The U.S. Army plans to add five task forces with enhanced cyber, intelligence and long-range strike capabilities amid restructuring and cuts to its forces.
Military recruitment has been on the decline for decades. The number of active-duty personnel in the U.S. Armed Forces has fallen by 39 percent since 1987. The Army and the Air Force missed their respective goals by nearly 10,000 recruits in 2023, while the Navy fell short by 6,000.
Meanwhile, the ongoing Israel-Hamas war has stoked new regional tensions and militia rocket and drone attacks against U.S. forces as they are being met with more intensive air strikes. The Russia-Ukraine war, which just passed the two-year mark, has shown the need for air-defense systems and high-tech abilities to use and counter airborne and sea-based drones.
On Tuesday, according to the Associated Press, the U.S. Army plans to add about 7,500 troops in critical missions, including air-defense and counter-drone units and five new task forces around the world with enhanced cyber, intelligence and long-range strike capabilities in an effort to prepare for future wars.
Christof STACHE/AFP/Getty Images
Newsweek has reached out to the U.S. Army via email for comment.
The announcement comes as the service aims to restructure its operations, aiming, under the new plan, to bring in enough troops over the next five years to reach 470,000 soldiers, up from the current 445,000 total of active-duty soldiers.
However, the plans to restructure come as the service is also making cuts to the size of its force by about 24,000, or almost 5 percent, amid its already low recruitment numbers. The cuts will mainly be in already-empty posts, such as counter-insurgency, and about 3,000 of the cuts will also come from Army special operations forces.
According AP, the service is “significantly overstructured” as there aren’t enough soldiers to fill existing units. The service add that the cuts are “spaces” not “faces” and the Army will not be asking soldiers to leave.
However, the decision demonstrates the reality that the Army has not been able to keep up with its recruitment goals.
Last fiscal year, the military services collectively missed recruitment goals by roughly 41,000, according to U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) official Ashish Vazirani. Vazirani, who serves as deputy under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, called the issues causing the recruiting challenges “complex and multifaceted” in a December 2023 article on the DOD’s website.
Pentagon spokesperson Major General Pat Ryder addressed the low recruitment numbers during a press conference in December but added that the services are working to adapt to the challenges, including by being “very active and creative in looking at how we can communicate with the public that we serve.”
However, the challenges continue as a new Pew Research Center poll this month found that more than half of adults under age 30 have a negative view of the U.S. military.
The poll found that 53 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 believe that the military has a negative effect on the way things are going in the country compared to 43 percent with a positive view. When looking at Americans ages 50 and older, seven out of 10 said that the military has a positive effect on the country. Additionally, 57 percent of those ages 30 to 49 also have a positive attitude toward the military.
The survey, which looked at an array of American trends, was conducted between January 16 and 21 and had a margin of error for the sample of 5,140 U.S. adult respondents of plus or minus 1.7 percentage points.
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