<blockquote>Vital Military Jobs Go Unfilled, Study Says By Damien Cave
The New York Times
Friday 18 November 2005
The military is falling far behind in its effort to recruit and re- enlist soldiers for some of the most vital combat positions in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new government report.
The report, completed by the Government Accountability Office, shows that the Army, National Guard and Marines signed up as few as a third of the Special Forces soldiers, intelligence specialists and translators that they had aimed for over the last year.
Both the Army and the Marines, for instance, fell short of their goals for hiring roadside bomb defusers by about 20 percent in each of the last two years. The Army Reserve, meanwhile, failed to fill about a third of its more than 1,500 intelligence analysts jobs. And in the National Guard, there have been consistent shortages filling positions involving tanks, field artillery and intelligence.
The report found that, in all, the military, which is engaged in the most demanding wartime recruitment effort since the 1970's, had failed to fully staff 41 percent of its array of combat and noncombat specialties.
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The report showed that Congress needs to monitor these shifts better and ensure that the military is effective and efficient, Mr. Hosek said.
The report found signs of wasted spending. In many cases the military offered enlistment bonuses to people who signed up for jobs that were already overfilled. An Army recruiter in New York, who insisted on anonymity because he had not been authorized to speak to the news media, said it was not uncommon for noncombat positions to be opened up at the end of a tough recruiting month even the Army did not need more people to do the job.
As a result, the report found that shortfalls in many occupations were more severe than overall recruiting totals. The active-duty Army missed its target of 80,000 soldiers by 8 percent last year, but fell short of its goal for human intelligence experts by 35 percent.
The Marine Corps, which reached its recruitment goal last year after missing a few monthly quotas, struggled to fill several positions. It hired only about three out of every four linguists for the Middle East and Asia that it said it needed for last year.
Even the Navy and Air Force, which met their annual targets for overall recruitment last year, could not find enough qualified people for several combat and intelligence positions, according to the report.
The war, several military experts said, has scared many young people away from dangerous work.
"Prospective recruits, when they think about rewards and sacrifices of military service, realize that some positions are simply a lot more dangerous than others," said Mr. Hosek, the personnel expert at RAND.
There are nonetheless some bright spots for the military in the G.A.O. analysis. Dr. Chu said there had been growth in the Special Forces ranks, thanks in part to a new bonus of $150,000 for those who qualify. He said bonuses were also part of the reason some jobs were overfilled.
But some military experts doubt that these small triumphs will be enough to keep the ranks - and the right jobs - filled at a time of war.
"I'm not convinced that we can cap the problem," Mr. [Michael] O'Hanlon [of the Brookings Institution] said. "I think there's a strong possibility the situation could worsen."
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Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>