Where Are the New Recruits?

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Lieut. Colonel Michael Jones, the Guard's No. 2 recruiting officer, says 70% of the deficit in sign-ups is the result of soldiers' declining to join the Guard when they leave active duty because they don't want to be sent right back to Iraq. In peacetime, many active-duty soldiers go into the Guard for the extra money and camaraderie. Some of the shortage is due to the Army's "stop-loss" orders, which keep soldiers on active duty past their agreed-on commitments and thus make them unable to join the Guard. But there is another factor in the case of young people right out of high school: parents often steer their kids away from the military. "Mom and Dad understand they're going to go right into basic training," Jones says, "and then be eligible to deploy right away." Even if parents don't object, he says, "it's human nature to flee from risk. It takes a special type of person to join during this time."

The cost of recruiting a soldier ballooned from $7,600 in 1996 to more than $14,000 in 2004. That includes about $2,000 for advertising. The Army has become a more savvy seller, abandoning the "Be All You Can Be" slogan it used for two decades in favor of the more narcissistic "An Army of One" motto it embraced eight months before 9/11, which played off the individuality and independence of today's young men and women and tried to convince them that soldiers are more than mere cogs in a dehumanizing military machine. Today the Army sponsors NASCAR racing cars, football games, rodeo riders and a popular Internet video game called America's Army. But just how much those teenage touchstones do for military recruiting is an open question. A federal study found that although the military doubled its spending on advertising--from $299 million in 1998 to $592 million in 2003--it couldn't tease out the impact of the Pentagon's ad campaigns because "joining the military is a profound life decision."

The war and its impact on personnel are forcing the Pentagon to cut corners in ways that could dull the military's fighting edge. The Guard, for example, can no longer count, as in the past, on half its troops' having had military experience. If current trends persist, soon only one-third will be veterans. "They'll be able to make their numbers, but the question is, How effective is the Guard going to be if its troops don't have much military experience?" says Lawrence Korb, Pentagon personnel chief during the Reagan Administration. What's more, the military may have to begin promoting soldiers with inadequate experience if senior sergeants flee. "Promoting more rapidly leads to a less effective military," Korb says. "We're going to end up with a less effective force and, in another year, I think we could break it."