Senator CLARK. Perhaps you associates?

would like to introduce your

Mr. PAUL. Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman; on my right is William Gorham, who is Deputy Assistant Secretary in my Office for Requirements; and on my left is assistant to Mr. Gorham, Mr. Harold Wool, who is his assistant on manpower policy matters.

Senator CLARK. We are very happy to have both of you gentlemen with us. Mr. Paul, would you want to summarize briefly what you have in your statement?

STATEMENT OF HON. NORMAN S. PAUL, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE (MANPOWER); ACCOMPANIED BY WILLIAM GORHAM, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY (MANPOWER), (SPECIAL STUDIES AND REQUIREMENTS); AND HAROLD WOOL, DIRECTOR, POLICY PLANNING

Mr. PAUL. Mr. Chairman, it is a long statement and inasmuch as it is in the record I would not want to take the committee's time to go over it. I would summarize perhaps in 2 or 3 minutes what I consider to be the high points of it.

We have a rather fixed manpower requirement in the military; it is now running about 2.7 million men and women a year.

Senator CLARK. As I understand it your projection as to the size of future military manpower requirements is pretty flexible, in view of the unsettled condition of world affairs. But assuming that things stay about the way they are, would your manpower requirements also stay about the way they are?

Mr. PAUL. Yes, sir; and as nearly as we can project it it will remain relatively stable, I think, at roughly 2.7 million people, unless some new emergency arises that necessitates

Senator CLARK. Which has always happened.

Mr. PAUL. Yes. I do not see any prospect, Mr. Chairman, for any major reduction in that number over the next several years.

Senator CLARK. That depends a good deal as to whether any progress is made in the area of disarmament.

Mr. PAUL. Yes, sir; perhaps I was building in an assumption there. Senator CLARK. Please go ahead, sir.

Mr. PAUL. Well, we have this reasonably fixed requirement of about 2.7 million a year, and we have an additional 1 million people who are in a drill-pay status; that is in an active status in our reserves.

Now, we have had a special problem in terms of requirements because of the present facts of modern military technology. We have to organize our personnel and the jobs on the basis of a very specialized system of occupational classification. Just by way of example which appears in my statement, we have cataloged a total of 1,500 enlisted Occupational specialty titles currently in use in the four services which I think gives you some idea of the way the structure of the military has changed necessarily because of the complexity of the weapons they now have to deal with.

Senator CLARK. Can you give us in general terms the categories in which those 1,500 occupational specialties fit? I notice in your prepared statement you put a good deal of stress on electronics.

Mr. PAUL. Yes, sir; your enlisted skill structure runs roughly as follows in percentage terms:

In the services element, including the on-going food service, motor transport, et cetera, 12 percent of our personnel; in the ground combat category, which includes the Infantry, Artillery, et cetera, 14 percent; electronics as a broad category, including radio operators, aircraft control, et cetera, is about 14 percent, and that is quite a large raise from what it had been previously; a large variety of other technical areas, 8 percent; mechanics and repairmen is 25 percent, and that is a percentage that stays fairly constant, although the requirements for those people are much more demanding than they have been in the past because of the weapons and the vehicles they have to deal with; administrative and clerical, includes 20 percent, round out the 100 per

cent.

Senator CLARK. Is that going up or down in that category?
Mr. PAUL. That has stayed pretty stable, Mr. Chairman.

Senator CLARK. Generally speaking, do you rely largely on your own training efforts to procure these specialists, or do you go out looking for people with skills?

Mr. PAUL. We make every effort we can to recruit into skills but we have very little success getting the people with the skills we need. Senator CLARK. As I understand it, one of your major problems is holding them after you train them.

Mr. PAUL. That is correct, sir, and we have in this respect I think a problem that is pretty much the opposite from civilian industry. Civilian industry turnover rates are typically the highest among the semiskilled and unskilled, and least in the white-collar and professional groups. We have exactly the opposite problem. The very occupational groups which require the greatest training investment and the highest aptitudes, we have had the poorest reenlistment rates. have tried to lick this problem although I think in a way it is unlickable through a variety of devices. We have given the military a general pay raise, although it as not of sufficient magnitude to attract highly skilled people, because they can find higher jobs on the outside. We have initiated proficiency pays for skills.

