Armed Forces Day to salute more than 1.3 million service members

Saturday is Armed Forces Day, a national holiday saluting the patriotic service of 1.3 million active-duty service members.

OGDEN – Saturday, May 21 is Armed Forces Day, a holiday saluting active-duty military members for their patriotic service to our country.

In 1949, Armed Forces Day replaced a hodge-podge of separate Army, Navy Marine Corps and Air Force birthday celebrations, thanks to the unification of our armed forces under the U.S. Department of Defense.

Over the years, the size of our military services have varied greatly.

At the present time, our armed forces total more than 1.3 million service men and women, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Roughly 175,000 of them are serving overseas.

As recently as August of 2021, the U.S. Department of Defense had about 30,000 troops in the Middle East. Since then, the U.S. military has withdrawn from Afghanistan after fighting a war there for nearly 20 years and reduced troop strength in Iraq and Syria.

We now have about 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria.

Pentagon estimates for other active duty personnel deployed overseas include about 91,000 in Asia and the Pacific; more than 66,000 in Europe; 2,200 in South America; and 600 in Africa.

All of those men and women are volunteers today, but that wasn’t always so.

Until the Spanish-American War of 1898, the U.S. Army and Navy has a peacetime strength of about 28,000 men. Congress depended upon the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to isolate us from foreign wars until conscription could bring fresh blood into the services.

In World War I, the U.S. drafted 2.9 million men, another 12 million+ for World War II and 3.6 million for the Korean War in 1950.

The Vietnam War was so unpopular, however, that Congress was forced to renounce conscription, pledging instead to raise an All Volunteer Force starting in 1973.

Nowadays, the Pentagon gets by with about 14 percent of the male 18-plus population and just 1 percent of the female 18-plus population.

When stateside, about 43 percent of all U.S. service members are stationed in just five states – Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia and California.

Here in Utah, the majority of active duty service members are in the U.S. Air Force, stationed at Hill Air Force Base just south of the Ogden metropolitan area.

In July 1939, Congress appropriated $8 million for the construction of the Ogden Air Depot.

After the U.S. entry into World War II in December of 1941, Hill Field quickly became an important maintenance and supply base, with round-the-clock operations geared to supporting the war effort.

Over the years, Hill Air Force Base has become the leading employer in Utah. The base employs approximately 5,500 active duty service members, 1,200 reservists, 13,000 federal civil servants and 4,000 civilian contractors.

The median age of service members is 27, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, and the average length of service for enlisted personnel is 6.4 years.

About one in seven military members are female.

The Pentagon says that 52 percent of military service member are married and that 86,000 service members are in dual-military marriages.

The median income of service members is $40,700.

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