After several years of rapid growth in defense budgets, measures to reduce federal budget deficits have led to projections of a substantial decline in military spending over the next decade. As a result of limits on discretionary spending in the Budget Control Act of 2011 ( P.L. 112-25 ), the Department of Defense (DOD) is considering how to absorb a reduction of about $490 billion in planned programs through FY2021. Senior defense officials have said that such reductions can be managed, but they also warn that that trade-offs among defense programs will require a strategically grounded re-assessment of priorities, and deeper cuts would weaken critical capabilities. A common theme is, unless reductions are managed prudently, budget cuts of the magnitude required, let alone larger cuts, would risk creating a hollow force As former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put it: I am determined that we not repeat the mistakes of the past, where the budget targets were met mostly by taking a percentage off the top of everything, the simplest and most politically expedient approach both inside the Pentagon and outside of it. That kind of "salami-slicing" approach preserves overhead and maintains force structure on paper, but results in a hollowing-out of the force from a lack of proper training, maintenance and equipment—and manpower. That's what happened in the 1970s—a disastrous period for our military—and to a lesser extent during the late 1990s. The Administration has invoked the specter of a hollow force to describe what could happen to the U.S. Armed Forces if significant cuts to the defense budget are enacted. While some Members and staff might be familiar with the hollow force and its causes, newer Members and staff might not have a similar understanding of the conditions that led to the hollow force in the past and what actions were taken to improve the situation. Given the Administration's plan to reduce troop strength in response to budgetary limitations and a new strategic direction, Congress—in its oversight, authorization, and appropriations role—will likely encounter Administration officials who claim that the U.S. military faces the prospect of once again becoming a hollow force As Congress will play a major role in shaping the Armed Forces both in terms of size, capabilities, and how it is equipped and trained, a nuanced understanding of how the military once became "hollow" could provide a useful context for current and anticipated legislative action. Recent warnings about the need to avoid creating a hollow force evoke two periods in history in which the term was commonly used to characterize the state of the U.S. military—post-Vietnam and the 1990s. Matters of concern, though, differed considerably in those periods. At the end of the 1970s, the gravest concerns had to do with the quality of personnel. It was widely perceived that U.S. military conventional warfighting capabilities that had declined as the Vietnam War came to a close did not appear to be recovering adequately, particularly as the military services struggled to adapt to the All-Volunteer Force (AVF) instituted in 1973. Concerns about the quality of the volunteer force in general were compounded by apparent shortfalls in filling military units with personnel properly trained and experienced to handle their duties. In the early 1990s, in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War, U.S. military forces were regarded as highly capable, but the worry was that steep cuts in the budget might rapidly erode hard-won gains in personnel quality and also in the quality of training and operations. Unless pay and benefits, training, equipment, and personnel support efforts were sustained, in this view, short-term military readiness would suffer, forces would lose the edge they had achieved after years of intense effort, and capabilities would be increasingly difficult to restore in the future. By the mid-to-late 1990s, warnings about the hollow force took a couple of different turns. Initially, a persistent complaint was that repeated commitments to contingency operations abroad put a strain on personnel and disrupted preparations for major conflicts. New concerns about recruiting and retention also began to emerge. By the end of the 1990s, the main issue had changed to funding for major weapons programs. With defense spending limited by ongoing battles over budget deficits, DOD elected to protect readiness-related funds for operations, but at the expense of extending a "procurement holiday" in which relatively little money was available to finance new weapons platforms. Investments for future capabilities, in this view, were sacrificed to protect the appearance of high levels of readiness in the short term. The following discussion provides a context for the current discussion of hollow forces by offering more detailed information on budget trends and other matters that relate to hollow forces when it was first discussed with regard to personnel matters in the 1970s, and as it has been redefined periodically since then. Most military experts agree that the U.S. military was in poor shape after the end of the Vietnam War. The