Free Essay Sample on the U.S. Military Drawdown

The changes occurring in the U.S. army have been a mechanism restructuring and enhancing effectiveness of the homeland security. In essence, the security operations by the military and other security departments in the U.S. has been a subject of combined approach from inter-agency approach. In particular, the military drawdown in the United States had a considerable impact inadvertently reducing the gains realized in both gender and racial diversity of the military in the 1990s. The last significant drawdown in the military forces of the U.S. was undertaken in late 1980s through mid-1990s. However, from this occurrence, there had been no erosion of gender balance mainly as a result of recruiting females and other ethnic minority individuals.

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A large proportion of the expected reduction in U.S. currently is anticipated to arise from the active duty forces while the U.S. army has been planning to reduce force levels of about 510,000 to about 420,000 by 2019. This was result into realization of the smallest Army in U.S. since the World War II. The Marine Corps had also been planning to reduce its workforce while the Air Force has condensed its entire force in the fiscal year, 2015despite the fact that the reduction of the two forces will be very minimal. In this regard, this reduction was a drawdown move in restructuring the department in order to enhance its effectiveness in handling essential processes. In the periodic scenario of major military drawdown, the services available must also consider a balance in reducing budget while at the same time ensuring that there has been a fair treatment of the contemporary service members besides retaining persons with the best skills for the tasks assigned. In essence, the active restructuring process is also ideal for the enhancement of homeland security.

Experts however recommend that a competitive analysis of the adverse impacts of the military drawdown be conducted prior to the undertaking of the process in order to mitigate essential strains that would result from the reduction. Subsequently, this move would allow services to engage considerable interventions within the service members military carriers including the primary career assignments. Besides, this would also help align the cooperation needs of inter-agency forces besides actively mapping out the effect on demographic diversity. Besides, the analysis could also promote the capacity of the service to identify the success of both assumptions and information involved across the entire process of force reduction.

Dealing with Army Drawdown Setbacks

The department of defense of U.S. has been planning for a large scale drawdown in the military personnel. The last major drawdown in U.S. defense forces to affect all the four Department of Defense services immediately after the Cold War of 1990s. In this period, the military force reduced significantly by about 37 percent from the past 2.17 million as at 1987 to about 1.37 million as at 2000. Other than having numerous goals and strategies in the 1990s and middle 2000s context of military drawdown, the service had reduced immensely. Immense diversity objectives associated with the drawdown could be soundly pronounced with the prime goal of enhancing its capacity to promote security cooperation. In order to address issues of inadvertent consequences from military drawdown, the office responsible for Diversity Management and Equal Opportunity within the Secretary of Defense office had been in charge of various undertakings that rocked the entire force across history. However, the restructuring was credited with numerous effects on enhanced coordination of security performances.

The personnel cuts with elongated services could also pose adverse effects on the black personnel but reduction on personnel with minimal service period may adversely influence women. Through enhancement of test standards as a strategic move to reduce recruitment may result in adverse effects particularly on women, Hispanic and blacks among other minority groups. In order to reap immensely in reducing security force personnel including Marine Corps, the Army and the Air Force in U.S. have been a process of balancing the forces to focus more on both occupational and experiences categories comprising of surplus and lower-quality officers. Unlike in the 1990s, majority of recent drawdown are anticipated to be anchored on cutbacks in the recruitment process as well as enhanced separation mechanisms that are involuntary.