Green troops

Last November, Marines from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit flew 350 miles into southern Afghanistan from Navy ships to set up the first permanent U.S. base in the country at an abandoned airstrip. With Taliban and al Qaeda forces still lurking in the countryside, the Marines immediately were ordered to start digging defensive foxholes at the base, known as Camp Rhino.

But despite six months of training before their deployment, most of the Marines had little experience putting shovels to soil. Some were digging their first foxholes since basic training.

"When we got to Afghanistan, people were surprised just how much work there was for preparing a defense," says Lt. Col. Gregg Olson, director of operations and training for the unit, which is based at the Marine Corps' Camp Pendleton in southern California.

The Marines did get six months of training before being sent off to Operation Enduring Freedom. But their efforts were hampered by environmental, noise and air restrictions that limited their training and left them with new skills to master once they started fighting. For example, their training in the off-road maneuvering of vehicles had been limited because of concerns about damaging the habitats of endangered species.

Such restrictions have raised the ire of military leaders and ignited a debate over whether U.S. forces are getting all the training they need before heading off to war.

"Over time, as we build bad habits into our training, or substitute the classroom and simulators for field training, our combat edge will become dulled," Col. Thomas Waldhauser, commander of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, told the House Government Reform Committee in May. "Limited training opportunities translate into increased risk where the price of success in combat will be unnecessarily high."

The Marine Corps is not the only military service in which commanders complain about restrictions on training ranges. All of the services are cutting back or eliminating training exercises due to an increasingly common phenomenon plaguing military bases-encroachment.

The Defense Department defines encroachment as "the cumulative result of any and all outside influences that inhibit live-fire training and testing." More specifically, encroachment refers to the effects of increased development around bases and the enforcement of environmental regulations on military training. All of the services have reported that encroachment is hurting their training:

• Three Navy ships in the Carl Vinson Battle Group were deployed to the Indian Ocean to support aircraft dropping bombs in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom without having participated in a key missile-firing exercise during their training. Naval officials canceled the exercise, scheduled to take place just off the California coast, because they believed several marine mammals, including seals, were too close to the exercise site and could be adversely affected.
• Soldiers training at Fort Hood, Texas, have unrestricted access to only about 17 percent of the base's nearly 200,000 acres. From March to October, Army vehicles and soldiers cannot leave trails on 44,000 acres because they contain the habitat for endangered birds. To preserve and promote air quality, Fort Hood limits the use of smoke, flares and pyrotechnics on nearly 50,000 acres. Noise restrictions prevent firing of the Multiple Launch Rocket System and other kinds of artillery on more than 1,000 acres. In some areas, even camouflage netting cannot be used because it could interfere with the natural habitat of threatened and endangered species.
• The Air Force spends $300,000 annually to monitor the movements of the endangered Sonoran Pronghorn antelope at the Barry Goldwater Range in southern Arizona. If any antelope are within five kilometers of a target area within two hours of a bombing run, the training exercise must be moved or canceled. In 2000, about 30 percent of all bomb exercises had to be moved to other areas because of antelope sightings, while 3 percent were scrapped altogether.

The initial proposal backed by the Pentagon, called the Readiness and Range Preservation Initiative, sought relief from provisions in six environmental laws, including the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, the 1973 Endangered Species Act, the 1972 Clean Water Act, the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act and statutes governing the cleanup of hazardous waste.

Congress has pared down the package. Only language affecting the Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act made its way into the House version of the 2003 Defense authorization bill. The Senate rejected all the provisions.

As activity on all but the most essential bills has ground to a halt in a bitterly divided Congress, however, the authorization bill remains mired in conference committee. At this point it's unclear what, if anything, lawmakers will do to address the Defense Department's concerns about environmental restrictions.

Matthew Weinstock contributed to this column.