WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 9, 2007 -- The Army Reserve exceeded its annual recruiting goals this year, the force’s commanding officer said Oct. 9 adding that the reserve did well with retention as well.
 
Nevertheless, he said, the reserve component faces end-strength problems because of competition with the active component.
 
Lt. Gen. Jack Stultz, the head of the U.S. Army Reserve, announced that the reserve had 27,004 during the last fiscal year, which closed at the end of September. That figure was higher than the year’s goal of 26,500 recruits. “So we exceeded our recruiting for this past year for the first time in a significant amount of time in a tough environment,” he said during a seminar on the Army Reserve at the Association of the United States Army’s Annual Meeting.
 
“More importantly, our retention is great,” he said. “Last year we increased the retention goal in our careerist from 65 to 85 percent and kept our first termers at 65. … Our careerists, we’re going to come in at about 33 percent of goal, after increasing it to 85. But on our first termers we’re shooting at something like a 150, 155 it looks like. Incredible.”
 
Stultz said that the biggest challenge the Army Reserve faces is building end-strength because of competition with the active component for soldiers. “This year we’re going to lose over 7,000 soldiers out of our formations that are choosing to go on active duty,” he said. “They’re going to the active component. We’re not getting nearly that much back. See that used to be one of our funnels – that’s where we got soldiers to fill out ranks. We used to get about 4,000 more soldiers coming from the active duty into the reserve than we saw going from the reserve into the active. Now it’s reversed. Even worse. So that is a draw on our attempt to build end-strength.”
 
He noted that while the active Army met its recruiting goals for the fiscal year, “one of their strategies for building the end-strength of the active Army is on the backs of the reserve components.” The active Army is also seeing high retention rates, he noted, adding that those who are leaving the active component are doing so because of high operations tempo and so are unlikely to join the reserve.
 
He outlined several strategies the reserve is pursuing or pondering to help with end-strength. He said that the biggest key is for the Army to finish the transition to the five-year force generation model in which reservists can expect to be called up for one year out of every five.
 
Other strategies include the AR-RAP program (Army Reserve Recruiting Assistance Program), which pays individual reservists up to $2,000 for each recruit they bring into the Reserve. “It’s Amway,” he quipped, to general laughter. “It’s a pyramid scheme. It’s legal but …” He noted that Army National Guard has had an equivalent program for more than a year and increased their end-strength by 21,000 and recruited 70,000 soldiers.
 
Another possible program is called “Active First” and would involve new recruits signing up to do two-year in the active Army before completing their obligation  in the reserve component. Stultz also discussed ideas about finding ways to cooperate more fully with reservist employers, potentially including sharing the cost of benefits like health care.
 
POC:
John Grady
Director of Communications
Association of the United States Army
(703)-907-2613
jgrady@ausa.org