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.
