| DDN | Army Reserve battles an exodusDAILY
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Army Reserve battles an
exodus
Branch misses its retention goal
by 6.7 percent
By Robert Schlesinger
The Boston Globe
WASHINGTON | The U.S. Army Reserve fell short of its
re-enlistment goals this fiscal year, underscoring Pentagon fears
that the protracted conflict in Iraq could cause a crippling exodus
from the armed services.
The Army Reserve has missed its retention goal by 6.7 percent,
the second shortfall since fiscal 1997. It was largely the result of
a larger than expected exodus of career reservists, a loss of
valuable skills because such staff members are responsible for
training junior officers and operating complex weapons systems.
��The Army has invested an enormous amount of money in training
these people, and they�re very hard to replace,�� said John Pike of
globalsecurity.org, an independent research group in Washington,
D.C.
With extended deployments and increasingly deadly attacks by
Iraqi guerrillas, Defense Department officials are scrambling to
combat a broader downturn in retention and recruitment that they
fear is on the horizon.
The U.S. Army, the primary service deployed in Iraq, is offering
re-enlistment bonuses of $5,000 for soldiers serving there. The Army
National Guard is extending an official thank-you to members by
arranging services to honor returning soldiers. The Massachusetts
National Guard is offering rewards ranging from plaques to NASCAR
tickets to members who lure recruits. And throughout the branches,
recruitment advertising is up and programs are being launched to
make the military seem more family-friendly.
The Army also is resorting to a policy called ��stop loss�� that
allows the Pentagon to indefinitely keep soldiers from leaving the
service once their time has expired. The policy, used during war, is
designed to prevent staffing shortfalls in key sectors.
As the military ponders unpalatable measures � further Reserve or
Guard call-ups, back-to-back tours of duty � to fill the global
obligations, any personnel shortfalls could prove disastrous.
��It�s a slippery slope in the sense that there�s kind of a
snowball effect,�� said Andrew F. Krepinevich, executive director of
the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington,
D.C., think tank that focuses on defense issues. ��It�s very
difficult to work your way out of, very difficult to put Humpty
Dumpty back together again once you break the force.��
While Pentagon officials have insisted that recruiting and
retention figures are mostly at or above expected levels, thanks in
part to a soft economy that offers little competition, signs of
trouble are emerging. Recruiting for the Massachusetts National
Guard, a backup to the professional Army and Air Force, was down 30
percent this year. Nationwide, the Army National Guard has fallen 13
percent short of its recruiting goal, although that deficit was
offset by fewer than expected troops leaving the service.
Sgt. Maj. James Vales, senior Army counselor in charge of
overseeing active-duty retention policy, said his shop of 740 career
counselors has been answering concerns from members of Congress and
Army leaders about trying to prevent a talent drain.
��We have some things in the works to kind of offset any problems
that we may see in retention,�� Vales said, citing options ranging
from family-friendly policies like support groups and child care to
his most important tool: cash. ��Most of (the effort) is increasing
our retention bonus dollars. . . . The biggest thing
soldiers respond to is monetary incentives.��
It was the second time in the past seven years that the Reserve
has fallen below its intended reenlistment figure, according to
Steve Stromvall, an Army Reserve spokesman. In the 12 months that
concluded at the end of September 2001, the Reserves was 1 percent
short of its number.
That the shortfall was entirely among career soldiers is
important because they are considered the Army�s backbone.
��They�re critically important,�� said Cindy Williams, a
specialist on military personnel issues with MIT�s Security Studies
Program. ��That�s where the leadership is going to come from in the
next decade.��
They are people like Staff Sergeant Scott Durst, a 15-year
veteran of the Army Reserve who extended his enlistment after a tour
in Bosnia but will not sign on for another tour after Iraq, though
it will means he loses the opportunity for retirement benefits.
��Not even a chance, no,�� said his wife Nancy Durst, a high
school art teacher. ��He didn�t sign up to be a Reserve to be doing
active-duty orders every year.��
She added that her husband, a member of the 94th Military Police
Company, has spent too much time away from their home in southern
Maine and their two teenage daughters.
��I fear there will be a negative impact on retention of these
Guard and Reserve personnel,�� said Senator Susan Collins, a
Republican of Maine who sits on the personnel subcommittee of the
Senate Armed Services Committee. ��There�s an old saying in the Army
that they enlist the soldier but reenlist the family, and the new
one-year �boots on the ground� policy for service in Iraq has really
upset a lot of the families with whom I�ve talked.��
According to internal Pentagon surveys conducted last spring and
summer, the overall percentage of troops intending to reenlist
remained steady from last year, at 58 percent. But among those
serving in Iraq, only 54 percent who were surveyed agreed, while 46
percent said they did not want to reenlist.
Michael O�Hanlon, a defense specialist at the Washington-based
Brookings Institution, called the figures ��at the threshold of
tolerable. In and of themselves they�re not catastrophic, but the
problem is they could get worse because as people increasingly
confirm the reality of returning to Iraq another time these numbers
can be expected to drop further. If you wait too long to address the
trends, then it�s too late.��
In 2003, the Army�s retention goal was 67 percent.
Like the recruiting shortfall in the Guard, the Reserve�s 2003
retention figure, which was off by slightly less than 100 soldiers,
was offset by stronger than expected recruiting.
The Army, which oversees the bulk of troops in Iraq, is not the
only branch of the armed services facing hardships in recruitment
and retention because of the Iraq war.
Air Force Major Joe Allegretti, chief of the Defense Department�s
Joint Recruiting Advertising Program, cited a poll of youths
conducted from April through June in which half said the war in Iraq
made them less likely to join the military, and only one-third said
it made them more likely to join.
Reserve and Guard leaders are working to improve relations with
stateside families by setting up support networks, including
��marriage enhancement seminars�� run through the Army Reserve�s
chaplaincy and designed to address such issues as long separations
during deployments.
Guard leaders also have sent teams into Iraq to work on the
problem. Several soldiers spread between Iraq and Kuwait try to act
as trouble-shooters for unhappy Guard members, checking back twice
weekly with Guard headquarters in the United States, said Colonel
Frank Grass, the Guard�s chief of operations.
And thanks to ��stop loss,�� members of the Guard and Reserve
cannot leave the military until 90 days after they have been
deactivated.
Robert Schlesinger can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[From the
Dayton Daily News: 11.24.2003]
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