In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing this morning on Army and Marine Corps preparedness, retired Maj. Gen. Robert Scales testified that two thirds of regular brigades and “virtually all of our reserve brigades are not combat-ready.”

He added that “the stress of back-to-back deployments has created uncertainty and anxiety among military families that is affecting the morale and resolve of those who we will rely on to fight the Long War for a generation.”

Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, added in today’s hearing that the decision for a surge-to increase the number of ground troops in Iraq-”threatens to leave the United States with a broken force that is unprepared to deal with other threats around the world.” He further testified that Army and Marine commanders “will only be able to provide these additional troops by cutting corners on training and equipment and by putting additional stress on those in uniform.”

Korb said that while Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s decision to expand the Army and Marines is “long overdue,” how to expand the forces without relaxing standards is tricky. To ensure those standards, he said, “the current target of adding 7,000 soldiers and 5,000 Marines per year is too ambitious in light of current circumstances and should be scaled back.”

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