THE TIMES POLL : Military Cuts Spread Anxiety Among Enlistees

Petty Officer Jimmy E. Forbis, a 20-year-old yeoman based in Charleston, S.C., has been in the Navy just a little over a year. But he can already feel the pinch of the shrinking military all around him.

His ship, the guided-missile frigate Hawes, is likely to remain in the fleet, but Forbis and his shipmates will increasingly have to compete with sailors from decommissioned ships if they want to remain part of its crew.

The young sailor’s father, an Army enlistee with almost 19 years of service, worries whether he will be permitted to complete a 20-year career and retire with a full pension. And Forbis’ fledgling career as a yeoman--a Navy administrative clerk--simply is not as bright or as secure as promised when he walked into a Navy recruiting center two years ago.

“At the time my father came in, the military was a career choice,” said Forbis, one of 2,346 enlisted men and women surveyed by The Times Poll on a range of issues facing the military services. “Now, it’s more of a temporary thing. There’s no sense of security there, and that makes you look at other options. They’re going to lose a lot of good people that way, and the military will become more average, whereas it used to be considered elite.”

Like 52% of those surveyed in the nationwide poll, Forbis called the downsizing of the military--and the resulting troop reductions--one of the two biggest problems facing the U.S. military. The other, cited by 48% as the most pressing problem, is President Clinton’s proposal to lift the ban on homosexuals in the military.

Close behind those two “top problems”--and directly connected to reductions in the ranks brought on by budget constraints and the end of the Cold War--are low morale and few opportunities for advancement.

“Morale is really a problem in the Army right now, and the drawdown is adding to it,” said Army Sgt. Ray Frisbey, a 26-year-old platoon sergeant who leads a unit of helicopter mechanics at Ft. Hood, Tex.

“I cut my people in half, I maintain the same mission load, I work my people twice as hard, they’re tired, they’re irritable. It’s a whole lot harder to come to work with a smile on your face,” he said.

While grumbling is as old a military tradition as parades and bad chow, the satisfaction level of enlisted members is important in maintaining the quality of the nation’s all-volunteer force. If promising young enlistees and more-senior noncommissioned officers leave because they are disgruntled over conditions in the services, Pentagon planners fear that the nation will be left with a force that is harder to train and less effective in combat.

And because the military depends on volunteers to fill its ranks, it must continue to attract intelligent and promising youths with guarantees of training, advancement, good benefits and security. At some point, military experts say, dissatisfaction among the rank-and-file could result not only in a less-capable force today but a decline in high-quality recruits tomorrow.

Those concerns have led military leaders like Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to fret openly about a drawdown in military personnel so rapid and so deep that it would “break the force” and nullify the hard-won gains of the past decade.

The poll clearly illustrates that the drawdown has generated a high level of worry among enlisted service members even though overall, 74% indicated that they are generally satisfied with life in the military. Satisfaction levels are roughly the same in the Air Force (79%), the Army (78%) and the Marines (78%) and lowest in the Navy (66%).

The findings are the result of a poll of 2,346 enlisted men and women who were surveyed through confidential written questionnaires in commercial and residential areas near 38 military installations across the country. The survey was conducted under the supervision of John Brennan, director of The Times Poll, from Feb. 11 to Feb. 16.

The first independent poll of military personnel of its kind, the survey was carried out without the involvement of the Pentagon or the individual services. Because of the broad sample, the poll is considered highly representative of the attitudes of the 1.5 million enlisted men and women in the U.S. armed forces.

According to the poll, 60% of those surveyed said they either were “very worried” or “somewhat worried” about the possible effects of military downsizing on their careers.

That anxiety was evident in all branches and among all demographic groups but was highest in the Air Force, where manpower rolls were slated to shrink by 29% even before the Clinton Administration’s proposed spending cuts. Two-thirds of the Air Force enlistees surveyed said they were worried about the impact of downsizing on their lives.

Concern among members of the Army and Marines was almost as high, with 61% of both Army and Marine respondents professing that they feared for their careers. The Army is slated to shrink by more than a third by 1997. In the Navy, just over half of those polled--53%--indicated such concern.

Worries were noticeably higher among men and women with five years of service or more, with 69% of that group expressing concern about their futures. Asked whether the military has generally fulfilled the commitments made to them when they enlisted, 61% said yes, while almost three in 10 said the military had disappointed them.

Disappointment was somewhat higher among those with fewer than five years of service--a common finding for youthful enlistees, among whom turnover is highest.

Twenty-eight percent of all respondents said they would not re-enlist, including 21% of those with at least five years of service. Twenty-nine percent said they intended to re-enlist, while 34% said they possibly would do so.

In recent years, military leaders have warned repeatedly that the quality and morale of the armed forces would be gravely threatened if a significant number of troops believed that the military had “broken contracts” made with them in return for their service.

“I feel somewhat cheated,” said Senior Airman Brian K. Finnefrock, a 25-year-old communications technician who is based at South Dakota’s Ellsworth Air Force Base and has six years in the service and a careerist bent.

