WASHINGTON – The Army’s chief of staff surveyed the state of his service Tuesday, and found it to be good.
“This is the first time in our history that we have fought a protracted war with an all-volunteer force,” Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker said. “Our accomplishments, quite frankly, have been staggering.”
He added: “Putting these commitments into context, in the four to five decades since the end World War Two until the time at which the wall fell, much of this time with an Army that was fed by conscription, the Army deployed at the battalion task force level or above right around 20 times, in that four- or five-decade period. In the 15 years since the Cold War ended and with a greatly reduced all-volunteer force, we’ve deployed in excess of 30 times.”
Addressing the Association of the United States Army’s Dwight D. Eisenhower luncheon Oct. 4, Schoomaker gave an exhaustive list of the Army’s accomplishments over the last few years.
“Our efforts in recruiting and retention continue to pay off,” he said. “Since September of 2001, we have added almost 4,000 recruiters to the force and increased incentives and recruiter support by twice, up now to $1.4 billion. … We’ve recruited over 600,000 soldiers across all components, soldiers, citizens who have answered the call to duty. To grow all Army by 30,000 soldiers, our annual recruiting goal went from 150,000 to 175,500. This compares to the 107,500 for all other services combined across all components.”
The Army missed its recruiting mission for the active force by 7,000 for the year.
But he did note that the active component of the Army achieved 106 percent of its retention goal while the Reserve and National Guard reached 102 percent of their retention goals.
Other accomplishments that he listed included:
- “Since 9/11, the U.S. Transportation Command estimates that over 90 percent of the almost 7 billion short tons of equipment and supply moved by air and sea belonged to the Army,” he said.
- “TRADOC expended 62 million rounds of ammunition [last year], that’s a 50 percent increase,” he said.
- “The Center for Army Lessons Learned catalogued over 6,200 lessons since 2001 and has produced over 381 publications,” he said. “Based on these lessons, a revamped office basic training course will be implemented at Fort Benning and Fort Sill in June of 2006.”
- “80 percent of our modular conversions will be accomplished … this fiscal year,” he said. “The total number of available brigades will increase from 48 to 77, with 10 new active brigades.”
- “We are also rebalancing active and reserve forces to produce more units with the highest demand skills,” he said. “This realigns the specialties of more than 125,000 soldiers.”