In the long history of the U.S. Army the total force has been volunteer except for a brief time in World War I, and from the start of World War II (with a year of no draft in 1947-48) until 1973.
In 1971, President Nixon signed a new law to end the draft and put the selective service structure on standby. After a two-year extension of induction authority, the end of the draft was formally announced in January 1973.
For the last 10 years, the United States has conducted a nearly unprecedented experiment: fighting two wars with a completely volunteer force. Many commentators predicted failure and collapse. Instead, military forces have remained effective even in the face of great stress, uncertain prospects for success and declining public support for the wars. Yet the costs have been steep: stress on personnel, disconnection from the wider society and a heavy reliance on contractors.
Conscription through the Selective Service System can be enacted by the request of the President and the approval of Congress. All males aged 18 through 25 who are living in the U.S. are required to register with the Selective Service for a potential future draft. The Fiscal Year 2011 Department of Defense budget request plan calls for an active military end strength of 1,406,000, an increase of 77,500 from the 2007 baseline as a result of increments in the Army (65,000 more troops) and Marine Corps (27,100 more troops) strength and decrements in the Navy (13,300 less troops) and Air Force (1,300 less troops) strength. The failure of the educational systems in the United States may force the armed forces to seek math and science qualified recruits elsewhere, such as through accelerated citizenship for foreign nationals. Currently only one in four Americans of the proper age meet the moral, academic and physical standards for military service.
The All Volunteer Force is also broadly representative of the American people. For the past 26 years, the Department of Defense has annually reported on social representation in the U.S. military. The 2004 report noted the following:
Age. The active-duty population is younger than the overall civilian sector. Forty-nine percent of the active-duty force is between the ages of 17 and 24, whereas about 15 percent of the civilian workforce falls between those ages. Similarly, officers are younger than their civilian counterparts.
Gender. Today, 15 percent of the active-duty enlisted force is female, compared with less than 2 percent when the draft ended. Sixteen percent of the officer corps is female. Despite these improvements, women are still underrepresented in the military.
Marital status. The larger career force means that the number of service members who are married has increased. Today, 49 percent of enlisted personnel are married, compared with 40 percent at the start of the AVF. Sixty-eight percent of all active-duty officers are married.
Educational level. The most recent statistics show that 92 percent of the new accessions to the active-duty force are high school graduates. The figure for the reserve components is 87 percent. This is a dramatic increase from the 1973 goal of 45 percent and today’s goal of 79 percent. In addition, 95 percent of active-duty officers have baccalaureate degrees, and 38 percent have advanced degrees.
Socioeconomic status. Recruits come primarily from families in the middle or lower middle classes. The high end of the distribution is not well represented.
Race and ethnicity. In fiscal year 2002, African-Americans were slightly overrepresented among new enlisted accessions relative to the civilian population: 16 percent compared with 14 percent. However, this is considerably below the 1973 level of 28 percent. Hispanics are underrepresented, making up 16 percent of all civilians but only 11 percent of new accessions.
http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9195/index1.html
Why Did the United States Move to an All-Volunteer Force (AVF)?
Although the country had conscripted its armed forces for only 35 of its 228 years — nearly all in the 20th century — the American people were generally willing to accept this practice when service was perceived as universal. However, in the 1960s, that acceptance began to erode. There were five major reasons:
Demographics. The size of the eligible population of young men reaching draft age each year was so large and the needs of the military so small in comparison that, in practice, the draft was no longer universal.
Cost. Obtaining enough volunteers was possible at acceptable budget levels.
Moral and economic rationale. Conservatives and libertarians argued that the state had no right to impose military service on young men without their consent. Liberals asserted that the draft placed unfair burdens on the underprivileged members of society, who were less likely to get deferments.
Opposition to the war in Vietnam. The growing unpopularity of the Vietnam war meant the country was ripe for a change to a volunteer force.
The U.S. Army’s desire for change. The Army had lost confidence in the draft as discipline problems among draftees mounted in Vietnam.
Crimes against civilians. The U.S. record in the Vietnam War was marred by incidents of great violence against civilians. At My Lai, the most infamous, up to 500 civilians were killed in a single day. Although the current conflicts have had like abuses at Abu Ghraib and the killings at Hadithah, nothing has arisen on the scale of Vietnam. The courts-martial record tells the story. In Iraq and Afghanistan, 22 service members have been convicted of killing civilians through 2010. The comparable number for Vietnam was 278.
Desertion. Despite impressions to the contrary, desertion rates have been at an all-time low for a period of conflict. The current rate for the Army is about nine per 100,000, about the same as the prewar figure. Rates in earlier conflicts were much higher: Vietnam (73 per 100,000 in 1971), World War II (63 per 100,000 in 1944) and Korea (22.5 per 100,000). Other services have had the same experience. Further, during the Vietnam War, hundreds fled to Canada or deserted in theater. In the current conflicts, only a few dozen, though highly publicized, fled to Canada and essentially none deserted in theater.
Outside contractors: The wars also saw the military vastly expand its hiring of outside help. The number of contract employees rose from 9,000 during Desert Storm to 200,000-plus at the height of the more recent Iraq war. Contractors are now everywhere. They feed the troops, transport materiel, build and maintain bases, repair equipment, translate for the locals, guard facilities, protect diplomats. Many military commentators were startled to find that so much of their logistics tail had been “privatized” and worried about whether it was wise to rely so heavily on “mercenaries.” Critics decried this development as shocking and irresponsible. However, reliance on contractors was a rational response to the scarcity of military personnel and to the force structure changes of the post-Cold War era.
