Increasing end strength immediately boosts morale—the perception of a force capable of reducing operational tempos is enough to enhance readiness and boost recruitment Reed and Hagel, 04 (Jack and Chuck, US Senators, Federal News Service, “NEWS CONFERENCE WITH SENATOR JACK REED (D-RI) AND SENATOR CHARLES HAGEL (R-NE) RE: LEGISLATION TO EXPAND THE SIZE OF THE ARMY”, 3/4, lexis)KM
Q Could I ask you to elaborate some on the manifestations of the stress that the force is under? How do you see the stress? What are the consequences, and particularly as it affects the Guard? SEN. REED: I'll just start. I have two Military Police companies and a Military Police battalion in Iraq from the Rhode Island National Guard. They've done a magnificent job. And no one knows for sure what their reaction is going to be when they come back in about a month. But having deployed previously, about two years ago, to the Balkans, and now this second deployment, a very long, about 16-month, deployment, there is a feeling, at least, or an anticipation that some, if not many, of these soldiers will decide that they can't continue to serve. I think that feeling will be accelerated if we don't increase the size of the end strength of the Army because they can do the math, too. If the Army stays this size they're going again and they're going very quickly. I think we'll also -- and General Abizaid was asked today about the impact on force retention and recruitment, and he expressed some concern. He was confident that we could weather this storm -- he is more confident than I -- but he expressed concern about retention of young officers, which is a key factor in any military force, and younger NCOs. So these are beginning to show some stress, and the -- Q Will increasingthe size of the Army relieve the pressure on the -- SEN. REED: It will certainly relieve the pressure on the National Guard, both I think initially in terms of perception -- perception as being there's a bigger active force, I'm not going to be called in six months to go -- but also reality. Eventually the active force will be doing more. Another point that we're looking at -- we're trying to find data. It's hard sometimes to do this. One of the major sources of recruitment for the National Guard and reserves are regular soldiers who are leaving and will go into the Reserve/National Guard. I wonder now, if regular soldiers are leaving the active force right now, whether they'll go into the Reserve/National Guard simply because my presumption is they're leaving because they don't want to go back again into Iraq or Afghanistan or someplace else, and they won't join the Guard because they know they'll be headed that way. SEN. HAGEL: The only thing I would say in addition to that, the recruitment/retention issue is an issue and it's going to become more of an issue, and not because I say it or Senator Reed says it, but we hear from people who we represent. We hear from their families. We hear from their employers. We hear from their communities. And we hear from them personally, and some are willing to go on the record with the press. When I was back in Nebraska over Christmas, I had two Reserve officers, captains, talk to the press about this. But also one additional point: morale, morale of the troops. And morale is a very significant factor because morale directs everything. Morale directs not just the feeling of the nobleness of the purpose and the cause, but there's an alertness factor. You drift into a dullness that is very dangerous in combat or in what we're doing in nation building and peacekeeping around the world. And if you lose the morale of the troops, then you've lost something that's irreplaceable and is very difficult to get back. And there's no question in my mind that this increase of force structure helps address this.
Impact Turn – End Strength Good – Terrorism
Intense ground-force presence is critical to providing stability to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bruner 5 (http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/42484.pdf, Edward F. Bruner, January 3rd 2005, Specialist in National Defense
Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division) NAR
Specific types of forces needed will be defined by perceptions of future requirements, recent experiences, and response to current stresses.Congress influences the type of forces to be acquired by allocating end strength among the four Services. Further refinements occur as specific weapons systems and materiel are developed and procured, and through the oversight process. Whether or not to create dedicated “constabulary” forces remains an issue. Substantial ground combat forces will likely be needed as “stabilization” efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq have no defined end point20 and other nations of concern, such as Iran, Syria, and North Korea, retain a potential for future armed confrontation. Combat campaigns in both Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrated the value of U.S. Special Operations Forces. SOF strength is being increased and is particularly important to the War on Terrorism, but that strength is accounted for within the Services that contribute their personnel to SOF units. In Iraq, the ability of U.S. mechanized infantry and armored forces to survive and prevail against both regular and nonconventional enemy forces, even in urban areas, was striking. To reinforce success, some advocate maintaining and increasing units armed with Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.21
End strength is key to solving terrorism – war is ground troop intensive. Kagan 6 (Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute August Frederick, Foreign Affairs, “The U.S. Military Manpower Crisis, July/August, www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.24584/pub_detail.asp)KM
Three hundred forty-five million dollars can, roughly speaking, buy one F-22 Raptor--the U.S. military's new stealth fighter plane--or pay the average annual cost of 3,000 soldiers (although it would cost far more to equip, maintain, and deploy either the fighter or the troops). The soldiers are a better investment. Yet U.S. military personnel, pundits, and policymakers have been downplaying the importance of ground forces since 1991. Even today, in the face of ongoing, manpower-intensive counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration is emphasizing long-range strike capabilities over land forces. The recently released 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review and the president's budget proposal for fiscal year 2007 both reaffirm this priority. The administration has maintained this emphasis despite the fact that the long-term neglect of U.S. ground forces has caused serious problems in the Iraqi and Afghan campaigns. If not corrected, moreover, this neglect will cause even worse problems in the future. War is fundamentally a human activity, and attempts to remove humans from its center--as recent trends and current programs do--are likely to lead to disaster.