Senator CLARK. Could you give us an example.

Mr. PAUL. I would say an electronics technician would remain the No. 1 example in the enlisted force.

Senator CLARK. How much of a premium were you able to pay him? Mr. PAUL. We are able now through the program which we just revised a month ago and therefore have not had too much experience with, to pay an additional $100 a month, so that a man who is a sergeant first class would be making a salary equivalent of $645 a month which you can see is not too competitive a salary when you think of what this man could earn on the outside.

Senator CLARK. Does he have to take care of his own living out of that?

Mr. PAUL. He has a quarters or subsistence allowance, but we were including that in his total compensation.

Senator CLARK. So that would not be in addition to the quartering? Mr. PAUL. No sir; it would not, and that is a highly skilled man. Senator CLARK. Do you have any way of knowing what happens to these people that you train in a skill after they leave you? To what extent do they find employment in the civilian labor force?

Mr. PAUL. I knew you were particularly interested in that question, Mr. Chairman. I regret to say that we do not have any comprehensive statistics on what happens to them after they leave us. We do know very precisely the skills which they have acquired while they are in the military service. I will give you one example of the problem. The number of trained aircraft mechanics who have left the service in the last 6 years total 124,600 people, and that exceeds the total number of civilian aircraft mechanics which is only 112,000 as reported in the last census.

Senator CLARK. I am not sure I got the impact of that. Would you mind repeating it?

Mr. PAUL. Well, repeating the figures. The number of trained aircraft mechanics who have left service in the last 6 years totals 124,600, and that exceeds the total number of civilian aircraft mechanics, which is 112,000 as reported in the 1960 census.

Senator CLARK. What do you think happened to them?

Mr. PAUL. I would judge that if they are trained aircraft mechanics they probably had an intelligence quotient which was sufficient to allow them to retrain into other occupations but they obviously did not find jobs as aircraft mechanics.

Senator CLARK. They might either be downgraded or upgraded. Mr. PAUL. Yes, sir; either way.

Senator CLARK. What else could a trained aircraft mechanic do? What kind of skills might he be retrained in?

Mr. PAUL. Well, I should think

Senator CLARK. He could go to engineering school, could he not? Mr. PAUL. Yes, sir; he probably could.

Senator CLARK. I imagine many of these people who left you are still pretty young.

Mr. PAUL. Yes, sir.

Senator CLARK. Having acquired a basic skill they might have the ambition to go on to a technical school or junior college.

Mr. PAUL. If this particular individual has stayed with us for, say two tours, 6 years or 8 years, he will have acquired several thousand dollars worth of training, a large part of which would be transferable. Senator CLARK. Do you have any general judgment in the absence of statistics which proves what happens to these people?

Mr. PAUL. If I may defer that question to Mr. Wool I think we have an answer to it.

Mr. Wool. We have followed up on a few specialties. The Air Force a few years ago did make a followup study on several of its electronics and other specialties and they found, for example, that over 30 percent of the electronics technicians who were employed a year after they left the Air Force, after one tour of duty, were working in what were considered related jobs. They were working in electronics or electrical work. On the other hand, in other specialties of less skilled type relatively few were working in similar jobs. We have had other similar scattered information. We are looking forward to more comprehensive data being developed by the Labor Department and other agencies in this area in the near future.

Senator CLARK. Thank you.

Now, Mr. Paul, will you continue with your summary.

Mr. PAUL. Our procurment policies was the second section of my statement, Mr. Chairman. I merely reiterated what I am sure has

been well known to this committee that we try to rely as much as we can on voluntary manpower sources. We want to do this because it is the way it should be done, of course. The volunteer is also likely to be better motivated than the conscript.

Senator CLARK. You succeeded everywhere but the Army. The Navy and the Air Force rely on voluntary recruitment. Mr. PAUL. Yes, sir.

Senator CLARK. But the draft is a big help to you?

Mr. PAUL. The draft, I would say, is indispensable at this time. It is necessary to meet an actual requirement of bodies for the Army. We have conducted some very interesting polls of the attitudes of young men to determine what makes them or does not make them go into the service.

