General Raymond T. Odierno of the United States Army has announced that the plan is to keep the Pacific force at the same size over the next decade. Odierno is the 38th Army chief of staff, and during a recent stop over in Hawaii stated, "The number of soldiers assigned to the Pacific will be generally the same. You won't see a significant decrease here, and the additional thing you'll see, as we reduce our commitments now that we're out of Iraq, and now that we're reducing our structure in Afghanistan, you'll see more of the (continental)-based force who will be available to conduct operations in support of any of the combatant commanders, but also to support what's going on here in the Pacific."
This is good news for the state of Hawaii, as the United States Army currently has about 23,000 soldiers in the islands. The Pacific force has another 28,500 soldiers in South Korea, 2,700 in Japan, and 13,000 troops in Alaska.
