The US military is facing a growing recruiting shortfall, a shortfall so large that legislators are
getting concerned.
The Army has to recognize that there's been an evolution in that young population, and if you're going
to target that young population for service, you've got to make it appealing to them.
The pool of potential recruits has been dropping for years.
So the three biggest reasons for a small pool of eligible recruits are criminal backgrounds, health care
and obesity specifically, and financial issues.
The Army and the other military services this year are facing.
What they're describing is the most challenging recruiting environment since the all volunteer force
era began in 1973.
The latest figures show that only about 23% of young men and women in the United States meet the criteria to
join, whether that's physical fitness, health, criminal background check.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are obviously very concerned about the military's recruitment efforts
because this is coming at a time where Russia's war in Ukraine is changing global order as well as China.
Saber rattling with Taiwan and in the South China Sea.
When unemployment is low, the military struggles to get recruits.
And with unemployment hovering around 3.5%, it can be tough to convince young people to sign up.
The fiscal year for the US army ends in September and the army has only reached 50% of its recruiting goal
for the year as of mid-July.
The US military needs a lot of people.
The US army alone must get tens of thousands to sign up every year to replace those who leave the service.
The Army had a goal of signing up 60,000 people this year, but according to the Secretary of the Army, they
could end up close to 15,000 short of that goal.
Each sister service branch is going to also have to think about their retention tactics, whether it's
offering enlistment bonuses or other incentives to keep people in our current military force.
One tool the military has in times like these are big cash bonuses.
These bonuses usually apply to certain understaffed jobs and also have stipulations such as finishing
training to be fully paid out.
The Army is offering $40,000 for Special Forces candidates, and the Navy is offering bonuses that can
range up to over $100,000 for eligible veterans to sign up.
Keeping troops in who are looking to exit the services.
Another way to bolster numbers.
The Marines have recently had some success in convincing people to stay in a major hang up to
recruiting more new soldiers are the fitness and academic requirements.
Some services are struggling more than the others.
The Army is certainly struggling the most they are also the biggest.
So that would just make sense. They're revisiting some of the fitness standards and some of the academic
standards right now to try and scramble for the end of this fiscal year.
If you're going to be a cyber technician, do you really need to be able to lift X number of pounds and run
five miles?
I think over time, we're going to have to target the expectations of our service members based on the kinds
of jobs they're doing.
The military has found itself getting dragged into domestic politics more than in the past and in new
ways.
Disproportionately of the age group of American youth that we're talking about, the military recruits from
certain geographical concentrations of America.
It's more geographical than it is class or race or gender specific.
And these areas tend to be more conservative.
Those that tend to be interested come from Southern states where we have a lot of installations and from
families in which there is at least been one family member that served.
So 80% of our service members now have legacy in their background.
We're entering a space where more people on the right and more people on the left have more bones to pick
with the military and the kind of life that they're going to have to live there.
So there is this perception about the military is going woke and there are all these cultural wars inside the
inside the military.
But to be honest with you, I'm not sure how much of that actually trickles down to that young 18 year old
recruit from Middle America who was trying to decide what he or she wants to do to to improve themselves and
their future.
The state by state fight over abortion rights could also become a factor.
Military personnel stationed in one state could have access to abortion rights, while others may not.
There's a potential that you'll have some folks who are hesitant to join because they don't know if they're
going to get sent somewhere where they don't have access to health care that they believe is a human
right.
Health factors have always been a reason for the shrinking pool of recruits, but new factors are
exacerbating the crisis.
If you've now got legal marijuana in much of America, and that's not okay for the troops to have with it not
being federally legalized.
The Information Age is also changing how recruits are screened.
Perhaps certain data and information that's available now to recruiters that wasn't available in the past can
possibly skew or change attitudes towards a potential recruit.
Military Health System Genesis is a new computer system that connects a variety of health care record systems
together, allowing a recruiter to see a candidate's health background during the recruiting process and
determine if they are eligible to serve.
When they turned on electronic health records systems, that made it so they could see the entirety of
applicants, prescription histories and almost all of their medical records, whether they were seeing
military or civilian doctors think, if your medical records are in MyChart or one of those
online health management portals, the Army can see those.
Now, if you're an applicant trying to join because you sign a records release as part of that process.
And so informal practices of coaching recruits to omit certain parts of their medical history to
streamline their enlistment came to a screeching halt.
In a bureaucracy as large as this one it is.
The Defense Department is the largest bureaucracy on the planet.
And what is large is this one.
I'm okay with informed individuals making specific choices on a case by case basis to sort of let in
certain people when needed, even if it's A gray area of the rules.
And this would certainly ...
This could slow that down, that transparency.
I also would put it on the Army in particular to look at whether or not that should disqualify if you had
ADHD as a child but no longer have ADHD.
Why should that be a disqualifying factor if you had asthma as a young child but don't have it now?
So I do think that there needs to be a complete reboot of the recruitment
evaluation.
Now, the stakes are really real for some of these medical standards.
And when it comes to other ones related to mental health, there's very real concerns about whether the
military is the right environment for people who have previously shown symptoms of mental illness.
But at the same time, if you can have 50% of your ranks filled with perfect soldiers
from a medical perspective, or 100% of the ranks filled with people who are either perfect in the eyes
of the medical standards or otherwise are able to pull it together and do their job.
You know, you've got to go with the latter.
The COVID vaccine is one point of controversy that is not going away among the armed forces.
This was a unique scenario in terms of its timeline, development and testing, as you know.
And so that's where service members are pushing back.
But ultimately, policymakers and our military leadership have a responsibility to ensure we have a
force that is ready to fight if needed.
And this means a healthy force.
So if at the time policymakers thought a vaccine was required to keep the force healthy, then it should have
been instituted.
But as I said, things continuously change and have to be reevaluated.
Regardless of how you consider it as a health policy decision.
The fact of the matter is, is that around a third of Americans between the ages of 18 and 40, so kind of
that prime demographic that the military needs to reach.
About a third of them aren't fully vaccinated, which means they're completely off the table from the start.
Now, having the COVID vaccine is going to prevent you from getting Covid, but it's also going to prevent you
from spreading it.
And you know that the U.S.S.
Teddy Roosevelt had over 600 cases and one service member actually died.
So I just don't think that that argument carries a lot of weight.
Another component that is factoring into the Pentagon's subpar military recruitment is morale.
And if there's even motivation to serve.
Now, Americans faith and trust in all institutions are declining from police to Supreme Court to church and
organized religion.
But the numbers show that for the US military in particular, it's nothing short of a collapse in the
last three years.
It's very specific.
I think it's important to differentiate between decisions taken by policymakers and the professionalism
and conduct of the US armed forces.