{"id":84234,"date":"2024-09-25T12:02:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-25T12:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/airforcetimes\/uncategorized\/2024\/09\/25\/what-will-the-surge-of-us-forces-to-the-middle-east-cost-the-military\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T01:14:57","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T01:14:57","slug":"what-will-the-surge-of-us-forces-to-the-middle-east-cost-the-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/airforcetimes\/news\/your-air-force\/2024\/09\/25\/what-will-the-surge-of-us-forces-to-the-middle-east-cost-the-military\/","title":{"rendered":"What will the surge of US forces to the Middle East cost the military?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SUBIC BAY, PHILIPPINES \u2014 The day the Middle East almost erupted into a full regional war this summer, Lloyd Austin was touring an Asian shipyard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just before the defense secretary visited Subic Bay, Philippines, the former site of a massive U.S. Navy base, Israel killed the political leader of Hamas, who was visiting Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Austin\u2019s July visit was meant to show his focus on Asia, the region America says is its top priority. Instead, he ended the trip distracted by the Middle East, spending hours containing the crisis on a flight back to Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to do everything we can to make sure that we keep things from turning into a broader conflict,\u201d Austin told reporters that day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. military has spent much of the past year backing up that sentiment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since Oct. 7, when Hamas\u2019 attack on Israel provoked all-out war in Gaza, the Pentagon has been on call. When the region has approached a wider war, the Defense Department surged forces there to calm it down. But after a year, some in Congress and the Pentagon are growing concerned about how to sustain that pace, and what it will cost the military in the long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Call it the U.S. Central Command squeeze. The Pentagon insists its surge has helped stop the Middle East from falling into chaos. But the longer the region borders on conflict, the more the U.S. tests its endurance for crises later on, most notably, a future conflict with China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at Philippine navy headquarters as part of his visit to Subic Bay, Philippines, July 2024. (DOD)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The pressure on the military increased even further this week. After their most intense attacks in almost 20 years, Israel and the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah are close to a larger war. On Monday, Austin yet again ordered more troops to the region, joining 40,000 other American personnel there, 6,000 more than normal. Another aircraft carrier may soon follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re caught in this kind of never-ending quagmire of having to divert resources, and we\u2019re burning [out] on the back end,\u201d a senior congressional aide said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story is based on interviews with analysts, current and former defense officials and congressional staffers, many of whom were allowed to speak anonymously either because they weren\u2019t permitted to talk to the press or because they were discussing sensitive topics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their message was that America\u2019s military wouldn\u2019t exhaust itself anytime soon, but that a year of unplanned deployments and spent missiles come with a cost. Even more, they said, the longer the crisis continues, the more the Pentagon will have to manage tradeoffs between the urgent needs of the Middle East and the rising challenges of the Indo-Pacific.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A sailor passes information via sound-powered phone on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the Middle East earlier this month. (U.S. Navy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Merging<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The way American military leaders in the Middle East describe it, they woke up to an entirely new world on Oct. 7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the last several years, the narrative around U.S. forces in the region had been one of decreased focus, with adversaries in the Europe and the Pacific taking priority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That changed when Hamas fighters stormed into Israel, killing 1,200 and taking hundreds more hostage<\/a>. For the short-term, at least, the U.S. was refocused on the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t know what this was the start of,\u201d an American military official told Defense News. \u201cWe immediately started to go to worst-case planning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within weeks of Oct. 7, in support of Israel, the U.S. sent two carrier strike groups, the Gerald R. Ford and the Dwight D. Eisenhower, to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and Middle East. It doubled the number of Air Force fighter squadrons in CENTCOM. And to defend its forces already in the region, the Pentagon rushed valuable air defense batteries nearby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur advice to those who might seek to exploit the situation or amplify the conflict is simple, don\u2019t,\u201d a senior U.S. defense official warned in an October press briefing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This phrase, which became a clich\u00e9 among senior members of the U.S. government, was still a clear statement of mission. America was sprinting to defend Israel and its own forces in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That became harder the longer the war lasted. Oct. 7 brought direct attacks between Hamas and Israel, but it also upset a delicate balance among other groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon after the attack, Israel and Hezbollah \u2014 which has a formidable force, armed with over 130,000<\/a> rockets \u2014 started trading fire in a cycle of escalating skirmishes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Militant groups armed by Iran started attacking Israeli and American forces, especially the 3,500 or so stationed between Iraq and Syria<\/a>, with three soldiers dying in one such attack in January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Three Army Reserve soldiers were killed in the Jan. 28, 2024, drone attack on the Tower 22 base in Jordan. They are: Sgt. Kennedy L. Sanders, Sgt. Breonna A. Moffett, and Staff Sgt. William J. Rivers. All three were assigned to the 718th Engineer Company, based at Fort Moore, Georgia, and were posthumously promoted. (U.S. Army)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the Houthis, a terrorist group in Yemen, started firing on commercial ships in the Red Sea, a vital economic waterway where 15% of global trade flowed before last fall.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Navy\u2019s running sea fight with the Houthis is the longest and most kinetic since World War II, according to service leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s flavors of all those activities in the past and previous rounds that I\u2019ve been involved in, but I don\u2019t recall a period when so many of them have merged,\u201d said another senior U.S. defense official, describing the different attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Bear the burden\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As the threats rose, so too did the demand on America\u2019s military. By December, the U.S. began Operation Prosperity Guardian<\/a>, a multinational mission to protect shipping in the Red Sea. It devoted an aircraft carrier and destroyers to the task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In April, when Iran lobbed hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, the U.S. and its partners helped intercept nearly all of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

America\u2019s national defense strategy accepts that its military can\u2019t be everywhere in the numbers it would want. Instead, the plan is to have a movable force. Put more practically: the U.S. argues it can rush to contain crises like the Middle East after Oct. 7 while still deterring a conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what we were saying before Oct. 7 and we just demonstrated it,\u201d said Dana Stroul, a top Pentagon Middle East official until early this year. \u201cIt\u2019s been a proof of concept.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the plan requires these emergencies to eventually end. Despite months of intense diplomacy in the region, the administration is now showing less confidence in its proposed ceasefire deal. And now Israel \u2014 the country America has spent the last year defending \u2014 may itself be opening a new front in the war against Hezbollah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t employ diplomacy without the backbone of military capability,\u201d said retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, who led CENTCOM until 2022. \u201cMilitary capability without diplomatic messaging is not a good way to approach the problem either.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Navy destroyer Laboon, shown here in December, is one of several warships that have shot down drones and missiles fired by Iran-backed Houthi Rebels over the Red Sea. (U.S. Navy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou need both but you have to be willing to bear the burden,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some in Congress especially, the concern is that the Middle East is a distraction from the Indo-Pacific.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pentagon leaders say they calculate the risk in pulling assets from one region to another, and that the choice to move forces away from Asia is a sign that they consider the region stable enough to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not everyone in the region is convinced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have relayed messages that it is better to invest in deterrence where there is no overt conflict, rather than intervene in a conflict where there is one already,\u201d the Philippines Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro said in an August interview. He wouldn\u2019t specify who in the U.S. those messages have reached.<\/p>\n\n\n\t