military recruiting

thanks to fester for sending in the latest military recruiting numbers.

I've been meaning to try to get the recruiting plan for the year - but im not sure the military will be very helpful.

The latest headline number seems good news for the military: " The Army exceeded its recruiting goal in November, the sixth consecutive on-target month" although, as usual, its difficult to tell how much aritmetic buggery occurred.

The last para of the AP piece tells us:

"The recruiting results for November were mostly positive, although the Army set a substantially lower goal than in November a year ago. The active-duty Army signed up 5,856, compared to its goal of 5,600. In November 2004 it signed up 6,838 against a goal of 6,800."

October was the first month of the recruiting year and they proudly trumped that they were ahead for the month vs the target - however they buried the news that they had reduced the target by 30% from the previous year (link) and in November they lowered the target by 18% vis a vis last year.

I have no problem with them moving targets around and such - but you'll remember that last financial ear (to September 05) the recruiting fell 8% short of the annual target of 80,000 . This year they also hope to recruit 80,000. Here's where it gets a bit funky - they hit their targets in October & November last year, but for some reason they significantly lowered their targets for oct/nov 05 - despite the fact that they are aiming for the same total. (given the funkiness of the numbers last year, anything is possible)

or if we put it another way, by this time last year they recruited 13735, and they have 10781 so far this year - putting them 22% behind where they were at the same time last year, and remembering that they failed by 8% last year.

Last month they acknowledged that they were going to go for the Hail Mary in the coming Summer "That means the Army is leaving 30,300 recruits -- or 38 percent of its annual goal -- for the final three months of the fiscal year (july/aug/sep)." It'll be terrible if the Hail Mary fails and we can watch the army collapse just before the 2006 elections...