Military Recruiting Woes Worse Than First Realized

[Nbadan]

A congressional report released Thursday that analyzes military recruiting and re-enlistment shows that the military has been failing to adequately fill many of its most vital combat job occupations for years, even as it is deep in enlistees for other positions, the New York Times is set to report in Friday editions, RAW STORY has learned. Excerpts.

The study, completed by the General Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, shows that 41 percent of the military's 1,484 job specialties have been consistently understaffed over the past five years, while 19 percent maintained staffing levels beyond what the Pentagon had authorized.

The report suggests that for the active-duty Army, the Reserves, and the National Guard, the recruiting shortfalls of the past year have been even more severe than the aggregate numbers imply.

The policy of overfilling positions while others languished, the report said, raised concerns about whether the Pentagon had given Congress an accurate picture of its ability to maintain the force it needs for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rawstory (http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Militarys_recruiting_woes_worse_than_previously_11 17.html)

Rep. Murtha made this point today ... "The Armed Services are broken". I think his disgust at the mistreatment of the military by this administration is a major reason he spoke out so forcefully yesterday. You don't bankrupt the forces you rely on to keep you safe; you treat them well and use them wisely.

[boutons]

Army to Halt Call-Ups of Inactive Soldiers

Thousands on Reserve List Seek Delay or Exemption on Return to Active Duty

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, November 18, 2005

The Army has suspended plans to expand an unwieldy, 16-month-old program to call up inactive soldiers for military duty, after thousands have requested delays or exemptions or failed to show up.

Despite intense pressure to fill manpower gaps, Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey said the Army has no plans for any further call-up of the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) beyond the current level of about 6,500 soldiers. The IRR is a pool of about 115,000 trained soldiers who have left active-duty or reserve units for civilian life, but remain subject to call-up for a set period.

The Army also announced, in a memo released this week, that it will no longer involuntarily mobilize from the IRR an estimated 15,000 Army officers who have already completed their eight years of required military duty, stating that under a new policy it will offer them a chance to resign instead.

Poor records management has hampered the Army's efforts to draw on the pool, intended to fill holes in existing Army units, Harvey told defense reporters last week.

Since June 2004, the Army has begun mobilizing 6,535 people from the IRR. Of those, about 3,300 have reported for duty, and 1,450 have been granted exemptions on medical and other grounds, according to Army figures from October. The Army is trying to locate more than 400 who were supposed to report by October but have not.

Stretched thin by the war in Iraq, the Army began calling up IRR soldiers last year for the first time since the 1991 Persian Gulf War to meet its growing manpower needs. The Army taps the IRR for replacement troops and to bring undermanned units to full strength.

Officials said a year ago that they anticipated a similar dip into the IRR in 2005, but the Army is struggling to complete the first group.

"It's profoundly irritating to me. It's not good management," Harvey said. The Army said it has lacked resources to modernize its IRR record-keeping. Harvey said an initiative is underway to allow the Army to better track IRR members and how much time they have left to serve.

IRR call-ups -- in the form of Western Union Mailgrams -- have arrived as a welcome call to duty for some former soldiers and as a shock to others, many of whom have been out of uniform for years.

More than 3,000 of all those facing mobilization have asked for delays or exemptions, which have been granted so far primarily on the grounds of illness or the need to care for family members, but also because of financial hardship. Others have contested the call-ups on legal grounds.

One of the most contentious issues involves thousands of Army officers who have completed their eight years of military duty but have been kept in the reserve pool indefinitely because they have not formally resigned their commissions -- a requirement some officers say they knew nothing of.

Paul Davison, a 1995 West Point graduate, served six years as an infantry officer and two more in the IRR, ending in 2003. Now a freelance television producer, he thought there was some mistake three weeks ago when he opened the mailbox at his apartment on New York's Upper East Side and pulled out orders summoning him to report for training and deployment to Iraq.

The next day, Davison, 32, dialed a phone number printed on the Mailgram to correct the error, giving a clerk his Social Security number.

"You're still in," he recalled the clerk telling him.

"No, I'm out," Davison replied.

"You're in."

"It was the most shocking, stressful, horrible thing," Davison said.

Davison and several of his West Point classmates were among about 800 people issued mobilization orders in the Army's latest batch of IRR call-ups between August and November, said Sgt. 1st Class Keith O'Donnell, spokesman for the Army's Human Resources Command in St. Louis.

