Military Reserves Are Falling Short in Finding Recruits

by Steven Lee Myers

New York Times

August 28, 2000

WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 -- The nation's military Reserves are increasingly struggling to fill their ranks with new recruits, even as the Pentagon relies on them more heavily than ever to

conduct operations around the world, according to military officials and Pentagon documents.

In each of the last three years, the Army, Naval and Air Force Reserves have each fallen short of their recruiting goals; last year, the Air Force Reserve missed its objective by nearly 40 percent, signing up only 7,518 of the 11,791 recruits it needed. Only the Marine Corps Reserve has steadily recruited enough new troops in recent years.

The recruiting problems have continued -- with the three Reserve forces unlikely to make their targets by the time the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30 -- even though the active-duty services have turned around their own dismal recruiting record after an infusion of recruiters, increased advertising and enlistment bonuses, according to Pentagon records.

For the first time since 1997, the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps are all expected to meet their recruiting goals this year, an achievement Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and other officials have attributed in part to sharper marketing strategies and a string of military pay increases.

But the difficulty in persuading young men and women to sign up as part-time soldiers, sailors and airmen has been a sobering counterpoint. It is also raising questions about the Pentagon's

strategy of turning to the 864,000 members of the Reserves and National Guard for humanitarian missions, peacekeeping operations and combat.

In fact, the increased demands on the Reserves, which have resulted in more missions overseas, is one of the reasons cited as an obstacle to filling units that not so long ago required reservists to set aside only a weekend a month and two weeks a year.

The military's readiness -- particularly efforts to recruit new soldiers and re-enlist the ones it has -- has become an issue in this year's presidential campaign, and the latest recruiting

numbers could provide fodder for both Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush.

While Mr. Gore can point to the recruiting turnaround for the active forces, Mr. Bush can emphasize the shortages on the Reserves' side.

"We have the same concerns about morale, recruiting and re-enlistment for the Reserves as we do for the regular forces," a spokesman for the Bush campaign, Ray Sullivan, said on Friday.

The Gore campaign did not respond to questions about Reserve recruiting.

Many of the recruiting challenges facing the Reserves are the same ones that have besieged the entire military in recent years. The economy is thriving, creating more, better-paying alternatives to military service. More and more high school graduates also are heading directly to college, while there has been a steady decline in young people expressing any interest in enlisting in the military.

The Reserves, however, are facing unique problems. Traditionally, the largest pool of Reserve recruits has been made up of people leaving full-time active duty, but as all the services have shrunk from their cold war levels, so has that pool.

There is also evidence that people leaving active duty are less willing to join the Guard or Reserves. In the last three years, the percentage of those leaving the Army who said they would

consider continuing to serve part time has declined to 21 percent from 41 percent, according to the Army Reserve.

Officials attribute that at least in part to the increased missions of the Guard and Reserves. Reservists, once described as "weekend warriors," are now serving beside their full-time

counterparts in operations from the Persian Gulf to the Balkans. The average Air Force reservist served 58 days last year, while air crews served 110.

"Kids getting off active duty right now are looking at what we're doing and they're saying, 'Whew! I'm not going to join the Reserves or the Guard. I mean you're going where I just came

from,' " Maj. Gen. David R. Smith, vice commander of the Air Force Reserve Command, said during an interview earlier this month in his headquarters at Robins Air Force Base in central Georgia.

General Smith and senior Pentagon officials said the problem had not yet become a crisis, but they acknowledged that the difficulty in signing up part-time soldiers, sailors and airmen has created spot shortages, especially in units, like medical companies, requiring special skills.

The National Guard has done better meeting its recruiting goals nationally this year and last, but individual states have fallen short, including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, South

Carolina and Tennessee, some of which are 5 percent to 10 percent below their authorized strength.

The decline in recruits with prior military service has also meant the Reserves have had to rely on enlistees with no experience, resulting in higher training costs and less seasoned units.

"It continues to be a challenge," Charles L. Cragin, the assistant secretary of defense for Reserve affairs, said in an interview on Friday. "Obviously, if it continues, you're going to have an impact on units."

Mr. Cragin and Reserve commanders said they had watched the trends in recruiting and retention closely, but in recent years much of the attention, and money, has gone to reversing the recruiting slide in the active forces.

