Why does the Army do 15 month deployments while the rest of the military does 3 to 9 months?

Answer 1

the deployment time depends on what the unit commander says.my husband did a 6 month tour the first time and now he is doing a 22 month tour

Answer 2

Touchy subject....look who has the most boots on the ground in both countries. I am not saying all services aren't pulling their weight but look who is pulling the most weight. The Marines are also doing long rotations. The battle is spearheaded by the largest branch of service suited for the specific battle. By doing a 15 month rotation in theory it will give us more time before we are due to rotate back. They have also considered 18-24 month rotations so that we could have 15 months stateside before we would have to rotate back to OIF or OEF. The last time I went to Afghanistan we were the HQ for a Marine BN. In 14 months we saw 3 different Marine Battalions....talk about getting slapped in the face.

Answer 3

The Marines do shorter tours because it matches their normal sea duty rotation schedule.

The Army is doing 12 months 'boots on the ground' for two reasons:

#1 -- it makes for better operations. The whole purpose of being there is to help the locals... so you have to be there long enough to get to know them -- who is really in charge; informal as well as formal relationships and power relationships; local problems and what needs to be done to solve / improve them. Also it give more time to learn about the local insurgent cells and develop tactics to stop / deter / kill them.

#2 -- Force protection. The fact is the bloodiest time for any unit is the first and last months in country. The first month because Soldiers are just getting used to the area / people / enemy and they get 'tested' by both the insurgents and other locals. The last month because everyone is getting hot to go home and they make careless mistakes.

Answer 4

The Marines do 7 month floats and all BLT and smaller units will do 7 months in Iraq. All other BN and larger will do 14 months. The Commandant of the Marine Corps says that's what we do now.

Answer 5

Its an old saying "The Airforce does more before Breakfast than the Army does all day"

Not far from the truth. THe Army has historically been a little slow in everything

Answer 6

Needs of the Army.

Answer 7

The Army has lengthened deployments throughout the course of this war as the manpower shortage has become more acute.

Answer 8

Do you mean, the Marines ? The fact is, the Marines deploy more often than the army. They may deploy for six months, return stateside for a few, and then re-deploy. The Marines do a lot more intense combat when they are deployed, and returning stateside also offers a time for fact finding and intelligence gathering, to occur.

Answer 9

Until every other service can do 15 consecutive months without going home to mommy, they don't know **** about combat stress.
And no one deploys for 22 months straight unless they volunteer to!

Answer 10

umm, the Navy is doing 12 monthers as well, as Individual Augmentees.