The Army and National Guard are having trouble meeting their recruitment goals. The basic reasons are obvious but I suspect that an overlooked reason is the use in recent years of stop-gap and stop-loss policies – pulling people back into military service (from the Individual Ready Reserve) possibly years after their active duty has been completed and preventing people from leaving the field after their contractual obligations have ended, respectively.
It’s one thing to volunteer for a known tour of duty – it’s something more to subject your life-plans to an unknown schedule dictated by someone else. The stop-loss measures may have stopped losses temporarily but part of the price is understandably reluctant recruits.
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