<p>What portion of graduates will end up in Iraq?</p>
<p>Why do you ask?</p>
<p>Firstly, this is the army, your ob is to fight. Secondly, depends as what you sign up as; infantry or warrant officer I believe.</p>
<p>Seemed like a simple enought question to me. Anyone out there who can speak with authority on the subject?</p>
<p>It dose not matter what army branch you sign up for, the simple fact of the matter is a soldiers job is just that, deployment and fighting. The War on Terror will be a frequent part of the West Point Grad for years to come. If the question is whether you want to be in combat you should find that out now. There are many other non-combat ways to serve, in government, Police or firefighter perhaps. Soldiers do their duty its what makes them different from civilians.</p>
<p>Ok then. I’m completely unqualified to answer this question but so apparently is everyone else so I’m going to take a complete wild educated guess and say that at least 85% of recent and upcoming West Point graduates will see service in Iraq and/or Afganistan. Furthermore, and while I’m in guessing mode, most of those will come from infantry and will activly see service in those two theaters.</p>
<p>While I’m not an authority either, I think it really depends on what branch (infantry, aviation, armor, etc) you go in. Some branches obviously have more of a chance of seeing combat while others have less of a chance.</p>
<p>Oh and on a side note, when I went to SLS this past June, they told me, an aspiring infantry officer, that infantry is a very popular branch and not all who want to be commissioned in the infantry will get it. I do remember them also saying that aviation (helicopters I guess) is the most popular branch choice.</p>
<p>(Warrant officers are a different rank, not job.)</p>
<p>Many army personnel are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Whether in support, infantry, armor, aviation, or a host of other possitions, there is almost always a chance of being deployed there. I do not have any numbers though.</p>
<p>At SLS I believe they guaranteed we’d go overseas.
Don’t go to West Point (or the Army) without expecting to end up somewhere hot. You’re certainly going into combat if you branch infantary, but there aren’t really any “safe” branches you can choose (maybe aviation?). IEDs blow up finance guys just as well as infintary.</p>
<p>Helicopters get gunned down all the time-aviation isn’t safe.</p>
<p>you’re right!</p>
<p>Your deployment overseas rests entirely on what unit you go to. The rotation of Brigades going overseas is always changing, but there are no longer any units that dont deploy over there. For instance, a few years ago, the 2nd ID and 25th ID were responsible for the security in the pacific region, as they were stationed in Korea and Hawaii; since then, both of those units have sent Brigades to Iraq/Afghanistan.
There is no way to say how many will get deployed; some people go to units and for whatever reason, they never go, others go 3 times in 4 years. However, it has nothing to do with what branch you are. I dont know if this has been hit on here before, but a few years back the Army began its Unit of Action (UA) concept, where instead of deploying entire Divisions, the Brigade (BCT) became the base formation of Army units. Now, a BCT can deploy anywhere as an organic unit with all the units (infantry, armor/cav, signal, mp, etc) that it needs already attached.</p>
<p>Hope this helped or let me know if it needs more clarifying.</p>