Image Credit: NYT
For the first time since January, the Army met its recruiting goal this month, but it still faces what some senior Army officials say is a nearly insurmountable hurdle to meet the service’s annual quota.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a public forum at the Pentagon on Wednesday that the Army exceeded its June goal, but he gave no details. Senior Army officials said in interviews earlier in the day that the Army exceeded the quota of 5,650 recruits by about 500 people. The Army Reserve also made its first monthly goal since last December, the officials said.
That still leaves the active-duty Army about 7,800 recruits behind schedule to send 80,000 enlistees to boot camp with only three months to go in the recruiting year that ends on Sept. 30. The Army has not missed its annual enlistment quota since 1999, when a strong economy made recruiters’ lives miserable.
Army officials publicly insist that they can still reach their annual goal, especially with hundreds of new recruiters on the street for the peak summer recruiting month, armed with big enlistment bonuses and greater leeway to recruit more high-school dropouts and lower-achieving applicants.
But privately, senior Army officials voiced skepticism on Wednesday that the Army could make up the deficit.
“If you ask people point-blank, we just don’t have enough time left to make it,” said an Army official who has been briefed on the June figures, but who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the Pentagon does not plan to release them publicly until early July.
They barely made their recruiting goals, and this is after adjusting the goals downward to reflect ‘changing market conditions.’
Two predictions:
1.) There is time to make up the deficit, and they will barely find a way to do it this summer. Maybe. That doesn’t make future recruiting scenarios any rosier, just that I know how resourceful these Army types are in a pinch.
2.) Hugh Hewitt is going to go absolutely ape-shit when he sees an anonymous Army source being quote in the NY Times saying they won’t be able to do it. Because everyone knows, you can’t trust anonymous sources. Plus- they are harder to punish when they stray from Hugh’s worldview. This article needed some balance- why, Hugh has five or six generals who will go on record saying the Army will meet its recruiting goal.
Also, if you are interested, the Washington Post has a long piece on how the Bush administration bringing in the academics to explain how to keep morale up on the homefront. Not a bad idea, at all.