End strength kinda like I posted here a couple days ago…

I don’t think the Pentagon got it wrong. I think you were asking the wrong question of the wrong report. A report on recruiting is just that. If I wanted to find out how many people worked for GM I would not look at GM’s hiring numbers.

The Army is over 500K strong with people leaving and joining every day. Recruiting goals, the lowering of which was the premise to your first article, are merely a prediction how many soldiers they think they’ll need. To do that they need to factor in retention vs. enlistments ending, deaths combat and otherwise, disciplinary actions, medical discharges, etc, etc.

The point is a change in any of the factors I named or others I can’t think of could cause the recruiting goal to change. All a drop in the recruiting goal means is the Army decided it needed less recruits to reach its desired end strength.