Posted on 06/19/2019 4:36:50 PM PDT by robowombat
Panel Says U.S. Military Recruitment Pool Must Broaden
By: John Grady June 17, 2019 1:17 PM
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Recruiting young men and women from military families has succeeded in attracting applicants, however doing so questions the services’ long-term ability to attract people from other backgrounds with new talents needed for the future, a panel of personnel experts said Friday.
Focusing on military families for recruits worked into the 1960s when between 40 and 50 percent of the male population had served in the military, but since then that percentage has shrunk dramatically “down to 7 percent” now “who have a history” of close family members serving in the all-volunteer armed forces, Lt. Col. Brad Orgeron said, drawing on his 20 years of experience as an Air Force pilot and commander.
Orgeron was part of a panel speaking Friday at the Center for New American Security’s 2019 National Security Conference.
Emma Moore, a research fellow at the Center for New American Security, added the 7 percent number Orgeron quoted is still shrinking.
“The military wants the talent” from that larger pool of young people, “but it doesn’t know to how to bring them in,” Moore said. She and other panelists cited Army Gen. Mark Milley’s comments that about 80 percent of his service’s recruits come from those families. Milley, the incoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the Army fell more than 6,500 recruits short of its goal.
The Army’s answer, Moore said, is to continue doing what worked in the past: offer bonuses, step up advertising and assign more soldiers to recruiting duty. Whether this strategy works again isn’t guaranteed. Only about a third of young people consider the military as an option to pursue after high school or college, Moore said.
“The connection [between] the military and society is changing” because so few people are serving, said Peter Levine, a former personnel specialist at the Pentagon and now with the Institute for Defense Analyses. The real challenge, he said, is drawing in the needed talents through contractors.
“We need to bring in new types of people,” Levine said.
While the Navy and the Marine Corps met mission last year, the services “have to get out of the 18 to 22 recruiting pool” to find the talents — cyber, computing, artificial intelligence, languages — they need in the long term, Moore said.
In an age when American technological overmatch is no longer guaranteed against adversaries like China and Russia, Laura Junor, from National Defense University, asked “have we identified the skill sets” needed and how to recruit these individuals.
“I wish the military focused as much on the intellectual [in recruiting] as much as the physical,” Junor said.
Levine said, “we are better in [recruiting and retaining talent in a number of fields] than our adversaries.” The prime reason, he said, stems from “we trust [junior officers and noncommissioned officers and civilians] in ways our adversaries don’t.” This gives them the flexibility to meet shifting circumstances and makes their work more rewarding, he said.
A recruit renders a salute during a capping ceremony inside USS Trayer at Recruit Training Command. US Navy Photo
When the services look outside the areas and populations it traditionally recruits from, the strictures on height and weight and the use of controlled substances — specifically marijuana usage — limit the pool of possible recruits, the panel agreed. More than two-thirds of American youth between 18 and 23 do not meet Pentagon recruiting standards, USNI News previously reported.
For a large portion of the military’s target recruit population, Levine said “the military is alien to them,” so they don’t see possible careers outside of the combat arms.
The difference between the services in recruiting and retention is the “Army is trying to grow right now” and “that is always difficult in a good economy,” Levine later told USNI News after the session.
As for the Navy and the Air Force, which are both planning to grow in the coming years by adding more ships to the fleet and squadrons, “they are trying to be creative about” keeping enlisted recruits today. Ther services must if they’re to have an experienced NCO corps in the future.
“It’s a fight. I think they are meeting it,” Levine said.
Recruits from Recruit Training Command at Naval Station Great Lakes prepare to parade the state flags of the U.S. for the opening ceremony of the 2017 Department of Defense (DoD) Warrior Games. US Navy Photo
The Navy is setting retention goals at 80 percent for sailors it is enlisting now and the immediate future to meet future staffing needs. If fleet size were stable, the Navy needs to retain about 55 percent of first-term sailors, service officials have testified.
Retention of pilots and aircraft maintains will always remain a problem for the services, Orgeron said during the session. “Pilots want to fly” but if the aircraft are down for maintenance and the parts aren’t available, that adds up to career frustration for them, as well as the maintainers.
