The San Francisco Chronicle March 21, 2004
Uncertain era for military recruitment, retention
By Michael Taylor
It is one year since the Army and the Marine Corps started their march toward Baghdad, and even though so-called hostilities ended several weeks later, the size of the U.S. force in Iraq is more than 100,000 and shows no sign of decreasing.
And this has created a problem: how to keep up the strength of that force for peacekeeping and maintain the strength of the rest of the armed services deployed all over a fractious and uncertain world.
The Bush administration is taking steps to keep highly trained troops on duty, even to the extent of extending their tours. And a bill in Congress would increase the size of the Army by about 6 percent.
"The Army is stretched thin and is really struggling," said Adam Bozzi, a spokesman for Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., who with Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., recently introduced legislation to authorize the recruitment of 30,000 more Army troops. "The Army's not in a position to respond to another major conflict. If something happened in North Korea, how quickly can we respond?"
The United States has a total standing force of 1.3 million active-duty servicemen and women and 1.26 million reservists and National Guard. The Army, the nation's largest armed service, has about 500,000 soldiers. Some 330,000 of those are stationed overseas, with the largest chunk, 125,000, in Iraq.
Right now, most of those troops in Iraq are being brought back to the United States by whole units -- a division here, a brigade there -- unlike during the Vietnam era, when troops were sent to the war individually and joined existing units. The units in Iraq that are coming back are being replaced by ones that have been training in the United States.
"There are many reasons why the Army is rotating units (as opposed to rotating individual soldiers)," said Army spokesman Andrew Stamer. "One is that it provides unit cohesion. It also provides trained and ready forces for the combatant commander to maintain the current level of momentum on the global war on terrorism."
Many experts say the chief problem in keeping the armed forces strong is that the United States is bogged down by peacekeeping and nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan, and these activities consume an enormous and, it turns out, unforeseen amount of manpower.
"The U.S. has enough troops for the combat side," said Marcus Corbin, a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information in Washington. "It's the occupation that's the problem. So much of this problem of force levels is driven by Iraq. "
Corbin said that as long as the government keeps a huge force in Iraq, "the need to increase the force size, particularly the Army, is much more of an issue."
"The Army's suffering quite a bit," said Patrick Garrett, an analyst at globalsecurity.org, a nonprofit think tank in Alexandria, Va. "They have a significant presence in Iraq, as well as Bosnia, Kosovo and other places around the world."
But the Army maintains that in spite of that, people are still joining.
"So far for this year," Stamer said, "all indications say that we are on track ... for a 100 percent goal across all components, active, guard and reserve. The recruitment and retention challenge is one that the Army will have to face, and we do not currently know what the magnitude of it will be. The Army doesn't know what the future might hold."
There are, however, some people who do know what their futures will hold. At the Army's Oakland recruiting office, their names are on a large white board on the wall to the right of Staff Sgt. Jemahl Martinson's desk. Seven of the 24 people whose names are up there have already joined -- soon they'll be sworn into "Today's Army!" -- and another 17 are in the works.
"If they walk in here, it's an easy sell," Martinson said. "But unfortunately a lot of those who walk in here are not qualified." So Martinson finds himself doing a lot of outreach, cold-calling people on the phone and manning booths at public events, and he finds it does pay off.
"People are joining up," he said. "There's the economy; there have been layoffs."
Many listen to Martinson's practiced pitch. Some, enticed by the promises of $50,000 in education bonuses, join up. Others hem and haw. Still others decide they're fine just where they are. And, unlike the situation during the Vietnam War, those who stay where they are don't have to worry about being drafted.
"I think we're a long way from needing a draft," said Thomas McNaugher, a senior analyst at Rand. McNaugher, like other military experts, said the swift strike across the Iraqi desert one year ago would have been difficult to do with an Army of draftees.
"You've got forces that are very skilled and are equipped with very sophisticated weapons," McNaugher said. "A draft Army could not have done what the 3rd Infantry Division did last spring (in Iraq). You really need a professional Army, and you train them and they stay."
Reinstituting the draft sounds great in theory, says former Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb. "But the problem you face is that it is not practical right now. Would you allow exemptions (from the draft)? What about gays? And the military services don't want the draft. They don't want to get people who don't want to be there."
And with no draft, the Army is forced to make do with the limited number of people it has. That proposed increase of 30,000 will not go far in filling military units.
The Army is holding onto some troops through "stop loss" and "stop move" programs. In "stop loss," soldiers may not retire when eligible, and those who are not due for retirement must stay in the service beyond the end of their hitches. "Stop move" prevents soldiers from being transferred to a new duty post when their regular tours of duty -- in Iraq, for example -- are up.
But the Army is also thinking seriously about retraining soldiers who are in units that may have become outdated as the nature of warfare evolves.
"The Army is looking at how its force is structured," said spokesman Lt. Col. Joe Yoswa, "identifying which (specialties) need to be increased and which need to be brought down. For example, the Army may identify that it needs fewer tankers and more MPs (military police officers)."
There's also talk of retraining some of those tank and artillery people in civil affairs. Both MP and civil affairs units are in high demand in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The biggest problem the Army faces "is an ability to ensure peacekeeping operations post-conflict," said Garrett. "You can't necessarily deploy a heavy armored division to support that. Massive land campaigns are not the focus of the Army anymore."
© Copyright 2004, The Chronicle Publishing Co.
