Gen. Odierno: Budget Crunch Will Render Army Unready For Syria & Hybrid War

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http://breakingdefense.com/2013/05/07/gen-odierno-budget-crunch-will-render-army-unready-for-syria-or-anywhere-else/



Army exercises like this one at the National Training Center are being cancelled due to budget cuts.

Gen. Odierno: Budget Crunch Will Render Army Unready For Syria & Hybrid War
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on May 07, 2013 at 7:02 PM

WASHINGTON: While the Army can keep troops headed for Afghanistan trained up and ready to go, the ongoing budget gridlock threatens its ability to prepare for crises around the world – from North Korea to Syria – conflicts that would require a very different kind of training than the counterinsurgency tactics the force has focused on for years. That’s the warning from Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno, who added that the service might even have to submit an “unfunded requirements” wish list to Congress for the first time in years.

“I worry about the unknown contingency. We’ll continue to train for our Afghan mission and some other missions we have, but for unknown contingencies, our risk goes way up,” Gen. Odierno told reporters at a Defense Writers’ Group breakfast this morning. With yesterday’s release of the Pentagon’s annual report on China, the People’s Republic is getting a lot of anxious attention, but “we also have to worry about North Korea,” said Odierno. “That’s the first priority.”

“The next priority is the Middle East, and we have to prepare to operate in Syria or against Iran or, who knows, a failed Pakistan,” said Odierno. In particular, the fall of the Assad regime looks almost inevitable, he said: “It’s not a matter of ‘if,’ it’s a matter of ‘when,’ so what I worry about is … what happens the day after.”

Once the Army could spend 50 years focused on conventional warfare against the Soviet Union or a decade on counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, he said, “we’ve got to be prepared to operate across a broader spectrum of conflict, and that’s what makes this even more challenging.”