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Report suggests radical personnel changes

A bipartisan think tank takes controversial positions involving military personnel in a new report about national security strategy.

To deal with recruiting and retention problems, the Center for National Policy recommends lifting the military’s ban on open service by gays, barring the services from using stop-loss orders to keep people on active duty beyond their separation dates, and requiring every American youth to serve the nation in mandatory national service — with military duties as one option.

Called “Agility Across the Spectrum: A Future Force Blueprint,” the report, released today, also recommends phasing out the use of civilian contractors as private security guards by 2014, which would require an increase of 92,000 active-duty personnel.

Underlying the proposals is a concern that seven years of war have taken a toll on the military and that relief is needed. “The tempo of combat operations has been unprecedented for an all-volunteer force and strains are beginning to show,” the report says. “Aptitude levels for new recruits are dropping while inducements for recruitment have increased dramatically.”

One sign of the problems, according to the report, is the use of more than 100,000 private contractors in combat zones performing duties traditionally done by service members. The report says private contractors are operating “outside the chain of command,” which causes additional complications.

The report also says multiple combat tours have led to “the highest level of suicides, desertion and mental illness in the armed forces in a generation.”

“Our national security depends not on high-tech weapons systems alone, but on the men and women who make them operational in combat situations,” the report says.

The report says its recommendations are aimed at increasing the pool of volunteers to fill the ranks, something a mandatory national service program could accomplish by making military service an option that people otherwise might never consider.

Mandatory national service, an idea sometimes pushed as an alternative to a military draft, would produce the added benefit of reconnecting the military to typical Americans, the report says.

President-elect Barack Obama spoke during the election campaign of a voluntary national service program, something quite different than the mandatory concept recommended in the report. But Obama said last summer than he thought national service could end up leading some people to serve in the military.

Stop-loss, a policy that Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last week will continue into 2009, has helped to provide full manning of units deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, but has also “created a measure of resentment from affected service members and distrust from the general public,” the report says, calling the postponement of separations and retirements something technically legal but “counterproductive.”

“Just as economies cannot prosper without clear contract laws, military recruitment will suffer if recruits feel that hidden clauses in their enlistment agreements could spring upon them at any time,” the report says.

Repealing the military’s policy that prevents gay people from serving openly — which Obama has said he wants to do as president — is a change whose time has come, the report says.

“It is time to end this outdated and misguided policy,” the report says, noting polls show that the majority of Americans support allowing gay people to serve.

The report is posted online here.