Quote Originally Posted by reed11b View Post
One Year. As for tour frequency that is more difficult to calculate, but my observations (which are obviously the opposites of the DOD's) lead me to believe that tour length has greater impact then tour frequency. Too bad the Army does not see it that way, but I have always said that Army Mental Health knowledge and Army policy have a huge gap that needs to be closed.
We can do one of two things; go pre-WW II British and US Army professional with old sweat PFCs having 15-20 years of service and who deploy until the job is done or keep roughly our current enlistment policies and go to six month tours. The year tour is bad * -- we proved that in Korea and we proved it again in Viet Nam.

Slow learners -- or no sense of history or continuity, that's us...

* Which makes the 15 month tour worse...

NOTE: While longer tours would make for greater continuity of effort, the lack of that -- and we do have that lack in spades right now -- is a leadership problem that is repairable . Quite high level leadership...