Together with his classmates, Davison badgered mobilization officials and scoured the Internet looking for a way out of the predicament. One officer discovered a new clause in a July 16, 2005, Pentagon directive that in effect forbids the Army from keeping officers in the IRR against their will once their time is up.

"Dude! I think we've got the smoking gun!" the classmate said excitedly in a phone call to Davison earlier this month.

Initially, Army officials argued that the new policy did not apply to their cases. So Davison and his classmates hired a lawyer, who last week advised the Army of his intent to seek a restraining order. Meanwhile, the Army issued an interim memo to implement the new policy.

"Effective immediately the Army will cease mobilization of officers beyond their MSO [military service obligation] unless they positively elect to remain in the IRR," states the memo, which the Army provided to The Washington Post.

On Nov. 10, Davison got a call from an official at the Army's Human Resources Command offering him a chance to resign. "My ordeal is over," said Davison, who was scheduled to report for duty at Fort Jackson, S.C., on Nov. 13.

But for others, the shift came too late. The Army will allow officers who fall under the policy to resign if they are still in the United States. But if they have already left for Iraq or other assignments, they will have to stay for the entire deployment. "If they have already been deployed, they'll be required to fulfill the terms of their mobilization orders," said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, an Army personnel spokesman.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

[boutons]

The New York Times
November 18, 2005

Vital Military Jobs Go Unfilled, Study Says
By DAMIEN CAVE

The military is falling far behind in its effort to recruit and re-enlist soldiers for some of the most vital combat positions in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new government report.

The report, completed by the Government Accountability Office, shows that the Army, National Guard and Marines signed up as few as a third of the Special Forces soldiers, intelligence specialists and translators that they had aimed for over the last year.

Both the Army and the Marines, for instance, fell short of their goals for hiring roadside bomb defusers by about 20 percent in each of the last two years. The Army Reserve, meanwhile, failed to fill about a third of its more than 1,500 intelligence analysts jobs. And in the National Guard, there have been consistent shortages filling positions involving tanks, field artillery and intelligence.

The report found that, in all, the military, which is engaged in the most demanding wartime recruitment effort since the 1970's, had failed to fully staff 41 percent of its array of combat and noncombat specialties.

Officials with the accountability office, the independent investigative arm of Congress, found that some of the critical shortfalls had been masked by the overfilling of other positions in an effort to reach overall recruiting goals. As a result, the G.A.O. report questioned whether Congress had been given an accurate picture by the Pentagon of the military's ability to maintain the force it needs for Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The aggregate recruiting numbers are rather meaningless," said Derek B. Stewart, the G.A.O.'s director of military personnel. "For Congress and this nation to truly understand what's happening with the all-volunteer force and its ability to recruit and retain highly qualified people, you have to drill down into occupational specialties. And when you do, it's very revealing."

David S. C. Chu, the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, denied that the military lacked what it needed to complete the mission in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said the report failed to appreciate how the Defense Department handled its recruiting efforts, and had "failed to take into account the dynamic nature of the problem we're trying to solve."

"This report tries to cast that pall on what's going on, but it's misread the fundamental mechanics of how the department actually manages personnel," Dr. Chu said. He said the targets the G.A.O. used to calculate shortfalls were annual guideposts for staffing levels, which could be adjusted according to circumstance. "The report assumes that all positions will always be filled," he said. "That's not in fact the strategy."

Some military experts also said the gaps would be dangerous only if they continued. Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, said the problems posed by the shortfalls would be eased if the military began to reduce its deployment in Iraq.

"We are taking a gamble here that the Iraq mission can be wound down before the cumulative problems become really serious," Mr. O'Hanlon said.

The specific number of jobs the military can fill is in fact authorized each year by Congress, which defines the military's personnel budget on the basis of what the Pentagon says it needs. James R. Hosek, a military personnel analyst at the RAND Corporation, said the military had become more willing to disregard specific titles and use soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen for a variety of tasks that might not be directly related to their job descriptions.

The report showed that Congress needs to monitor these shifts better and ensure that the military is effective and efficient, Mr. Hosek said.

The report found signs of wasted spending. In many cases the military offered enlistment bonuses to people who signed up for jobs that were already overfilled. An Army recruiter in New York, who insisted on anonymity because he had not been authorized to speak to the news media, said it was not uncommon for noncombat positions to be opened up at the end of a tough recruiting month even the Army did not need more people to do the job.

