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Army Recruiting Falls Short
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| smokeape |
| quote: | Posted 3/2/2005 9:40 PM Updated 3/3/2005 4:04 PM
Army misses recruiting goal
By Dave Moniz, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — In what could be a troubling sign for the military, the active-duty Army missed its February recruiting goal by more than 27%. It was the first time in almost five years that the Army has failed to meet a monthly target.
The Army signed up 5,114 recruits in February, 1,936 fewer than its goal of 7,050. The last time the Army missed a monthly target was in May 2000.
The February shortfall is especially worrisome because it comes as the Army is trying to lure recruits with the largest enlistment bonuses it has ever offered: up to $20,000 to some recruits willing to sign on for four years. The Pentagon has also been adding thousands of recruiters for the Army and other branches.
Doug Smith, a spokesman for U.S. Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox in Kentucky, attributed the shortfall in part to competition from the improving economy and parents' fears that their children could be injured or killed in Iraq. As of Wednesday, nearly 1,500 U.S. servicemembers had died in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003.
Smith also said the Army has used up many of its "delayed entry" recruits — people who agree to sign up, but whose enlistment is delayed until later for their convenience or the Army's. Last year, the Army rushed several thousand recruits in the delayed entry program into basic training to meet its 2004 recruiting target. Normally, those recruits would have been available this year to boost recruiting numbers.
"It's just going to be a rough year," Smith said.
The Marine Corps missed its monthly target in January for the first time in nearly 10 years, but it met its February goal.
David Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland who monitors personnel trends, said the Army's February numbers reflect the extraordinary demands on the nation's ground forces and the uneasiness many Americans feel about the war in Iraq.
"We all knew this was coming if you looked at what is happening in the Army Guard and Army Reserve," Segal said, pointing to recruiting problems in those two part-time military forces. "The question was not whether it would happen to the Army, but when."
The active-duty Army needs to recruit 80,000 new soldiers this year — 3,000 more than last year — to replenish its ranks. Segal said he does not think the Army will achieve that goal.
Guard and reserve recruiting has lagged. Through January, four months into a recruiting year that runs from October 2004 through September 2005, the Army Guard was almost 24% behind its recruiting target. Figures were unavailable for February. The Army Reserve was about 10% below its recruiting target through February.
The Army National Guard and the Army Reserve are part-time forces made up of soldiers who train typically one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer in peacetime. That has changed dramatically, however. Guard and reserve troops now make up about 40% of the full-time U.S. troops in Iraq.
February's results are the first sign that recruiting problems plaguing the Guard and reserve are spreading to the active force.
Loren Thompson, a military analyst with the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va., said several Army generals told him last year that recruiting was likely to "fall off a cliff" in 2005. "I think this spells a major recruiting shortfall for the Army," he said. |
Bad news for the Army in the War on Terror. First, they need to lift cap on Cat IV recruits (lowest qualifications) of 10% per year and at least double it to 20% to get Infantry. Beyond that, it's pure money short of a draft. Congress needs to throw a billion minimum at the effort to entice more kids into the Army, else they will face enormous problems in near future. ARNG is heading for a disaster if something doesn't happened soon, considering they were 9,000 short of end strength last FY. If they take a consecutive hit this year, ARNG units on rotation to gulf and other theaters will have to mobilize other soldiers or units to round them out for deployments. This will probably mean mobilizing soldiers under the 3 year cycle as planned now, and will cause even more angst and even lower retention in the ranks.
:eek:
[[[smoke]]] |
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| Arbiter |
Yeah it's a problem. Part of the problem is that a lot of folks won't consider joining because they disagree with the ideology of the white house. That's about 50% of your potential recruits right there (probably a bit less actually, since liberals are generally less inclined to military service anyway, but nonetheless significant.)
That, as well as the fact that people read and hear about how our troops are being required to do a lot of extra duty for not-great compensation, and well there's a lot of reasons not to sign up for most people right now.
It's only going to get worse from here I'm afriad. In order to keep meeting objectives the soldiers we can retain for now will have to work harder and longer, and that will only discourage more people from enlisting or staying on board.
