Experts Say Army in Crisis

The influential Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank, recommends that the Army cut its planned force expansion of 65,000 new soldiers and comes mighty close to saying the service should axe its prized Future Combat Systems modernization program. The report (.pdf) was authored by renowned Army analyst Andrew Krepinevich and released at a conference this week in Washington, D.C. Krepinevich's report is titled "An Army at the Crossroads." But a more appropriate title would have been an "Army in Crisis." In the report he writes: "[The Army] risks a catastrophic leadership failure of a kind not seen since the late stages of the Vietnam War, a failure that took the Army over a decade to repair." Poll: Is the Army in crisis? His central message is alarming: the quality of the Army's soldiers is in sharp decline, from enlisted personnel to NCOs to officers. It's a "particularly discouraging" trend for the Army as it is happening despite the service's "increasingly aggressive" use of financial incentives including bonuses and a salary increase of 33 percent between 1999 and 2005.

http://www.military.com/news/article/experts-say-army-in-crisis.html?ESRC=topstories.RSS