The Scramble for New Recruits

How is recruitment going?

After several bad years, all branches of the military reached their targets in 2006. The Army signed up 80,635; the Navy recruited 36,679; the Marine Corps, 32,337; and the Air Force, 30,889. This was a huge relief for the Pentagon because, with the Iraq war, recruitment has become steadily more difficult. And since the military is all volunteer, a shortage of troops has enormous military and political repercussions. Indeed, trying to refill the ranks solely through recruitment in wartime is rare. The Spanish-American War, the Mexican-American War, and the Gulf War are the only major conflicts since 1775 that did not rely, at least in part, on conscripts.

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