Think I heard today 1.4 million troops in arms ...

[struggle4progress]

as total US deployments around the world, with comment Iraq was only a small fraction. Don't know if total is correct.

Anybody out there have a general handle on US deployments?

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Here's a good start

From the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR):

How many U.S. troops were stationed in and around Iraq when Baghdad fell?
The Pentagon said April 8 that some 340,000 U.S. servicemen and women were under the authority of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which covers a region stretching from the Horn of Africa through the Persian Gulf and into Central Asia. GlobalSecurity.org, a defense information website, estimated that about 235,000 of these troops were engaged in the Iraq war.

24.3%, or 100 * (340k/1.4M)

The CFR keeps good information. Check it out from time to time -- after all, a lot of Freepers think the CFR is the political handmaiden of Satan.

--bkl
(Edited to add math.)

[punpirate]

2. Total military is about 1.4 million....

1.4 million is not the number deployed overseas. But, since many troops are in support roles, the number on the front lines actually doing the fighting is much smaller.

Since there are 140,000-odd troops in the Gulf region, that might mean that there are only 15,000 or so troops which are dedicated infantry and front-line Marines. The rest support them. The total troops in the Iraq region is about 10% of the total armed forces.

The problem is one of how many are trained to actually be up front, pulling the trigger. They're about ten percent of the Marines and the Army. In the Navy or the Air Force, even fewer.

Look at it this way. The ratio of support to combat arms troops today is something like 13:1, maybe 14:1. For a force of 1.4 million, that means that only 100,000 or so soldiers are, worldwide, trained and capable of operating in combat, on the front lines. That means that Iraq alone is taking a fair chunk of them, Afghanistan even more.

We have something like 157 military installations around the world besides those at home. It means, in the determination to carry out a _Pax America_ around the world, we're spread pretty thin, overall, by just a couple of rather small foreign wars. That's not to mention of couple of thousand combat-ready Marines in Haiti, recently, for example.

It's difficult keeping up an empire....

[izzie]

3. I just posted on this subject so thanks for the information

Two other things. Corp have taken over a lot of the quartermaster s jobs such as Brown and Root. This leaves more fighters. A point that has been pushed as the new fighting force. It is like the old ship of the line vs the back up fleet. We are paying for that back up and Brown and Root are hiring them from countries that work cheap. Also I have read that as these high trained fighters leave the govt is having a hard time keeping them in, as many are sighing up in corp armies. Be interested to know more about that.I spent years in the middle of this business as I was married to a 20 year man, if you wonder my interest.

[punpirate]

4. I have questions myself about the degree to which...

... privatization has affected the support-to-combat troop ratio. Admittedly, the volunteer army has made it more difficult to recruit people for positions such as mail clerks, cooks and the more mundane skills the military required. On the other hand, the volunteer army has also enlisted a lot of people into job classifications including computer skills, etc. (because those people wanted to enlist in areas in which they thought would have civilian application), and that may have kept the support-to-combat ratio much as it was in the past.

I don't have good figures on this, but am trying to develop them in the course of other research. If you have new figures, I'd very much like to see the sources.

Cheers.

[izzie]

5. Oh I do not have any figures. Sorry. It is just an interest thing.

I once got interested in the Germany army of WW2 and read every thing I could find. I could see why they were so good. They did two things that really paid for them. One they had the Hitler Youth so they took the natural born leaders and they are the ones that were the leaders of men in the army, not if you had money to go to college etc. and the men usually stayed together as a fighting group the whole war. Do recall we did not save Europe as a country but with Russia, England etc also fighting with us. It was a world war.We were really fighting half the German army. Also Fr did fight and I think they lost over a Million men where we did not lose that in the whole war. People for get they went to war years before we got in. By the way in Vietnam men were replaced as a person and not a unit. That did not work well.

[struggle4progress]

6. Thanks all

:)