U.S. Army ends hard recruiting year, woes persist

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Army, hard pressed to lure
new soldiers amid wariness about war in Iraq, ended on Friday
one of its toughest recruiting years since the birth of the
all-volunteer U.S. military in 1973, and officials said the
next year looked difficult too.

The Army did not release official figures for the 2005
fiscal year, which ended on Friday, but officials said they
fell about 7,000 recruits short of the annual goal of 80,000
new soldiers. Army officials previously acknowledged they would
miss the target.

That marked the first time the Army had missed its
recruiting goal since falling short in 1998 and 1999, but this
year’s shortfall was by a wider margin than in those years.

In fact, it was the biggest numerical shortfall since 1979,
when the Army fell just over 17,000 short of its goal of
159,200 recruits, according to data provided by the U.S. Army
Recruiting Command.

The roughly 73,000 recruits in fiscal 2005 also fell about
4,000 short of the number the Army attracted in fiscal 2004.

The situation was even worse in the Army’s reserve
component, with the National Guard, made up of part-time
soldiers under the command of state governors, and the Army
Reserve, made up of part-time federal troops, falling short of
their annual goals.

Julia Bobick, an Army Recruiting Command spokeswoman, said
the Army is entering fiscal 2006 with positive momentum, having
achieved its monthly recruiting goals in every month since June
after a very difficult spring.

OMINOUS SIGN

But in an ominous sign for fiscal 2006, which begins on
Saturday and ends September 30, 2006, the pool of recruits
accepted by the Army for delayed entry into the service is way
down from previous years.

In fiscal 2004, 45.9 percent of the Army’s annual goal was
met by recruits who were in the Army Delayed Entry Program,
giving recruiters a big head start for the year, according to
the Recruiting Command. In fiscal 2005, the figure fell to 18.4
percent. For 2006, the number is a scant 11 percent, meaning
the Army has a comparatively small head start.

“We’re expecting it to be a challenge to meet our
recruiting mission and to reach out to those folks who are
interested in serving,” Bobick said of fiscal 2006.

Army leaders attribute recruiting difficulties to wariness
among young Americans, as well as their parents and other
influential adults, about service during wartime. They also
said the economy now offers ample civilian job opportunities.

The Iraq war, in which more than 1,900 U.S. troops have
been killed in 2-1/2 years of combat, represents the first test
of the all-volunteer military in a protracted conflict. The
Army provides the bulk of ground troops in the war.

“We have soldiers who are coming back from combat tours who
are going out into communities and talking about their
experiences to try to share what it is like to be a soldier and
what it means to deploy, so people understand that first-hand
instead of maybe what they see on the news,” Bobick said.

The Army has also sweetened financial incentives for
enlistment and added recruiters.

And the Pentagon this summer asked Congress to raise the
maximum age for enlistment in the military to 42 in order to
increase the pool of potential recruits. The ceiling now is 35
for active-duty service and 39 for enlisting in the reserves or
National Guard with no prior military service.

Some defense analysts have argued that the United States
may have to consider resuming the draft, abolished in 1973
during the tumult of the Vietnam War era, if the military is
unable to attract sufficient numbers of recruits.