“I’ve signed up for another six years, but I don’t even know whether I’m going to be able to stay in. People are pretty much worried whether they’ll have a job next month or next week, and that brings morale down,” he said.

The poll also reveals a high level of concern among enlisted service members about the Clinton Administration’s plans for shrinking the U.S. military beyond the “base force” of 1.6 million troops that military leaders and the George Bush Administration had identified as the “rock-bottom minimum” that U.S. forces could safely reach. The Clinton Administration has said it believes that the troop level could be safely reduced to 1.4 million.

While 14% of those surveyed said they believed that Clinton’s plans for downsizing the military “are necessary given the end of the Cold War,” a substantial majority of those polled, 65%, said that Clinton’s cuts “go too far in a still-dangerous world.”

While only 24% of the respondents pronounced themselves dissatisfied with life in the military, the level of worry over the drawdown may indicate storm clouds on the horizon of military recruitment and retention. Enlisted service members under the age of 25 indicated slightly higher levels of dissatisfaction with military life than those 26 years of age and older. Twenty-nine percent of the crucial 21- to 25-year-olds who are in the process of making decisions about whether or not to make the military a career expressed dissatisfaction.

In follow-up interviews with The Times, several of those surveyed expressed deep concern about the constricting effects of the drawdown on their prospects for advancement through the ranks. Others cited concerns about the decreasing quality and experience levels of those who remain in the service, while many complained of arbitrary and shifting standards that appear to determine how many--and which--service members will stay.

“There’s been a lot of the better soldiers going out,” said 25-year-old Army Sgt. Hector Laureano, a medical administrator and former infantryman based at Ft. Leonard Wood in Missouri. “The slick people--those who can beat the system--can stay in, the people who do favors for each other. It’s a good-old-boy system. The honest people who don’t want to play around and beat the system, they’re leaving.”

Added one 23-year-old submariner with almost six years in the Navy: “The people in charge--the leadership--is the problem. Most of the senior people around were treated one way and did things one way, so that’s the way things are going to be. You get new people in--very smart, excellent workers--and they see how things are messed up and who they’re working for, and they say: ‘I don’t want to stay in.’ ”

Like other enlisted personnel in their early and mid-20s, this submariner said it has become nearly impossible to get promoted in his grade and specialty.

In the end, service members may look as much to circumstances outside the military to determine their level of satisfaction and whether to remain. About half of those polled said they were doubtful that they could get a well-paying, secure civilian job in a relatively short time. A slightly lower 47% felt either somewhat confident or very confident of their job prospects on the outside.

Offering a view widely expressed in interviews with The Times, Forbis said Congress and the Clinton Administration could help stem the apparent slide in morale over the downsizing by identifying where the cutting will end.

“If we’re going to continue downsizing, we need to get a set number, a set of guidelines to let people know what they need to do to have a career,” he said. “People don’t feel that anymore, and they don’t know where it’s going to stop. It’s really scary.”

THE TIMES POLL: Military Personnel Skeptical of Cutbacks

A Times poll of enlisted men and women found them concerned that proposed defense cuts are too severe.

THEY SEE A STILL-DANGEROUS WORLD . . .

The Clinton Administration proposals for downsizing the military: Are necessary given end of Cold War: 14% Go too far in a still-dangerous world: 65% Don’t know: 21% *

. . . AND 37% CALL EFFORT INADEQUATE . . .

How would you rate the programs and services available to help victims of downsizing get going in civilian life? Adequate: 43% Inadequate: 37% Don’t know: 20% *

. . . RAISING DOUBTS ON OUTSIDE JOB PROSPECTS

If you had to leave the service in the next few months, how confident are you that you could get a well-paying civilian job in a relatively short time? Confident: 47% Doubtful: 49% Don’t know: 4% *

How poll was conducted: The Times Poll interviewed 2,346 enlisted personnel in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force outside of 38 military bases in the continental United States and Hawaii, from Feb. 11-16. Respondents were approached by Times interviewers at off-base commercial sites and residences and asked to fill out a questionnaire confidentially and anonymously. Each interviewee then placed the completed survey in a sealed envelope for return to The Times. Quota methods were utilized to ensure proper representation of service people within each service branch by sex, race and age. The sample was additionally weighted slightly to conform with Department of Defense demographic information for enlistee age, education and marital status. By branch, the sample includes 728 personnel from the Army, 591 from the Navy, 488 from the Marine Corps and 539 from the Air Force. Results for the total sample of enlistees are adjusted so that each branch of service is represented in its proper proportion. Though every attempt has been made to produce a representative sample of enlistees, this type of poll is subject to certain limitations. For example, only those personnel who were present in the targeted areas outside selected bases during the interviewing period had an opportunity to be polled. Additionally, there is no guarantee that the opinions of those who declined to participate in the survey are mirrored by those who agreed to take part.