You might be interested, Mr. Chairman, in having them for the record. It is not a part of my statement. This was in a 5-percent Army-wide sample survey last November, we asked the question: "When you were a civilian without previous military service how much influence did the Selective Service draft have upon your decision to enlist in the Regular Army?" One possible response was: "None, I wanted to be in the Army." Now, in the highest category of intelligence, group 1, 21.7 percent were in that category. A second response was "Very little influence, I most likely would have enlisted if there had been no draft," 14 percent, of our highest intelligence category made this response.

Senator CLARK. How high is your intelligence category in terms of the IQ?

Mr. PAUL. Group 1 we would class as among the top 7 percent. The interesting figure to me, Mr. Chairman, was "very much influenced, I would not have enlisted had there been no draft."

Thirty-nine and eight-tenths percent, or by far the largest percentage of the group 1 category, answered in that form. And in group 2, which is a slightly less high level of intelligence, 23.6 percent, answered that they would not have enlisted had there been no draft, so that the fact of the draft is a very important influence upon enlistment. and the Navy and Air Force readily admit this, perhaps not so readily

Senator CLARK. Nonetheless it is true.
Mr. PAUL. It is a very important factor.

Senator CLARK. I think you stated that 23 years is the age of the majority, about where you get most who go into the armed services? Mr. PAUL. That is the draft, Mr. Chairman. Actually our age is much lower than that, our enlistees, our voluntary enlistees are generally in the 17 to 19 years of age category, but the average draft age is close to 23. We feel that as a result of the President's recent decision to put married men in a lower order of call this will reduce that age somewhat, but it will still

Senator CLARK. It is going to increase the population problem very substantially, too.

Mr. PAUL. We have been afraid of that. It is too early. We do not have any statistics on that.

Senator CLARK. You pick your draftees of 23 and this is fine from the point of view of the armed services. But what is this doing to the educational opportunities, to the morale, and to the careers of young

Americans who have this threat of military service hanging over their head which they cannot get rid of unless they enlist earlier. If they do not enlist earlier they are stuck at age 23 with how long? Two to four years.

Mr. PAUL. Two years, and then many of them have a Reserve obligation after that.

Senator CLARK. Yes.

Do you not feel any responsibility to gear the whole draft and selective service policy into the overall manpower needs of the country? How do you justify the position you are presently taking?

Mr. PAUL. Mr. Chairman, that is a problem of very immediate concern to us. The President has ordered us, as a matter of fact, to come up to him early next year with the results of a very thorough study of this entire subject, the objective of which would be to get the age of knowledge of whether or not you are going to be called up for military service down lower.

Now, this is a complex problem, it is one in which General Hersey is far more expert than I, Mr. Chairman, but I think we recognize that this is a serious problem and I hope by some means or other we can get to a point where a young man at the age of 20 or thereabouts can more or less know whether he is going to have to serve.

Senator CLARK. I would say that if you were drafting people at the age of 17 or 18 instead of the age of 23, this would make a very considerable contribution to solving the problems of school dropouts, of careers for young people, of enabling them to get their military service out of the way before they have to think in terms of a career or matrimony. What would be wrong from your point of view in dropping the draft age down from 23 to 18?

Mr. PAUL. That would deny us the skills that are possessed by the older men.

Senator CLARK. It would make your training program much more difficult?

Mr. PAUL. Somewhat.

Senator CLARK. Don't most of the draftees leave you anyway?

Mr. PAUL. Yes, they do, but we are able to get 2 years or reasonably good service out of most of these men.

Senator CLARK. Through your screening process in the draft, are you able to confine yourself mainly to high school graduates or even young people who have had a couple of years of college.

Mr. PAUL. We do get rather large numbers of non-high-school graduates, we also get numbers of graduates. We could give you percentages on that.

Senator CLARK. You only take a relatively small number of those who are eligible for the draft, don't you?

Mr. PAUL. Potentially, yes, sir.

Senator CLARK. Then what are your policies in determining among the many who are eligible who will be taken?

Mr. PAUL. Well, we have two standards, of course: we have the physical standards and the mental standards, and the physical standards are just about the same as they were in World War II, so there has not been any significant change there.

Senator CLARK. What percentage of potential draftees are rejected for physical reasons?

Mr. PAUL. About 17 percent.