As a result, the report found that shortfalls in many occupations were more severe than overall recruiting totals. The active-duty Army missed its target of 80,000 soldiers by 8 percent last year, but fell short of its goal for human intelligence experts by 35 percent.

The Marine Corps, which reached its recruitment goal last year after missing a few monthly quotas, struggled to fill several positions. It hired only about three out of every four linguists for the Middle East and Asia that it said it needed for last year.

Even the Navy and Air Force, which met their annual targets for overall recruitment last year, could not find enough qualified people for several combat and intelligence positions, according to the report.

The war, several military experts said, has scared many young people away from dangerous work.

"Prospective recruits, when they think about rewards and sacrifices of military service, realize that some positions are simply a lot more dangerous than others," said Mr. Hosek, the personnel expert at RAND.

There are nonetheless some bright spots for the military in the G.A.O. analysis. Dr. Chu said there had been growth in the Special Forces ranks, thanks in part to a new bonus of $150,000 for those who qualify. He said bonuses were also part of the reason some jobs were overfilled.

But some military experts doubt that these small triumphs will be enough to keep the ranks - and the right jobs - filled at a time of war.

"I'm not convinced that we can cap the problem," Mr. O'Hanlon said. "I think there's a strong possibility the situation could worsen."

* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[Oh, Gee!!]

I hope they start drafting all of the so-called patriots vehemently supporting dubya.

[boutons]

conscription only in red-states would be fine by me.

red-state voters should see on their hands the blood of their own kids.

red-state voters elected dubya/dickhead, red-state voters should suffer the consequences of an exclusively red-state/Repug war.

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

red-state voters should see on their hands the blood of their own kids.

red-state voters elected dubya/dickhead, red-state voters should suffer the consequences of an exclusively red-state/Repug war.

They already are you dumbfuck, the majority of the US Armed Forces population comes from the midwest, AKA the 'red state.'

Dickhead? You're a fucking cunt.

[Oh, Gee!!]

They already are you dumbfuck, the majority of the US Armed Forces population comes from the midwest, AKA the 'red state.'

Dickhead? You're a fucking cunt.


you'll be the first to go, assbag.

[JoeChalupa]

Well..deferments worked for Cheney...no big deal.

[boutons]

AHF, why haven't you and all your dubya-sucking friends signed up and over there already?

Why aren't the red-state parents running big recruiting campaigns, with funds like Swift Boat levels, to send their kids over there? Maybe because they know now they were lied to and the Repug Iraq war is doing nothing for US security.

YOUR Dubya Needs You Now! Go Ahead. Make your ST buddies proud you died for nothing.

You only support wars with your mouth, but not your body, only wars where others die.

[CommanderMcBragg]

Any man should be willing to give his son or daughter's life for democracy.

[Oh, Gee!!]

Any man should be willing to give his son or daughter's life for democracy.


nay, required.

[RandomGuy]

nay, required.

ah don't need no gov'mint byoro-crat tellin' me wat to do with my kid.

[Guru of Nothing]

No Virginia, there are no urban white boys in the military.

[RandomGuy]

A government report found that the military had failed to adequately staff 41 percent of its array of combat and noncombat ranks.
By Damien Cave
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Friday, November 18, 2005

The U.S. military, engaged in the most demanding wartime recruitment effort since the 1970s, is falling far behind in its effort to recruit and re-enlist soldiers for some of the most vital combat positions in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new government report.

The report, completed by the Government Accountability Office, shows that the Army, National Guard and Marines signed up as little as a third of the Special Forces soldiers, intelligence specialists and translators that they had aimed for in the past year.


Both the Army and the Marines, for instance, fell short of their goals for hiring roadside bomb defusers by about 20 percent in each of the past two years. The Army Reserve, meanwhile, failed to fill about a third of its more than 1,500 intelligence analyst jobs. In the National Guard, there have been consistent shortfalls in filling positions involving tanks, field artillery and intelligence.

The report found that, in all, the military had failed to adequately staff 41 percent of its combat and noncombat ranks.

Officials with the GAO, the independent investigative arm of Congress, found that some of the critical shortfalls had been masked by the overfilling of other positions to reach overall recruiting goals. As a result, the GAO report questioned whether the Pentagon gave Congress an accurate picture of the military's ability to maintain the force it needs for Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The aggregate recruiting numbers are rather meaningless," said Derek Stewart, the GAO's director of military personnel. "For Congress and this nation to truly understand what's happening with the all-volunteer force and its ability to recruit and retain highly qualified people, you have to drill down into occupational specialties. And when you do, it's very revealing."

