In its version of the pending defense authorization bill, the House of Representatives said that the U.S. Army should consist of 480,000 soldiers at the end of FY2017. That would be an increase of 5,000 over the current year level of 475,000.
But the Senate said that 460,000 soldiers would be sufficient, a decrease of 15,000.
Meanwhile, the Department of Defense itself is proposing to reduce Army “end strength” down to 450,000 soldiers by the end of FY 2018.
So how big should the Army be?
The answer is– it depends. What it depends on is, among other things, what the Army is for in the first place, what resources are available, what competing priorities need attention, and what changes in the threat environment can be foreseen.
These issues are illuminated in a new report from the Congressional Research Service. Instead of proposing its own answer to the question, the CRS report examines the premises underlying the diverse positions on the subject, helping to explain how different people could arrive at different conclusions. It is unclear that congressional leaders have any appetite for this kind of analysis, but others who are not already ideologically committed to a position might benefit from it.
“For many observers, questions regarding the appropriate end strength of the Army are related to the changing international security landscape, and the perception that those changes are resulting in heightened threats to the United States and its interests abroad. For others, the cost of increasing the size of the Army is the predominant factor,” the report said.
In any case, “Although the international security environment is arguably becoming more challenging and complex, the role of ground forces–relative to other services–in helping the nation meet those challenges is somewhat unclear.”
One threshold question, therefore, is: “What are the tasks that the Army, specifically, needs to accomplish for the nation?” See How Big Should the Army Be? Considerations for Congress, September 2, 2016.
Some related official resources include the following.
Report of the National Commission on the Future of the Army, report to the President and the Congress of the United States, January 28, 2016
Notification to Congress on the Permanent Reduction of Sizable Numbers of Members of the Armed Forces, US Army report to Congress (via FOIA), July 2015
Force Structure and Force Design Updates, Army G3/5/7 briefing (FOUO), August 2015
Stability [on joint stability operations], Joint Publication 3-07, Joint Chiefs of Staff, August 3, 2016
The FAS Nuclear Notebook is one of the most widely sourced reference materials worldwide for reliable information about the status of nuclear weapons, and has been published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1987.. The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by the staff of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project: Director Hans […]
On 14 April 2023, the Belarusian Ministry of Defence released a short video of a Su-25 pilot explaining his new role in delivering “special [nuclear] munitions” following his training in Russia. The features seen in the video, as well as several other open-source clues, suggest that Lida Air Base––located only 40 kilometers from the Lithuanian border and the […]
A photo in a Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) student briefing from 2022 shows four people inspecting what appears to be a damaged B61 nuclear bomb.
In early-February 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) had informed Congress that China now has more launchers for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) than the United States. The report is the latest in a serious of revelations over the past four years about China’s growing nuclear weapons arsenal and the deepening […]