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This is an intersting post from StrategyPage on military recruting challenges.
As the U.S. Army struggles to recruit enough people to maintain its strength, the U.S. Navy has the opposite problem; how to get rid of 50,000 excess sailors. The navy has to lose more people than the army is short. What’s going on here? It’s simple. The army is at war, and the navy isn’t. You get shot at, you don’t like it. Most folks can figure that one out for themselves. But it gets rather more strange. The army recruiting problems are with their non-combat troops. It’s much easier to recruit troops whose primary job is fighting.Posted by Ted at June 23, 2005 9:22 PM[. . .]
The army generals are not in a panic over this situation. They have a solution that works, but will cause a big stink in Congress. No, it’s not the draft. The last thing the generals want are reluctant conscripts. The way you get more volunteers is to offer more money. There is no shortage of volunteers, usually men with military experience, to take civilian security jobs in Iraq. These volunteers get paid at least three times what the troops get, and that makes a big difference. The army is already moving in that direction, one small step at a time. Special pay for those serving in combat zones has been increased several times already, and will probably go up again. This sort of approach is not new. During World War II, a lot of men who volunteered for parachute units said a major reason for taking on that dangerous job was the extra pay (about $500 a month, in current dollars). It turned out that being a paratrooper was safer as well, as the parachute divisions had lower casualties than the regular infantry divisions. This demonstrates another reason why people are reluctant to sign up for non-combat jobs. They know they will be less well trained for combat situations, and will be out there waiting to get hit, while the combat troops go looking for fights. This makes a difference when it comes to stress. To be in control of a situation is a lot less stressful.
So the army plans to solve their recruiting problem with more training, more money, and turning a lot of non-combat troops into stress-proof fighters. This is not the kind of “transformation†the army was expecting before September 11, 2001. But wars always bring unexpected change, and there it is.