NYT : Army Misses Its June Goal for New Recruits

Army Misses Its June Goal for New Recruits

By DAVID S. CLOUD | Published: July 10, 2007

WASHINGTON, July 9 — The Army missed its recruiting goals in June for the second straight month, as rising casualties in Iraq and a strong economy at home kept the service from enlisting enough new soldiers, Pentagon officials said.

The Army fell more than 1,000 active duty recruits short of its June goal of 8,400, said a Pentagon official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the figures had not yet been formally released.

Lt. Col. Dan Baggio, an Army spokesman, declined to confirm the numbers, which are due to be made public on Tuesday, but he acknowledged that there had been a shortfall.

“We’re not in a doomsday situation,” Colonel Baggio said. “When we don’t make the goal, that is something of a concern, but we are not panicking.”

He said that the National Guard and the Reserves met their recruiting goals for June and that the numbers of soldiers signing up for additional years of service was strong. He declined to elaborate.

In May, the Army fell 400 enlistees short of its goal of 5,500, the first time in two years that the active force failed to meet its monthly target. The downturn has coincided with sharply higher casualty numbers in Iraq, where 331 American soldiers were killed from April to June, the highest three-month level of the war.

The downturn is particularly worrisome to Pentagon officials, especially because it has come in the summer, when recruiters normally find more fresh high school graduates eager to join.

“One of the greatest challenges of an all-volunteer force is recruiting in a protracted war, and I think you are seeing that,” a Pentagon official said.

Colonel Baggio pointed out that the Army was still on track to meet its yearly target of 80,000 new recruits because recruiting exceeded goals for several months earlier this year.

In contrast to the Army, the Marine Corps will report that it met its recruiting goals in June, said an official who declined to provide further specifics.

The recruiting demands on the Army have increased this year, as the service has embarked on a five-year effort to increase its active-duty strength to 547,000, from the currently authorized level of 514,000. The plan was announced by the Pentagon in January as a way to ease the strain on the Army in coming years of conducting continual deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Colonel Baggio said that — aside from those conflicts — recruiting had been hurt by the fact that 7 in 10 potential recruits in their late teens and early 20s do not meet Army standards, largely because they are too heavy or failed to graduate from high school.

Recruiting may also have been harmed by the fact that soldiers are now required to serve 15-month tours in Iraq or Afghanistan, an increase from the previous requirement of 12 months. The longer tours were imposed to sustain a Bush administration decision earlier this year to send an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq.

Early in the war in Iraq, the Pentagon’s goal was for active-duty troops to spend two years at home for every year deployed. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the Army eventually wanted to return to those goals. That will have to await either a reduction in overall force levels, however, or an increase in the size of the military, which has been set in motion but will take years to accomplish.