To staff the social experiments instead of boots on the ground.
An Army study on Joint Base Lewis-McChord’s new two-star infantry headquarters recommends increasing its staffing to improve oversight for the roughly 20,000 troops under its command.
The headquarters, JBLM’s 7th Infantry Division, had 250 soldiers assigned to it at the time of a study last year by the Army Audit Agency.
That’s about one-third of the size of a standard Army division headquarters.
The division’s first commander, Lt. Gen. Stephen Lanza, recommended adding at least 77 soldiers. The audit favored his analysis, but it acknowledged growing the headquarters might be unrealistic in a period of force reductions.
The Pentagon’s 2015 budget proposal calls for an active-duty Army force of fewer than 450,000, down from today’s 522,000.
“We believe the Army should acknowledge the shortfall needed to meet the division’s mission-critical requirements, keeping in mind the shortfall will need to compete with other priority requirements due to constraints,” auditors wrote.