On Thursday, President Barack Obama addressed the nation and the U.S. military regarding the size of the armed forces. The Associated Press reports Obama said the military will be "leaner" in the face of around $350 billion in budget cuts in the coming years due to mandatory cuts in the Budget Control Act. The force's downsizing comes just as the United States' presence in Iraq is ending and troops start coming home from Afghanistan.
Here's a look at the size of the U.S. military over the past 150 years.
Civil War Era
Before the Civil War began in 1861, American Military History states the regular U.S. Army had 1,080 officers and nearly 15,000 enlisted men as of June 1860. Less than a year later, President Abraham Lincoln called for men in loyal states to send 75,000 men to help put down the rebellion. Very quickly, a force of 100,000 militia men serving for five months was called up as the U.S. military readied to invade the south. The Confederate States of America also tried to raise a similar force to defend its territories.
By the end of the war, there were over 1 million volunteers serving in the U.S. military. Within two years, the force was reduced to just over 11,000, a size even smaller than before the war. Adding part-time enlistees, a regular force of 57,000 men was realized for about five years. By 1876, there were just over 27,000 personnel in the military.
World Wars
When World War I started, the American military was in the process of increasing in size. Congress authorized an increase to 400,000 members in the National Guard to augment a regular Army size of around 175,000 in peace time. When President Woodrow Wilson called for the United States to enter World War I in Europe, volunteers to the force topped 2 million.
The Information Please Online Almanac states the U.S. military reached its highest enlistment in 1945. By the time World War II ended, there were over 12 million military personnel in the Army, Navy and Marine Corps combined. The U.S. Army had about 1.5 million people at the start of World War II.
Modern Times
Since the Vietnam War, troop levels decreased from about 3 million to roughly 1.4 million active personnel over the past two decades. PBS reported in 2004 that there were 499,000 active duty U.S. Army personnel backed up by 700,000 part time National Guard troops. Those numbers were about a third less than the force available during the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
Under current proposals, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps will begin troop reductions in 2015. The military will have to find savings across the board, from pay and retirement benefits to the size of overall military units.
William Browning is a research librarian specializing in U.S. politics. Born in St. Louis, Browning is active in local politics and served as a campaign volunteer for President Barack Obama and Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill.
steven tyler office space rawhide bigfoot tony romo twilight zone sandra dee
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.