US Army Recruitment?

[rcaf_777]

According to this article during fiscal year 2017, the US Army recruited almost 69,000 soldiers for active duty.

http://www.businessinsider.com/army-...ldiers-2017-10

So my question is how many soldiers would the US Army need to recruit during twilight?

I am guessing initially Guardsmen and USAR, and recalled members would used to fill critical positions need to deploy regular army divisions. While some new personnel with key cadre members would

A. Roundout National Guard/USAR Units
B. Establish new units

Other newly recruited personnel would thrown into the replacement system and assigned to existing units

am I out to lunch

[dragoon500ly]

How many people would need to be drafted?

The easy answer is a lot! With the need to recruit service members to bring units up to TO&E strength, among all five branches, then you are looking at hundreds of thousands. Toss in the Reseve and Guard units, and you are looking at potentially a million or more.

The best example is World War Two, many people don't realize that the US military started ramping up for the war almost two years in advance, bringing Regular units to full strength, building/expanding training and support facilities, registration for the draft and then calling up the first draftees.

It is generally considered that roughly 17 weeks is needed to take a civilian, complete basic training and then push the new soldier through AIT, in the end, you have an individual that has a basic idea of their job, but is sorely lacking in experience. It takes roughly a year, in a peacetime Army, to get that new soldier sufficient experience for them to be an useful part of the unit. In wartime, running 7-days a week training schedules and exercises, you can get this done to roughly 6 months.

And by this time, you have a shooting war on three continents, with modern weapons being employed, casualties will be brutal. There will be demands to get these new recruits to the fighting units to bring battered divisions back up to effective strength. Give these new recruits experience? Again, the WWII experience gives us a horrific view of what happens next, green 18-year olds reporting to their new unit, just in time for tomorrow's offensive, their squad leaders not even able to learn their names before they become casualties. Toss in the "joys" of a chemical attack and those new recruits are decimated, time for the G-1 to scream for more replacements.

By time the strategic nukes start getting tossed, I would expect that the replacement pipeline would be drying up, unable to sustain the heavy demands. This is why I can see divisions shrinking down to only a few thousand soldiers. Senior commanders would have no choice but to ruthlessly comb through support units in order to scrap up enough soldiers to reinforce the front. Air Force and Navy units, there are no aircraft or ships left! Welcome to the PBI!!

[Ancestor]

"The easy answer is a lot! With the need to recruit service members to bring units up to TO&E strength, among all five branches, then you are looking at hundreds of thousands. Toss in the Reseve and Guard units, and you are looking at potentially a million or more.

The best example is World War Two, many people don't realize that the US military started ramping up for the war almost two years in advance, bringing Regular units to full strength, building/expanding training and support facilities, registration for the draft and then calling up the first draftees."

Great point. A quick search turned up this resource from the US Army Historian:

https://history.army.mil/documents/WWII/ww2mob.htm

I always feel terrible for those poor souls from the NG who were mobilized for a year in 1940 IOT to provide a stop-gap to grow the force. Some were nearing the end of their mob when Pearl Harbor happened.

[dragoon500ly]

One of the greatest problems of the pre-War mobilization was leadership. The Army had its small pool of Regular officers, another small of Reserve officers (these were regulars who had resigned their commissions in order to get jobs that would allow them to support their families), ROTC cadets, and the graduating class from West Point. These were used to bring units up to strength.

One of the other problems was the miserable state of the NG units. Since these were state-controlled, their officers were riddled with over-age or political appointees. This resulted in a need to replace these officers as well. So West Point cut its classes from 4 years to 3 years and sending NCOs and promising EMs to OCS, turning out "90 Day Wonders" to fill in platoon leader slots, and, needless to say, promotions rained down like manna from heaven! One NCO, E-7, was promoted to 2LT, then to Captain, given a company, then was promoted to Major and made Operations Officer for his battalion, and all within the space of ten days! He wound up getting into a fight on post, was court-martialed, and reduced back to Captain, with the proviso that he would keep his officers rank, provided he transferred to a newly formed division (he finished the war as a Lieutenant Colonel commanding a infantry battalion).

