You might re-word it....competent and capable people not seeking recruitment. By lowering standards (giving weight waivers to people who are entering bootcamp, finding ways to overlook convictions or drug-use in the past, etc), you are ending up eventually with someone who is more of burden, than an asset.
The problem I see...it’s not 2023 you should be worrying about. The trend absolutely continues and intensifies in 2024 and 2025. It also drifts across to officer recruits...so you end up with some junior officers who would have been denied entry in the past decades.
A AF Lt Col ends up as a squadron commander in 2024....only to arrive and discover that nine of eighty-eight billets are unfilled. A ship commander arrives to take charge...finding that of the 244 folks who should be there...there’s 18 vacant positions. A army Lt Col arrives to find that of 920 folks there (instead of the thousand)...he’s got fourteen folks on some mental profile for crazy behavior, and forty folks who simply can’t pass the fitness test and barely a year out of basic. All of this drives the better officers to leave service early.
Even if Biden leaves in 2025...with either RFK or Trump, I don’t see how they can reverse this trend without massive legal challenges pressed upon them. We are simply motivating ourselves to downsize the military over the next decade, probably by 30-percent. The reserve/national guard picture is probably even more dismal.
He was a smart man. We were at IGMR at the time.
First thing they need to do is look at consolidating support services. Much of the Stateside support services are performed and managed by civilians anyway. One Admin system, one supply tracking system and one medical reporting system now you no longer need competing programs across the services. You reduce the number of Flag Officers and General Officers running the same programs across four services. Army takes Admin, Air Force takes Intel and Navy takes Medical or something to that effect. You will always have Sailors, Soldiers and Airman trained in those fields for deployment, but as a Marine you may go to Admin and find a Soldier doing your orders, a Marine your pay and and Airman managing your billeting. All of the above managed by a civilian. It already happens at many Joint Commands. As a Navy Chief I ran an Air Force Customer Service Department. Eventually you have a single Support Command for Intel, Supply, Medical and Chaplains. But it will take decades and a lot of pain to get this done.
My third, and final platoon was a Towed Vulcan platoon, with 3 "acting jack" squad leaders. IOW, three of my 4 squad leaders were E4s. Most fun I had as a platoon leader. They were hungry to learn. We surprised the heck out of the rest of the battery, when we were the only platoon that passed during a battery level evaluation. It was no surprise to me, I had been through those ARTEPs with my two other platoons, I knew how the game was played.
Thanks to these shortages, I was able to volunteer as an augmentee in our sister battalion during REFORGER. It was additional experience that was greatly beneficial. I let the Platoon Sergeant run his platoon, while helping him in any way I could. LOL, from the start he said, "you're the platoon Leader LT, I'm happy as the Platoon Sergeant."