Addicted to Stop-Loss: Army Personnel Readiness in the GWOT Era

摘要

For many years, the All-Volunteer Army has often operated with fewer Soldiers available to fill the Army's requirements. Before Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Army mitigated personnel shortages with existing strategies and policies which provided sufficient personnel to meet the Army's immediate needs. However, since the Army's continuous involvement in combat operations of the last eight years, previous personnel policies and strategies to mitigate routine shortages of personnel have proven insufficient to support unit rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan. To improve unit level personnel readiness the Army has also had to rely on Stop-Loss; a policy that retains service members beyond their contractual service obligation. Long-term reliance on this policy is a growing concern for Americans and the U.S. Congress. This paper examines the Stop-Loss policy and other personnel management practices that attempt to mitigate chronic personnel shortages and concludes with a recommendation for a balanced approach to Total Force Integration (TFI). A TFI strategy can eliminate chronic personnel shortages and long-term reliance on Stop-Loss by blending select active duty unit requirements with reserve component Soldiers.