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2011/10/7691489/
Suicide: Historically the military’s suicide rate has been about half the general population’s (age and gender adjusted) — 10 per 100,000 vs. 19.2 per 100,000. In 2004, the Army’s rate began to climb steadily, hitting 24.4 per 100,000 by 2010. The Marine Corps had a spike in 2004, eased off, then rose again to the same level as the Army’s. By contrast, levels for the Air Force and Navy have risen only slightly.
27/05/2012
Suicides are surging among America's troops, averaging nearly one a day this year — the fastest pace in the nation's decade of war.
The 154 suicides for active-duty troops in the first 155 days of the year far outdistance the U.S. forces killed in action in Afghanistan— about 50 percent more — according to Pentagon statistics obtained by The Associated Press.
The numbers reflect a military burdened with wartime demands from Iraq and Afghanistan that have taken a greater toll than foreseen a decade ago. The military also is struggling with increased sexual assaults, alcohol abuse, domestic violence and other misbehavior.
Because suicides had leveled off in 2010 and 2011, this year's upswing has caught some officials by surprise.
Military Contractors and the All Volunteer Army.
Defense contracting has expanded dramatically over the last decade, particularly in the United States, where in the last fiscal year the Department of Defense spent nearly $316 billion on contracts. Contractors have also assumed a much larger on-the-ground presence during recent American conflicts: during the 1991 Gulf War the ratio of uniformed military to contractors was about 50 to 1, while during the first four years of the Iraq War the U.S. hired over 190,000 contractors, surpassing the total American military presence even during the 2007 Iraq surge and 23 times greater than other allied military personnel numbers. In Afghanistan, the presence of almost 100,000 contractors has resulted in a near 1 to 1 ratio with military personnel.
Private Military Mercenaries.
In October 2007, the United Nations released a two-year study that stated, that although hired as "security guards", private contractors were performing military duties. Many countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, are not signatories to the 1989 United Nations Mercenary Convention banning the use of mercenaries.
Private Military Contractors supply support to U.S. military bases throughout the Persian Gulf, from operating mess halls to providing security. They supply armed guards at a U.S. Army base in Qatar, and they use live ammunition to train soldiers at Camp Doha in Kuwait. They maintain an array of weapons systems vital to an invasion of Iraq. They also provide bodyguards for VIPs, guard installations, and escort supply convoys from Kuwait. All these resources are called upon constantly due to the war in Iraq
Blackwater is currently one of the most high-profile firms operating in Iraq, with around 1,000 employees as well as a fleet of helicopters in the country. Whether the group may be legally prosecuted is still a matter of debate
Blackwater's purpose ‘‘We are trying to do for the national security apparatus what FedEx did for the Postal Service." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_Worldwide
February 2009, Blackwater announced that it would be changing its name to "Xe Services LLC. Blackwater is now known as Academi. Academi is a privately held company and publishes limited information about internal affairs.
About Blackwater:
Blackwater exists as a mercenary force, and argues that Blackwater's rise is a consequence of the demobilisation of the US military following the Cold War and its overextension in Iraq and Afghanistan. He describes further how Blackwater (at the time of writing) serves in Iraq and Afghanistan like, in his judgement, a Praetorian Guard, protecting top authority figures and enjoying immunity from the usual constraints and regulations on traditional armies.War's Risks Shift To Contractors
This is a war where traditional military jobs, from mess hall cooks to base guards and convoy drivers, have increasingly been shifted to the private sector. Many American generals and diplomats have private contractors for their personal bodyguards. And along with the risks have come the consequences: More civilian contractors working for American companies than American soldiers died in Afghanistan last year for the first time during the war.
American employers here are under no obligation to publicly report the deaths of their employees and frequently do not. While the military announces the names of all its war dead, private companies routinely notify only family members. Most of the contractors die unheralded and uncounted -- and in some cases, leave their survivors uncompensated.
''By continuing to outsource high-risk jobs that were previously performed by soldiers, the military, in effect, is privatizing the ultimate sacrifice,'' said Steven L. Schooner, a law professor at George Washington University who has studied the civilian casualties issue.
Last year, at least 430 employees of American contractors were reported killed in Afghanistan: 386 working for the Defense Department, 43 for the United States Agency for International Development and one for the State Department, according to data provided by the American Embassy in Kabul and publicly available in part from the United States Department of Labor.
By comparison, 418 American soldiers died in Afghanistan last year, according to Defense Department statistics compiled by icasualties.org, an independent organization that monitors war deaths.
That trend has been growing for the past several years in Afghanistan, and it parallels a similar trend in Iraq, where contractor deaths exceeded military deaths as long ago as 2009. In Iraq, however, that took place as the number of American troops was being drastically reduced until their complete withdrawal at the end of last year. And last year, more soldiers than private contractors died in Iraq (54 compared with 41, according to Labor Department figures).
There are many reasons to oppose the privatization of war. Reliance on contractors allows the government to work under the radar of public scrutiny. And freewheeling contractors can be at cross purposes with the armed forces.
But most fundamental is that the government cannot — or will not — keep a legal handle on its freelance gunmen. A nation of laws cannot go to war like that.
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