Insufficient manpower is the biggest obstacle to President Donald Trump's ambitious plans to rebuild the military, The Washington Times reported on Monday.
Although the focus of the debate has been on how to pay for the massive buildup, an equally pressing question appears to be if enough willing and able recruits can be found to fill the expanded number of soldiers needed for the requirements of such a plan.
One problem Trump faces in implementing his proposal is the unenthusiastic reaction so far to a massive surge in the ranks from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who say that additional money would be better spent on more modest troop increases combined with repairing aging weapons systems and buying newer ones.
There is also the concern that bolstering the number of troops so quickly could have a negative influence on the quality of the new recruits, thus creating new and unintended problems for the armed forces.
An immediate example of the difficulty the armed forces has in boosting its numbers is that the military announced this month an offer to soldiers who have the option of leaving before October incentive bonuses of $10,000 or more to remain for another 12 months, with additional incentives for those in high-demand fields, the Army Times reported.
This is because in the next eight months the military will have to have 16,000 more soldiers than what it originally planned for, and the easiest and quickest way to do that is to retain as many as it can, in addition to the necessity of recruiting new soldiers.
Among other factors hindering the ability to find enough new quality recruits for such a massive buildup is that, according to the nonprofit Center for Naval Analyses, only 17 percent of all military-age Americans would be deemed physically "qualified military available" for service, which means the available pool of possible soldiers is not as large as it might appear.
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