The Pentagon announced today that the next increment of replacement and reinforcement of Generalissimo Field Marshal Kagan’s surge escalation has been decided upon.

The Department of Defense announced today additional major units scheduled to deploy in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The announcement involves three brigade or regimental combat teams and one Marine expeditionary force headquarters consisting of approximately 20,000 personnel. These deployments are not associated with the current troop surge. The units are part of a normal rotation of forces to replace formations currently on the ground. The deployment window for these units will begin at the end of this year and continue into 2008.

…
I Marine Expeditionary Force Headquarters, Camp Pendleton, Calif.

Regimental Combat Team 1, Camp Pendleton, Calif.

Regimental Combat Team 5, Camp Pendleton, Calif.

3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.

The military doesn’t always announce which units are being rotated out, but I suppose a suspicious observer of the Bu$h malAdministration would automatically assume if 20,000 troops are being fed in, then less than that are being drawn out.

Way back in April DoD announced the next round of National Guard units being sent:

The Department of Defense announced today the alert of additional replacement units for deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. These units, consisting of four National Guard brigade combat teams, will deploy consistent with the Secretary of Defense’s new policy of mobilizing reserve component units for a maximum of one year at any one time.
These Reserve units are not scheduled to begin deployment until December 2007. [emph added] They are receiving alert orders now in order to provide them the maximum time to complete their preparations. It also provides a greater measure of predictability for family members and flexibility for employers to plan for military service of their employees. The final determination of whether these units will deploy will be made based on conditions on the ground in Iraq.

This alert is not associated with the current troop surge. These units would deploy as replacement forces for formations currently operating in Iraq. There are approximately 13,000 personnel in these four brigades.

Specific units receiving alert orders include:

39th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Little Rock, Ark.

45th Infantry Brigade, Oklahoma City, Okla.

76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Indianapolis, Ind.

37th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Columbus, Ohio.

While these above units are not scheduled to leave until December 2007, one can safely presume they’ll be judged fully trained, and will depart NLT late October to mid-November so as to be on the ground in December.

Unmentioned in the DoD announcement, but covered here is the rather surprising news that Marines will now do 12 month tours, more in line with the Army’s 15 month tours.

Sadly, I predicted last month the easy days for the Marines are over.

The “15 months in, 12 months out” policy will join other discarded enlightened Army policies. Marines will start doing 12 month tours, rather than 7 months in country.

The troops will sit still for this treatment. They are patriotic, loyal, and well-motivated. They believe in what they think our nation is doing over there. Whether they are fully aware of things we know here is uncertain, since Fox Noise is the official news carrier in the Middle East and there is very little opportunity for them to gather news from free and independent news sources like many of the UK papers.

Next stop: either 18 month tours for the Army, and 15 months for the Marines, or a shortening of the time home from 12 months to 9 months.

UPDATE: I failed to mention the invaluable assistance of The Newshoggers a fine online resource.