COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Service: General
As part of military's ground force, Navy firms up support services
LOUIS HANSEN, The Virginian-Pilot
October 22, 2006
VIRGINIA BEACH - The military calls them "IAs," shorthand for individual augmentees.They're the 46,000 men and women who have been picked from Navy units to serve, often facing danger, with soldiers and Marines in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Once considered a short-term program, the Navy and defense experts acknowledge these sailors are now a permanent part of today's ground force.
The Navy this month created the Expeditionary Combat Readiness Center at Little Creek to track and assist those sailors uprooted from their ships and shore commands. About 150 people are assigned to the center and at bases in battle zones.
At any given time, about 8,500 Navy personnel are deployed for fill-in roles in the two wars. Their jobs include logistical support, civil affairs and military police. Deployments have grown, and now typically last 12 months.
The readiness center aims to ease the stresses on sailors, many stationed in combat areas without their shipmates to rely on.
"They don't have embedded unit support with them," said Capt. Jeffrey
McKenzie, the center's commander. "They're a unit of one."
Sailors at forward bases in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and other stations can meet with staff advisers. They will help sailors manage their career and advancement exams, and smooth out payroll problems and health-care issues, he added.
McKenzie said he begins every morning by answering e-mails from sailors in Baghdad who need help.
McKenzie said his new command can also help families - something as simple as contacting a sailor at a forward base. Augmentee families have a disadvantage: They lack the ready community support as when a 300-crew warship deploys for six months.
The Navy handles an average 1,000 IAs each month, he said. The new command can handle twice that number.
Early in the Iraq war, sailors sometimes received bare-bones combat training and makeshift equipment, McKenzie said. Combat skills training has since been bolstered and standardized at Fort Jackson, S.C.
Dan Goure, a senior researcher with the Lexington Institute, said the Navy should expect to fill its support role for a long time.
Army and Marine units have been overstretched, deploying three and four times since the Iraq war began.
The IAs will continue being used more widely, he said, because the military became smaller after the Cold War and conflicts have become longer, straining manpower.
"The global war on terrorism has shown us we can't do our business the old-fashioned way," said Goure, who studies military personnel issues for the Northern Virginia-based think tank.
The military needs active-duty and reserve troops from all branches to boost Army and Marine Corps missions, he said. "These are the new realities."
Capt. Ed Burdick, a personnel and manpower administrator for surface fleet headquarters in Norfolk, said the combat experience often creates better, battle-tested sailors for the Navy.
The migration of sailors to ground-combat roles have not diminished the fleet's readiness, he said, because less than 3 percent of any ship's crew has been selected for ground duty.
Sailors usually volunteer, although some are ordered.
Cmdr. Jim Lowther, a supply and financial officer for the surface fleet, requested a six-month tour in Iraq in 2005. He said he wanted to directly contribute to the war and gain experience.
He spent a week training at Fort Bliss, Texas, then joined a command in Iraq. "It was pretty quick," Lowther said.
Among other duties, he managed contracts for military and civilian construction in Iraq.
The deployment "makes you appreciate what you have here," he said during an interview at Norfolk Naval Station.
Capt. Robert Irelan left a staff job with the surface fleet for Baghdad, where he served as a liaison between the U.S. military and the Iraqi Navy. It was one of the most rewarding duties of his 22-year career, he said.
Irelan said a combat deployment can be much easier and safer aboard a warship patrolling the Persian Gulf.
But, he said, "it's not really my idea of war."
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