Today?s military needs a soldier who?s a smart, independent thinking high school graduate who can adapt to a technology-laden battlefield with everything from anti-tank weapons to laser range finders on rifle scopes.
An all-terrain Humvee, for example, carries digital radios, computer screens and GPS equipment in the 21st-century successor to a World War II Jeep.
?It?s just a rolling computer with armor on the outside of it,? Army recruiter Sgt. 1st Class James Slough said. ?We have incorporated technology into absolutely everything.?
And that?s changed who gets into the Army. Slough?s Kettering recruiting office routinely turns away more people than recruiters enlist.
?The Army continues to tighten up its standards,? he said. ?The days of you being able to come in as your last option are gone because we?re probably not going to take you.?
Proposed cuts to the number of soldiers and Marines in ranks mean fewer people will be needed to fill uniforms.
?The wars are over and the economy is turned around,? said Lawrence J. Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense for manpower under the Reagan administration. ?In fact, right now they?re forcing people to get out.?
Loren B. Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va., had a similar forecast.
?It?s going to be harder for people to get into the force because there will be personnel cuts,? Thompson said. ?In addition to that, until the economy gets better, people already in the system probably will not be all that inclined to leave.?
The military estimates one in every four 17- to 24-year-olds rank as fully qualified to join under moral, academic and physical standards, Slough said.
At the same time, younger workers face a tight civilian job market. The Economic Policy Institute reported in February the unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds dropped to 16 percent versus a peak of 19.6 percent two years ago, a rate still the highest outside of the Great Recession since the fall of 1983.
David M. Ross, 20, of Centerville, decided to join the Army after attending the University of Oklahoma and later returning home to work at McDonald?s.
?I decided to join the Army because it?s the best financial option,? he said. ?There aren?t many jobs right now that pay more than minimum wage.?
He?ll attend boot camp at Fort Jackson, S.C., and then head to an intelligence analyst school at Fort Huachuca, Ariz.
Despite the higher standards and a limited number of candidates, the military has met or exceeded recruiting goals this decade with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the height of the build-up.
Yet Korb noted with the simultaneous wars, the military granted 125,000 ?moral waivers? between 2003-07 with ranks thinned through repeated war zone deployments. If granted, a moral waiver allows someone to join the military despite, for example, some criminal offenses. In some cases, the waivers were handed out for serious misdemeanor offenses and in hundreds of other cases felonies, to keep enough people fighting, The New York Times reported.
Last year, the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps met recruiting goals with 152,754 active-duty recruits, or about 10,000 more people than live in Dayton.
Eric Lindemann, 21, of Centerville, left his physical therapy studies at the University of Cincinnati to enlist in the Army. He wants to be a medic. Within weeks, he?ll leave for nine weeks of training at Fort Benning, Ga., then spend another 18 weeks at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas for advanced individual training on battlefield medicine.
It?s a guaranteed job after a boot camp graduation, plus advanced rank with his prior studies, although Lindemann said he had an intangible draw him to sign a six-year contract.
?I look forward to the brotherhood of it,? he said.
In the Navy, Petty Officer 1st Class Tyrone Davis has had college graduates walk into his recruiting office in Middletown in recent months holding four-year bachelor?s degrees. They were interested in joining the Navy Reserve, but their financial situation caused him to urge them to join the Navy full-time.
What once passed muster, such as some waivers for some criminal offenses, no longer does, he said.
And with jobs from air traffic controllers to nuclear reactor operators, finding someone who?s both smart and has mental stamina ranks highly.
?The Navy has [gone] to more quality over quantity,? Davis said. ?It?s different than sitting at home looking at TV and playing video games. You have to be able to adapt to deployment on a ship for six months.?
The Navy has explored use of social media as a 21st century recruiting tool to find tech-savvy sailors.
Would-be Air Force airmen must jump another hoop: Credit checks.
?Our critiquing of our applicants has become very important in terms of their qualifications,? said Master Sgt. George E. Ramsey, 34, an Air Force recruiter in Xenia.
?We take the whole person concept into the qualification,? Ramsey said. ?What might have been OK when I joined won?t be OK today. We?ve basically raised our standards quite a bit to allow a more capable, leaner force to execute the mission.?
nancy pelosi gop debate republican debate trisomy 18 lewis black kirkwood chris brown and rihanna
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.