O'Hanlon's Latest Pep Talk to America on Behalf of the Pentagon

by: Brandon Friedman

Mon May 05, 2008 at 14:28:28 PM EDT

O'Hanlon was at it again this weekend, giving us his latest update on the State of the Military for the Washington Times.  Again, O'Hanlon's comments are both wildly off the mark and puzzling.  Let's take a look.

Michael O'Hanlon says:

In fact, to date, our military is holding up reasonably well under the immense strain. By most measures of quality, it still looks roughly comparable to say the early years of the Reagan buildup -- if not necessarily as strong as its typical state of the late Reagan years or the 1990s.
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But at a strategic level, the state of the force is not so bad as to necessitate an immediate change in our approaches to fighting wars.

That's some strange commentary when you consider that less than two months ago Army Vice Chief of Staff General Richard Cody said this while testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee:

Today's Army is out of balance. The current demand for our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds the sustainable supply and limits our ability to provide ready forces for other contingencies.
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Given the current theater demand for Army forces, we are unable to provide a sustainable tempo of deployments for our Soldiers and Families.  Soldiers, Families, support systems, and equipment are stretched and stressed by the demands of lengthy and repeated deployments, with insufficient recovery time. Equipment used repeatedly in harsh environments is wearing out more rapidly than programmed. Army support systems, designed for the pre-9/11 peacetime Army, are straining under the accumulation of stress from six years at war. Overall, our readiness is being consumed as fast as we build it.

And remember how O'Hanlon said above that "the state of the force is not so bad as to necessitate an immediate change in our approaches to fighting wars?"  Well, this is how General Cody put it in his last paragraph:

If unaddressed, this lack of balance poses a significant risk to the All-Volunteer Force and degrades the Army's ability to make a timely response to other contingencies.

But Cody isn't the only military officer to refute O'Hanlon's crazy-happy talk.  From CNN:

The Iraq war has strained U.S. forces to the point where they could not fight another large-scale war, according to a survey of military officers.

Of those surveyed, 88 percent believe the demands of the Iraq war have "stretched the U.S. military dangerously thin."

That doesn't make it sound like the forces are "holding up reasonably well."  But O'Hanlon continued:

While there are equipment shortages and maintenance depot queues of equipment due to the ongoing wars, Congress has been generous enough with supplemental appropriations that these situations are not dire.

Obviously O'Hanlon has a very Iraq-centric viewpoint, because Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff took a different slant on the resource issue in March:

If the current round of fighting subsides and the U.S. withdrawals from Iraq go ahead as planned, Mullen says, he is exploring the idea of shifting troops to Afghanistan -- an effort that he says is vastly under-resourced.

O'Hanlon then tackles the issue of retention:

There has been a recent rumor that West Point graduates have been leaving the service at drastically increased rates as soon as their minimal obligations are satisfied.

In fact, this appears not to be true. The last year for which data are available as of this writing (the class of 2002, which was eligible to leave the service as of 2007), showed a 68 percent re-enlistment rate, only 4 percentage points below the 1990s average.

More generally, company grade officers (first and second lieutenants as well as captains, and West Point grads and others all combined) have not been leaving the force at a greater than normal rate.

Not true?  Even coming from a Very Serious Person known for spouting Bush administration talking points, this is absurd.  The Washington Post reported in October 2007:

The Army is offering cash bonuses of up to $35,000 to retain young officers serving in key specialties -- including military intelligence, infantry and aviation -- in an unprecedented bid to forestall a critical shortage of officer ranks that have been hit hard by frequent deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Army officials said that lengthy and repeated war-zone tours -- the top reason younger officers leave the service -- plus the need for thousands of new officers as the Army moves forward with expansion plans have contributed to a projected shortfall of about 3,000 captains and majors for every year through 2013.

O'Hanlon also fails to take into consideration that the flow of officers leaving the service has been stanched recently through the use of repeated and increased stop-loss policies.  In fact, less than two weeks ago USA Today reported on this situation:

The Army has accelerated its policy of involuntary extensions of duty to bolster its troop levels, despite Defense Secretary Robert Gates' order last year to limit it, Pentagon records show.

Gates directed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the service secretaries to minimize mandatory tour extensions, known as "stop loss," in January 2007. By May, the number of soldiers affected by the policy had dropped to a three-year low of 8,540.

Since then, the number of soldiers forced to remain in the Army rose 43% to 12,235 in March. The reliance on stop loss has increased as the military has sent more troops to Iraq and extended tours to 15 months to support an escalation in U.S. forces ordered by President Bush.

O'Hanlon also glosses over the fact that many stay in the Army out of fear of being involuntarily mobilized off the IRR, as has happened to tens of thousands of soldiers since 2001.  

Even before the bonuses and before the stop-losses really set in, the New York Times was reporting the Army's own data in 2006:

Young Army officers, including growing numbers of captains who leave as soon as their initial commitment is fulfilled, are bailing out of active-duty service at rates that have alarmed senior officers. Last year, more than a third of the West Point class of 2000 left active duty at the earliest possible moment, after completing their five-year obligation.

It was the second year in a row of worsening retention numbers, apparently marking the end of a burst of patriotic fervor during which junior officers chose continued military service at unusually high rates.

Mirroring the problem among West Pointers, graduates of reserve officer training programs at universities are also increasingly leaving the service at the end of the four-year stint in uniform that follows their commissioning.
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The statistics are even more striking among West Point graduates, who receive an Ivy League-quality education at taxpayer expense - and, in the view of many senior officers and West Point alumni, owe the nation and the Army a debt of loyalty beyond the initial five years of active duty.

The retention rate at the five-year mark for the West Point class of 1999 was 71.9 percent in 2004, down from 78.1 percent for the previous year's class. And for the class of 2000, the retention rate fell to 65.8 percent, meaning that last year the Army lost more than a third - 34. 2 percent - of that group of officers as they reached the end of their initial five-year commitment.

That is the highest rate of loss over the past 16 years among West Point officers reaching the five-year mark.

If I didn't know any better, I'd think Michael O'Hanlon was on the Pentagon payroll.

UPDATE: More refutation of O'Hanlon by the guy in charge of Special Operations Command.