The solution may be compensating our soldiers better to get more people to want to sign up, but like you say that'll cost a bundle and it's going to be tough to get people to swallow that price tag in the current political climate.
If progress in the war on terror continues the way it's been going, this could be a serious long-term problem. It's probably best to foot the bill now and not wait for it to get worse, but there's going to be a lot of people who don't want to put up the cash. This is definitely something to keep an eye on. |
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| Q5echo |
i just re-enlisted for $45grand this week (still waiting on my check :rolleyes: )
no problem recruiting me! |
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| ::TranceVanDyk:: |
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
i just re-enlisted for $45grand this week (still waiting on my check :rolleyes: )
no problem recruiting me! |
money is nothin to a dead man:confused: |
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| shaolin_Z |
good. i wonder when they're gonna start drafting. maybe then ppl will open their eyes.
A: "Why are we going to war?"
B: "Sadaam support terrorism and has ties to al-Quaida."
A: "Sadaam is secular and him and al-quaeda hate each other. He had nothing to do with 9-11."
B: "Umm, well, they have wepons of mass destruction!"
A: "You mean the ones your dad's administration sold to him? Well, those were chemical weapons whose shelf life has expired. The UN and the US found no weapons of mass destruction."
B: "Uh, well, Sadaams a tyrant and a mass murdered who needs to be taken out of power."
A: "He came into power with US support and the US continued to support him right after the gasing of the Kurds."
B: "Ummm.. hu.. well.. YEAH! I got it.. we're liberating the Iraqi ppl!"
A: "16171-18443 dead civilians. Oil reserves sold to American corperations. You have a strange concept of liberation."
cmon, wake the f*ck up ppl. |
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| shaolin_Z |
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
i just re-enlisted for $45grand this week (still waiting on my check :rolleyes: )
no problem recruiting me! |
some ppl are pretty easy to buy out. |
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| Q5echo |
| quote: | Originally posted by shaolin_Z
some ppl are pretty easy to buy out. |
yeah. especially when you've done the things i've done and seen the things i've seen.
to each his own. right?
the best of luck to whatever you do in life. |
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| JM |
| quote: | Originally posted by ::TranceVanDyk::
money is nothin to a dead man:confused: |
FU . dead man? why don't you go hide in a corner and cry..
what a shameful comment.
>JM< |
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| shaolin_Z |
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
yeah. especially when you've done the things i've done and seen the things i've seen.
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I'm not trying to be confrontational or anything but what exactly may that be? I hear things like that all the time. Unless you're a Palestinian living in the occupied territories, or a Jew in Nazi Germany, or a Japanese in the concentration camps, or an orphan starving in Somalia, or a black person under the apartheid, or a chinese suffering attrocities under japanese invasion during world war 2, or a native american, or a black slave, comments like that don't really mean much to me. Especially if you live in the US, the richest and most powerful country in the world. What exactly is your greivance, living in the most sheltered enviornment possible.
"What the do white people have to be blue about anyways.
Did banana republic run out of khakis?" - George Carlin |
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| Q5echo |
| quote: | Originally posted by shaolin_Z
I'm not trying to be confrontational or anything but what exactly may that be? I hear things like that all the time. Unless you're a Palestinian living in the occupied territories, or a Jew in Nazi Germany, or a Japanese in the concentration camps, or an orphan starving in Somalia, or a black person under the apartheid, or a chinese suffering attrocities under japanese invasion during world war 2, or a native american, or a black slave, comments like that don't really mean much to me. Especially if you live in the US, the richest and most powerful country in the world. What exactly is your greivance, living in the most sheltered enviornment possible.
"What the do white people have to be blue about anyways.
Did banana republic run out of khakis?" - George Carlin |
you want to call me a sell-out and then say you don't mean to be confrontational? up your's dude. it's a f**king job you moron. a job that i've hated at some times and have never felt more fulfilling at others. i've decided to make it MY career. besides, i've probably taken more dumps at 800 ft. under three different oceans than you've pulled your pud.
i love sayin that. |
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| shaolin_Z |
| calm down. i wouldnt exactly call that a difficult life. |
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