The Army is Not Tapped Out

I’ve seen a few people on Facebook post and comment about Ron Capps’ TIME.com blog post, “The Army is Tapped Out.” On immediate reading, it’s clear his conclusions about the linked RAND report are fatally flawed, but Gulliver over at Ink Spots does a great job deconstructing it:

http://tachesdhuile.blogspot.com/2011/05/lies-damn-lies-etc-army-is-tapped-out.html

Here are the two “interesting” revelations:

1. Despite making up only 50% of the Armed Forces’ active-duty end-strength, the Army is responsible for 75% of the individual deployments to the Box. This apparently surprises some folks, in spite of the fact that those deployments are in support of two manpower-intensive land wars. You know, the sort the Army is designed to fight.

2. “Second, and more importantly,” according to Capps, “the Army is operating at full capacity… So the Army can’t do more unless it deploys the Corps of Cadets.” This is a serious misreading of the data. Let me explain.

Head over there for the full explanation.