Army’s 101st Airborne Division: Years of budget cuts have hurt readiness, strained crews

Years of budget cuts and attempts to cap troop levels in Afghanistan have wreaked havoc on helicopter mechanics and pilots with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne, according to senior officers within the air assault division.

Congressional attempts to trim federal deficits, along with policies enacted by former President Barack Obama, have degraded readiness at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and whittled down its forces to one aviation brigade. Fox News Channel’s Jennifer Griffin arrived at the base for an exclusive interview on how commanders live up to the same global responsibilities with fewer pilots and experienced mechanics.

“We used to have two aviation brigades here, over 200 aircraft, and now we are down to just one aviation brigade and slightly over 100 aircraft,” said Col. Craig Alia, commander of the division’s combat aviation brigade, the network reported. Thursday.

When the national security correspondent asked if he could quickly carry out the kind of brigade-size air assaults seen during the early days of the Iraq War, he replied, “We could not. We don’t have the crews to do it.”

Maj. Gen. Andrew Poppas, commanding general of the 101st Airborne, further explained the predicament created by the budget cuts enacted under sequestration.

“When you … reduce the amount of brigades that you have to deploy, yet the demand on those [brigades] goes up, you are going to have to deploy those more often. That induces stress,” the officer said, Fox reported.

Exacerbating readiness problems was the decision to rely on contractors in Afghanistan as a way to officially “cap” the number of U.S. forces in the region. Nearly 1,000 “Screaming Eagle” mechanics were left behind on a previous deployment in favor of contractors, and as a result the troops lost 18 months of experience.

“Our maintainers left back here did not have a fleet of aircraft to work on,” said Lt. Col. Kenric Smith, the 101’s aviation support commander.

“The crews we have here are becoming fatigued,” Chief Warrant Officer 2 Robert Hodgson, an Apache pilot, told Fox. “[But] they will do whatever they can to accomplish the mission.”

Ms. Griffin noted that things may change with President Donald Trump’s call for $603 billion of defense spending, a three percent increase over his predecessor.

“I have to say, when I was young, in high school, and college, everybody used to say we never lost a war,” Mr. Trump said from the White House on Feb. 27. “We never lost a war. You remember. Some you were right there with me, and you remember. We never lost a war. America never lost. And, now, we never win a war. We never win. And we don’t fight to win.”