Not conscription, but conscripts

IN THE NEWS
Since everyone else has use the recent announcement of the Army's recruitment shortfall as a springboard to discussions about the draft, I'm going to steer in a somewhat different direction. The news is pretty grim, no matter how you look at it. Not only is the US Army falling short of its normal recruitment goals (see this Washington Post article for the numbers), but the Department of Defense has been quietly cutting back the amount of training soldiers receive before seeing combat. The Marines, for example, already announced that they have cut pre-deployment training in half.

That, perhaps, is even more significant a statistic than the intake number, since the whole concept of a volunteer army depends on the quality of its soldiers. What we cannot make up in numbers, we can make up in quality, through both training and technology. The major axis of conflict now, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, already reduce the effectiveness of whatever technological advantages we have. Laser- or GPS-guided missiles are of little use fighting house-to-house in Fallujah, for example. If soldiers are less prepared when they're first deployed from a US training camp to Fallujah, US combat effectiveness drops even further.

And it gets worse. The training we're discussing is designed around conventional warfare, not counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. At a time when we should be talking about additional training in languages, cultures, insurgent and counterinsurgent tactics, and other critical skills for our current wars, the Department of Defense is cutting back on the already inadequate training it provides.

You can win some kinds of wars by shoveling conscripts into the fray. You can't win the counterinsurgency war in Iraq that way, nor any war from Afghanistan to Colombia that we are directly or indirectly fighting.

Comments

[Jim G]

As I step back, I see issues of still greater strategic concern. The problems that you mention happen against the backdrop of great increases in an already gargantuan military budget. To fund this, America goes further into debt, allows competitors like China to hold vast amounts of those dollars (look at the recent stock market tumble, partly precipitated by South Korea's statement that they MAY sell off a portion of their dollars) and places itself in a worsening strategic position, globally. What is the saying? "Unlimited money, the sinews of war"? What happens when the "other guy" is holding onto our sinews?
I have no doubt that our military continues to be pretty robust, as our economy is, as our political system is. However, we now are experiencing compounding problems on all of these fronts, and there is no apparent end in sight. Stop-lossing/dumbing down training, etc. begin to appear the symptom, rather than the disease.

[J.]

Evidently our officers don't need the training either...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050222-111908-6911r.htm

This is really disturbing news. I was in CAS3 at Leavenworth in Aug 1990, I remember students flying out the door to get back to their deploying units. The Chief of Staff of the Army personally got involved to stop those actions and told the students they would do their terms unless they were really essential to the unit (and that didn't apply to too many of us captains). But evidently the Army is being stretched real thin these days.

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