Posted on 07/31/2022 9:37:47 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Replenishing the military ranks with qualified personnel is a perennial challenge. It’s no secret, though, that this year our armed forces are fighting uphill to recruit and retain talent.
Most of the services are well behind their quotas.
But the Army, our largest service, is having the hardest time enticing young Americans. That service will fall short, nearly 20,000 troops from its original target end strength of 485,000 for FY ’22, and next year could be worse.
To manage, Army officials have slashed end strength and enlistment goals, while recruiters are offering fat stacks of cash and generous service terms as inducements.
So far, nothing is working.
The Army’s Chief of Staff, General James McConville, blames the shortfall on competition with the private sector. Others blame upwardly mobile families who would rather their children attend college than wear a uniform.
Both are old saws. And this year, they ring hollow.
Some civilian jobs do pay more. But for an 18-year-old with only a high school diploma, military compensation is nothing to sneeze at. Indeed, recruits most often cite generous pay and benefits as the reason for signing papers.
Meanwhile, undergraduate enrollments are down over 600,000 from last year. So, it appears our missing recruits aren’t trading rifles for books, either.
Instead of blaming their competition, the Pentagon brass might dwell on their tarnished image as the reason fewer young Americans want to join up.
Public trust in the military institution has plunged steeply since 2018, according to one poll. Respondents cite politicized leaders, scandals, and the bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan for their loss in confidence.
We might add to that list suicides, sexual assaults, social justice indoctrination, and Covid vaccination policies as dulling the shine of military service.
Of the lot, the Pentagon’s vaccine mandate may prove its deepest self-inflicted wound.
While the service chiefs are begging Congress to fund more generous recruiting incentives, they have forcibly discharged thousands of vaccine dissenters – including most of those objecting on religious grounds. A similar fate awaits tens of thousands more of the unjabbed in the National Guard and Reserve. Never mind that our military increasingly relies on these part-time troops for routine mission support.
And the Pentagon has doubled down. Submission to the vaccine is now a condition of enlistment, despite evidence the therapy is at best ineffective, and at worst dangerous for younger, healthier people.
It’s a policy gravely alienating to the families of Middle America whose children disproportionately serve in our all-volunteer force.
Before going further, consider that fewer than one quarter of Americans in the prime recruitment age of 17-24 years can meet our military’s physical, moral, or educational entry requirements, and that figure continues to decline.
Of those, only about 9% of young Americans have any desire to serve. Perhaps only 1% ever do.
High standards have produced something of an embarrassment of riches. Our service members are amongst the healthiest, most disciplined, and best educated of their cohort nationally. But to maintain this quality, recruiters have come to count on solidly middle-class families inhabiting our Mid-American towns, suburbs, and rural counties to fill their quotas.
Recruiters bank on small-town America because for a variety of reasons our populous cities produce few qualified volunteers. Even the New Yorkers and Californians in the ranks are more likely to hail from upstate or inland counties. In fact, a once-reliable third of all new recruits enter from just five southern states: Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia.
The prepossessed term for these rich recruiting grounds is ‘flyover country.’
Instead, we might think of them as communities celebrating life on a smaller and more intimate scale, and where patriotism, faith, family, and public service remain in fashion.
And yet their young people are not signing up like they used to.
The belief by some that vaccine mandates are meant to purge conservative Christians from the armed forces may be one reason recruiting offices are empty. After all, young people living in these prime recruitment areas are somewhat more religious and tend to be more conservative in outlook than many Americans.
They also are less likely to be vaccinated against Covid.
A more charitable account, though, is that the brass authored their own Catch-22 in the rush to prove their obedience to President Biden. As such, they have taken a position purported to improve readiness that has done quite the opposite. And now that they’ve become so thoroughly entrenched, they cannot easily retreat.
No matter. It should trouble the Pentagon more that their reluctant recruits are most likely military legacies.
Like many professions, the military is a family business. Roughly 80% of recruits either grew up in a military family or have a close relative who served. General McConville’s own clan is actually something of a poster family in career following, with three children and a son-in-law in uniform. Even the general’s wife once served.
Career following in military families is nothing new. It’s been going on since our country’s founding. The children of veterans, like those of bankers or physicians, often emulate their parents’ professional ethos early on. For soldiers, this includes a respect for duty and honorable, selfless service. The generational transmission of such virtues has played a critical role not only in reproducing our service cultures, but by extension our national values.
But it’s also a fragile chain.
While research indicates that military children are 5 times more likely to follow a parent into the service, only 1 in 4 do. And their desire to serve drops sharply every year over the age of 18.
In short, the Pentagon’s stubborn adherence to its Covid protocol is breaking faith with its once loyal base. And the longer they dig in, the smaller that base will become.
