Sending a THAAD air defense system to Israel adds to strain on US Army forces

WASHINGTON (AP) — The deployment of a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery to Israel and roughly 100 soldiers to operate it will add to already difficult strains on the Army's air defense forces and potential delays in modernizing its missile defense systems, Army leaders said Monday.

The service's top two leaders declined to provide details on the deployment ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin over the weekend. But they spoke broadly about their concerns as the demand for THAAD and Patriot missile batteries grows because of the war in Ukraine and the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah and Hamas militants.

“The air defense, artillery community is the most stressed. They have the highest ‘optempo’ really of any part of the Army,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said, using a phrase meaning the pace of operations. “We’re just constantly trying to be as disciplined as we can, and give Secretary Austin the information he needs to accurately assess the strain on the force when he’s considering future operational deployments."

Wormuth said the Army has to be careful about "what we take on. But of course, in a world this volatile, you know, sometimes we have to do what we have to do.”

The Pentagon announced the THAAD deployment Sunday, saying it was authorized at the direction of President Joe Biden. U.S. officials said the system will be moved from a location in the continental United States to Israel and that it will take a number of days for it and the soldiers to arrive. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of troop movements.

The move adds to what have been growing tensions within the Defense Department about what weapons the U.S. can afford to send to Ukraine, Israel or elsewhere and the resulting risks to America's military readiness and its ability to protect the nation.

“Everybody wants U.S. Army air defense forces,” Gen. Randy George, Army chief of staff, said Monday as he and Wormuth took questions from journalists at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference. “This is our most deployed formation."

The decision to send the THAAD came as Israel is widely believed to be preparing a military response to Iran’s Oct. 1 attack, when it fired roughly 180 missiles into Israel. Israel already has a multilayered air defense system, but a Hezbollah drone attack on an army base Sunday killed four soldiers and severely wounded seven others, underscoring the potential need for greater protection.

Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon have been clashing since Oct. 8, 2023, when the Lebanese militant group began firing rockets over the border in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza. The Sunday drone attack was Hezbollah's deadliest strike since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon nearly two weeks ago.

Since the THAAD deployment only involves about 100 soldiers, it won't add a tremendous amount of additional strain on air defense forces, Wormuth said at the conference.

But it adds to the pace of their deployments. Since the frenetic pace of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has subsided, the military has tried to ensure that service members have sufficient time at home to train and reset between deployments.

Shrinking that so-called dwell time can have an impact on the Army's ability to keep good soldiers in the force.

“They're very good, but obviously deploying for a year and coming back for a year and deploying for a year — it's tough to do for anybody,” George said.

He said the Army is looking at a range of ways to limit the impact on recruiting and retention, including growing the force and modernizing the systems so that it takes fewer soldiers to operate them.

But the repeated deployments makes it difficult to get the systems into the depots where they can be upgraded.

As a result, Wormuth said, Army leaders are trying to make their arguments as clear as possible when combatant commanders go to Austin and ask for another Patriot system in the Middle East or another one for Ukraine.

“We need to be able to bring these units home to be able to go through that modernization process,” she said. “So we’re trying to lay that out for Secretary Austin so that he can weigh those risks — essentially current versus future risks — as he makes recommendations to the president about whether to send the Patriot here or there.”