According to comments made by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Pentagon is planning for the military deployments to West Africa to fight Ebola to last around 18 months.
“We think we’re making some progress in Liberia,” Dempsey insisted, “Sierra Leone is not trending favorably, and nor is Guinea.” He went on to say it would take “every bit of 18 months,” though he downplayed the risk of it taking four years.
That four years is even in the discussion suggests the 18 month estimate is probably on the low end, however, as the Pentagon’s predictions for how long a conflict will last inevitably are far too optimistic.
Dempsey also named the five US bases which will house troops for quarantine purposes when they return from the Ebola rotation. This includes Fort Hood, Fort Bliss, Fort Bragg, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, and Joint Base Langley-Eustis.
Eighteen months seems about right to me. Ebola has the good point that you either die or recover in a couple of weeks. As Forbes so nicely put it, the only ebola vaccine we have now is ebola. Precisely how much immunity the infection gives no one seems to know, but it's generally agreed that there is some. It's claimed that some survivors are shunned, so they are obviously open to the offer of a job in the hospitals. After all, scrubbing off the vomit and excrement, washing the bedding and burying the corpses doesn't require specialised skills. Once most of the health workers are immune and the hospitals cease to spread the disease, the rate of infection should drop below one per patient, and the epidemic die out. Until the next time, of course. This would be aided if vaccines and drugs could be introduced in time to cure the victims and immunise the health workers and contacts. You could argue that the US wants bases in Africa, and will take advantage of the epidemic to obtain them, but this seems most implausible to me. After all, the only base of Africa Command on the African continent is Djibouti, to deal with Somali pirates. I would also argue that the worst possible base area is a fever ridden jungle. While disease doesn't generally kill more soldiers than fighting these days, although it has done throughout most of history, the last thing you would want is a base area where you are continually having to protect your troops against disease. Imagine the problems if the US wished to deploy troops from Liberia, and another ebola epidemic had broken out. You'll note that the US was careful to avoid using the civil war as an excuse to keep troops in Liberia, although it would have had no trouble gaining support from some of the locals.