Lowering standards

IN THE NEWS
You should read Fred Kaplan's analysis of the Army's progressive decline in standards for inductees. He does more than just point out the statistics about how many people whom the Army would not have recruited five years ago are now being rushed into our all-volunteer force. He also quotes a RAND study that actually substantiates the harm these lowered standards do to the performance of combat units.

Even if we were not simultaneously fighting two major counterinsurgency wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and several less publicized ones in Colombia, the Philippines, and elsewhere, this would be bad, bad news. The strategic calculus on which the all-volunteer Army is based depends on high-quality troops, just to handle conventional military operations like the invasion of Iraq. The quality of the individual soldier matters even more in counterinsurgency campaigns like the occupation of Iraq. If Kaplan's analysis doesn't get you worried about the future of the US military, I'm not sure what would.

Comments

[Chris Bray]

And question two would be, what about the quality of the NCO corps and the officer corps? Are some of the best potential officers staying away or going elsewhere, and are some of the better folks in each group jumping ship? The implications of those questions will resonate much farther down the line.

[Jeff Rubinoff]

In a somewhat vaguely related note, have you read this British criticism of our Army's counterinsurgency approach? It includes mention of 'widely differing' levels of competence among our soldiers. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/documents/aylwin_jan06.pdf