Pentagon: No timetable for review of overseas troop levels

Senior Bush administration officials have been promising for months to give lawmakers some estimate of the number of troops returning home from overseas in preparation for the upcoming 2005 Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC, round.

But during a background briefing Wednesday, senior administration officials said while a review of the U.S. global military presence has been under way for the past 18 months, no timetable has been set for its completion.

In March, Raymond DuBois, the deputy undersecretary of defense for installations and environment, told Senate appropriators that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld soon would share with Congress some preliminary decisions about bringing home troops from overseas.

At a March 30 hearing, DuBois told Senate Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, that Rumsfeld planned to finalize a decision on the "major building blocks of our overseas force structure and infrastructure in the May time frame of this year."

DuBois said this was necessary in order to "appropriately inform the domestic BRAC process" and provide the military departments ample time -- by May 17 of next year, when the Senate is to confirm a nine-member BRAC commission -- to determine where the forces will return.

Bush administration officials said Wednesday the administration has been consulting allies on plans to shift forces overseas, and they would keep lawmakers informed. But they stressed that the global posture review is ongoing, and that it does not need to be completed to inform affect the upcoming base closure round.

One senior administration official said current discussions are focusing predominantly on military capabilities and where they are located, and less on the number of troops.

"Globally, since we can't predict where the next fight will be, we want to make sure that we have the ability to get [capabilities] forward," one official said at the briefing. "That's key to the strategy, and it's also key to what we're looking to be able to bring back here to the United States."

The official said BRAC is a critical part of this process, adding that "absent BRAC, we will not be able to bring back these forces and position them in the most optimum way to generate the greatest amount of capability."

Although there is no timetable for completing their review of this process, officials said they are aware of the need to provide the upcoming BRAC round with data from the global posture review.