{"id":988,"date":"2012-10-26T11:57:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-26T15:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.alumni.ncsu.edu\/?p=988"},"modified":"2012-10-26T11:57:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-26T15:57:00","slug":"a-reduction-in-force-remembering-gen-ray-odierno-86","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/2012\/a-reduction-in-force-remembering-gen-ray-odierno-86\/","title":{"rendered":"A Reduction in Force: Remembering Gen. Ray Odierno ’86"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Gen. Ray Odierno \u201986 MS tackles his latest mission \u2014 downsizing the Army he has served in for 36 years.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n WASHINGTON\u2014Gen. Ray Odierno \u201986 ms has faced plenty of challenges during his 36 years in the U.S. Army since graduating from West Point in 1976. He has sat across the negotiating table from the Russians, using his master\u2019s in nuclear engineering from NC State to help hammer out agreements on intermediate-range nuclear weapons. As the general in charge of operations in northern Iraq, Odierno oversaw the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003, famously describing the former dictator as hiding like a rat in a hole when he was found. He\u2019s even joined Comedy Central\u2019s Stephen Colbert for an on-camera a cappella duet of \u201cI\u2019ll Be Home for Christmas\u201d in tribute to troops returning home from Iraq.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Odierno may now be facing his greatest military challenge, one that could fundamentally alter the U.S. Army and how it operates. The number of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq is on the decline as 10 years of combat and security efforts there wind down. Meanwhile, Congress is attempting to rein in the federal budget with cuts to entitlement programs, defense spending and other parts of government. As a result, the U.S. Army must get smaller. Congress has ordered that the Army be reduced by 80,000, more than any other service, over the next five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That would bring the total force to 490,000, closer to the numbers the Army had about a decade ago\u2014before the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those were the lowest numbers the Army has experienced in modern times, but some experts say the cuts could go even deeper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The responsibility for figuring out how to make those cuts falls to Odierno, a four-star general who is chief of staff of the Army. The hallway leading to Odierno\u2019s office in the Pentagon is filled with portraits of those who have held the position before him: generals like Eisenhower, Pershing and Westmoreland. They each faced their own challenges to ensure that the Army was prepared to do what was asked of it. Now it is Odierno\u2019s turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You have to culturally understand where you’re operating. You have to be more disciplined in how you conduct your operations. You have to be able to think very quickly on your feet and you have to be able to adapt and adjust. We’re expecting more and more out of our young leaders as we move forward.<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe cuts we get are not easy,\u201d Odierno says during an interview in his Pentagon office, where he wears the same combat fatigues and boots that his soldiers wear. \u201cThey will be difficult. But, today, the United States Army is seen as the finest Army in the world, and when we get finished with these reductions, we will still be the finest Army in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to do what\u2019s necessary. The one thing that I want our Army to be able to do in the future is operate across a spectrum of capabilities. And so if our nation needs to do peacekeeping, we\u2019ll do that. If our nation needs us to help other nations build, we\u2019ll do that. If they need us to fight and win in a very complex environment, we\u2019ll do that. If they need us to do a small counterinsurgency operation, we\u2019ll do that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Making the Army smarter while it gets smaller is no easy task. When the Army has drawn down its ranks in the past, it has done so during peacetime. But as Odierno is quick to point out, the U.S. still has almost 100,000 troops in precarious spots around the world. The Army also must learn from its experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, where it has fought what Odierno calls \u201chybrid warfare\u201d in which soldiers face quickly changing circumstances \u2014such as a civilian market suddenly becoming the scene of an attack\u2014and enemies who aren\u2019t always wearing the military uniforms of another country. At the same time, Odierno and other military experts say the Army may not find itself in a comparable situation again. Odierno cannot make the mistake, as other generals have been accused of in the past, of simply fighting the last war again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe know what the Army was supposed to do over the last decade\u2014large-scale, protracted stability operations,\u201d says Todd Harrison, a senior fellow for defense budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, D.C. \u201cWe\u2019re also pretty sure we\u2019re not going to be doing that again in the near future. The country just doesn\u2019t have the appetite for it. But that still leaves the question of what the Army is going to do. Peacekeeping operations? Smaller stabilization operations? Is it going to be a lighter Army, move faster, respond faster\u2014maybe work more with special operations? We just don\u2019t know yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n