Army Surgeon General Eric Schoomaker
Army leaders have been telling us for years that the post-9/11 wars have been chewing up their armor and other weapons. This week, the service’s top docs made clear the same thing is happening to the troops, although much of it isn’t combat-related.
Some 15% of active-duty troops – that’s one out of seven – is undeployable for medical reasons, Lieut. General Eric Schoomaker, the Army surgeon general, told the annual Association of the U.S. Army gathering in Washington. “This has begun to erode the readiness of the Army as a whole,” Schoomaker said. “It’s an issue the leadership of the Army has identified as a major problem for us.” The numbers are even worse in reserve units, where roughly one of every three troops is non-deployable.
“If we don’t get our arms around the non-deployable population — and the biggest population is the medically non-deployable population — we’re going to have a significant problem manning our units to get them to go downrange,” Brigadier General Brian Lein, the chief medical officer of U.S. Forces Command, said. “The soldier is the center of our formations, so if the soldier is not ready to go, then the unit is not ready to go.” The problem, the Army docs say, is only going to get worse as the Army shrinks in the coming years.
The biggest medical issue is injuries to muscles and bones, which put the equivalent of 68,000 soldiers a year on the sidelines. One of every four recruits coming into the Army has low iron and poor bone density, and recruits today have the highest body mass index in Army history – all of which makes such injuries more likely. The Army is developing new fitness routines and deploying healthier diets to help deal with the issue.