David Chu, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, denied that the military lacks what it needs to complete the mission in Iraq and Afghanistan. "That's what I'm trying to advise against as a conclusion," he said.

He said the report failed to appreciate how the Pentagon handles its recruiting efforts, and had "failed to take into account the dynamic nature of the problem we're trying to solve."

"This report tries to cast that pall on what's going on, but it's misread the fundamental mechanics of how the department actually manages personnel," Chu said. He said that the targets the GAO used to calculate shortfalls are simply guideposts for staffing levels, established at the beginning of a fiscal year.

"As a strategic matter, you may decide, 'Well, I don't really need to have every unit at 100 percent,' " Chu said. "Or 'I don't really need to fill a particular career field at this point in history at 100 percent.' The report assumes that all positions will always be filled. That's not, in fact, the strategy."

There are nevertheless some bright spots for the military in the GAO analysis. Chu said that there has been significant growth in the total number of Special Forces ranks, thanks in part to a new bonus of $150,000 for those who qualify.

But GAO investigators are not convinced that these small triumphs will be enough to keep the ranks, and the right jobs, filled at a time of war.

Some military experts also said that the gaps would be dangerous if they continue. Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institute, said the problems posed by the shortfalls would be eased if the military begins to reduce the number of men and women it has deployed in Iraq.

"But in the degree we have shortfalls of various sorts now, and we multiply that by several years, then we get into serious trouble," O'Hanlon said.

The specific number of jobs the military can fill is authorized each year by Congress, which defines the military's personnel budget on the basis of what the Pentagon says it needs. James Hosek, a military personnel analyst at Rand Corp., said that the military has become more willing to disregard specific titles and use soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen for a variety of tasks that may not be directly related to their job description.

But he added that the report also shows that Congress still does not have a grasp on how the military actually staffs its ranks.

The report also found that in many cases the military offered enlistment bonuses to people who signed up for jobs that were already overfilled.

For many jobs, the report found that shortfalls were more severe than those of overall recruiting totals. The active-duty Army missed its target of 80,000 soldiers by 8 percent last year, but fell short of its goal for human intelligence experts by 35 percent.

The Marine Corps, which reached its recruitment goal this past year after missing a few monthly quotas, also struggled to fill several positions. It enlisted only about three of every four linguists for the Middle East and Asia that it said it needed for the year.

Even the Navy and Air Force, which met their annual targets for overall recruitment last year, could not find enough qualified people for several combat and intelligence positions, according to the report.

[gtownspur]

you'll be the first to go, assbag.


Aren't you eligible to go too?

Oh!, thats right. It's hard to enforce "Don't ask/Don't tell" with your flamboyance. :lol Maybe the Navy will take you in. That way you can tell all your Gay bar queens of how you've been around the world and around the Navy ship.

[boutons]

aka, "go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want" (or need).

"new bonus of $150,000 for those who qualify."

Now dare to suggest that these $150K bonus SFers are motivated to be martyrs for democracy and freedom, even worse, take a bullet for the Repub party.

[Dos]

yes rawstory and NYT are truly fair and balanced news sources... lol

[exstatic]

Aren't you eligible to go too?

Oh!, thats right. It's hard to enforce "Don't ask/Don't tell" with your flamboyance. :lol Maybe the Navy will take you in. That way you can tell all your Gay bar queens of how you've been around the world and around the Navy ship.

You probably shouldn't talk for someone who hasn't served, although with Chickenhawk Cheney as your hero, that probably makes sense to you.

[Dos]

You probably shouldn't talk for someone who hasn't served, although with Chickenhawk Cheney as your hero, that probably makes sense to you.

so only people that have been in war or in the army can talk about the war... ok..

lets here what some generals in the field now are saying...

Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) relaying a message from a Marine Colonel to the Dems:

"He asked me to send Congress a message — stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message — that cowards cut and run, Marines never do," Schmidt said.

[exstatic]

so only people that have been in war or in the army can talk about the war... ok..

Talk? Fine. Criticize others for not serving? Hypocrisy.

Who is the Colonel, by the way? You keep bringing him up. Does he have a name? or is he just a figment of this woman's imagination, concocted for a soundbite....

[Vashner]

This is insluting to the volunteers. Bush is letting his generals play war. Remember if you have more troops you need a LOT more supplies and logistics support. It's a democraptic trick to jack up the cost. This war plan was developed by General Tommy Franks not Bush.