It’s a high price our nation may pay for unimaginative leadership.
Oh how I wish Piglosi and Xiden would bring back conscription! Democrats couldn’t import enough fake ballots from China to stay in power if they ever pull such a bone headed stunt. The Jackass party would lose the peacenik and youth vote for at least a generation. Though I’m far too old for military service, I’d be marching in the streets alongside the youths I help talk out of serving the Xiden regime chanting, “Hell no! We won’t go!”
My step son got good test scores and enlisted, went through some great schools , but before he got his first assignment, he shared that the discrimination against straight white males in training was so high that he knew one complaint by a classmate for any reason and he would be out. He kept his head down and is heading out to his first assignment. Classmates were passed with performance that was below requirements and with behavior issues that will insure that fragging might raise it’s ugly head in future operations. No more bible in your duffel bag, it’s best if it’s an encrypted file on your phone. There’s a native american back in our family tree, so I’m hoping he can self identify as a minority for future promotion prospects.
What does that mean?! Please be explicit and clear!
Regards,
I work for a tree trimming service whose work force is almost totally male and mostly young. I warn those considering military service how much power black supremacists, communists, radical feminists, and sexual deviants will have over them if they enlist. Video games such as “Call of Duty” tend to make the military look more “manly” and less “diverse” than the Democrats have made it since the Cold War ended. I recommend the oil field to any young man who wants to get away from his parents, make money, and be a man. I also remind them there’s no way they can “serve their country” getting crippled, maimed, or killed halfway around the world just so the neocons can enforce the NWO, even as our borders remain unprotected...
recruits most often cite generous pay and benefits as the reason for signing papers.
—
The most pay I received in the Army (1966) was $300 a month, that was with jump pay and combat pay (and no taxes).
I will admit I did not have to worry about housing, food or medical :-).
Back then they paid you in cash! First month in Viet Nam while we were out on patrol the pay master flew out set up a table and we stood in line to receive our pay. Of course it was not in US dollars but military script. As soon as I could I set it up so most of my pay was sent home and just kept a little for a few luxuriates. at the PX.
The personnel problems are only exacerbated by the forcible discharge of some 260,000 active duty personnel for “failure to comply” with orders to get the COVID-19 mRNA injection protocol. This is in addition to the individuals, deceased or discharged “for medical reasons” because of adverse reactions to having received the injection.
Enough with the experimentation. We have a military effectiveness about on a par with the Russian Federation, if not below. “Hollowed out” does not begin to describe the present morale and readiness deficits within the ranks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrip
Regards,
Pentagon brass are a woke joke who like to play make believe and nobody respects.
Thanks for the correction.
thoroughly modern woke milley is quite the recruiter
+1
This November is SOOOOOO important.
WE MUST get people in Washington who know what they are doing and are able to set things right.
By their actions, the woketard Pentagon officials, including the SecDefComPoop, have betrayed the United States of America.
I had a much different experience as your regular infantry. Over the Co B 1/508 PIR, 82d, our unit was busy taking home 10-12 and then 11-13 division level 11B squad drills, while my mortar platoon got the highest score in Division by over 10 points. Then I went back to Dayton with an assignment to Co C 11th SF USAR and due to factory work and missing that stuff full time went back to the Division. I loved the Army. It took me 12 years to wonder how or why I ended up at XVIII Corps HQ as SGS NCOIC, but by then I knew I had to get back to Division again;)
WOKE Pentagon military ‘leaders’ need to recruit at DC’s private schools. The children of ‘elites’ should be prime pickings hungering to serve their country. /s
This is the same military that teaches junior officers that they can't delegate away morale problems.
We're three decades into it and the result is a senior military that are unwilling or unable to solve the problems they created. There is no room for woke in the military.
Who has formed the backbone of the US military for 250 years? White Males.
Who disproportionally fills out the ranks of the tip of the spear combat units? White Males.
Who suffered injuries and deaths at twice their rate of the population (which gives you an idea of how White a lot of the combat units are)? White Males.
Where does the military obtain fully half of their recruits? The South.
Who do they demonize above all others? Straight Southern White Males.
Now they can’t meet their recruitment goals. Shocking!
Just like the rest of government; a complete culling of all woke and activist minded people must be purged from the ranks to fix it. Nothing less will do.
If it were up to me I’d say ban all democrats from holding office but they would just pose as republicans just like the RINO’s do today.
Austin, Milley, and many of their ‘chosen’ will remain, as well as most of the DOD civilian career bureaucrats. Probably 90%+ of those bureaucrats are democrats. The senior military (pentagon) officers and Staff NCOs are going along just to get to retirement.
IMHO.
USMC 1971-1981. Old Corps
Good on you, Mark. (Let’s hope the next upgrade isn’t to queen size beds.)
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