Does the All-Volunteer Force Have an Expiration Date?

[rangerrebew]

 
Does the All-Volunteer Force Have an Expiration Date?
By Conrad Crane
January 28, 2023


Thomas Gates, chairman of The President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Force in 1970, appears to have been an adept wordsmith.  Supporting President Nixon’s own predilections, Gates wrote in his final report to the President that the commission “unanimously believe that the nation’s interests would be better served by an all-volunteer force, supported by an effective stand-by draft, than by a mixed force of volunteers and conscripts.” What he did not say, was that there was not unanimity on the viability of the concept. Crawford Greenewalt, chairman of the Finance Committee of E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co., thought there was something immoral in “seducing” young people to die for their country with money, and was concerned about the impacts of turning honorable military service with all its risks into “just another job.” General Lauris Norstad, another commission member, shared Mr. Greenewalt’s concern that an all-volunteer armed force would not be representative of the total population and would only recruit from narrow segments. They were also distrustful of econometric projections and shared worries about rising costs with the Department of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff. Greenewalt actually suggested the wording Gates used to hide the differences among the commission members.  When Secretary of the Army Stanley Resor met with the commission, he kept referring to the proposed volunteers as “mercenaries.” Eventually  frustrated member Milton Friedman  responded with “Let’s make an agreement. If you promise to stop calling my volunteers ‘mercenaries,’ I will promise to stop calling your draftees ‘slaves.’” But as the concept moved forward, the different perceptions remained.  And while even draftees deserve to be adequately taken care of, the move to an all-volunteer force accelerated and magnified increases in pay and benefits.

With the current recruiting crisis, it appears that those concerns about the long-term viability of the AVF expressed more than fifty years ago were well founded, and have been joined with others. In FY2018 for example, military pay and benefits were the single largest expense category for the DoD budget, comprising more than one third. If total compensation funding, including for civilians and contractors, is tallied, that consumed half of the budget. That amount was matched by personnel expenditures outside the DoD budget, for the Department of Veterans Affairs and Treasury payments for retiree pensions and TRICARE for Life. Without counting Social Security payments to veterans and retirees, pay and benefits for DoD personnel and veterans accounted for about 15% of the total federal budget of 4.1 trillion dollars. That was an even larger percentage of discretionary spending.  But such costs are unevenly distributed among the services, not surprisingly the Army had the largest expenditures for military pay and benefits, bearing 42% of the total. People are expensive. Over 69 billion dollars of 178 in the Army’s FY23 budget request are for military personnel costs, and there are other associated expenditures in operations and construction categories.  (As a point of comparison, the whole DoD budget in 1971 was about 78 billion dollars.)  After an increased trajectory of compensation designed to close pay gaps with the private sector overshot the mark by 2010, DoD executed a number of reforms to reduce personnel costs, including accepting reduced raises and increasing TRICARE health care expenses.  In the Army, Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) activities were cut back and forced to pay their own way. Despite assurances from Army leadership, many groups have expressed concern about the impact of eliminating thousands of service medical billets.  Complaints by veterans groups managed to reduce planned DoD cuts in medical billets by 2027 from 17.000 to 13,000, but they still remain concerned about long term impacts.

 https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/01/28/does_the_all-volunteer_force_have_an_expiration_date_878344.html

[rangerrebew]

First, the military is having all kinds of problems recruiting.  Then something like this is leaked in the media.  Next, a draft of young people, of whom 72% (gen z) are not patriotic?  It doesn't look good for the home team.  :

[EdinVA]

Never thought it would work and the bad new is, it is irreparable.

[Timber Rattler]

I know Dr. Crane and he's a brilliant guy.  He's a history specialist on World War II bombing in general, and Curtis LeMay in particular.  Old School.

I like this article he's written, but he's still dancing around the main problems with the volunteer military, recruitment, and retention in 2023:

1) The post-Cold War infection of political correctness into the armed services during the Clinton Administration, beginning with Don't Ask/Don't Tell and then Pat Schroeder's assaults on the Navy following Tailhook.  It was at this point that the volunteer force started to become just another jobs program, at best, and a social engineering exercise at worst.  People began joining not to serve their country or defend it, but to get the benefits and perks, cashing in after 4 or 8 years. Flashback: https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19920729&slug=1504613

2) The bungled War on Terror and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan poisoned the well on several fronts.  First, Rumsfeld's seeming callousness and ruthlessness toward the troops in the field (i.e. "we go to war with the Army we have") sowed the seeds of disgruntlement that is still manifest today.  He also ransacked and starved the Navy of funding to feed the understrength Army.  And his "Blue to Green" in Iraq which set in motion a whole series of bad events that led to the accidents with the McCain and Fitzgerald.  Finally, he abused the National Guard and Reserve, while implementing "stop-loss," again to keep the Army fighting in Iraq.  I know a lot of soldiers who got screwed over during that time, and they are now out and telling their kids to avoid military service at all costs.  Flashback: https://www.stripes.com/news/operation-blue-to-green-army-looking-to-recruit-from-air-force-and-navy-1.21896 and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2804656/

3)  Continued incompetence at the Department of Veterans Affairs has led to all kinds of horror stories for the last three generation of veterans, as well as the reneging on bonuses and promised benefits for extended service, as well as incompetence within the military's personnel pay system.  Flashback: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/army-probes-troops-wrongly-targeted-bonus-scandal-92579457

4) Overpromising and overreliance of technology, at the expense of the troops.  How many times have we heard that new technology will lead to cost savings and the need for manpower as AI and automation take over war fighting in the 21st century.  We've certainly got the high tech and fewer troops now, but how has that worked out for the Armed Services in general, and the U.S. Navy in particular?  Remember the LCS?  And what about the totally screwed up procurement system in which the U.S. can't even build and deploy a new warplane or ship design in under ten years, at the very least?  Flashback: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a39970022/littoral-combat-ships-suffer-hull-cracks/

5) The increased misuse, neglect, and incompetence of the military during the Obama regime.  I'm not sure where to start with this one, but '13 Days' in Benghazi, the "Arab Spring," the collapse of Libya, and invasion of Syria come to mind, as well as the continuing decline and diminishment of the U.S. Navy, as underscored by the Balisle Report of 2010. Flashback: https://blog.usni.org/posts/2022/07/15/naval-historical-foundation-2nd-saturday-3rd-saturday-this-month-webinar-on-july-16-at-11am-est-the-balisle-report-surface-ship-readiness-why-it-was-chartered-what-it-said-what-was-done and https://www.sailorbob.com/files/foia/FRP%20of%20Surface%20Force%20Readiness%20(Balisle%20Report).pdf.

6) The disaster of the withdrawal from Afghanistan looked a lot like the final abandonment of Vietnam.

7) There's currently a lot of stupidity and incompetence within the services that our members are just tired of putting up with.  Heck, just follow U.S. Army WTF or Terminal Lance (for the USMC) on social media for a day-by-day account of everything that is wrong within those service branches.  DD-214s are golden in this day and age!

With all of that said, going back to an all-conscript force is not going to fix any of that, and would likely exacerbate the rot that has hollowed out the military over the past 30 years.

So why would any young person today want to voluntarily enlist in such a force?