4-1 Female Enlisted Accessions, by Service, Selected Fiscal Years 1960-77- 4-2 Estimates of Potential Civilianization of Enlisted Positions at Fiscal Year 1974 Manpower Levels, by Service... 4-3 Estimated Percentage of Enlisted Military Personnel Turnover Rates by Service, and Service Goals, for Selected Fiscal Years 1960-74__ 4-4 Percentage Distribution of Noncollege Male Population (Ages 19-21) and Fiscal 1973 True Volunteers Based on AFQT Test Results____ 4-5 Selected Types of Physical Disqualification Among Enlistees for A-1 Males Qualified and Available for Military Service, Fiscal 1960-79-- A-2 Males Qualified and Available for Military Service, by Age (17- to 22-Year-Olds), Fiscal Years 1975-79__. A-3 17-Year-Olds in Fiscal 1974 Likely to be Qualified and Available for ALL-VOLUNTEER ARMED FORCES: PROGRESS, PROBLEMS, AND PROSPECTS SUMMARY Whether to draft men into the military services has been one of the most controversial national issues of the past two decades. The end of conscription would appear to resolve the question, but a great deal will depend on how many qualified men and women volunteer for the armed forces. At present, the administration views a force of about three million under arms (active and reserve) as its minimum peacetime requirement. Can enough men and women be found, willing and able to volunteer without exorbitant additional costs, and without compromising appropriate quality and therefore the effectiveness of the armed forces? That is a monumental task, unprecedented in any country's history. Yet the conclusion of this paper-directed to the practical implications of planning, developing, and maintaining an all-volunteer armed force—is that it is likely to prove a feasible proposition, if timely measures are taken to reevaluate manpower requirements and standards and to deal with foreseeable recruiting shortfalls. This paper does not attempt to judge whether maintaining an all-volunteer force is wise-merely whether it can be done. The paper does not try to assess whether the extra costs involved in buying volunteer manpower are worth incurring, whether relying on an allvolunteer force rather than on the draft has socially divisive effects, or whether an all-volunteer force has undesirable implications for U.S. foreign policy or for U.S. military-civil relations. The purpose of this paper is more modest: to examine practical options open to decision makers that will modify the demand for, or expand the supply of, qualified and available volunteers, without undermining the effectiveness of the armed forces. The paper reviews 1) progress to date in the transition to an all-volunteer force; 2) the administration's view of immediate recruiting problems and how to solve them; and 3) the long-term prospects for sustaining an allvolunteer force, and how those prospects would be affected if a variety of specified options were exercised. The conclusions of the paper are summarized below: Progress to Date 1. The fact that the administration was able to end reliance on conscription in January 1973-six months ahead of schedule was due principally to large reductions in military manpower, on the one hand, and the ability to attract sufficient volunteers as a result of increased financial incentives and recruiting efforts, on the other. 2. The quality of volunteers, as measured by the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT), has generally improved since fiscal 1970. There has been a steady but modest decline in enlistees with aboveaverage AFQT scores, a moderate increase in those with average scores, and of most importance-a steady decrease in enlistees with below-average scores. 3. As measured by educational attainment, however, modest declines in proportions of Army and Navy enlistees that had completed high school were experienced in fiscal 1973, principally because of large accession needs. Among "true" volunteers-those freely choosing military service and not influenced by the draft-the proportion of Army high school graduates dropped from almost 60 percent in fiscal 1972 to under 50 percent early in fiscal 1973. 4. Growth in the proportion of enlistees from racial minority groups has been pronounced during the transition period from 1970-73. The proportion of true volunteers who were nonwhite increased from 14.4 percent in fiscal 1970 to 19.8 percent in fiscal 1972, and then remained fairly constant for the first nine months of fiscal 1973. 5. The military services do not collect data on family earnings on a routine basis. Data available are insufficient for an adequate evaluation of the effect of socio-economic factors on recruitment. 6. The additional cost associated with moving to an all-volunteer force is estimated to be approximately $3 billion per year. These costs, while substantial, are only a small part of the total increase in manpower costs in recent years. 7. On balance, the 1970-73 transition experience is promising. A continuation of fiscal 1973 enlistment rates would be sufficient to meet fiscal 1974 male recruitment needs. However, shortages of manpower in certain activities may threaten the effectiveness of an all-volunteer force in the period immediately ahead. Immediate Problems 8. Despite success in achieving high volunteer rates, it appears that a manpower scarcity could develop in three areas: critical skills (including combat arms), reserve forces, and health professionals (such as physicians and dentists). 9. The administration has requested broad authority to pay bonuses to attract and retain qualified personnel in these areas. The annual cost of this proposal could grow from $225 million in fiscal 1974 to $400 million by fiscal 1976. 10. Before using such financial incentives, however, alternative and potentially less expensive means of meeting the predicted shortfalls should be examined: a. In the case of critical skills, the question of qualification should be explored in greater depth. "Quality" is not a simple concept; the two principal measures currently in use are standardized tests and level of education. Because of the difficulty of relating these standards to the performance of specific military jobs, qualifications in these terms have not been stated with precision. Therefore, until each type of quality specification can be more clearly rationalized by further investigation, undue concern about shortfalls in certain skills would be premature. Moreover, additional financial incentives to attract men who score higher in some specific measure could be buying more "quality" than is necessary. b. A review of reserve force requirements not directly related to national security is overdue. More attention should also be paid to the recruitment of personnel leaving the active service, women, nonwhites, and those scoring in the lower AFQT categories-sources that have not been fully exploited. c. Two avenues to ease the potential shortage of medical personnel should be further explored: the scholarhsip plan for medical students and the civilianization of some military medical tasks. 11. To ensure that these alternatives are examined in greater depth, the Congress should place constraints on the broad bonus authority requested by the administration in the proposed Uniformed Services Special Pay Act of 1973. Long-term Prospects 12. The magnitude of the longer term task can be stated as follows: to maintain an all-volunteer active force of 2.2 million under existing manpower policies will require that one of every three qualified and available men eventually volunteer for active military service.1 Under present policies, and as measured by present AFQT tests of mental ability, one-third will have to be "above-average" and over one-half "average". 13. Given no unforeseen changes in present trends and circumstances, the rate at which qualified volunteers enlisted in fiscal 1973, if continued, should be adequate to meet average long-term quantitative needs without any further real increase in costs. Though manpower requirements may diverge year by year from the average, the swings in either direction should be relatively small and transitory, and could be stabilized by alterations in military manpower policies. 14. On the basis of fiscal 1973 experience, it should be possible, though more difficult, to maintain qualitative standards. The Army may continue to have problems attracting sufficient personnel who meet current educational and test standards. Again, it is not clear that these standards are as directly related to job performance as adherence to them would imply. 15. One of the elements affecting the maintenance of an all-volunteer force may be the impact of unemployment on an individual's inclination to enlist. Enough data are not yet available upon which to base confident conclusions, but there are no indications that the volunteer rate will be significantly affected by changes in the employment rate. 16. The rough nature of these estimates on the long-term prospects of an all-volunteer force cannot be overemphasized; they are based on limited experience. Any one of a number of new developments could produce an imbalance between military manpower requirements and the supply of volunteers. This fact underlines the importance of examining as many options as possible to make sure that future minimum requirements can be met. Some of the options that would reduce the need for male enlisted volunteers (the most critical re 1 This assumes that men with three or more years of college are not "available" as enlisted volunteers; these men, however, may enlist as officers. |