I’d had this post on hold for a couple of weeks but with my co-blogger Major Star’s piece just published about the NZDF’s staffing problems it seems appropriate even though it’s about the US military, and less about retaining people than getting them in the first place:

The military is facing the worst recruiting environment since the end of the Vietnam War. The Army is at only 40% of its recruiting numbers for the fiscal year despite raising its maximum enlistment bonus from $40,000 to $50,000. It now offers new recruits up to $10,000 for showing up to basic training in 30 days. And is no longer even asking them for a high school diploma.

Fifty thousand US dollars? Without even finishing high school? They are desperate, as a 60% recruiting shortfall shows. Those sorts of figures suggest that it’s not money that’s the issue, and this military website, Task and Purpose, focuses on two other things; poor advertising in general – and specifically in terms of all the benefits; but also poor structuring of the recruiting people and processes.

I’m surprised they didn’t discuss the competitive private sector environment where the US, as across the entire West it seems, is screaming for job applicants and lifting wage and salaries significantly to get them. But the first article gives the lie to money as a reason anyway, pointing out that such has always been the case:

The United States military is never going to win a bidding war against corporations. Amazon warehouse team members make more than starting recruits. And they’re generally less likely to die. The only real military recruiting edge is a patriotic commitment to defending your country.

As does this article on the recruiting problem:

To doublecheck that the economy wasn’t the overriding reason why recruiting is failing, I spoke with a friend who leads a large police academy in Texas…. He said the classes are full of new recruits He even noted an influx of police coming into Texas from other states to escape Covid-19 vaccination requirements for public safety employees.

Although it notes that police recruiting is way down in Chicago, Oregon, and Washington State – which is another hint as to the real problems in the military; as you’ll see they are connected.

Former US Infantry officer Strieff was also an Inspector General of US Army Recruiting Command so has some detailed insight into the issues raised by Task & Purpose (although he describes them as “usually a hot mess of leftism”) – including the insane and quickly dropped plan earlier this year to recruit high school dropouts. As he points out, recruiting such dropouts kills both of the following key military objectives.

The Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) measures “aptitude,” not “potential academic ability.” The two things the Army is most interested in are a) trainability, which is why the AFQT is emphasized, and b) ability to complete an enlistment.

But he also says this, which goes to the heart of the point made above about “The only real military recruiting edge”:

The Army went into the crapper at the end of the Vietnam war because the Army that came out of Vietnam was not viewed positively by the general population. It took courage, or desperation, to enlist in the Army between 1975 and around 1982 because enlisting was the quickest way to become a social outcast.

Now the Army seems hellbent on destroying 40 years of hard-earned reputation for the sake of being woke and dying its hair magenta. The reason for the Army failing to meet its recruiting goals is simple, it has essentially declared that it has no use for heterosexual males…

And he uses examples to show this from inside the military.

As for that advertising discussed, there’s this: “….the Minnesota National Guard placed a $77,000 ad buy in an LGBTQ magazine.” And this:

The most recent Army advertising campaign had zero ads aimed at working-class or middle-class white males (Two of the five profiles are immigrants. Three of the five profiles are women. Three of the five are officers. None of the examples are combat arms.
…
The stereotype they are trying to break down is that the military is mostly male, and those males are overwhelmingly heterosexual and white. The other stereotype they are trying to break down is that the Army fights wars.

Exactamundo. All of this stuff; the advertising, the recruiting “standards” are merely symptoms of the real problem, which is that people at the highest levels of the US military have fully imbibed multiple Left-wing theories on race, gender and even warfare itself, and are determined to re-shape the services to fit those theories. And to smash stereotypes you need to smash people:

.. the Army will reportedly force female soldiers to shower with biological males who identify as females, while the Navy will allegedly allow sailors to use whichever locker room suits their gender identity. There’s also a huge emphasis on race:

Units were to adjust to transgender identity and recently The Washington Free Beacon provided source documents of the Army’s transgender service policy which states:

“Gender transition in the Army begins when a Soldier receives a diagnosis from a military medical provider indicating that gender transition is medically necessary.”

This comes after the military’s celebration of Pride Month this past June, and West Point cadets being taught Critical Race Theory – including this slide on “whiteness.”

Same in the Air Force:

In all, 86 percent of our aviators are white males. Less than 3 percent of our fighter pilots are females. This is why we established a detachment within Air Force recruiting two years ago charged with improving diversity for those who wear flight suits. The mission of Detachment 1 is to bring a singular focus to recruiting qualified women and minorities who have not always felt they belonged

Unexpectedly the Total Air Force (Active, Guard, and Reserve) was short 1,650 pilots in 2021, and the shortfall will likely only get worse.

The USAF has responded to the challenge by eliminating prior flight training as a “plus” on pilot selection. They found that such training favored applicants who could afford private flight lessons. It has also announced that it intends to reduce the number of white officers from 80% to 67.5%.

Compounding the outright racism and bigotry involved in these “goals,” the Department of Defense’s new Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity oberführer, Kelisa Wing, is, to be charitable, a pathological and virulent racist.

Military Veteran and former CIA head and Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, put it bluntly:

Which match comments from other former military people:

My own decision to enlist the military in 1983 was motivated by President Ronald Reagan and his call to defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War. In 2007, I retired as a lieutenant colonel. If I were 20 today, there’d be zero chance I’d enlist to serve under a group of people whom I thought hated me and despised my political views — and who would use my time in military service as a cross between a reeducation camp and an armed international social service agency.

In a must-read article by Jeff Groom in the Spectator, he points out the personal aspect of the military in the face of all this:

Would you volunteer? Identity politics works both ways. Trash my tribe and I won’t associate with you, let alone risk my life. It shouldn’t be a shock, then, that those expressing a “great deal of trust and confidence in the military” dropped from 70 percent in 2018 to 45 percent today.

Rod Dreher picks that up in A Military At War With Americans:

“At some point, you’ve got to realize that it’s a scam, that you are being asked to risk your life to fight for an imperial order that thinks your law-abiding, church-going, pale-faced right-wing self is the problem with America.”

This last article – another by a former Army infantry colonel – imagines what it would take to fix this with the next Republican President (it won’t happen with any Democrat now) and it’s pretty drastic:

“Gentlemen, this is an orders briefing, not a decision briefing, meaning I am not asking for your input. I am telling you my intent, so be sure you understand it before you walk out of this room because Friday at 0900 we meet here for you to tell me – your Commander-in-Chief – how you have fulfilled my intent. If your answer is anything but an honest, ‘Yes, sir, I have fulfilled your orders,’ I will relieve you.

Effective now, we are out of the diversity, inclusion, and equity business. It’s over. Finished. Done. Every DIE program is terminated. Every Norwegian History Month or the like is ended. There are no more DIE classes, training, or any of this woke garbage. There are no drag queens on base and no men wearing women’s uniforms. It all ends. Make sure the curricula at the academies and war colleges are scrubbed of this poison. Make sure no officer reading lists includes racists like Ibram X. Kendi. The nonsense is terminated starting now. Oh, and you will strike any reference to ‘white nationalism’ and ‘climate change’ from any documents that presumes to list the strategic threats the United States military is facing. Do each of you understand my intent? Be here at 0900 Friday to confirm you have executed my orders. Dismissed.” 

I don’t know if this is an issue in the NZDF – Major Star’s post focuses on money – but I do have to wonder after the incident noted here a year ago in NZ Military once more follows the Pentagon’s lead, where an essay written by a serving New Zealand Army soldier first won an internal contest before being booted when its dangerous messages were revealed to the wider community.