For all the institutional changes that could be made to free up trigger pullers,(i.e. shifting funding from RC to AD, reducing non-deployable commands, reducing support troops etc.) I feel the core fact is that A) if we need 15 month deployments to meet our current deployment needs and B) that does not free up a standing pool of units available to deploy elsewhere in a very turbulent world political/military atmosphere; then the Army is not big enough, period. So, do we need a long term enlargement or a short term one? Expanded recruiting or draft? I feel the POTUS elect's call to national service is the right track to expanded recruiting. I do feel that the military should remain voluntary, but we are burning through soldiers physically and emotionally at a non-sustainable rate, and if recruitment failed to bring in sufficient quantity of quality troops, then I would be open to a short term draft. I would focus draftees in the tail and not the teeth personally, but that's me.
Reed