While the statistics from last year's recruitment are encouraging (the Army achieved 100% of it's goal, while the Marines achieved 101%), they may be somewhat misleading. First off, how did the goals compare to the previous year's goals? Did we anticipate difficulties in achieving previous standards, and lower our expectations?
Further than that, however, is evidence that our recruiting efforts may indeed be not enough. Take a look at this information about the ARNG:
"The Army National Guard missed its recruiting goal by 12 percent in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 – the first time it's fallen short of recruits since 1994 – and officials say a major reason was the Army's stop-loss orders. As of mid-October, 7,845 active-duty soldiers were under stop-loss orders.
The Texas National Guard was an exception to the national trend, exceeding its recruiting quota by several hundred volunteers." [Dallas Morning News, As Army Holds Troops, Guard Loses Out, by Richard Whittle 20OCT04] (Just threw that last bit in there for all y'all Texans.)
Additionally, there is some interesting information out there about the start of the current fiscal year. From the Wall Street Journal, Army's Recruiters Miss Target For Enlistees In Latest Month, by Christopher Cooper and Greg Jaffe.
"For the second straight year, U.S. Army recruiters fell short of their goal for signing up enlistees in the first month of a new recruiting cycle.
For the first 30-day period in its new recruiting year, the Army was 30% shy of its goal of signing up 7,274 recruits. The Army had a particularly hard time recruiting for the Army Reserve, on which the Pentagon has relied heavily in Iraq and Afghanistan. Enlistments for the reserves were 45% below the target.
In the same period last year, the Army came up 25% short in its goal in the first month for enlisting 6,220 regular recruits and 40% short of its reserve enlistment goal.
The monthly targets are used as guideposts by the Army toward its ultimate recruiting goals. They refer to the number of people it hopes to sign up who promise to report for duty within a 12-month period. But it measures its ultimate success in any given year by the number of people who actually report for duty. A rush of recruits reporting for duty late in the year thus can compensate for weak sign-up numbers early in a year.
But the Army does faces some challenges this year. One is its increased goal of boosting the number of soldiers who report for duty by 3.8%, to about 80,000, which is in keeping with congressional mandates to build the force. In the next few years, the Pentagon wants to increase the size of the active-duty Army force temporarily by about 30,000 to roughly 510,000."
...
"While new enlistees count toward the monthly recruiting goals, they aren't typically included in the final tally of new soldiers until they report for duty. Because of that difference, the Army often starts the new fiscal year with large numbers of recruits who can be expected to report for duty in the coming year, thus helping fulfill the yearly goal. Monthly targets depend in part on how large that "bank" of pending soldiers is; generally, the more soldiers due to report for duty, the lower the monthly goals for signing up new ones.
But this year, the Army entered fiscal 2005 with an unusually low number of recruits in the bank, about 16,000, or 21% of its overall goal for the year. By contrast, a year ago, it began fiscal 2004 with 33,000 prospective soldiers -- meaning 45% of its recruiting goal already had been met. That also means its monthly goals in fiscal 2005 are higher than they were a year ago.
The reason for the gap: To make its numbers in fiscal 2004, the Army pushed many new enlistees into reporting for duty within a month. While that helped it make its 2004 goal, it depleted the bank for this year."
...
"As it has in the past, the Army has responded to shortfalls by offering larger cash incentives. It recently bumped up the amount it will pay toward enlistees' college tuition by 50% to $75,000 and increased cash bonuses. Many recruits can get bonuses of $15,000 or more if they offer certain skills in demand and agree to report for duty in one month or less. The Army also said recently it plans to add 1,000 recruiters nationwide."
The Guard is dealing with this in a similar fashion:
"To cope with the plunge in the number of active-duty soldiers leaving the Army and joining Guard forces, the Army National Guard will add 1,000 to 1,400 recruiters to its current cadre of 2,700, Gen. Schultz said." [Whittle]
Will the measures that we are taking be enough? While I firmly support both my chain of command (and I mean all the way to the top), I sincerely hope that the operational tempo that we are currently sustaining may somehow be curtailed. I know that I have not shared in all the hardships that my fighting brethern have endured, but I surely sympathize with what they are going through. We need to maintain a proper level to our fighting force, and stoploss seems necessary to do so. But for how long?