Armed Forces News

Many in Congress want to increase the Army’s end strength by as much as 40,000 troops in order to ease the strain of deployments. But the Army’s top general, Peter Schoomaker, “adamantly opposes” adding end strength. Instead he hopes to modularize and standardize the Army to make it more lethal and agile. He said Army planners believe the service can gain 10,000 spaces from military to civilian conversions. In addition the Army is considering more than 100,000 structural changes. “We’re going to convert 36 field artillery battalions to 149 MP units, increase the number of transportation units, medical, aviation restructuring,” said Schoomaker. “This is the biggest internal restructuring we’ve done in 50 years, but it must be done to make us relevant and to allow us to meet the real threat to the United States.”