Since the beginning of the all-volunteer force in 1973, the military services have recruited hundreds of thousands of new enlistees each year. While these enlistees are required to sign contracts committing them to remain on active duty for a specified period of time, the services have found that many do not fulfill this commitment. In 1997, we reported on the reasons that enlistees do not complete their first 6 months of service. For this follow-on report, we have analyzed why enlistees who successfully complete their first 6 months of service are separated before their contract terms have expired. Before new recruits are sent to basic training, they are required to take an enlistment oath and sign a contract to serve one of the military services for a specified period of time, generally between 2 and 6 years. For enlistees who entered the services in fiscal year 1993, about 87 percent signed contracts for 2, 3, or 4 years. The breakdown of contract length is as follows: 8.2 percent for 2 years, 15 percent for 3 years, 64.2 percent for 4 years, 4.1 percent for 5 years, and 8.4 percent for 6 years. DOD defines attrition as the failure of an enlistee to complete his or her contractual obligation. Some attrition occurs during basic training, which lasts from 6 to 12 weeks, depending on the service. Some attrition occurs during initial skill technical training, which lasts for a few weeks to more than 1 year, depending on the enlistee’s occupation. Finally, some attrition occurs after enlistees have reported to their first duty assignments. By the 6-month point in enlistees’ first terms, most have completed both basic and initial skill training and have been assigned to their first duty stations, though this is not the case for enlistees whose occupations require longer and more extensive training. Two examples include the Air Force’s pararescue occupation, which requires 55 weeks of training beyond basic training and the Navy’s electronics technician rating, which requires 36.7 weeks of training after basic. In fiscal year 1993, 202,908 enlistees without prior military service signed first-term contracts. Of this number, 174,555 (86 percent) were men, and 28,353 (14 percent) were women. Women represented 22 percent of Air Force enlistees, 16 percent of Army enlistees, 13 percent of Navy enlistees, and 5 percent of Marine Corps enlistees. In terms of quality measures, 91.5 percent of all enlistees held high school diplomas, and 71.1 percent scored in the upper half of the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT). (More data on this group’s demographics is contained in app. I.) In presenting our detailed analysis of first-term attrition, we track all enlistees who entered the services in fiscal year 1993 up until the end of fiscal year 1997, 48 months later, since this is the latest available data. For enlistees with 2-, 3-, and 4-year contracts, we counted as attrition those enlistees who did not complete the full length of their contracts. For enlistees with 5- or 6-year contracts, we counted as attrition those enlistees who did not complete 48 months of their contracts. In January 1997, we reported that one-third of all first-term enlistees do not complete their first terms of service and that a significant portion of this attrition occurs in the enlistees’ first 6 months. In our report, we made recommendations to the Department of Defense (DOD) and the services on how they could improve their (1) use of separation codes to better analyze attrition, (2) recruiter incentive systems by tying these systems to recruits’ successful completion of basic training, and (3) screening of recruits by adding and revising medical screening forms and moving all drug testing to the Military Entrance Processing Commands. We testified on this work before the Subcommittee on Personnel, Senate Committee on Armed Services in March 1997. The recommendations contained in our report were incorporated into the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1998 (P.L. 105-85). In January 1998, we issued a more detailed report on recruiter incentive systems and the selection of recruiters. This work was also aimed at identifying what could be done to reduce attrition. Among our recommendations were for the services to (1) improve the screening of recruiters to ensure that those selected for recruiting duty possessed traits characteristic of successful recruiters; (2) require incoming recruits to undergo physical fitness tests before they report to basic training to screen out candidates likely to separate early due to poor physical conditioning; and (3) encourage the use of quarterly floating goals for recruiters to relieve pressure on them and to increase their morale and productivity. In March 1998, we testified before the Senate Committee on Armed Services’ Subcommittee on Personnel and the House Committee on National Security’s Subcommittee on Military Personnel on how well the services were managing attrition and the screening of recruiters and their recruits. The Chairman and the Ranking Minority Member of the Senate Committee on Armed Services’ Subcommittee on Personnel asked that we continue our work in the area of attrition by analyzing the historical separation rates of enlisted personnel who serve 6 months but leave military service before completing their first contract terms. While we developed some overall historical attrition data, we focused our detailed analysis on enlistees who entered the services in fiscal year 1993 and were separated by the end of fiscal year 1997. Specifically, we determined (1) the rate and timing of attrition, (2) the extent of DOD’s investment in recruiting and training first-term enlistees, (3) reasons for attrition after training, (4) servicemembers’ perceptions of quality-of-life factors that contribute to attrition, and (5) actions DOD and the services are taking to reduce enlistees’ attrition. We also agreed to provide attrition data for enlistees by educational background, AFQT score, age at enlistment, gender, and race/ethnic group (see app. I). To determine historical first-term attrition rates, we obtained data from the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC), whose primary purpose is to support the management needs of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. The data covered all enlistees without prior service who entered the military from fiscal year 1982 through 1993 and included the gender, educational background, age at enlistment, race, AFQT score, occupational code, and separation code (for those who left the services). To ensure a standardized reporting of attrition rates, we measured attrition at the 48-month point for all enlistees entering the services from fiscal year 1982 through 1993. These groups of enlistees reached their 48-month points of service from fiscal year 1986 through 1997. Our calculation of attrition did not include the early separation of enlistees with 5- or 6-year contracts who were discharged in their final 1 to 2 years of service. However, because the majority of first-term contracts are for 4 years, we made our calculation at the 48-month point to include the most recent data available (fiscal year 1997). Also, like DMDC, we did not count as attrition persons allowed to separate before the end of their terms through early release programs. Because our method does not include the attrition of enlistees with 5- or 6-year contracts who were separated in their final 1 or 2 years of service and because it does not include separations under early release programs, our information on attrition rates is somewhat conservative. Although we did not extensively test the reliability of DMDC’s database, we did discuss the Center’s computation of attrition rates with DMDC officials and recalculated these rates ourselves. Our recalculated rates were comparable to DMDC’s rates. We also compared our calculated attrition rates and categories of separation with information in the services’ databases, and officials in each military service who track attrition verified the accuracy of our data on reasons for early separation. To determine how much the services spend in recruiting and training each enlistee, we interviewed cost analysts at the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), Fort Monroe, Virginia; the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Quantico, Virginia; the Air Force’s Air Education and Training Command, Randolph Air Force Base, Texas; and the Navy’s Office of the Chief of Naval Education and Training Command, Pensacola, Florida. We also discussed the calculation of the services’ cost of recruiting and training enlistees with officials from the Center for Naval Analyses, the U.S. Army Cost and Economic Analysis Center, and the Naval Center for Cost Analysis, as well as service officials who track attrition. Because the services calculate recruiting and training costs differently and because analyzing the various costing methodologies was beyond the scope of our review, we formulated costs using data provided to us by DOD-level officials in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Readiness) and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Force Management Policy). To determine reasons that enlistees were separated between their 7th and 48th month of service, we first analyzed DMDC data by separation code. The separation codes included in DMDC’s database are taken from each servicemember’s official discharge form, the DD Form 214, “Certificate of Release or Discharge From Active Duty.” We then interviewed 254 first-term enlistees and 41 supervisors to gain insight into root causes for early separation.