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Reserve, Guard miss May recruiting targets

The National Guard and Reserve were short on their recruiting goals for May, but they are still comfortably ahead in their fiscal 2009 goals.

The shortfall marks only the second time in this fiscal year that the two components have missed their monthly goals.

The National Guard’s recruiting goal of 3,649 came up 623 under mission, meeting only 83 percent of goal, while the Reserve’s goal for May of 2,300 fell short by only 32, meeting only 96 percent of mission.

Both components are still above 100 percent in their fiscal 2009 year-to-date goals.

The active component has met or exceeded its yearly goals for the past two years and is on track to do the same this year, having exceeded all of its monthly goals in fiscal 2009.

In May, the active duty Army recruited 4,044 soldiers, meeting 104 percent of its mission to sign on 3,900 soldiers.

In addition, the active component has already exceeded its fiscal 2009 retention goal of 55,000 with 62,003 soldiers re-upping so far.

The recruiting mission for the active Army was 78,000 for fiscal 2009 but was reduced twice – once on March 5 to 71,000 and again on March 13 to 65,000.

“We’ve got a lower mission than we did at the beginning of the fiscal year and so far everything’s going well,” U.S. Army Recruiting Command spokesman Douglas Smith said, adding that “it looks like we’ll have a lower mission number for next year as well.”

That mission number, he said, has not been determined yet but he predicted it would be similar to the 65,000 goal the Army has now.

As of April 30, the Army’s end strength stood at 548,700, about 1,300 soldiers above the amount authorized by Congress.

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