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The Shocking State of the US Military

The US military is still the most formidable fighting force in the history of the world,

Having unprecedented firepower, resources and financial means to equip itself with the latest high-tech gadgetry; however, it is not without problems as the Pentagon tries to reassess its future needs amid changing geopolitical demands and evolving threats.

With the end of the Cold War and the threat from the Soviet Union no longer something to worry about, the US military began to downsize.

But then came the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the US military found itself fighting three major conflicts; a full-scale war-turned-insurgency-turned-uprising-turned urban war in Iraq; a guerrilla war in Afghanistan and an asymmetrical war waged against a mostly invisible enemy in the so-called “war on terror.”

These three conflicts presented new challenges for the US military in view that it had already began to downsize after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of communism from Eastern Europe when Washington decided there no longer the need for such a large force.

In defence of the department of defence, no one could have anticipated or ever imagined that the United States would one day go to war — make that two wars — in the greater Middle East. Just as no one could have predicted the tragic events that led to the horrendous terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Among the major challenges the Pentagon will have to face in the coming years will be the growing problem the military faces in recruiting and retention; problems further accentuated not only by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also due to the fact that the Army now with fewer troops, overseas deployment assignments are longer and troops frequently end up serving two, three and even four combat tours in Iraq, making it very hard on the lives of soldiers and their families. Far fewer enlisted personnel end up staying in the military than in previous decades.“Those are fairly serious problems,” said Steve Kosiak, vice-president for budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.

“We are worse off in terms of quality than we were a few years ago,” said Kosiak. Because of the difficulty recruiting, the army has lowered the bar, making it easier to sign up.

Among those who do sign up only one in five end up staying a full 20 years. The reasons why fewer people are enlisting are threefold.

First: More young people are going to college today that ever before. “People who go to college are less likely to serve in the military,” said Koziak.

Second: Traditionally, young people who had a parent in the military are more likely to enlist and follow in their father’s (or mother’s) footsteps. With fewer veterans, there are fewer recruits. In recent years the ratio of veterans-recruits went down from 60 per cent in the 1980s to the current 18 per cent and it is predicted to go further down to a mere 8 per cent.

And third: the wars in the Middle East are causing potential recruits to reconsider the possibility of a career in the Army. Furthermore, the very structure of the conventional army is being transformed with rising demand for greater specialisation as weapon systems, and indeed, warfare in general becomes more high tech.

In the future there will be more demand for specialised skills and less for the regular GI Joe.

At the same time there will be transformations on the battlefield with combat missions becoming more and more zone specific, according to Kosiak. This means that smaller units are likely to be committed to the theatre of operations with specific targets and missions instead of throwing massive numbers into a battle as in past conflicts. This new tactic will require more reliable lower level officers, said Kosiak. “There will be a greater demand for smarter middle echelon officers — captains and majors — who are intelligent risk takers.

As a result of this over-stretching the Pentagon has decided to increase the size of the Army by adding 65,000 troops, while the Marines are increasing their size by 27,000.

Unlike the Army, the US Marine Corp has not had any recruitment problems. Marine General “Boomer” Milstead, who is in charge of Marine recruitment told me a couple of months ago that the Marines were not only meeting but also exceeding their recruiting quotas. And unlike the other services, they were not lowering the standards.

Gen. Milstead told me that when he informed a potential recruit that the Army would pay him $30,000 more, the recruit replied, “Yes sir, but they will not make me a Marine.”

The other services may not be as lucky. “There are reasons to be concerned,” said Kosiak.

These problems, he said, take a long time to fix.

Claude Salhani is editor of the Middle East Times and a political analyst in Washington, DC. He can be reached at claude@metimes.com