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Army misses recruiting goal
Thu Mar 3, 6:30 AM ET

By Dave Moniz, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON - In what could be a troubling sign for the military, the active-duty Army missed its February recruiting goal by more than 27%. It was the first time in almost five years that the Army has failed to meet a monthly target.

The Army signed up 5,114 recruits in February, 1,936 fewer than its goal of 7,050. The last time the Army missed a monthly target was in May 2000.

The February shortfall is especially worrisome because it comes as the Army is trying to lure recruits with the largest enlistment bonuses it has ever offered: up to $20,000 to some recruits willing to sign on for four years. The Pentagon has also been adding thousands of recruiters for the Army and other branches.

Doug Smith, a spokesman for U.S. Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox in Kentucky, attributed the shortfall in part to competition from the improving economy and parents' fears that their children could be injured or killed in Iraq. As of Wednesday, nearly 1,500 U.S. servicemembers had died in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003.

Smith also said the Army has used up many of its "delayed entry" recruits - people who agree to sign up, but whose enlistment is delayed until later for their convenience or the Army's. Last year, the Army rushed several thousand recruits in the delayed entry program into basic training to meet its 2004 recruiting target. Normally, those recruits would have been available this year to boost recruiting numbers.

"It's just going to be a rough year," Smith said.

The Marine Corps missed its monthly target in January for the first time in nearly 10 years, but it met its February goal.

David Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland who monitors personnel trends, said the Army's February numbers reflect the extraordinary demands on the nation's ground forces and the uneasiness many Americans feel about the war in Iraq.

"We all knew this was coming if you looked at what is happening in the Army Guard and Army Reserve," Segal said, pointing to recruiting problems in those two part-time military forces. "The question was not whether it would happen to the Army, but when."

The active-duty Army needs to recruit 80,000 new soldiers this year - 3,000 more than last year - to replenish its ranks. Segal said he does not think the Army will achieve that goal.

Guard and reserve recruiting has lagged. Through January, four months into a recruiting year that runs from October 2004 through September 2005, the Army Guard was almost 24% behind its recruiting target. Figures were unavailable for February. The Army Reserve was about 10% below its recruiting target through February.

The Army National Guard and the Army Reserve are part-time forces made up of soldiers who train typically one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer in peacetime. That has changed dramatically, however. Guard and reserve troops now make up about 40% of the full-time U.S. troops in Iraq.

February's results are the first sign that recruiting problems plaguing the Guard and reserve are spreading to the active force.

Loren Thompson, a military analyst with the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va., said several Army generals told him last year that recruiting was likely to "fall off a cliff" in 2005. "I think this spells a major recruiting shortfall for the Army," he said.

The amount of army recruitment advertising on British TV has reached a point now where it's become disturbing. It feels like we're fighting a proper, legally declared war.

The British army has been quietly disbanding old regiments and experienced solidiers are exchanging camo gear for civvies and filtering back into society. That means that the recruitment drive is aimed at securing a steady stream of young people to fill the ranks.

There are several different varieties of TV Ad, all aimed at enticing slightly different types of people into the forces. Study these adverts closely; look at the imagery and the language the actors they use and what they're offering new recruits. It's ground floor propaganda. The army isn't really like this and I think the penny is finally beginning to drop.