Effects of Downsizing The impact of the Army downsizing is nothing new. This rapid demobilization of forces has transpired after every major conflict. The most recent downsizing effort was from the Persian Gulf. The Army was an incredibly powerful force around 730,000 in 1990 and rapidly downsized to 508,000 in 1995. Once again, the Army is repeating itself, projecting to shrink the active force from 566,000 during the height in 2011 to a speculated 420,000 reaching this in the fiscal year 2017 (Trice, 2015). A disturbing fact is that the unemployment rate for veterans outpaces that of the rest of the country at 6.8% rate verses that of the non-veterans of 5.7% (Watson, 2014). The strain of a growing unemployment rate among veterans rapidly increases in small towns throughout the United States especially those where units are deactivating.
Economic Effects As the downsizing and restructure of the Army continues, cities all over the country also feel the sting of Soldiers leaving the service. Two cities outside of Fort Benning, Phenix City and Columbus Georgia, have reported they will miss an estimated $229 million dollars in sales due to the elimination of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team (Adams, 2015). Other concerning factors are the civilian employees that currently work on Fort Benning. They may also be out of work due to the restructure. This ripple effect will continue throughout other privately owned businesses. For instance, the apartments Soldiers currently
America’s weak economy has caused a major growth in military enlistment and re-enlistment, because the military has
Coming home to nothing; no help, no support, no job, and no one to talk to about their personal experiences while being deployed. This type lifestyle is something veterans face on a day to day basis. Transitioning back into society can be difficult, but we as Americans should help them make this extensive change. The introduction of the book For Love of Country, written by Howard Schultz and Rajiv Chandrasekaran inspired me to look more into how the American society helps those who sacrifice their lives so our lives can be free. The introduction also helped with the theme of veterans and one topic question. What are the common repercussions of veterans leaving the army and what can American society do to help them?
The quick evolving military environment, needs the US Army redouble its efforts to reduce the uncertainty associated with the downsizing. There are some predominant principles that can guide the Army’s efforts in minimizing the impact of uncertainty during the force reduction. Even with major political and legislative challenges, keeping balance among the different proportions of readiness is a goal of US defense policy. During the budgetary preparation, downsizing of the armed forces often becomes one of the first victims of fiscal reduction. This was true of the years between World War I and World War II, when the Great Depression made military preparedness a very low national priority. The Army’s downsizing effect put its readiness
Consequently, the Obama Administration has silenced defense leader for a long time, so he could keep his Budget Control Act or (BCA). For example “8 years under the Obama Administration, top defense officials were largely silenced and prevented from articulating their concerns about budget cuts and decreased readiness”(Cooper pg1). The Obama Administration neglected top defense officials, which has resulted in “Army has lost more than 205,000 soldiers, or 30 percent of its staff”(Spencer). Nevertheless, this has also resulted in “3 of 58 Army brigade combat teams are considered ready for combat”(Cooper). Conversely, Obama cut down the military so far that America has 150,000-225,000 troops ready in the Army when all of our combat teams should be ready for combat, so that the armed forces can protect America’s interests at home and abroad. Moreover, the Army is not the only who has experienced decreased readiness, for example, there have been budget cuts across the board which have resulted in “The Air Force is the smallest and oldest it has ever been”(Cooper). “80 percent of the United States Marine Corps or (USMC) do not have the minimum number of aircraft they need for training and basic operations”(Cooper). “The Navy’s fleet is the smallest it has been in nearly 100 years”(Cooper). “Maintenance period will increase costs 2.6 times”(Pickup). Accordingly, all parts of the Armed forces have experienced budget cuts
The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is a government-run military veteran benefit system that provides essential financial and medical assistance to veterans and their families that are located all over the world. (www.va.gov) As the country and the military’s needs change, the VA needs to continue to evolve and grow. With this thought in mind, it is necessary to understand how the department is coping with the many different challenges that they are currently facing to effectively address the current issues and policy pitfalls. The most critical issues presently facing the VA, is the concern over long increasing wait-times and backlogs for services, which have emerged since 9/11 and are primarily the result of the growing
Downsizing refers to the voluntary actions on the part of organizations to reduce the overall size of their workforce, generally to reduce costs. The disadvantages of downsizing in a survey by the American Society of
The information presented from the two articles above can be supported by the article by Frueh and Stencel. Veterans ' experiences in war are likely to go beyond the instantaneous and physical effects, which may affect their entire lives. According to Frueh and Stencel, more than 2.2 million troops from the United States served in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars (10). In the two wars, more than 6,600 troops from the United States lost their lives. Frueh and Stencel assert that a substantial percentage of veterans experience enormous difficulties while in transition. The use of statistics is helpful in elevating the quality of the article. They acknowledge that veterans are faced with far-reaching challenges in their effort to adjust to civilian life. For example, health problems- such as PTSD and traumatic brain injuries- are common among veterans. However, with high jobless rates and shrinking aid programs, these aren 't the best days to be
