Potential recruits list critical to 'all-recruited' force

  • Published
  • By Kathleen T. Rhem
  • American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON (AFPN) --  The term "all-volunteer force" is a misnomer, a senior Defense Department personnel official said here June 23.

In truth, the U.S. military is an "all-recruited force," and its success depends on recruiters having access to potential recruits, said Dr. David S. C. Chu, undersecretary for personnel and readiness.

Dr. Chu's comments came in response to a June 23 Washington Post article that claimed a new DOD contract for a database of potential recruits "is provoking a furor among privacy advocates."

However, Dr. Chu said, the new contract is just that -- a new contract, not a new practice. Military services have kept various lists of potential recruits for many years, he said. In the past decade, defense officials put more emphasis on "a more organized supervision" of the lists, and since 2003 they have gone to a centralized list of about 12 million names that is distributed to recruiters from all services. The list is of recruitment-eligible people between 16 and 25 years old.

The new contract is for a system to provide a centralized agency to compile, process and distribute files of people who meet age and minimum school requirements for military service, according to the notice in the Federal Register.

The government provides the contractor various lists, and the contractor is responsible for consolidating the lists into a master and to purge duplicate entries, Dr. Chu said.

DOD officials said they understand privacy concerns and allow only limited use of collected data.

"We don't give these lists out to other people," Dr. Chu said. "(They are) given only to the military recruiters."

Data available to recruiters include people’s name, address and phone number. Social Security numbers are used only to purge duplicate entries, and are not distributed or even maintained in the list, Dr. Chu said.

This centralized list of potential recruits has no relation to provisions in the federal No Child Left Behind Act that state schools must make student data available to military recruiters to be eligible for federal education funds. Parents can choose not to have their children's information released to recruiters, Dr. Chu said.

The No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to provide information to local recruiters, not to a centralized list of all potential recruits.

"No Child Left Behind is basically a local and decentralized operation which gives recruiters at your local recruiting station the same right that private companies have," Dr. Chu said, adding that high schools routinely provide the same type of information to companies that sell yearbooks and class rings.

To sustain recruiting efforts, recruiters need access to a source for names of potential recruits.

"I suspect some (people think recruits) simply walk in the door and sign up," he said. "That's not how it works. People have to be made aware that we're interested in them, that they are good candidates for military service. And we have to convey to them what the attributes of military service entail."

Maintaining lists of potential recruits is critical to the success of an armed force that does not rely on conscription.

"Contacting young Americans, making them aware of their option in the service, is critical to the success of the volunteer force," Dr. Chu said.

"The country does not want conscription. If we don't want conscription, you have to give the Department of Defense, the military services, an avenue to contact young people to tell them what is being offered," he said. "And you would be naïve to believe in any enterprise that you're going to do well just by waiting for people to call you."