And it's working so far. It just got fresh UN mandate for continued troops presence.

Just a few days after Veterans day here we have NBA dan crawling out of a rock like a fucking snake..

I ask you... what has he done for his country? He won't answer my question...
Because you know.. he has not done anything but cut down just about every aspect of USA other than spewing constant media anti-war anti-Bush propaganda.

Spurs fans.. I give you this... we as a community have a lot of service men and woment. And long history of sacrifice going back from the Alamo to earth quake and tsunami relief flights to Iraq school rebuilding and immunizing children overseas.

Our military and our local Spurs community does not deserve bullshit like this..

Please don't insult volunteers... show me where we are loosing ground battles?
No fucking where... we are loosing mostly to suicide bombers.. We didn't give up with Japan tried it we are not going to give in now.

Gentlemen on the left.. it is the U.S. and Allied Soldier that gives you the right to post
negative propaganda like this.

[gtownspur]

Talk? Fine. Criticize others for not serving? Hypocrisy.

Who is the Colonel, by the way? You keep bringing him up. Does he have a name? or is he just a figment of this woman's imagination, concocted for a soundbite....


If you weren't busy pleasuring yourself with the 30lb oak dildo your buddy got you from RenFair, you would of known that i was just ribbing oH gee!!!

Funny how i was just roasting Oh gee!! about his flamboyant nature and not being able to serve in the millitary, and you jumped in defense of OH Gee!! in effect defending his status as a civilian(it was a joke btw.). You somehow didnt go after me for joking that he's a fruit cake. Maybe you know something we don't know, but Thank you for helping half my argument.

Somebody needs to pluck the feather from your ass. You're about as sharp as a plastic butterknife around an airport terminal snack bar. I guess as long as I serve my country, I'm granted the intellectual right to voice my support for the war. As if i even had it, you'd still wouldn't respect me or anyone with that title to voice support. (Look how much it helped Flash Gordon). You're full of shit. By your logic a poster could of served in the airforce as boot polisher and cook while never seeing combat. He then could come in here and spout baloney of how we should invade all the Latin american commie states and turn them over to South Carolina, and you'd moonbats in your alternate universe would applaud my bravery. :lol

Seeing how one not serving his country should ever support a war, rigtheous or not. From now on, anybody whose never been a cop shouldn't support tough crime laws.

Anyone who never served as a politician, shouldn't vote or voice their political oppinion since they've never served office.

Anyone whose never been a doctor shouldn't support free healthcare.

If you've never served as a social worker for Child protective services, you shouldn't support laws against pedophillia, negligence, and physical abuse.

:pctoss

[boutons]

"NYT are truly fair and balanced news sources."

These are not opinion pieces. If you have ANY FACTS to counter the facts of this articles and justify your blanket bias against NYT or WP, please post.

[exstatic]

Nice tangent you're off on, there, gtown. Never said that people who haven't served shouldn't support the war.

People who haven't served shouldn't criticize others for not doing so.

You've done so repeatedly, both in the abstract, and against specific posters. Don't make me go get quotes and make you look more stupid than you do, yourself. You've admitted that you won't serve, but probably would if drafted. Way to support your country, Sparky. Talk is cheap.

[RandomGuy]

The real problem with this war dragging on for too much longer is that it will end up destroying our capability to fight.

Sure, we have had only 2000 troops killed, and that is small compared to other conflicts, but add to those killed, the number of troops that have to be mustered out because of injuries or such, and you are talking closer to around 10,000.

Figure between the Army and Marines you are talking about 200,000 troops.

10,000/200,000= 5%

So we have taken about 5% personnel losses IN ADDITION TO the rather strong disincentives to join those two branches.

Our men and women over there need us to speak on their behalf, they can't do it openly and are too busy to do so. We should not fail them, we owe it to them.

I do feel we have incurred some moral obligation to the Iraqi people to help them, but I think Murtha had it dead on when he said that our troops are little more than a "catalyst for violence".

We need to redouble our efforts to build up security forces so that we can get SOME exit strategy. "Hold the course" is not a plan, it is a catchphrase.

I want something beyond an empty catchphrase, I want some results. Is it really that unreasonable to ask for this of my elected officials?

When Mccain asked the Joint Chiefs at their senate testimony "Last year we had 3 combat ready brigades of Iraqi troops, how many do we have this year?" and the answer was ONE, that should be cause for concern.