Attrition: Where Have All The American Soldiers Gone
February 27, 2023: The United States, like other industrialized nations, is having problems finding enough military age men and women to serve in the military. Most women are not interested but a growing percentage of troops are female. Currently that means five to ten percent of the armed forces personnel are women. Currently the U.S. military estimates that there are 412,000 Americans aged 17-24 who are qualified and willing to join the military. That’s not enough to replace all the troops who are retiring or simply leaving the military. This has forced the four services (army, navy, air force and marines) to be creative in coming up with ways to attract these prospects and keep those already in the service longer.
Another strategy is to stay in touch with those who left before they were eligible (after 20 years) for retirement. Some believe that returning to the military, even if only for a few more years, is not a bad idea. The military encourages that by restoring the rank and pay the returnee had when they left. At the moment, all this is less effective because the military, particularly the army, is undergoing a period of mandatory political indoctrination. This discourages some men from joining or rejoining the army.
Meanwhile there are still some fundamental problems that have to be overcome. The service with the most problems is the army. This service needs the most new recruits and suffers the most casualties in wartime. Despite that the U.S. Army quickly, by 2020, recovered from its recruiting crisis in 2018. That was the first year since 2005 that the army failed to achieve its recruiting goal (76,500 new recruits). The fiscal year ends on September 30 and the army was forced to examine how it was going about its recruiting. Changes were made and the army exceeded its recruiting goal in fiscal 2019.
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htatrit/articles/20230227.aspx