But one of the critical impacts of this leadership shortfall, was the promotion of barely trained "NCOs". In many cases, there would be, perhaps one experienced NCO in a company. The British were certainly right in complaining that American leadership didn't know how to lead. It would take the campaigns in North Africa and New Guinea to start the brutal process of instilling discipline teaching the hard lessons of combat, each year saw a more careful selection for OCS/NCOs. But there were still problems that were never successfully resolved. And these same problems returned with a vengeance during the Korean War.

[Adm.Lee]

Per Wikipedia:
"In WWII, males between 18 and 64 were required to register, but the selections were limited by executive order on December 5, 1942 from from 21–45 to 18–38. Assuming the citation (George Q. Flynn, The Draft, 1940–1973) is correct, 50 million men from 18 to 45 were registered. The Selective Service statistics page gives the total inductions during WWII as 10,110,104, which would indicate that the percentage would be somewhere around 20% were drafted based on registration.

By the Vietnam war, the draft age had changed to 18-26 by the Selective Service Act. The draft pool was around 27 million (apparently lifted verbatim from a paragraph from this paper), and per the Selective Service page linked above, there were 1,857,304 inductions during Vietnam. Note that Morris gives the number as 2,215,000 - this may reflect a difference in start and end dates used but they are fairly close. This would indicate that roughly 7-9% of the draft pool was conscripted."

So, 2 million per year in a serious emergency, to bring the combined US armed forces to around 13 million at war's end. In a not-so-serious emergency, an average of 200,000 to maintain a force of over a million.

If I had to guess, the Twilight-era US forces would want to draft at least a million per year, but probably don't achieve that. Say they start in late 1996, once shooting starts, ramp up in 1997 to fill up some of the units that need to be created or filled from cadre, such as the dozen training divisions that have to become light infantry/security formations after the TDM instead of maintaining the replacement stream to the battlefronts. Assume new formations try to resume that role in 1998, but disorganization keeps things breaking down.

[Tegyrius]

If the lessons Dragonfly mentions were learned, I can see there being a targeted call-up of retired field-grade officers and SNCOs who'd previously seen combat in Korea or Vietnam as company officers or JNCOs. They'd serve as cadre for training units (and an expanded OCS program) initially, but some of them might find their way into the fight. There's an argument to be made for the remaining CONUS units having a bunch of those dudes among their leadership, too, once the training pipeline becomes the direct-to-combat-unit replacement pipeline.

For another spin on it, some of them might have avoided the call-up but later spontaneously volunteered - or were "drafted" - as local militia commanders or trainers.

- C.

[dragoon500ly]

Originally Posted by Adm.Lee

Per Wikipedia:

If I had to guess, the Twilight-era US forces would want to draft at least a million per year, but probably don't achieve that. Say they start in late 1996, once shooting starts, ramp up in 1997 to fill up some of the units that need to be created or filled from cadre, such as the dozen training divisions that have to become light infantry/security formations after the TDM instead of maintaining the replacement stream to the battlefronts. Assume new formations try to resume that role in 1998, but disorganization keeps things breaking down.

IMHO, with the increasing tension between the USSR and the PRC, one could reasonably expect a closer scrutiny of the region by the various intelligence agencies. One would also expect that the Selective Service people will start airing their PSAs advising the public that it is the law to register, and advising on the various ways to register.

Using the WWII example, a call-up of the Individual Ready Reserve (recently discharged personnel), as well as recently retired personnel would take place. As the Sino-Soviet War kicks off, the Naval Reserve and the Air National Guard will start being called up, first with fighter squadrons (for national defends), then as military aid starts towards the Chinese, with Naval Reserve warships being recalled to.replace regular warships that are conveying aid to the Chinese.

Sometime during the process, the Soviets will start objecting to our "interference" in a local matter", followed by Soviet backed efforts in the UN to "prevent mercenaries from interfering."

With increasing tempos the war, as the Soviets withdraw units from Western Europe, NATO would increase its alert status.

Stateside, I regard it as highly possible, that the President would order the activation of the Army Reserve, starting with the training divisions, bringing these units up to speed on the latest equipment and procedures. Within 2-3 months, the President will ask Congress to approve the restarting of the draft.

During this period, the National Guard will be increasing its training tempo.

Thoughts?