Most of the tours we see out here will still remain in the 8 to 12 month realm. My experience has been that up until now the people who get the excessively long tours tend to be support guys with hard to come by skill-sets rather than the shooters and door kickers. For instance the longest tours we've seen in the congregation to date have been done by JAG officers, electrical maintenance guys, mechanics, etc. That's not to say that 82nd Airborne 11 bravos, SF guys and even Chaplains don't occasionally get 13 month tours, but it tends to be less common.
There are a few things that some people still misunderstand about all this however. First off, most of the Regulars without family are generally eager to get over to Iraq and Afghanistan and spend as much time as they can in-country. For officers in particular, having combat experience is critical to their career, and with all the deployments if they don't get it they are going to always be the low men and women on the totem pole for several decades. Additionally, for most of the regulars, enlisted and officers, this is what they signed up for, and the majority of them are still "behind the mission" and the only thing that really discourages them is micro-management and the creeping suspicion that the war will be abandoned here at home and their efforts and the death of their buddies end up being all for naught. For them, supporting them means giving them an objective and letting them finish the job. Long or multiple deployments only really become a problem for these men and women if the stress becomes too much for them or their families (more about that in a mo')
Also please remember that all servicemen and women make much more money while they are in the field, and for the enlisted in particular this is a major incentive. For most of them, 12 months means a new Mustang or a Bass Boat when they get home. The difficulty is often trying to persuade them to invest the big chunk of cash they receive instead of blowing it on toys.
Reservists and National Guard tend to be different, they aren't or are no longer career military, and unless being reactivated meant leaving a job you hated or finally getting out of a terrible financial hole (and I know guys who fit into both categories) going to Iraq or Afghanistan is an unwelcome interruption in their lives and their real careers. Most of them see it as their duty to their country, but many are paying back the military for their education with service and a long deployment to a war zone is not appreciated. This becomes a serious problem when it involves several deployments and the dreaded "Stop Loss" (sorry, you can't get out). Inevitably when the media wants quotes from disgruntled service people, it is usually this group that provides it.
Finally, the group bar none that suffers most from long deployments are not the service men and women themselves but their families back home. Many career guys are getting out of the military simply because they realize that their marriages and children are suffering from the constant cycle of deployments and the social pressures that act to rip their homes apart. Deployments are just never easy on wives and children, and unless their marriages are strong, they are on firm ground, and they have good support, a deployment is often the catalyst for a divorce. Say "15 months" to a single guy in the military and he shrugs because he knows he can do it as easy as a year. Say "15 months" to a wife with four children and the response is unlikely to be quite as stoic - especially when her husband has only been back for a few months from the last tour.
- SEAGOO
