It seems that Trump has, at least initially, shown interest in increasing the U.S. military strength as he had promised during his campaign. One of his first official acts was to go to Pentagon and sign an Executive Order increasing the acquisition of various of military hardware for all branches of the service. However, thus far he has done nothing about the most important component of the military - manpower. The current headcount of U.S. military is considerably less than what it was even just a few years ago. As of 2017, the U.S. Army is at its lowest level in manpower since before World War Two in 1940! We all know what happened the following year in 1941 when Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Imperial Japanese Navy! Our military strength was woefully low and the army in particular was terribly understrength.
In 2009, the year Obama took office, the U.S. Army had 562,400 men and women, the Navy 324,239, the Marines 203,075, and the Air Force 331,700. Today, after 8 years of Obama administration and troop reduction, the Army is down to 460,000, the Navy 322,000, the Marines 182,000, and the Air Force 317,000. Obviously the Navy took the lightest hit in personnel reduction, but then, the last Joint Chief was Navy and fought mightily to retain Navy strength!
The popular argument that the "modern" military is very hi-tech and does not require as many warm bodies is jusi a myth perpetrated by bean counters and those who are championing the use of more drones and other highly sophisticated new equipment. Despite all this talk, the bottom line is still "boots on the ground." If you take over real estate, you have to occupy it. You can't fill it with hi-tech equipment. You can most certainly use hi-tech equipment to replace human presence in some cases as it has been demonstrated successfully by the use of unmanned drones and surveillance. However, it is still the human component, the soldier on the ground, the airman controlling the drone, etc., that is the most important element in the equation. We should have learned a hard lesson from Iraq when we occupied the country with insufficient ground troops and allowed the situation to deteriorate to the point of a full blown insurgency! So, regardless of how sophisticated and advanced the equipment may be, it is still the soldier, sailor, marine, and airman that is the most important component of the military organization!
The problem that Pentagon is facing is that without the universal draft system, we cannot maintain a large military force with any degree of certainty. The Marines have always had an excellent recruiting program and a PR campaign that consistently drew young men to enlist in the Corps. Today the same program is also drawing a considerable number of young women. The Army, Navy, and Air Force just never quite had that kind of recruiting power. Still, the Air Force is able to recruit owing to its excellent reputation for technical training, which is also the case with the Navy. The Navy has recently also gained some popularity with young men because of the way the SEALs have become cult figures. Hollywood has helped a lot in recruiting young men as SEALs hopefuls. Naturally, it isn't a great number and in the overall scheme of things, it really doesn't have that great of an impact. The Army is the one that is taking the biggest hit in lack of interest among the younger population to enlist.
Without a doubt, the major problem in recruiting young people into the U.S. military is the lack of competitive pay. Our military pay has slipped badly in the last decade to a point where it is not competitive with even minimum wage jobs in the civilian world. With the minimum wage at $15.00 an hour or hovering in that neighborhood, a 16 year old high school student can make more money flipping burgers at a fast food joint than an Army or Marine Private (or Navy or Air Force recruit)! The so called "fringe benefits" of three square meals, a warm bed, and full medical coverage notwithstanding, a young man or a woman entering military service will make less money than the aforementioned 16 year old kid working at a fast food joint! That is not much incentive to enlist! A new enlistee in the U.S. military will earn $17,127 a year. The per capita income in the U.S. is listed at $57,294 a year for 2016, which ranks 8th in the world! In comparison Australia is ranked 12th in the world with a per capita income of $51,593. Yet, a young man or a woman enlisting in the Australian military will start earning $31,509 a year, almost twice the amount paid by U.S. military!
The U.S. ranks 6th or 7th in the world when it comes to pay for the military! Australia, Canada, UK, Germany, and France pay more than we do. Yet, the per capita income for all of those countries is less, some much less than the U.S.!
There is something terribly wrong when the richest country in the world (at least in real terms, I know that there are some oil rich countries that supposedly have a much higher per capita income. But those are really not true figures!) cannot even pay a decent salary to its fighting men. There are enlisted personnel with families who have to use food stamps! Not long ago, in Germany, the local townspeople chipped-in to help struggling US army family members! It truly was an embarrassment, and you would have thought that our government would have done something to correct such situations. Well, temporarily the pay and allowances were increased and for a time the military appeared to be competitive with the civilian market. But once again, it has slipped. Just think about this. Our military is behind in pay across the board, through all ranks. A Colonel (0-6) in the UK military earns $123,996 a year before various allowances (housing, food, uniform, etc.). The Canadian earns $115,434, the Australian $107,099, the French $91,282. All of these pays are before allowances and in U.S. dollars. The 0-6 in the U.S. military earns $61,128, less than half of what the British counterpart earns, and only about 70% of the French! Let's hope the new administration will do something to correct this terrible disparity.
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