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I’ve written in the past about the Army’s manpower crunch in the officer ranks. A Boston Globe article cited the following:

WASHINGTON -- Recent graduates of the US Military Academy at West Point are choosing to leave active duty at the highest rate in more than three decades, a sign to many military specialists that repeated tours in Iraq are prematurely driving out some of the Army's top young officers.

According to statistics compiled by West Point, of the 903 Army officers commissioned upon graduation in 2001, nearly 46 percent left the service last year -- 35 percent at the conclusion of their five years of required service, and another 11 percent over the next six months. And more than 54 percent of the 935 graduates in the class of 2000 had left active duty by this January, the statistics show. [emph added]

Those statistics are from just two West Point graduating classes, 2000 and 2001. The 2002 class will soon have completed its five-year mandatory active duty obligation and it is reasonable to expect to see similar losses among those officers.

As the Globe reported

In most years during the last three decades, the period for which West Point released statistics, the numbers of graduates opting out at the five-year mark were between 10 percent and 30 percent, according to the data.

The rising exodus is blamed on a number of factors, including the economic lure of the private sector. But interviews with former West Point superintendents, graduates, and retired officers pointed to another reason: the wear and tear on officers and their families from multiple deployments.

Note the article cites the best authorities of all for the officer hemorrhage: the officers themselves.

I’ve also discussed the problem of first term soldiers declining to re-enlist, back in 2006.

The loss of trained, motivated, troops affects tomorrow’s Army, because that is the recruiting pool for the mid-level and senior NCOs of the Army of the 2010’s. For many of them, two tours in Iraq in 40 months is enough. They're tired of "stop loss" programs extending their terms of enlistment.

It gets worse:

Lower level NCOs, E-5s and E-6s with 10 or 12 years service are also pulling the pin, prompted by the idea of third, and undoubtedly fourth deployments in “the sandbox” of Iraq, Afghanistan, and wherever Mr Bush decides to go next in his desperate floundering to maintain a Republican majority in Congress. Another concern for these older, seasoned soldiers is family obligations. Many are married, with children and the wives of some have to make hard decisions about watching their man go off every 14 months for another years of daily fear every time they see an officer in an Army sedan. Army wives don’t like Mr Bush and Mr Rumsfeld announcing a “long war” or “never-ending war of cultures.”

This Morning’s Christian Science Monitor examines the problem of the disappearing sergeant.

The Army has seen the reenlistment rate of mid-grade enlisted soldiers drop 12 percentage points, from 96 percent during the first quarter of 2005 to a low of 84 percent for the first quarter of 2007, according to Pentagon data. As of March, the Army is as much as 10 percentage points behind where it was in retaining mid-grade soldiers at that time in 2005 and 2006. (The overall retention goal for mid-grade soldiers in fiscal year 2006 was about 25,000.)

There was a time when a barracks comment about missing sergeants would have been greeted with cheers, but no sensible soldier will deny that he’d much rather have a skilled experienced NCO walking slack or drag on a patrol in Iraq, where IEDs and snipers are not daily concerns, but rather hourly fears.

LTG David McKiernan, Commander, USAREUR, is quoted as saying, “I am not alarmed to the point that we are breaking the Army, but [the numbers] are creeping up, We can't lose the leadership of the US Army, or we will be broken."

One way the Army is trying to keep these flagging numbers is some kind of stasis is by adding more and more money to re-up bonuses.

Army officials have expanded incentive programs to keep soldiers in, raising the ceilings on reenlistment bonuses for soldiers in specific jobs from $15,000 to $20,000. It's also paying as much as $150,000 to retain soldiers in special-forces jobs.

In addition, the service has created an extra bonus of $7,500 for those who reenlist during fiscal year 2007. Many of these bonuses are tax-free if the reenlistment occurs in a war zone.

A recent Associated Press review of bonus programs shows that the Army and Marine Corps will spend more than $1 billion on reenlistment bonuses during fiscal 2007, up from $174 million in 2003.

Army officials claim that the average re-enlistment bonus of $11,000 is not enough to truly affect the force’s population. A cynical man might ask why they’re also offering larger bonuses, and tax-free special bonuses for re-enlisting while in the sandbox.

The Army has also promised to increase dwell time – that period spent at home between deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan – guaranteeing a year, but not right away, since many of the units being pushed back out to Iraq as part of Mr Bu$h’s latest escalation have not spent a year at home.

Perhaps that 12 month stabilized tour at home is for next year. Or the year after.

This is my Army. It’s your Army. George Bu$h and the Republican Party are killing it. The death of 10,000 cuts.