Military Officer - November 2007 - (Page 52)

82nd Airborne Division. Successive MEFs have rotated through the violent al-Anbar province ever since. In an interview with Contributing Editor Tom Philpott, Conway, 59, discusses the impact of the war in Iraq on Marines, their families, and readiness. ■ Conway graduated from Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau, Mo., and received his commission in 1970. After various platoon and company commander assignments, he taught tactics at The Basic School, Quantico, Va.; served as operations ofﬁcer for the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit during contingency operations off Lebanon; and commanded Battalion Landing Team 3/2 during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. ■ Conway later commanded The Basic School and became president of the Marine Corps University at Quantico. He was director of operations on the Joint Staff when he was nominated to become the 34th commandant. This interview has been edited for length and, in some cases, clarity. Worried members of Congress have said the Iraq war is breaking the Army. Is it breaking the Marine Corps? No. There are areas of stress that concern me. But it [would be] way too strong to say it is breaking the Corps. We have asked for the number of Marines to grow to relieve what has evolved into a 1-to-1 ratio of time deployed to time home. Some units are home less time than they’re deployed, but for most it is seven months deployed to seven months home. Traditionally, when not in conﬂict, the ratio is 6-to-18. 52 MILITARY OFFICER NOVEMBER 2007 And what we’re not focusing on are some core competencies like amphibious operations or jungle or mountain warfare. We do some, but it’s almost by exception. We used to do 10 combined armed exercises a year where we [brought] together elements from throughout the Marine Corps to maneuver under live ﬁre and call in close-air support with live bombs — all the things that give you a core competency to go to war. We don’t anymore. It gives me cause for concern. If we can use additional manpower to get the deployment tempo near 1-to-2 again, then Marines will be able to spend more time with the families and more time doing requisite training. How many Marines are in Iraq? About 25,000. [There are] essentially nine maneuver battalions. And how small of a Marine Corps force in Iraq would be optimal to get the Corps back to a 1-to-2 deployment ratio? I’d phrase the question differently: “What’s the mission, and how many Marines do we need?” A priority is to right-size the force. We need 27,000 additional Marines, and we’re growing that force. We’re having signiﬁcant success with our Marines in the al-Anbar province; if we indeed do stand down as Iraqis stand up, then maybe we can get by with less. In any withdrawal design, we’ll look at what units come out when. If you look at the Vietnam model, the Army was there through 1972. Marines started coming out around 1970 to be able to reset and prepare, as the nation’s contingency force, to go do something else. To me, that is a pretty attractive model. In Iraq we’re very much in what Marines call “sustained operations ashore.” Others might call it a second land army. We’ve got to ﬁx some things with My concern is if we stay at 7-to-7, it will impact families. We’re going to have Marines do two or three deployments in an operational tour and some families are going to say, “We’re not going through that again.” We don’t want people at that fork in the road. From a training perspective, when we’re home for seven months, a lot of that time we’re getting ready to go back to Iraq — training for a counterinsurgency role, assimilating new personnel, and going through a regimen that takes Marines away from home stations and exacerbates time separated from families.

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Military Officer - November 2007

Military Officer - November 2007 Contents From the Editor President’s Page Your Views MOAA Directory Rapid Fire Washington Scene Chapters in Action Financial Forum Ask the Doctor Cover Story: Commanding the Corps With Love, From Home Financial Guidebook Financial Tuneups Banking on Your Time Pages of History MOAA Scholarship Recipients Faces of MOAA MOAA Scholarship Donors Member Books Advertising Index MOAA Calendar Sounding Taps MOAA Member Services Encore

Military Officer - November 2007

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