A 19-year-old medic from Lake Jackson, Texas, Spc. Monica Lin Brown, 4th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, is the first woman in Afghanistan—and only the second female soldier since World War II—to earn the Silver Star. In April 2007, Spc. Brown was part of a four-vehicle convoy patrolling in eastern Afghanistan’s Paktia Province when a roadside bomb struck one of the Humvees, wounding five soldiers in her unit. She ran through insurgent gunfire to reach the casualties, shielded them with her own body from mortars falling less than 100 yards away as she administered first aid, and helped drag them some 500 yards to safety. She treated them on-site before a medevac helicopter arrived.

Although Pentagon policy prohibits women from serving in frontline combat positions, female soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the counterinsurgencies lack real front lines, participate in close-quarters combat more than women did in previous wars. Spc. Brown joined the Army in November 2006 and is expected to leave Afghanistan in April.

“I did not really have time to be scared,” she told an Associated Press reporter. “I was in a kind of a robot-mode, did not think about much but getting the guys taken care of.”


ARMY TRAINS AFGHAN POLICE
The Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan (CSTC-A), headed by Maj. Gen. Robert W. Cone and tasked with training, mentoring and equipping Afghan security forces, has begun a new program—focused district development (FDD)—to train and reform the Afghan National Police. U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine advises that an indigenous security force is generally the best force to use in a counterinsurgency environment, and often that best force is the police because they are local and know the land and people.

Commanders in Afghanistan do not have enough trainers to work with the country’s security forces; FDD is designed to concentrate trainers to make the best and most efficient use of them. In addition, Army and Coalition commanders have come to recognize inadequate training, poor equipment and corruption in the Afghan police force. CSTC-A developed the FDD plan to address those issues. It is a reform by the Afghan Ministry of the Interior to improve the national police force district by district.

FDD withdraws the police of one district at a time, replacing them temporarily with Afghan National Civil Order Police, who are generally not from the same region. The district police are all retrained together as a cohesive unit for eight weeks at one of eight regional training centers throughout the country. Exercises include mounted and dismounted patrols, station security tasks, and urban and village operations. The first classes graduated in late February—259 Afghan National Police from Zabul Province graduated in Kandahar; 143 from the Bala-Beluk district graduated in Herat, in western Afghanistan.

In the next phase of FDD, the graduates will be reinstated into their home districts, which takes about a week. Police mentoring teams, composed of American and Coalition soldiers, will then accompany and work with them in the field for two to four months.

Col. James Klingaman, commander of Afghan Regional Security Integration Command-West, one of five commands that support the mission of the CSTC-A, explained the pros and cons of the strategy in a Pentagon news briefing in February. The retrained police “know the terrain and the people,” he said. “And of course, [one] of the cons [is] that … if they were corrupt, they may tend to go back to their old ways, which is one of the reasons, in addition to the training, they get some very close mentorship as well as nationally vetted leadership as part of this program.”

Police in seven of Afghanistan’s 365 districts have begun training; completing it in all districts will take about four years. The United States spent $2.5 billion on the police in Afghanistan in fiscal year (FY) 2007 and will spend at least $800 million in FY 2008.


GEN. PETRAEUS ON IRAQ
On April 8 and 9, Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of Multi-National Force-Iraq, is scheduled to testify before Congress on security conditions there. He and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker will update lawmakers on progress since their last report in September 2007.

Gen. Petraeus has said that he favors a “condition-based” drawdown rather than a rapid reduction of troop numbers and advocates a pause in mid-July, when the last of the additional troops President Bush sent nearly a year ago redeploy. Gen. Petraeus told Military.com in an exclusive interview that he will report that violence in Iraq has dropped 60 percent since the surge began.

In March, Gen. Petraeus told reporters he wants time to assess the situation and review conditions before drawing down more troops.

According to Gen. Petraeus, neighborhood militias, recently renamed Sons of Iraq, have become vital to the improved security situation. The 90,000 Sons of Iraq, he told reporters, are “substantially thickening our forces.” In addition, he said the Iraqi army and police force have grown by more than 100,000 people.

