Do You Have Draft-Age Loved Ones? Here We Go Again!

DAVE MONIZ GANNETT NEWS SERVICE WASHINGTON -- For the first time since the all-volunteer Army began in
1973, a significant number of U.S. combat soldiers may have to start serving back-to-back overseas tours of up to a year each
in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan and South Korea, top Army officers say.

Grappling with large, simultaneous deployments around the world, Army planners are trying to determine how many troops will
have to serve extra tours. Based on the forces they must keep in place overseas, planners have concluded they will have no
choice but to force thousands of troops to return on new overseas assignment after only a short time at home. Currently, it's not
unusual for Army soldiers to serve up to one year overseas without their families.

"The Army is monitoring the situation," says Maj. Steve Stover, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon. "But we will do everything
in our power to prevent back- to-back deployments."

Privately, officers familiar with the Army's deployment needs say the math will almost certainly require extra overseas
assignments. Preliminary estimates range from 15 percent to 25 percent of the nearly 180,000 troops now overseas in Iraq,
Korea and Afghanistan would need to do consecutive tours. The estimate is based on the Army maintaining a force of about
130,000 troops in Iraq, about 10,000 in Afghanistan and about 40,000 in Korea for the foreseeable future.

If the prediction is accurate, as many as 45,000 soldiers would have to double up. Some of the second tours would be for six
months, but those in Iraq and Korea could require a second full year during which soldiers would be separated from their
families. An officer says the Army would attempt to allow troops rotating home to have at least three months before heading
back for a second overseas tour.

David Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland, says there is a growing awareness among the Army
rank-and-file that large numbers of troops will likely serve back-to-back assignments outside the United States.

"I know a number of officers from the 4th Infantry Division who are scrambling to find assignments that will take them out of the
running to be re-deployed," Segal says.

Says one high-ranking Pentagon official familiar with the math: "Looking out three years, it is not unreasonable to expect that
within a two-year period, a guy will have to do a year and a half outside the United States."

Commanders are worried that the added tours will lower morale and cause a wave of exits throughout the Army. A key concern
is that the deployments will cause an exodus of experienced, mid-career veterans such as sergeants, staff sergeants and captains,
who are harder to replace than younger soldiers. Tweet