Spotted this little article: After years of drawdowns, Army needs 80,000 new soldiers to meet 2018 growth targets
To summarize:
- In December 2016, the Army was on a draw-down from 565,000 to 450,000 than back to 476,000.
- For 2017 they had to find 68,500 more recruits.
- For 2018 they have to find 80,000 more recruits.
- This is “….owing most to congressional budget decisions that first prompted it to shed soldiers as quickly as possible, then to suddenly pivot back into growth mode.
Now…..this is not that unusual. Instead of slowly shrinking the force and systematically increasing the force….we “Yo-yo” the force (we = the American people and the elected representatives that they vote into office). This does nothing to help the quality of the recruits, unit cohesion, morale, etc. Nothing new here, we seem to go through the same cycle every decade or so. Without getting into the “guns or butter” debate, it would probably help if defense budgets incrementally decreased and increased vice suddenly decreasing and increasing.
Source (and larger, readable version): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Defense_spending.png
A few other interesting stats in the article:
- Only three in 10 Americans of enlistment age meet the military’s basic qualifications to serve.
- They recruit 11-12% more enlistees than they need as that is the number of soldiers who won’t make it through basic training and advanced individual training.
