Steve Buyer: “Mr. Speaker, I rise here as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel, and I also witnessed a lot of strain…”

“Mr. Speaker, I rise here as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel, and I also witnessed a lot of strain on military readiness. Last year, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence) released a report on military readiness, which I believe sounded an alarm on the strain of the Armed Forces today. Following his lead, the Subcommittee on Military Personnel held a field hearing at Ft. Riley, Kansas in March to look at the readiness of our late deploying Army divisions. In addition, we asked the GAO to look into these divisions, and here is what we found. The 10th division, only 138 of 162 infantry squads were fully or minimally manned. At the 2nd and 3rd brigades, the 25th division, 52 out of 162 infantry squads were minimally filled. At the 1st brigade of the 1st division, only 56 percent of the authorized infantry soldiers for its Bradley fighting vehicles were assigned. At the 4th infantry division, 13 of 54 squads in the engineer brigade had no personnel assigned or had fewer personnel assigned than required. At the hearing, we heard concerns from a variety of army officers and staff NCOs. The company of the 3rd brigade of the 4th infantry division said, 'We are in danger of becoming an Army of privates,' as senior NCOs were taken from the line units to fill critical billets in recruiting and drill instructor duty.”