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Pentagon wants to grow Corps by 22,000 Marines

The Pentagon wants to plus up Marine Corps end strength by 22,000 leathernecks within five years, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has announced.

Gates unveiled his plan on Thursday to make permanent the 5,000 temporary Marine positions funded by emergency wartime supplemental legislation and add 22,000 Marines, for a total of 202,000 leathernecks. Gates also wants to make permanent 30,000 temporary Army wartime positions and add 65,000 soldiers, for a total of 547,000.

The Corps has not had an end strength of more than 200,000 since 1971. Plans call for growing the service by 5,000 Marines per year.

The additional troops will go a long way toward helping Commandant Gen. James Conway put in place his plan to “right-size” the force to increase unit deployment-to-dwell ratios to 1:2. Deploying units typically spend seven months at home and seven months deployed. Conway’s plan would double their time at home to 14 months between combat tours.

However, Marine deployments in Iraq remain at a steady tempo.

“That 202,000 will help us get to that 1:2 ratio for everyone,” said a Corps spokesman. It won’t happen overnight, he cautioned. “Initially, the folks bearing the biggest brunt are the infantry battalions.”

The defense chief’s call for more troops dovetailed with President Bush’s call for an escalation of 21,500 additional troops in Iraq, a move that Gates painted as open-ended. The Marine Corps will fill its part of that number by extending the combat tours of 4,000 Marines in Anbar province. The units include two infantry battalions — extended up to 90 days — and one Marine expeditionary unit extended for up to 45 days.

Overall, Gates would not say how long the buildup will last.

“We’ll have to see in terms of the length of time. It’s really hard to say at this point,” Gates told reporters Thursday. “It’s viewed as a temporary surge. But I think no one has a really clear idea how long that might be.”