Question for those serving

[jonks]

Excerpt from a blog of a soldier purportedly serving in Iraq:


http://armyofdude.blogspot.com

The Surge ? The beefing up of ground forces in Iraq at the beginning of the year, started by the 82nd Airborne. Unit deployments were moved up several months to maintain a higher level of boots on the ground to quell the Baghdad situation. What most don?t realize is the amount of actual fighting troops in a brigade, something in the area of 2,000 soldiers in a brigade of 5,000 depending on what unit it is. So for every 2,000 fighters, there are 3,000 pencil pushers sucking up resources in every brigade that was surged. A logistical nightmare that, surprise, failed miserably. The increase of troops in Baghdad pushed the insurgents to rural areas (like Diyala), hence our move here in March. The surge was nothing more than a thorn in the side of nomadic fighters having to move thirty five miles while the generals watched Baghdad with stubborn eyes.
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Is this really the case?

 

[bbdub333]

The proportion would differ for any unit, but there are a significant number of support personnel required to maintain any fighting force. Calling them all "pencil pushers" is pretty misleading, as a lot of them are maintenance, transport, supply, medical, intel, etc. You don't have 3,000 people doing paperwork for 2,000 infantrymen, in other words.

Nowadays, the restructuring toward Brigade Combat Teams is trying to significantly change the support structure of units, allowing them to deploy as one self-sustaining package, whereas in the past, you would have to send many different units in order to support operations.

Short answer, your bolded quote is very inaccurate in most situations.

 

[piasabird]

Imagine the supply lines it takes to support the troops. In the United States we have things like mess halls (Cafeteria) for troops to eat in. Sometimes it takes hiring civilians to prepare the food, and then that hamburger they eat for lunch has to be shipped by truck, then put on a plane and then flown to some location, then it has to be shipped somehow when it gets in country to arrive at it's destination. Hopefully, they are getting some hot meals. Even if it is MRE's it probably costs more to ship them than they are worth. So supplies may have to be shipped via helicopter inside Iraq. Jet Fuel and maintenance cost on one helicopter is really expensive. They can only fly a few hundred miles before they need mandatory maintenance. Then you may also be shipping goods via a cargo ship which is a large and lengthy process.

Still I think that logistics being placed aside, that the numbers may be inflated a bit, because several divisions may be supported by the same people. There are opportunities to save money and resources if support is on a larger scale, like it is for this war. However, most units are moved by unit, and their equipment is allocated by the company. In some ways this is a wasteful way of approaching problems for the military. Perhaps we need to consider alternatives.