Defense Dept. Failure

February 2005 MILITARY PERSONNEL DOD Needs to
Conduct a Data-Driven Analysis of Active Military
Personnel Levels Required to Implement the
Defense Strategy GAO-05-200

The Report reads like a nightmare to Someone who can visualize the consequences. The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) has the listed policy goal of not increasing active personnel levels. Well and Good, except the Army wants to increase the number of it's Combat brigades by ten, or possibly 15--We are talking 30,000 or 50,000 men. The Marine Corps was 9,000 personnel short in 2004. The Air Force was planning to reduce it's personnel--basically in security personnel--but lacked the Funding for advanced equipment. The Navy plans on reducing it's Force, but has not organized an implementation plan as yet.

The OSD states they will convert much Support Service over to Civilian employees, and so free military personnel for Warfighting capacity. The hitch here is the OSD will not allocate any funds for conversion--hiring and training--so the program is about 60% behind schedule. It should be remembered that Civilian conversion employees cannot be deployed Overseas into War Zones because of Combat specialty definition. It should also be mentioned that military personnel assigned to Combat Support specialties are universally older, likely to retire rather than transfer, and make poor Candidates for Combat positions.

The OSD demands the Service shift personnel from less-needed Specialties to more-needed Specialties, so Clerk/Typists become Military Police and Artillerymen become Patrolers. The Author can't wait until Patriot Missle operators become Mess Sargents. The real element here remains that National Guard and Reserve troops have been turned into active Regulars. The real beauty comes in the statement:

it
may take years before OSD is in a position to determine whether these
long-term initiatives will yield the expected increases of active duty
military personnel for warfighting duties.

Some Services are meeting their Recruitment goals--Army and Air Force are not. No Service has articulated a viable Recruitment policy change to make up for Shortfalls. Stop-Gap measures to retain Service personnel past their enlistments will continue as National Guard and Reservists stay on active duty, while Congress will not increase Manpower lists appropriately. This Author hopes the OSD will call for, and Congress will enact, a military personnel expansion; before sheer Casualties force Operational change. lgl