As brigade combat teams redeploy, Gen. Petraeus emphasized that the U.S. would not simply hand over an area completely to Iraqi security forces. “We will maintain a sufficient footprint with an adequate, generally substantial Iraqi force of police and soldiers,” he said.

He noted that much work remains in the Diyala and Tigris River Valleys and in Ninevah Province and its capital, Mosul.

U.S. commanders recognize Mosul as the last urban stronghold for al Qaeda and other insurgent groups in Iraq, and they are relying on Iraqi security forces there more than they have anywhere else in the country. About 2,000 U.S. troops—3rd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, and 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment—are operating in Mosul and are establishing combat outposts around the city with Iraqi army and police troops.

Gen. Petraeus pointed to progress made but warned that the way ahead will not be easy. “Al Qaeda is trying to come back,” he told reporters. “We can feel it and see it. … At the end of the day, it’s about feel.” Most commanders in Iraq are on their second tours, some on their third, he said. “Over time, you can start to feel where you can take a bit more risk and also where you cannot.”


'GROWING THE ARMY'
The Army has awarded Northrop Grumman a three-year $30 million instructional contract. Under the U.S. Army Armor Center’s “Grow the Army” contract, Northrop Grumman Technical Services’ team of instructors “will support the center’s training for both officers and noncommissioned officers in the development of instructional material, teaching, counseling/remediation and testing for several courses and programs based on Army student load projections and training schedules,” according to the company.

Work on the contract began in March, with more than 25 instructors teaching classes of 75 to 80 students in the center’s Mounted Basic Officer Leadership course. Frank Thompson, program manager for Northrop’s Technical Services sector, told ARMY Magazine that the team of instructors “brings expertise both from the schoolhouse as well as the battlefield, having served as senior noncommissioned officers in armor and armored cavalry units equipped with Abrams tanks, High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles or Bradleys.”

Other courses and programs of instruction tasked under the contract include:

• 19D and 19K initial entry training.

• Master gunner program.

• Scout/cavalry leader courses.

• NCO Academy.

• Combat Life Saver course.

• Career Management Field 63.

All instruction is scheduled to take place at Fort Knox, Ky.


ARMY SUICIDES INCREASE
Col. (Dr.) Elspeth Ritchie, psychiatric consultant to Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, announced that 102 active duty soldiers committed suicide in 2006, a rate of 17.5 per 100,000. That is the highest suicide rate since the Army began keeping such records in 1980, and it appears that the rate for 2007 will be at least as high. Thus far, the Army has confirmed that 89 active duty soldiers committed suicide during 2007; it is investigating another 32 deaths.

Suicide attempts have also spiked—from about 1,400 in 2006 to more than 2,000 in 2007. Col. Ritchie acknowledged these numbers but noted that the increase is due, in part, to new electronic medical record keeping and better reporting compliance.

The Army has launched various initiatives to combat suicides, including mental health screenings, outreach, improved access to mental health care, training and education. Col. Ritchie said it is impossible to determine how many deaths these efforts may have prevented, but the Army is concerned that the number of suicides continues to grow. It is a common misconception, she said, that most active duty suicides are among deployed troops or those recently redeployed. Nor are they linked directly to combat or to multiple deployments. Multiple, long combat deployments can rupture personal relationships, however. “Historically, and now, two-thirds to three-quarters of suicides are related to the failure of intimate relationships,” Col. Ritchie said in a news release. Legal, financial or occupational problems rank next in order.

Col. Ritchie was part of a team that interviewed deployed soldiers to try to find ways to prevent suicides and drew up 55 recommendations to improve the suicide-prevention program.


MONEY FOR NEW RECTUITS
In February, the Army began a pilot recruiting program called the Army Advantage Fund that awards enlistees who commit to five years of active service up to $40,000 for a down payment on a home or seed money to start a business; reservists can receive up to $20,000. Three- and four-year enlistments pay lesser cash incentives.