What are returning veterans really experiencing?Did their stress get released or may they still suffer. Many of our returning veterans faces a lot of problems from problems ranging from PTSD to no jobs.These problems are important because some veterans commit suicide because they can’t get help.Homelessness is among the most urgent problems facing our veterans and simply the easiest problem to fix.Upon returning home, they may struggle to find employment, obtain felicitous health care or secure treatment for war-related mental illness and this is the problem when the government failed to help the returning veterans
In the thirty years after the War of 1812, the United States gradually and painstakingly developed its army from a nascent confederation of independent state militiamen, volunteers, and a disproportionately smaller group of regular soldiers into a corporate body of professionals with seemingly common standards of training, doctrine, and, arguably, discipline. Referred to as the “Thirty Year’s Peace,”
Veterans face many obstacles and barriers to overcome when transitioning back into civilian life. Macdermid & Riggs (2014) discusses how military deployment has many consequences for an individual and their families. According to Sayer, Frazier, Orazem, Murdoch, Gravely, Carlson, &Noorbalooci (2011) all military branches already require their troops to complete a reintegration program before discharge but these programs typically only
Men and women serve in the United States armed forces in hopes of receiving the promise of a dependable income and reliable benefits. The primary influence for those joining the armed forces is tuition reimbursement followed by health care benefits (Clever, & Segal, 2013). The majority of enlisted military only serve for seven years and often work in minimum wage jobs without health insurance after departing from the military. Before the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, veterans could only utilize veteran hospitals and outpatient clinics for military related health problems (United States Department of Veterans Affairs, 2016). Once the Affordable Care Act was initiated, all veterans could utilize veteran medical services for any of their health care needs. The problem needing to be addressed is the number of veteran facilities available to provide treatment for the vast amount of veterans now qualified for medical services.
However as of more recent, the focus has been to cut spending and this in turn has affected most notably, Veterans Affairs (VA) and their health programs. According to the VA, “VA is charged with fulfilling President Lincoln’s promise to care for those “who shall have borne the battle, and for ” their families and their survivors. To support this mission, the 2016 Budget provides $70.2 billion in discretionary funding for VA, a 7.9 percent increase above the 2015 enacted level. In addition, the budget includes $3.2 billion in estimated medical care collections, for a total discretionary budget authority of $73.5 billion (which includes $3.2 billion in Medical Care Collections) and $95.3 billion for VA’s mandatory benefit programs.” This increase in budgetary spending can be deceiving as the VA is also seeing an increase in the amount of veterans claiming benefits. So although there is a budgetary increase, it is not enough (a deficit) to fulfill all claims made by veterans and/or their families and therefore is causing the VA to make cutbacks in both military construction efforts, but more importantly in medical benefits that veterans receive. For instance, improving veterans access to medical care to include strengthening their benefits program is a matter of priority. As has been recently of subject in the news, wait times for veterans has been extreme and inefficient, at times to the detriment of the health of veterans. Although the increase is aimed at providing more physicians and improving the VA’s “physical” infrastructure, the budgetary increase lacks the foresight to address the growing veteran population in concurrence with the needed changes that are being proposed. In an article published in Military Times on
This growth while beneficial still hasn’t been enough to help meet the needs of all the Veterans seeking VA health care or waiting on their pending enrollment list. A report from The Huffington Post showed that 847,882 veterans are on the pending enrollment list, and out of those 238,657 have died after filing for enrollment and waiting. (Ryan Grim) This information was given to them by Scott Davis, a VA program specialist, who worked at the Health Center in Atlanta. The VA is backed up to the point where every clinic turns away patients everyday some of whom live long distances from these
During this last half of the twentieth century the US military was under siege from all sides, internal and external. The root cause of this situation can be traced back to Vietnam and the governments lack of true commitment. What resulted was the near destruction of the US military. The military managed to come out in the end to become perhaps the best military in the world by completely reevaluating itself and reorganizing almost every aspect . The primary focus will be on the reorganization of the Army and Air force, and how they were affected by the disaster of Vietnam. The US military managed to come out one top through completely reorganizing the way the military works and thinks. Focusing
The downsizing of a company can affect employees before, during and after it occurs. Employees usually know of a possible downsizing, care of the almighty grapevine, months before it is supposed to happen. Thus, employees may become paranoid and self-absorbed, and their top priority is their own career rather than the bottom line of their employer. This causes them to be unfocused and prevents them from performing their jobs efficiently. Many workers would also be perfectly willing to stab their peers in the back in hopes of keeping their job. Usually when a downsizing is complete, the company is at an all-time low. This is due to the fact that in almost every merger, acquisition or downsize, employees are faced with uncertainty about their jobs before and after the restructure. After a large percentage of downsizes, ten percent of the remaining workforce will easily adapt to the change, while another ten percent will never adapt. Workers who survive the downsize often have feelings of anger, fear or distrust. Further internal problems result from employees who survive with the company, but cannot adapt to their new settings and expectations, and eventually quit their job.