You have already heard information and comments about the legal, moral and political implications of assigning individuals under the age of 18 to combat duties.

For that reason I will confine my brief remarks to a more pragmatic issue: Will combat readiness and effectiveness of the U.S. Armed Services be reduced by restricting U.S. servicemen and women under the age of 18 from assignment to combat duties?

I claim some special insight into this issue by virtue of two and one-half years concurrent service as both Director of U.S. Navy Manpower Planning and Programming and as Assistant Chief of Naval Personnel Plans and Programs. In these assignments I directed two staffs, which determined how many and what kind of people Navy needed; and then, determined how we would recruit, train, assign, promote and retire those people. This was during the period immediately after President Nixon had ended the draft and all of the services were in desperate straits to man forces much larger than today's 1,400,000 active forces. Since then basic pay has more than tripled and recruitment and retention bonuses abound. Today the services face new problems in a terrorist world but personnel numbers and force management are not among them.

Looking at the Child Soldiers Protocol, it becomes obvious that not a single one of the service's current recruiting programs is adversely affected in any way. Department of Defense Military training programs can legally begin for children as young as 13 years of age and recruiting for active service still begins at the 17th birthday.

The only new requirement is that the United States government must "take all feasible measures to ensure that members of their armed services who have not attained the age of 18 years do not take a direct part in hostilities." To meet this new requirement is a very simple matter for three reasons:

1. The great majority of those who enlist at 17 years of age actually enter service under the Delayed Entry Program, which permits them to delay service for up to 12 months. Only 6% of all recruits are less than 18 years old when they finally report for active duty.
    
2. The minimum period of time for basic recruit training ranges from 4 to 6 months. About half of the 17 year old cadre passes their 18th birthday before completing recruit training.
    
3. Finally, the majority of recruits go directly from basic to advanced specialty or technical training which can take up to 64 weeks. Thus, all but one quarter of one percent of all recruits are more than 18 years of age before they become available for assignment to combat units.

In addition to the small numbers involved, there is another reason why such assignments would be no problem. In each service there are units at various stages of training and equipment readiness for deployment. In each service assignment offices would flag the lowest rated units and every month spaces would be found in them for about 10 recruits. When one considers that every month each service must find spaces for about 3,000 to 4,000 recruits in the active forces, 10 restricted assignments per month pose no personnel management problem at all.

This can be demonstrated by the recent Army decision to provide special assignment consideration for all Army members returning from arduous duties, which involved family separation of more than six months. Army has announced that all such individuals will be posted to duties which will not result in further family separation for at least six months. Because each year this policy will affect assignments for thousands of individuals, many of them senior with special skills and experiences, it will require major management efforts to ensure that they are protected from deployment for at least six months. Protecting a few inexperienced 17-year-old recruits for about three months is no challenge, by comparison.

As a last point, in the past those who argued against the Optional Protocol often claimed that combat readiness and unit esprit would both suffer if an unplanned deployment to a combat zone suddenly required the transfer out of 17 year olds. As explained above, this would involve at most a few very junior, unskilled members who had been with the unit only a few weeks. The few vacancies could be quickly filled by lateral transfers of 18 year olds from nearby units without loss of either unit strength or esprit. Also, it is noted that this would never happen in the highly mobile, readily deployable prestigious combat units such as Rangers, Seals, Airborne or Air Force Special Ops units because the special training required to qualify for duty in such units ensures that no 17 year olds serve in them.

In summary, 17 year old recruits who are available for assignment to combat units number fewer than 200, or about one tenth of one percent of the current 1,400,000 active duty force. This presents no personnel management problems nor threat to the combat readiness of the U.S. Armed Services.

 

By Rear Adm. (Ret.) Eugene J. Carroll CDI Vice President Emeritus ecarroll@cdi.org

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