Army in Worst Recruiting Slump in Decades

With many of our elected officials believing the Army must get larger; it just finished its worst year of recruiting in over 25 years. Coming into this year the growing unpopularity of joining and then having to go right to war plagued the Army. However, they couldn’t predict the four consecutive months of not meeting their goals. Also, the summer increase that happens every year was enough to meet monthly goals but instead of having almost a quarter of the needed recruits for next year, the Army has only five per cent. These people come from the Delayed Entry Program where you sign up to go in the future to boot camp.

The rising death toll in Iraq and other arenas may force shorter enlistment periods to be part of a new program to get more people to sign up.

The Army is closing the books on one of the leanest recruiting years since it became an all-volunteer service three decades ago, missing its enlistment target by the largest margin since 1979 and raising questions about its plans for growth.

Many in Congress believe the Army needs to get bigger — perhaps by 50,000 soldiers over its current 1 million — in order to meet its many overseas commitments, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army already is on a path to add 30,000 soldiers, but even that will be hard to achieve if recruiters cannot persuade more to join the service.

Officials insist the slump is not a crisis.

Michael O’Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution think tank, said the recruiting shortfall this year does not matter greatly — for now.

“The bad news is that any shortfall shows how hard it would be to increase the Army’s size by 50,000 or more as many of us think appropriate,” O’Hanlon said. “We appear to have waited too long to try.”

The Army has not published official figures yet, but it apparently finished the 12-month counting period that ends Friday with about 73,000 recruits. Its goal was 80,000. A gap of…

Posted by Ted
Former submarine sailor, now a peace warrior. I am 28 years old and currently seeking a Physics and Mechanical Engineering B.S. I am currently enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I serve as the Secretary for IVAW-Madison and am the WI...

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