A good economy and commercial airlines hiring add pressure to the services’ retention efforts. The decision can also come down to family considerations. He said he had moved 11 times in his 20-year career.
There’s also a new twist in the aviation recruiting and retention challenges, Junor added. The services “are struggling how to deal with UAV pilots” when considering strategies for attracting and retaining these specialties. The Air Force opened its remotely-piloted aircraft field to enlisted members to broaden the number of applicants in 2016, to return commissioned pilots to manned aircraft.
Recruit from Muslim “refugees” and illegal immigrants. What could possibly go wrong.
Like mayor Buttigig?
Bring back the draft.
Get rid of the deviant freaks, fire the generals and DoD civilians that actively support social engineering that props them up and start acting like a go to war organization again, then maybe you’ll meet or recruiting goals.
A path to citizenship would help. I remember Philippino nationals with engineering degrees serving in the Navy. They worked as stewards. Polak recruitment once Ft. Trump is opened. How many Mexicans would enlist?
Maybe more Americans would consider a military career if they hadn’t already figured out that he U.S. military is primarily a mercenary force for Islamic royal families all over the Middle East.
Back in Cleveland, back in the day, the “p” word was strictly frowned upon.
Some form of compulsory national service is needed. Any new selective service system would have to have insurances that include all demographics. The Viet Nam war war fought by middle class whites and minority conscripts.
“a panel of experts” = nobody
““The military wants the talent” from that larger pool of young people, “but it doesn’t know to how to bring them in,” “
Increase the pay, and kick out trannies. Remove women from anything combat or sea duty. Make it manly and male again. Don’t expect to have a lotta 19 year old boys sign up to have a female platoon commander.
They now have sex integrated Chicks are in Ranger school and USMC infantry.
When a 19 year old male tells someone back home how tough Ranger school, Marine boot camp, or SF Q course were, what do you think it does to the situation when he is told “Oh yeah, my sister did that”. Or “Ranger school, my friend’s mom went there”.
Idiots.
Bring back conscription.
“Compulsory national service” = Get a job and pay your bills. That’s it. Forcing Americans to serve a government that doesn’t even remotely resemble the government that was established under the U.S. Constitution is a terrible idea.
Maybe they should raise the pay scale?
Works every time in the private sector.
“Some form of compulsory national service is needed. “
Bullcrap. In the old days maybe. But a draft is flat out evil when you are turning the new recruits over to a lesbian, a tranny, a homo, a wiccan, officer or NCO.
The hell with that.
Not to mention that involuntary servitude is unconstitutional except as punishment for a crime.
That's not quite true. It is the popular P.C. propaganda spewed by the likes of Jesse Jackson, et.al.
Check out the Vietnam casualty data. It shows that blacks in Vietnam roughly equivalent to the percentage of the civilian population. And, the casualties equate the same percentage of the total.
It is a very interesting read, if you are at all interested.
“Some form of compulsory national service is needed”
Also lots of people out there still have daughters that were raised like girls, Christian girls. They want to go start families and make a home.
A draft will send them into a den of horny men and lesbians.
No sale.
This article is the biggest bunch of bunk I’ve read in a long time.
The military doesn’t recruit from “military families”.
They recruit from schools and elsewhere. They recruit all over the place.
This is bullshit based on some stats about some recruits that volunteer coming in from previous service families and then turning that on its head to say that the military recruits from military families.
And then there’s the whine about what a small percentage of our pop serves in the military so no one in the civilian world can understand the military! waaaaaa! when the end strength is set by congress and all the extra recruiting in the world wont change that.
Our military isn’t for everyone. It can’t be for everyone. This panel needs to shut its sump as what its pushing for is “we gotta have, weak pieces of shit, fatties, weirdos, queers and trannies! too!”, they just ain’t stepping up and admitting it, yet.
Semper Fi.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
13th Amendment.
Didn’t see an exception for “Pentagon having a real hard time meeting it’s recruiting goals”.
I had exactly the same reaction to the article you expressed in your post. Well said.
Sadly, that ship has sailed. They are determined to destroy military capability in the complete interests of social engineering.
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