The Army met the recruiting goals for ’06:
One year after the Army failed to meet its annual recruiting goal by the widest margin in two decades, the Pentagon is to announce this week that the ground forces, and the rest of the military, all reached their targets for recruits in 2006.
Joining Up Weakness remained in filling the reserves, however. The Marine and Air Force Reserves topped 100 percent of their goals, although the Army National Guard hit 99 percent of its target.
For active-duty forces, the Army signed up 80,635 people in the 2006 fiscal year, which ended at midnight on Sept. 30, topping its goal of 80,000. The Navy recruited 36,679, after setting a goal of 36,656. The Marines enlisted 32,337, with a goal of 32,301, and the Air Force recruited 30,889, topping its goal of 30,750.
“The big question out there is, ‘How did you guys do better in ’06 if you fell short in ’05?’ ” the top Pentagon personnel officer, David S. C. Chu, said. “And yet we have a very demanding set of deployments going on overseas. And, if anything, the nation is more debating this issue of war against terrorism and our deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan than was true in 2005.”
A verry good question, and the answer is simple- you change the rules:
Some efforts to reach recruiting goals brought criticism, especially Army decisions to raise recruits’ maximum allowable age and to accept a larger percentage of applicants scoring at the lowest acceptable range on a standardized aptitude examination.
Fantabulous!