The USMC needs a few good men.
The Corps has been reluctant to admit monthly shortfalls, using earlier successes to cover recent shortages.
The truth is really getting out. Year three of the war is here and my earlier predictions are coming true.
And don't miss the Army figure of shipping only 68% of the recruits needed in March. That means some of the recruits reported are on delayed entry programs.
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From USMC Times.
May 02, 2005
Corps misses recruiting goal for fourth straight month
By Gordon Lubold
Times staff writer
Recruiters missed their contracting goal for April, marking the fourth month in a row the Corps has fallen short.
The Corps missed its April mission by 260 contracts, meeting 91 percent of its goal to enlist 2,971 recruits, according to Maj. Dave Griesmer, a spokesman for Recruiting Command in Quantico Va.
The shortage in April adds to the deficit the Corps has been accumulating since January, when it missed its contracting goal for the first time in nearly a decade. The April number marked the largest monthly deficit so far in 2005.
Overall, the Corps has met 98 percent of its contracting goal since Oct. 1, the beginning of the fiscal year, enlisting 20,817, with a goal of 21,258.
Officials maintain that the months between February and May are normally lean on recruiting because applicants are still attending school and some don’t like to ship until summer. Typically, however, recruiters make their contracting goal anyway.
The contracting goal is a “self-imposed, flexible planning target” that reflects the enlistees who will ship to boot camp within 12 months of enlisting, Griesmer said.
That goal is different from the shipping goal, which recruiting officials say is far more important. The shipping goal is the number of recruits who actually show up at boot camp each month. Recruiters have exceeded that goal by 2 percent, shipping 102 percent, or 18,043 recruits.
“This is the recruiting measure that most directly reflects the current status of recruiting,” Griesmer said.
While the Marine Corps struggles to make its contracting goal, the Army is in far worse shape. Army recruiting officials acknowledged recently that they are missing both their monthly contracting and shipping goals. Army statistics for April were unavailable as of May 2.
The Army met just 68 percent of its shipping goal for March for the active Army subset of its overall mission, which includes the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard. |
