What do the Numbers Reflect?

Behind The Military Recruiting Stats

July 15th, 2008

I come across a number of blogs that each month post the U. S. military service’s recruiting attainments and offer some commentary about what the numbers may mean and why the numbers may not be garnering more press than they do. Yes, it is always great news when the recruiting services achieve their assigned missions but what do the monthly press release numbers actually reflect? The simple answer is they are the number of people shipped (accessed) to active duty (both prior and no-prior service accessions) for that month, the people that start drawing an active duty pay check against the service assigned goal.

Each service assigns its own accession goal (people that will start getting paid) during the fiscal year. The accession goal is computed (very basic explanation) by taking the approved end strength number for the fiscal year, projected retention (re-enlistments) and then figure the number of replacements required.

Service end strength requirement - vacancies - projected losses = accession goal

The job of filling those projected empty slots rests with each service’s recruiting command. Each service will then break the accession goal up into the 12 months to level load boot camp and follow-on schools.

Based on the fiscal year accession mission and other factors a “new contract objective” (NCO) will be created. NCO is how many people need to be “signed-up” in order to achieve the accession mission. A person can in some cases be in the delayed entry program for over a year. A high school senior as an example may sign-up in July of 2008 and not access to active duty until July of 2009.

Pardon the basic explanation once again but NCO is determined by the fiscal year accession requirements, beginning of year delayed entry program (DEP) numbers, projected DEP attrition figures and projected DEP percentage for the following fiscal year. NCO goals and attainments are rarely if ever released/reported to the press.

You may have noticed that “projected” has been used numerous times - it is a fuzzy math. It is not uncommon for recruiting month and yearly accession and NCO missions to change - retention may be better than projected or DEP attrition may edge higher, whatever may effect it, in the end monthly accession attainments are no more than an indicator of how a service is working towards finishing the fiscal year on target of the approved military budget end strength totals. Missing the final end strength total equates to breaking the law - people get fired and the news of the service’s failure hits the media who will inevitably blame something or someone their demographic/readership wants to be held accountable.