I agree lets explode the myth that the Army is not able to man the force. We are ahead of this years goal.Re-enlistments are above goal which means we are not losing experienced troops.The max age for enlisting has just been increased to 42, this is primarily intended to help reserve and guard recruiting. But dont take my word for it,read it in the army times [owned by Gannet Newspapers].
$540 million paid to keep soldiers
Outlay is $50M more than last year, in 3 fewer months
By Gina Cavallaro
Times staff writer
Soldiers are re-enlisting at goal-busting rates — and they’re cashing in — but the pot of money is not like that bottomless cup of coffee at the highway diner.
With the war in Iraq entering its fourth year and signs showing that it will continue for many more, tough times are on the horizon, according to the Army’s G-1.
Personnel officials said there is no guarantee that the funding for re-up bonuses will continue to be so generous.
The Army has spent more than $540 million on cash re-enlistment bonuses so far in fiscal 2006, of which 60 percent has been paid in tax-free dollars to troops in the combat zones.
“We will continue to spend some more,” said Col. Debbra Head, chief of the Army’s Enlisted Career Systems Division at the Pentagon. “However, we know there are some resource constraints, so quite frankly, we are concerned about funding for the rest of the year.
“Leadership has been very supportive in giving us additional funds when we’ve realized that we needed them,” but “there won’t be an endless source of resources here in terms of bonuses, and so we are concerned about that.”
Both the active Army and National Guard are ahead of their retention missions for the first nine months of fiscal 2006, although the reserve component is trailing.
The $540 million in retention bonuses the Army had paid out between Oct. 1 and June 12 — less than three quarters of the fiscal year — exceeds the $491 million it spent the previous fiscal year.
Between fiscal 2001 and 2005, the Army distributed $1.06 billion in cash bonuses to 105,625 soldiers, an average of $10,000 per soldier who re-enlisted and got paid for it. The soldiers who received bonuses those fiscal years represented about one-third of the 306,892 who re-enlisted.
One of the incentives that almost doubled re-up numbers between fiscal 2004 and 2005 was the deployed bonus, which was offered to soldiers of any military occupational specialty as a way of retaining combat veterans.
“The deployed bonus was critical because any soldier who was in the desert, regardless of their MOS, could re-enlist and get a bonus,” Head said. “As a result, we have seen a lot more takers and, obviously, a lot more money spent.”
As of the end of May, 52,190 active-duty soldiers had re-enlisted this fiscal year. That means the Army is ahead of goal. The mission for the year that ends Sept. 30 is to retain 64,200 soldiers.
As of May 31, the National Guard had re-enlisted 26,331 soldiers, which is 117 percent of its year-to-date goal of 22,478. The Guard’s overall retention goal for fiscal 2006 is 34,875.
The Army Reserve had re-enlisted 11,434 soldiers by the end of May, 95 percent of that component’s goal of 17,712.
Almost 90,000 soldiers in all three components re-enlisted in the first seven months of the year.
Re-upping in harm’s way
The 4th Infantry Division doled out more than $32 million to more than 2,500 soldiers, whose bonuses were higher and tax-free because they re-upped in the war zone.
Under the Army’s Selective Re-enlistment Bonus Fiscal Year Expiration-of-Term-of-Service program, soldiers in any MOS with a contractual ETS date of Jan. 6 through Sept. 30 could re-enlist before April 30 and receive an additional $7,500 on top of other re-enlistment bonuses.
The bonus payments started in December, when the 4th ID landed in Kuwait, according to Sgt. Maj. Arlene Horne, who said in a news release that the division had to set up a 24-hour operation for three weeks to handle the requests.
Strong re-enlistment numbers have continued since the unit got to Baghdad. “The division is so successful in retention because the soldiers want to be part of a great team and because of the dedicated leadership across the board,” said Command Sgt. Maj. Ronald T. Riling, in an e-mail to Army Times. “The soldiers believe in our mission. They believe in our division and our Army.”
“The bonus money gives these soldiers a chance to make investments, put away money for their children’s college funds or buy a new car,” Riling said in a division news release.
The 101st Airborne Division, whose headquarters are in Tikrit, has also topped its retention goals for fiscal 2006. As of June 8, the division had re-enlisted 3,426 soldiers, surpassing its target number of 3,352 for a retention rate of 102 percent.
The division’s 101st Aviation Brigade has led the way, signing up 599 soldiers — a 144 percent retention rate. Its goal was 417 re-enlistments.
“The Army came up with great incentives for soldiers to consider when they started looking at their options, and the division’s retention staff is working hard with soldiers to explore those options,” 101st spokesman Lt. Col. Edward Loomis wrote in an e-mail. But, he said, those incentives are only part of the reason soldiers have decided to stay with the Screaming Eagles, based at Fort Campbell, Ky.
“This is a very proud division with a great history, a history every new soldier arriving at Fort Campbell learns when they in-process the division and go through their initial orientation,” Loomis wrote. “The division re-enlisted 117 percent of its objective in FY 2004, and 100 percent of a higher objective in FY 2005 in the run-up to this deployment. In other words, Soldiers who knew the division was about to go in harm’s way again.”