The Army is testing the Advantage Fund program in five cities—Albany, N.Y.; Cleveland, Ohio; Montgomery, Ala.; San Antonio, Texas; and Seattle, Wash. According to Lt. Gen. Benjamin Freakley, commanding general, U.S. Army Accessions Command, the pilot program will be evaluated later this year to determine whether it will be made available on a national level.

Gen. Freakley acknowledged that the Army must be creative in order to compete with schools and businesses for high school graduates. A recent survey in the test markets showed that six in 10 young adults are concerned about the difficulty they will face when buying their first home, and 79 percent viewed having enough capital to start a small business as a big problem. Participants in the fund may be able to reduce, or even eliminate, the need for a bank loan.

In a U.S. Army Recruiting Command news release, Gen. Freakley compared the pilot program to the GI Bill of Rights and said the Army “wants to be a part of the solution by offering young adults the proper funds which will allow them to live their American dream.”


NATIONAL GUARD/RESERVE REPORT
After more than two years of study of the seven reserve components of the U.S. military, the congressionally mandated Commission on the National Guard and Reserve sees “no reasonable alternative to the nation’s continuing increased reliance on its reserve components” as an operational force for missions at home and abroad.

According to the commission’s 400-page report, delivered to Congress and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates in late January, lack of sufficient training, personnel and equipment—because of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan—has resulted in an “appalling gap” in forces able to respond to attacks on U.S. soil. Arnold Punaro, the commission chairman and a retired Marine Corps Reserve major general, said the panel found the Army National Guard less ready than it was a year ago, when the commission said 88 percent of units were not ready for deployment.

Among 95 recommendations in the report is that U.S. Northern Command, the primary mission of which is homeland defense, have a significant increase in Guard and Reserve membership and have Guard and Reserve members included by statute in the command’s leadership.

The report states that the National Guard and Reserve should form the backbone of DoD operations in the United States. It also proposes that governors be given command and control of active duty troops responding to emergencies in their states.

Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense Paul McHale and Army Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, provided their perspectives on the report at a Pentagon press conference in early February. The commission, McHale told reporters, got it right in recommending that the reserve components should have the lead role in DoD operational capabilities within the United States. That statement, he noted, echoes one in a DoD report published in June 2005: “There should be a focused reliance upon the reserve component.”

Some of the commission’s recommendations, however, would actually hurt the reserve components, McHale said. He questioned the constitutionality of placing federal troops under the control of governors and said that having 50 different governors command active duty military forces “would guarantee an inability to achieve unity of command and unity of effort in a crisis.”

By proposing that DoD shift capabilities, McHale said, the commission is in effect recommending “converting the National Guard into a domestic disaster response force.” Gen. Blum added that the active duty military could not fill the gaps in forces if the Guard were removed from its wartime mission. “We would unhinge the volunteer force, and we would break the total force,” he said. The Guard currently makes up 40 percent of the U.S. military’s combat power—more than 355,000 troops serve in the Army National Guard.

“While there are positive elements of the commission’s report, in most cases echoing and validating actions already well under way within the Department of Defense,” McHale said, “the core elements of the report are fundamentally flawed.”

The commission, in its third and final report, went beyond its original mission of reviewing the structure and management of the reserve components. After concluding that the only way the U.S. military can become an efficient operational force is to combine the training, promotion and management of active and reserve troops into one manpower system, the commission recommended revamping the personnel policies of active duty members.
Now, active duty members are eligible for retired pay immediately upon completing a minimum of 20 years of service—as young as age 40 for someone who enlisted at 20. A revised retirement system, which AUSA opposes, would grant limited retirement benefits after 10 years of service, but actual payment would not begin until age 62. Servicemembers who serve at least 20 years could begin drawing retirement pay at age 60, and those who serve 30 years at age 57. Although earlier retirement payouts remain an option, the annuity would be reduced by 5 percent for each year servicemembers are under the statutory minimum retirement age.

The commission also recommended sweeping changes to the number of duty statuses, pay and the promotion system, among them promotions based on skill rather than longevity and reducing the number of duty statuses to two—on active duty or in reserve.