Meeting the Military's Manpower Challenges

摘要

To understand the manpower challenges facing the Department of Defense (DOD) as it unveils its latest QDR, it is first necessary to lay out the principles on which the All Volunteer Force (AVF) was created in 1973. When the Nixon administration set up the Gates Commission to fulfill the President's 1968 campaign promise to end the draft, it established an AVF composed of four separate but interrelated parts. First, the active component of the Armed Forces, particularly the Army, would be much smaller than it was during the days of the draft. Consequently, during the Nixon administration, the size of the active force was not only reduced from its Vietnam War level of 3.6 million people, but cut below its pre-Vietnam War level of 2.8 million. By 1975 it had dropped to 2.1 million. This was done because creating the AVF would eliminate the hidden tax of conscription, meaning that the military would now have to pay market wages, even for its lowest ranking members, to get qualified volunteers. It had to do this because without the threat of the draft looming over their heads, young men would now be less likely to 'volunteer' for the Navy and Air Force or for noncombat jobs in the Army. Nor could they any longer be forced into the Army's combat forces. Thus, the cost per person nearly doubled and even with the smaller force, military personnel costs rose from $19.8 billion in 1968 to $24.2 billion in 1974.