■"Guard Reports Serious Decline In New Recruits," by Eric Schmitt, New York Times, 17 December 2004, p. A1.
The Guard's recruiting totals are down 30% for the last two months, forcing them to push up the incentives to as high as $15k in enlistment bonuses. Then there's the $20b bill the Guard says it needs to pay for worn-out/destroyed/expended equipment and supplies thanks to all the deployments it's picked up in this Global War on Terrorism.
How much do these numbers matter? Guard and Reserves make up 40% of the force in Iraq, or roughly what they make up of the total force in being. Of course, the Reserve Component (as the Guard and Reserves are collectively known in DoD-speak) was never designed to be used this frequently. Gone are the days of the two weekends a month and two weeks in the summer, replaced by the reality of the rotational expeditionary force concept that basically promises you'll see a year overseas for every five that you serve.
That sense of certainty may solve the home issues, but it creates new and more difficult work issues. Essentially, you hire a Guard or Reservist and it's much like hiring a woman of child-bearing age: you the employer must expect that soldier will be gone one out of every five years of employment. So what are you, the employer, likely to do? Put that person on the military equivalent of the mommy track?
The rule set reset on the Reserve Component is just beginning, my friends. The SysAdmin function will be served, whether the Pentagon likes it or not.
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