By Jeremy Pelofsky
WASHINGTON, June 30 (Reuters) - It could take much longer than hoped and vast resources for the U.S. Army to rapidly deploy new Stryker brigades of troops into battle, a Congressional watchdog said in a report released on Monday.
It could take five days to two weeks to deploy the forces and require more than one-third of the Air Force's C-17 and C-5 transport planes to send a brigade into action by air, depending on the destination, the General Accounting Office said.
"Without more realistic deployment goals, the brigades cannot be effectively integrated into theater combatant commanders' contingency planning efforts," the GAO said in a report to Congress.
The Army wants build a combat force that could be deployed anywhere in the world quickly -- a brigade in four days, a division in five days and five divisions in a month.
As part of that transformation, the Army has been developing combat-capable brigades that would cost $1.5 billion each and include some 1,000 vehicles and pieces of equipment weighing 15,000 tons plus 3,900 personnel each.
The troops are being outfitted with lighter vehicles and equipment, like 19-ton (tonne) armored vehicles instead of Bradley fighting vehicles and Abrams tanks that weigh 33 to 68 tons.
The GAO noted that the Army now plans to use both air and sea transports to deploy the new brigades. In comparison, it would require moving 29,000 tons of equipment and 4,500 personnel to deploy a heavy armored brigade.
A light infantry brigade and one mechanized infantry brigade in Washington state were chosen to become the first two of six Stryker brigades and the Army has finished an operational evaluation of those two units.
A report on that review is due in November and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will have to certify to Congress on whether the Stryker units are operationally effective and suitable, meaning they could be deployed for the first time, according to the GAO.
The other four planned brigades will be formed between 2005 and 2010 and stationed in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Alaska, and Hawaii. One of the six would be relocated to Europe in 2007.
But the Army has not drawn up likely timelines for deploying a Stryker brigade that reflects the various transportation modes or the wide range of deployment times that depend on the force size, the location of the troops and their destination, the GAO report said.
"Without deployment goals that reflect the wide range of deployment variables and alternatives, the Army does not have a reasonable baseline from which to measure its progress toward achieving desired deployment timelines for Stryker brigades," the agency said.
The Defense Department said in a response included in the GAO report that it generally agreed with the findings but stressed that the four-day deployment plan was a goal, not a standard.