I am reluctant to give away too much, and I am not involved in the detailed planning of the MEL anyway, however your concerns are recognized by the planners. As participation is, of course, voluntary exercises must be interesting and valuable from the troops' point of view or they are not completely successful. That does have its challenges in this summer's scenario.
There are some real-world issues too, like the stand-up of CSOR, a couple of hundred guys gone to one or more TFs, ARC overlapping this year so courses don't have to be compressed, many new guys not being properly qualified to participate etcetera. TF manning and ARC will have a detrimental effect on the availability of critical junior leaders.
The final planning conference (where all planners come together to sort out the big picture stuff) was a couple of months ago so some of my info may well be dated, but nobody then could pin down how many pers would be available to participate even.
There has been a considerable risk taken on all of these exercises - SG and now VG - to provide interesting and valuable training. Not physical risk, as safety is of course hugely important, but in challenging troops and leaders beyond what has previously been expected of reservists and milcons, in fully funding peripheral aspects (like the PAff programme) that added a lot of flavour besides providing useful info to troops and generating media interest, and convincing very senior leadership that it could be done. Three percent of the Army's ammo budget for 2003 was spent on SG that year. I think that I got one box of blanks for my one mag for my first milcon in 1973. Many of us bought our own badly-worn combat clothing (one set) in Novack's in London that year as we were issued black coveralls for the summer course (and ankle boots, WWII heavy ponchos, and two grey blankets to sleep in). Fortunately, we didn't know any better. You guys are spoiled...
New ground has been broken with each SG, and this year's VG is no exception.
I'm not going to shoot my typing fingers off too much more at this point as I'm on the sidelines for a bit until everybody is ready to discuss helicopter support in detail.
It's certainly been fascinating and rewarding (and frustrating at times) to see this process (which occasionally has ressembled sausage-making in its lack of elegance) from the inside and participate in it.
Anyway, y'all are going to have to be patient and wait to see how this all unfolds. There are still tons of details to be worked out over the next few months.
I'll be trapped in Excon HQ, so I'll be relying on reviews here to gauge how successful we were. At least on SG 03 I got out to most of the PZs during the airmobiles and had a chance to chat with some of the troops.