Stars and Stripes: Army misses fiscal 2005 recruiting goals

The Department of Defense this week announced the Army missed its fiscal 2005 recruiting goal by more than 6,600 soldiers, bringing in 73,373 new troops over the last year.

The Army National Guard, Army Reserve, Navy Reserve and Air National Guard also all missed their recruiting goals, each pulling in less than 90 percent of their targets.

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...the active-duty Army shortfall — they recruited about 4,000 fewer soldiers than in fiscal 2004 — is especially troubling because the service has already widened its recruit pool to accept older candidates and those with lower test scores, according to Mike Reilly, vice president of operations at the Center for Security Policy.

“You can’t compare these numbers to the ones from last year, because you have to understand what they did to get these new numbers,” he said. “They’ve really gone down more than just what the difference is.”

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...John Grady, spokesman for the Association of the United States Army, said units could start to see problems as older soldiers move up in rank or retire from the service.

“Someone has to do those jobs, and you can’t have senior soldiers in entry-level posts,” he said. “So it does have an impact.”



http://stripes.com/article.asp?article=32220

... the hidden recruitment tactics within the No Child Left Behind Act.

Parents! OPT OUT !!

which makes me wonder by how much we are REALLY missing recruitment goals.

Do you suppose they do a little 'Rob Peter to pay Paul' by borrowing numbers from 'Delayed Entry Program' from the next calendar year?

Man, oh man, Bush* has so busted the military that it will take decades to repair, and I will bust the next idiot in the chops that even remotely suggests it's Clinton's fault.

...all those phantom troops won't be much help fighting Bush**'s war.

Where they move people up to make goal. A DEP is not counted as an accession, though--they have to have one magic day on ACDUTRA (active duty for training, i.e. boot camp) to go on the end strength roster.

But see, the new FY started for the government just this month, so this is a dump of all the bad news from the last fiscal year. All will be quiet until the first quarterly numbers give us more bad news.

As I alluded above, the military has something called end strength requirements, which are also restrictions. You have a floor number and a ceiling number, as well as restrictions as to how many people you can have in each paygrade (it is why promotions are slower some times, faster at others, depending on how many people stay in or get out).

Let's put it plainly, they are no where near their ceiling, and far closer to the floor. If things continue along these lines, we could be seeing more stop losses (you cannot leave, even if your time is up) ahead.

You must have to "opt out" by kindergarten in this day and age......:grr:

I seem to remember they keep cutting their goals to make it look closer than it actually is.

really go to the war that they have thrown.

Poll: 76% of potential recruits don’t object to gays in military

A majority of potential military recruits would not object to serving alongside openly gay servicemembers, according to a recent survey by the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military.

The group, a research unit of the University of California, Santa Barbara, reported that 76 percent of survey respondents said lifting the Defense Department’s ban on homosexuals serving openly in the military would have “no effect” on their decision to enlist. Two percent said it would increase their likelihood to enlist, and another 21 percent said it would discourage them from enlisting.

Those surveyed, 282 people total, were all between 18 and 24 years old, mostly male, 53 percent Republican and 30 percent independent — demographics targeted to mirror people most likely to join the military, said Aaron Belkin, director of the center.

http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=32219

He has a special ability to fight big wars with just a few people. Putting him in the infantry would be worth a couple thousand regular types, easy.

Also, I think there are several high level types at the WH who might be facing some jail time. Maybe we should offer them a deal: tour in Iraq (with unlimited 'stop loss' extensions) in exchange for postponing legal action. Maybe could get a couple of indicted congressmen and lobbyists this way too.

Let's see, what else . . . There's a bunch of talk show hosts real gung ho about the Iraq occupation, I'm sure they would all love a chance to do some grunt work.

unless we put them in special Chicken shit units what did the regular troops you will put at risk did to you?

Otherwise good plan... Hey Private Chenney get that machine gun to the Wire! Don't give me that shit you have chest pains Private!

regular units have it plenty bad already

without putting a chickenshit gasbag psycho on their squad.

The unit will need a really sharp, brave, competent, focused realistic seasoned sargeant. Maybe shrub will lead them on patrols through Fallujah. After they all get cut to pieces the first night out, shrub will say "I don't think anyone ever imagined we would be shot at . . ."

lowered standards? and added a whole pisspot of incentives ?

support the war, why would we have any trouble at all? 53% of enlistees are Republican? Really? Where did that statistic come from? Seems like they spend their time talking about how great the war is, but that they have better things to do (Young college republican groups, Congress critters, and what not).

during a losing war with no goals and no limit to cobat duty or terms of service is automatically to dumb to fight effectively.

Recruits get dumber, lose effectiveness, take more causualties, causing bad press and longer tours, leading to dumber recruits.

In three years the Army will consist of Peurto Ricans, Fillipinos and Russians led by a few American born officers that have statistically improbable survival rates.

It's the Jar-Jar binks military strategy.

Are we losing more than we are recruiting or or we gaining ? We never hear those numbers. They keep saying re-enlistment is way up so it sounds like they are getting them men they need.

So what does Rummy do?

Close crown-jewel 1AD/1ID bases in Germany so that the troops can be sent unaccompanied to Eastern Europe--places like Romania, riding high on bird flu and sex slave trades.

On edit: Stripes had to correct its headline a couple of days later because it had nothing to do with the article it was headlining. The Stripes writer later reported that reenlistment was down to the lowest level since Bush entered the WH.