end of the draft in 1973 initially compounded the problems of the U.S. Armed Forces. The early years of the all-volunteer force witnessed a significant drop in education levels and test scores among recruits, widespread recruitment scandals, and increases in bad discharges and peacetime desertions. One study noted that "because the military of this era was not viewed as an attractive career option, none of the Services had much luck in accessing quality recruits." Service in the U.S. Armed Forces during this period was not particularly attractive for a variety of reasons. Military base pay increased by 61% in nominal terms (not adjusted for inflation) between 1969 and 1973, in the run-up to the AVF. But salaries did not keep up with high levels of inflation during the remainder of the 1970s and fell progressively further and further behind the cost of living. By 1980, base pay had declined by almost 20% in real terms (adjusted for inflation) since the end of FY1972 (see Figure 1 ). "Catch up" pay raises of 11.7% in 1980 and 14.3% in 1981 narrowed the gap, but were not enough to close it, in part because high levels of inflation continued in those years. Post-inflation declines in take-home pay in the 1970s may also have aggravated some widely perceived problems in the structure of pay raises initially provided to implement the AVF. The initial AVF pay raises were disproportionately skewed toward inducing enlistment and keeping junior service members in the military. Non-commissioned officers, with many more years of service, were given smaller increases, and by 1973 made only about 30% more in pay than a newly enlisted member. In part, the structure of pay raises reflected the premise that incentives to remain in the force were very strong for personnel with more than 10 years or so of service time because of the prospect of full retirement benefits after reaching 20 years of service. Beyond that, benefits for military families, such as housing and moving allowances, also lost value, both relative to inflation and in proportion to base pay, making it relatively more difficult for service members with families to make ends meet at a time when a larger share of the force was getting older and having families. By 1979, the salaries of very junior enlisted had dropped so low that the income of an E-4 with a small family was below the U.S. government's official poverty level. Also in 1979, Army commissaries reportedly accepted almost $10 million in food stamps from service members, which drew a great deal of media and political attention. As pay and benefits eroded over the course of the 1970s, a growing shortage of qualified recruits was directly reflected in assessments of unit readiness. By 1979, the Army fell 15,000 short of its recruitment goal and the Navy was short 20,000 petty officers. Soldier quality was also of concern. In 1980, only 50% of those recruited had graduated from high school. Statistics for drug use, crime, and unauthorized absences—while not as high as during the Vietnam War—were considered unacceptable by defense officials. The Army signed up so many poor-quality soldiers during the late 1970s that 40% of new recruits were separated from the Army for disciplinary reasons or unsuitability prior to the completion of their first enlistment. Throughout the force, serious shortages in qualified soldiers became a pervasive problem affecting unit readiness ratings. By 1979, 6 of 10 Army divisions stationed in the United States were assessed as "not combat-ready." In Europe, one of the four U.S. divisions facing the Warsaw Pact, presumably the highest priority units in the Army, was also rated "not combat-ready." The Commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, General Fredrick Kroesen, publically complained that the U.S. Army in Europe had become "obsolescent." Some describe the readiness posture in the Reserve components—which constituted the nation's strategic reserve—as even more dire than the Active component. Reserve forces suffered from the same personnel shortages as did their active duty counterparts, but equipment and training deficiencies were even more pronounced. In terms of equipment, shortages were widespread and the Reserves often had to make do with "hand me down" equipment from the Active component—equipment that was not always in the best of condition. Training time for Reserve forces was also considered inadequate in relation to their assigned wartime missions. While personnel issues were at the heart of concerns about the hollow force, shortages of critical equipment, equipment repair, and availability of repair parts were also recurring apprehensions. Some officials also complained about declines in operational training. It is generally difficult to show a strict correlation between funding for operation and maintenance, however, and commonly used measures of military readiness. By the late 1970s, some important readiness measures showed a considerable decline. The total funding available for operation and maintenance relative to the size of the force, however, did not decline after the Vietnam War, but continued to grow at a very consistent rate above inflation.