Summary
What does it take to attract qualified people to the U.S. military? The Pentagon's release of final fiscal year 2005 recruiting and retention data confirms that this billion-dollar question needs to be revisited again. The recruiting catastrophe many feared after poor spring results never came to pass, but the numbers in the Army, the Army Reserves and National Guard are all bad omens. The Army's 6,627-recruit shortfall was its biggest in 26 years. No wonder Iran is taunting the United States over its apparently reduced capabilities in the Persian Gulf region.
The news isn't all bad: As expected, the Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force each exceeded their annual recruiting goals. Those services traditionally fill the ranks more easily than the Army and its reserve components, and that hasn't changed. Equally encouraging, it appears that the Pentagon's efforts to keep our existing soldiers, even in the most manpower-troubled places, are working. All the services except the Navy exceeded their annual retention goals. There were losses in the reserve components, but these were within the Pentagon's "acceptable limits." This suggests that even if the war in Iraq is driving away new recruits the way some critics of the Bush administration contend, at least it isn't driving away the people already fighting.See the full content of this document
Extract
Uncle Sam's Recruiting Problems
But existing soldiers aren't the problem; new ones are. The Army and its reserve compon...
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