An Individual augmentee is a United States military member attached to a unit (battalion or company) as a temporary duty assignment (TAD/TDY). Individual Augmentees can be used to fill shortages or can be used when an individual with specialized knowledge or skill sets is required. As a result, Individual Augmentees can include members from an entirely different branch of service. The system was used extensively in the Iraq War, though with some criticism. By early 2007, there were an average of approximately 12,000 Navy personnel filling Army jobs in the United States, Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba and the Horn of Africa at any one time.
Historical use
All branches of the military have existing regulations concerning assignment of personnel outside of their normal organization or branch of service. Examples include members of the Navy who are temporarily assigned to NASA for astronaut duty. Upon completion of their duties, these members are returned to their home units.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, and especially after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Individual Augmentee assignments increased dramatically. Initially, most of these assignments included Navy or Air Force personnel assigned to Army units to fill specialized roles that the Army had either trouble filling or had limited expertise in. Some of these personnel were already combat trained by virtue of their existing skills, while others went into combat zones in Afghanistan and Iraq with little or no combat training. As a result, a formal program soon developed that ensured a minimum level of training for all members deploying to combat zones.
Current assignment and training model
The current Individual Augmentee system approved by the United States Department of Defense works on a combination of ordered and volunteer assignments mirroring manning requirements. The Army produces a document consisting of job requirements with the required skill sets as well as starting and ending dates. The job descriptions are converted to Navy equivalents and the personnel activities of these branches task local commanders with assigning the required personnel. Volunteers are used first, and local commands issue orders for the remaining jobs based on local instructions. For the Navy, excess shore billets are tapped first.
As of June 5, 2008, United States Fleet Forces Command has responsibility of the Individual Augmentee training program. In January 2006 the McCrady Training Center at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, became the central training facility for Navy personnel assigned as Individual Augmentees. The center, operated by Task Force Marshall, is also a South Carolina Army National Guard facility, and the Individual Augmentee training program is modeled closely after the refresher training conducted for drilling reservists. Prior to using this centralized facility personnel were trained in several other locations including Fort Lewis, Washington, Camp Shelby, Mississippi, Fort Bliss, Texas, and Fort Benning, Georgia. The McCrady facility is capable of processing up to 600 students at once with an annual budget of $16.7 million.
Curriculum at McCrady includes basic combat skills. The three-week course is not designed to build Army infantrymen since even for Army personnel a significant amount of training occurs not in Basic Combat Training but in the experience of years on the job. Instead, the program is designed to teach individuals assigned to Army units the basic skills required to stay alive should the worst scenario occur. In keeping with this, topics covered in the training include basic marksmanship (Navy personnel must qualify on the same course of fire as Army personnel), combat first aid, land navigation, urban operations and an introduction to Army culture. Perhaps most important is training in convoy and counter-IED operations since these subjects are crucial to survival in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It's important to note that the vast majority of Navy Individual Augmentees are assigned to combat support or combat service support roles, and only a small percentage of Individual Augmentees have seen combat. While some risk exposure in a war zone is inevitable, most joint commands in Iraq and Afghanistan have specific controls in place to limit the exposure of personnel who are not trained for such high risk operations.