The Air Force, for example, paid for television advertising for the first time last year -- increasing its overall advertising budget to $76 million from $22 million the year before -- but the campaign focused almost entirely on recruiting for active duty. The Air Force Reserve's advertising budget, by contrast, fell to $8.5 million this year from $8.9 million.

The Air Force also increased the number of recruiters by nearly 400 this year, to 1,450, and, in addition, it temporarily assigned 169 more. The Air Force Reserve has only 146 recruiters

in the field this year.

While active-duty recruiting campaigns appear to have had some success -- with the Air Force, for example, already reaching this year's goal of 34,000 recruits, after falling 1,700 short last

year -- the efforts have yet to trickle down to the Reserves.

After falling short by more than 4,000 recruits last year, the Air Force Reserve is projected to fall nearly 2,000 short of a smaller target of only 11,321 recruits this year. The Naval Reserve is projected to fall short of its target of 18,410 by as many as 4,000, a year after missing its target by 4,700 recruits.

Officials point to the slight improvements from a year ago as a hopeful sign. In fact, with a month to go in the fiscal year, the Army Reserve may still meet its target, officials said, and any

shortage may be offset by an increase in reserve re-enlistments.

The Reserves have attributed their recruiting problems to a variety of factors, but General Smith and other officials at Robins Air Force Base said the most significant was the dwindling

size of the active force.

When the Air Force, like all the services, was shrinking through the 1990's, there were thousands of airmen and officers leaving active duty who chose to stay in the Reserves, often to keep their pensions.

"With the number we were processing, people were walking in the door," said Lt. Col. Kevin L. Reinert, deputy chief of Reserve recruiting. "Now we have to beat the streets."

All of the Reserves have increased signing bonuses, especially for slots that require specialty skills. Doctors who join the Army Reserve can now receive as much as $40,000 to pay off

medical school bills.

The Air Force Reserve is also focusing much of its efforts on the dwindling pool of those leaving active duty. At Robins, every airman or officer who leaves has to meet with the base's "in service" recruiter, Tony E. Vinson, an amiable master sergeant who has the persistence of a door-to-door salesman.

"If there's a position for them out there, we'll find it for them," Sergeant Vinson said.

On his wall is a map showing every Air Force Reserve unit in the country, and he quizzes every prospect about where they plan to settle after leaving the force. He also offers them training

courses or, more significantly, positions that might not require them to deploy overseas as often as they did on active duty.

In fact, the rising number of missions, or "ops tempo," appears to be a significant reason why people with prior service are less willing to join the Reserves. Five of 19 questionnaires Sergeant Vinson had would-be reservists fill out cited ops tempo as their main reason for leaving.

Many officials agreed that the increasing likelihood that a part-time reservist would be mobilized has contributed to recruiting problems, but they disagreed on the extent.

"The folks who are coming in now kind of know that it's likely they will be called up," said Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Plewes, chief of the Army Reserve. "They know you won't be sitting around the Reserve centers like in the old days, like when I first came in the Reserves, trying to figure out something to do."

There is no question that the pace of deployments has forced more and more reservists to juggle their military service with their civilian jobs and families, what General Smith called "the Reserve triad." And that has clearly made some prospects, either those with previous service or those without it, think twice about joining or staying in the Reserves.

At the same time, however, some of the reservists called up most often -- including those in Army Reserve civil affairs units responsible for dealing with citizens abroad -- actually have a higher rate of re-enlistment than the rest of the force.

"When they get an opportunity to take part in a contingency operation, it is actually a morale booster," said Col. F.C. Williams, commander of the 419th Fighter Wing at Hill Air Force

Base in northern Utah, which just sent 165 people and a squadron of F-16s to Turkey to conduct operations over northern Iraq.

The wing has had its recruiting woes. Colonel Williams said he expected to miss his recruiting goal of 220 by as many as 65. Part of that shortage, however, will be offset by improvements in

re-enlistments, which he attributed to pay increases and the satisfaction derived from deployments.

Still, he said, there are limits. In the last four years, the wing has deployed reservists to Turkey for more than a month three times and to the Persian Gulf once. That has put a strain on reservists, their families and their civilian employers.

"I'm not sure," Colonel Williams said, "where the line is."