a single “support command.”
- The 21st Theater Support Command, the Army’s main logistics
unit for Europe, will downshift from a two-star command to a one-star
command.
- While other units leave, Bell said he expects an “early arrival”
for a new Stryker Brigade to be stationed in Europe. That brigade
will be based at the Army’s training center at Grafenwöhr, where
new barracks and family housing are being built.
- The Army in Europe will shift from the dominant service in Europe
with nearly 60 percent of the 107,000 troops now assigned to EUCOM,
to about 36 percent of the some 66,000 troops remaining. That
will put it behind the Air Force, which is expected to end up
with about 27,000 troops in Europe, or 42 percent of the EUCOM
total.
The Army force structure that remains in Europe by 2014, said Bell,
“is going to be much more effective in this part of the world than
my current force.”
Although highlighting the contributions his mostly heavy armor
and mechanized infantry units have made in Iraq,
Bell said, “armor has minimal use in this theater.”
“I wish I had more forces that were more relevant for this theater,”
added Bell. “For an armor guy to come to that conclusion after three
years, that’s a big statement.”
“Now, none of you armor commanders walk away, but I believe that
Stryker Brigade could take your armored division on and walk away
with a win,” said Bell, drawing a “Bring ’em on” from the 1st Armored
Division commander, Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey.
Regarding the new Eastern Europe Task Force that Bell wants to
build, he said: “We’re looking at a task force to the east that’s
something like SETAF.”
Unlike the Italy-based headquarters, which has its own brigade
of infantry assigned to it, Bell said he will use the new EETAF
as a headquarters to oversee rotational brigades coming from the
United States.
Marine Gen. James L. Jones, who followed Bell’s presentation, said
rotational forces were critical for transformation efforts.
The Army hopes to rotate brigade-size units into Europe on a six-month
basis.
“It’s a deal breaker,” Jones told the audience. “We will need rotational
forces … in order to be strategically effective.”
Jones told Stars and Stripes that rotational forces in Europe are
predicated on force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan
drawing down.
“We won’t be able to do it until that happens,” he said.
 Email
this page to friends
©2004 Stars & Stripes. All opinions
expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily
reflect those of Military.com.
|
