Monday, October 27, 2014

Army 'funding cliff' may mean more demand for deployments, reserve soldiers, leader says | Army Times | armytimes.com

Army 'funding cliff' may mean more demand for deployments, reserve soldiers, leader says | Army Times | armytimes.com: The Army likely will look to the National Guard and Army Reserve to fill steady-state missions as it deals with increasing demands for soldiers around the world.
“The demand for Army forces has really been pretty high,” said Maj. Gen. Gary Cheek, the Army’s assistant deputy chief of staff for operations. “The velocity of global instability has really got us concerned that we’ll have a problem both with capacity as well as capability, and the readiness to do that.”
Many of the missions the Army is responding to – containing the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, coordinating the mission in Iraq and providing assurance and deterrence in Europe in the face of Russian aggression – were “not anticipated,” Cheek said Friday while speaking to reporters at the Pentagon.
Seven of the Army’s 10 division headquarters are committed, Cheek said, even as the Army faces a “funding cliff” if sequestration returns that will have a “huge impact on capacity and readiness.”