Update: The President’s speech just ended. The plan he outlined seemed reasonable to me, especially in that it tracked almost exactly with what I have been advocating. As I suspected the National Guard is not to be used for enforcement activity. The people who want to build a fence between the US and Mexico should be happy since he proposed doing exactly that, but all I have heard in the comments on the radio are complaints that the President wants to a allow a guest worker program.

Rumors are flying that President Bush will be deploying approximately 10,000 troops to the border to support the Border Patrol. Like other recent enforcement efforts this is meeting with derision from the “Secure the Border” / “No Amnesty” crowd. A large part of the dissatisfaction stems from the fact that they want more troops on the border. I want to look at a few issues associated with that.

First, what never gets addressed is the logistics issues like where will they sleep, how will they be supplied. Where is the potable water going to come from? The little things. I guess we could dump them out there with pup-tents and two canteens apiece and tell them to fend for themselves, but I don’t think that would do much for recruitment and retention. The US Military is perfectly capable of addressing those needs but it takes a little more than a weeks notice.

Another issue is the effect of this deployment on training and mission readiness. The military exists to fight wars and train to fight wars. This mission contributes nothing to either of those. It will consume supplies and equipment, cut into maintenance and training cycles and make those units involved less combat effective. Because of its nature it will also be expensive. That will cut into training funds.

Next on the block for consideration is how many troops would actually be required. As I stated above there is a large backlash claiming that 10,000 (or less) troops isn’t adequate. I calculated the number of troops that I thought would be required. I used four assumptions:

1. Troops would be stationed along the entire southern border.
2. The troops would have overlapping areas of operation.
3. These would be motorized troops covering 100 linear miles per patrol. (This can be disputed but I think I can make my case)
4. The troops would have actually patrol responsibilities.

Using these assumptions I came up with a need for 22 patrol bases. Each base would require 5 patrol squads if they were to operate on a 24/7 basis while allowing for rotation for time off, equipment maintenance etc. Each patrol squad has 12 to 15 men. The normal ratio of support to combat troops is 5 to 1. Using these numbers I come up with:

22*5*15*5= 8250 troops.

If we accept that logistics requirements are higher for dispersed patrol bases 10,000 is just about the correct number.

Of course my contention is still that this is mainly an economic problem that can be addressed by economic means, but if you want to do the secure the border thing 10,000 troops is a good start.

Look for an update after the President’s speech this evening.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 15th, 2006 at 11:22 am by Chad and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable, Big Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.