This map is from 2003.
It appears that the Army has lowered its recruiting goals for 2018. In the first six months of the recruiting year, they brought in only 28,000 new soldiers. The goal for the year was 80,000. The overall goal is to grow the Army to 483,500. They have been able to maintain strength by retaining current soldiers (86% retention, compared to 81% in past years). Of course, the problem is the strong economy reduced recruits and “the declining quality of the youth market.”
Army lowers 2017 recruiting goal; more soldiers staying on
What the article does not state is that there is a limit to how long they can maintain the force through retention. At some point, they need to recruit more.
There is one interesting statement towards the end of the article that gets my attention: “Defense officials have also complained that despite the last 16 years of war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, the American public is increasingly disconnected from the military, and they say many people have misperceptions about serving and often don’t personally know any service members.”
Back in 2003-2005 we did some contracts for the state of Pennsylvania in preparation for the upcoming round of base closures. This was not our normal line of business, but some people who knew us contacted us and asked if we could help. It then got weird, because some people in Pennsylvania wondered why they were using a historical think-tank for this as opposed to all their politically connected lobbyists and consultants. So, they replaced us, except for Pittsburg, who independently maintained us as a contractor (The Military Affairs Council of Western Pennsylvania) . The end result was that all the bases targeted for closure in Eastern Pennsylvania were shut down, but Pittsburg managed to justify and keep their bases open (for the time being).
Anyhow, one of the arguments I was developing for Pennsylvania is that the U.S. military needed to maintain a presence in the Northeastern United States. As we pointed out in our first report we did in 2003 for the “Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development Base Retention and Conversion-Pennsylvania Action Committee”:
As of 31 March 1943 New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey were among the top ten states in terms of War Department civilian employment….By fiscal year 2001 no Northeastern Sates was in the top ten in terms of Army and Air Force civilian employment….One side effect of Department of Defense downsizing and the BRAC process has been a continued shrinkage of the presence of the United States Armed Forces in the Northeastern U.S. and concurrent with that, the representation of Northeasterners in the Armed Forces….The U.S. Armed Forces is in danger of being transformed from a truly national force to a force with unusually strong regional representations: with a significant portion of the U.S. Armed Forces based, oriented and recruited from the Southeast. The Dupuy Institute does not believe that these trends are healthy, either for the nation as a whole or for the Armed Forces themselves.
Just to drive home point:
The Northeast has always played a significant part in the defense of the United States. Some of America’s most famous military figures have come from the region…and yet, since World War II it appears that this pattern has shifted. For example an examination of the biographies of nineteen of the senior commanders in the U.S. military show that now only two are from the Northeast, and this from a region that constitutes one-fifth of the population of the United States….Currently (as of 2000) only 14.6 percent of all personnel recruited annually in the U.S. military are from the Northeast.
And listed under possible reasons for this shift in participation:
- A stronger economy in the Northeast. U.S. military recruiting tends to be more successful in those area that have a lower per capita income. The Northeast has historically been one of the wealthiest areas of the U.S.
- A lack of major U.S. military presence in the Northeast…..They all reduce the visibility of the military in the region relative to other regions of the U.S.
- A lack of military families in the Northeast…..And since volunteers for military service often come from military families the reduced presence of the military in the Northeast has probably led to a decline in recruitment from the region…
- Cultural differences. For a variety of personal, political and economic reasons the citizens of the Northeast may be less likely to join the military.
Anyhow, this is part of a larger concern that I have had with our all-volunteer military becoming increasing regionally based and not being representative of the United States population as a whole.
So… the Northeast is simply the Luxembourg of the USA?
Not a good analogy. From the American Revolution through WWII it was the economic, intellectual and cultural center of the U.S. New York, Boston, Philadelphia are there. Harvard, Yale, MIT and all the Ivy League schools are there. Even though its prominence has declined in recent decades, it is still the wealthiest, best educated area in the United States (other than the Washington DC area and parts of California). If intelligence and education are valuable traits for the U.S. military, then this is an area you want to be able to recruit from.
I am aware of this, but that is not what I meant. They refuse to participate and serve in the armed forces other than decision making on the political level, comparable to the Benelux states. Macron is trying to form a European Army by reruiting the manpower predominantly from the poorest EU countries, aside from Germany which is supposed to finance and protect French interests in Africa.
Wasting your elites in senseless operations is also counterproductive. The Soviets were even aware of this, being a physicist was a recipe for survival. Only the “Feldherr aus Braunau” was intelligent enough to throw his entire labour force on the sword.
Furthermore, the Anglo-Saxon population in the US is dwindling.
Because of a lack of presence in some areas of the countries, including a lack of family members who are veterans, the U.S. is drawing more from some regions than others. Some of this is economics, but if most your bases and most your veterans are only in parts of the country, then there is not going to be the connection to the military that entices people to consider joining. It is really an issue of exposure.
The U.S. military has been fully integrated for many decades and draws from all segments of the population. Being an army-brat, I grew up in integrated neighborhoods.