American high officials continue to discuss the withdrawal of military contingent from Afghanistan. This dispute is about the size of the US troops as a whole., not only those present on Afghan territory.
In particular, it was first pointed out that, that after the withdrawal, the US military can be redeployed to “critical areas” – eg, to the Middle East or to bases in the Indo-Pacific region. Now the US Army headquarters says, that the US contingent in Afghanistan is too small, to strengthen those “critically important areas”.
celebrated, that the Pentagon faces a problem in carrying out its own plans. Previously, the plans indicated, that the number of direct military personnel in the army will be more than 500 thousands of people.
Currently the number of military personnel, active duty US Army, is 485 thousands of people. Rest – non-military personnel.
celebrated, that the recruitment of the US Army is experiencing the greatest difficulties in recent years 20 years. Over the same period this, allegedly, record low US Army strength.
American General James McConville during a seminar at the Center for a New American Security Strategy:
Today our army is equal in number to that, which was at the moment 9 September (day of terrorist attacks on the United States 2001 year). I'm very concerned about the size of our army, Considering that, that we live in an era of great power confrontation.
General McConville (US Army Chief of Staff):
The Secretary of Defense and I agree, regarding the issues of modernization of our army, the need to improve it to the level of readiness, which will ultimately reduce the deployment burden on our troops. We are trying to create a better army, that can only be obtained - without exorbitant loads on the same military personnel when deployed in different regions of the world.
Statements by American generals about, that the army's strength is at a "record low for 20 years", may be related to the desire to reach Joe Biden in order to again increase the size of the US military budget. Recall, that Biden signed the budget for 715 billion, which is less than last year. After this, the generals began discussing, how to “modernize and expand the number of troops in such financial conditions”.
