For the next few days, we’ll be looking at what’s happening with recruiting across the services. When I started poking around, a lot of the information was available but not well advertised, or compartmentalized and difficult to access. The military can be tight-lipped when things aren’t going according to plan. And when information is difficult to come by, it can be harder to get a sense of the big picture.

Luckily, other people have pulled this data together before, and there’s some pretty thorough analysis out there. The stakes are high: the military is supposed to be growing, now, in anticipation of presenting a credible force to oppose the threats of invasion and authoritarianism from Russia and China. Treading water would be a problem — instead, we’re dealing with shortfalls.

Thanks for reading and as always, you’re welcome to reach out with feedback or thoughts.

THE BIG STORY

How Bad is the Military’s Recruiting Problem?

The U.S. military has a problem recruiting officers and soldiers. It’s been growing for some time, masked by the economy, masked by GWOT, and recently, masked by the surge of interest in war owing to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

It’s most conspicuous in the Army, where, last year, for the first time since the 1970s, the Army failed to meet its recruiting goal by a whopping 25%. The Army came up short of its goal of recruiting 60,000 active duty soldiers and officers, pulling in 44,901 instead. It also missed bad on Reserve and National Guard numbers, and this year doesn’t look much better. The problem is real, and very bad.

Other services missed their overall numbers (Navy) or made them, barely, pulling from other places (Air Force) or healthily, but in such a way that depressed future recruiting (USMC).

Across the board, people are less willing to serve in the U.S. military than ever before. The usual explanation for why recruiting is up or down — the economy — doesn’t satisfy for current problems. Jobs availability is not substantially better or worse than it has been in the last 15 years, certainly not so much so that it would explain such a significant shortfall. The recruiting woes don’t seem to be tied in a positive or negative way to education, either, as it hits officer and enlisted recruiting, and the cost of a college tuition is higher than ever (normally something that helps drive recruiting).

Another hypothesis for why recruiting might be down is that with Iraq and Afghanistan having wound down, people don’t see a need to join. I’m old enough to remember when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were why the military was having trouble recruiting then, too, which is why we had three non-violent felons waivered into my basic training class (9 weeks at Benning before I went to OCS, where I commissioned). So I’m skeptical that this is depressing recruiting the way people mean. I’m also worried about the implications if that’s true — that recruiting problems means we ought to have more wars…? Doesn’t add up.

Some recruiters complained about challenges finding enough fit candidates in the wake of the COVID pandemic, which is another distinct (if alarming) possibility. The Army took this problem seriously enough to create a pre-basic program to address it (I reported on this early in the year for Military.com). Still, I know people were waved through the door to get to basic training during GWOT, and that doesn’t feel like a 15,000 soldier problem.

Finally, the most frightening possibility: that recruiting is down because there is a serious cultural malaise among the young adult Americans that manifests itself as a reluctance to serve their country in the military. This hypothesis is supported by a study conducted by the Office of People Analytics (OPA) found that just 9% of girls and boys aged 16-21 were considering joining the military.

This is alarming because one can tweak incentives to get disinterested people to serve. Offer more money, more benefits — find ways to change the levers and knobs of military service until one hits on the right combination. The top five reasons OPA respondents listed for considering joining the military all had to do with pay or benefits. But this calculus will only ever bring in people for cynical or self-interested service, and means that the finest motivation for military service — sincere patriotism on an individual level — is withering.

The best troops and leaders are always motivated first and foremost by a desire to give back somehow to their communities, animated by the idea that what they’re doing is good. The first such idea, “To help others” came in 6th, with 36% of respondents listing that. “Pride/self-esteem/honor” was 10th, with 24%. “Make a difference in my community” was 12th with 23%. “It is my duty/obligation to my country” was 17th out of 22 total choices, with 17%.

Not only are young people uninterested in service, the things they’ve heard or read about service seem to make the job actively unattractive. Worries about death, injury, psychological trauma, and sexual assault all rated highly on people’s list of reasons not to join — and more highly than the reasons given for joining.

All this adds up to trouble — cultural-level trouble, in fact. And it’s happening at a uniquely vulnerable moment for the American military which is trying to fully embrace egalitarianism across the branches (especially when it comes to women serving in combat roles) just as it prepares for the possibility of a big war. It’s trying to grow; recruiting is preventing that growth from happening organically.

Dipping confidence in the military — especially on the right, which seems disappointed that the military has not embraced their vision of the culture wars that have defined U.S. politics for the last decade or so — is an indicator of the trouble, if not a cause. An aversion to “wokeness” could make service less attractive among certain groups that have longstanding ties to the military. Still, I think it’s far more likely that the overall politicization of the military by politicians and unscrupulous influence-peddlers is what’s diminishing it in peoples’ eyes, making it into just another depressing extension of the federal bureaucracy.

Movies, television, and video games also have an impact, especially on younger people with fewer life experiences on which to draw. When one considers that death and debilitating injury are great and overriding concerns among youth, one has to wonder why that should be a determinative factor today, when the U.S. military is objectively a far safer place to serve than in any military at any time in human history. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan saw the least death and injury for US forces out of any major military campaign anywhere, ever. For good or for bad reasons, one might think death and injury would be of correspondingly less concern to young Americans looking to serve. Instead, it overrides reasons that were, in the past, sufficient.

Another possible input for falling recruitment numbers: the increasing partisanship and cynicism in political rhetoric, and conversations in the culture writ large. Reluctance to continue supporting Ukraine with aid (aid that is stimulating an aging and decrepit military-industrial base for the first time in decades) may be tied to falling recruiting. If one isn’t willing to help another democracy with weapons and equipment for selfish reasons, it isn’t a reach to assume that these same people wouldn’t be willing to have their children serve and possibly die in the military. All part of a cult of me-first cynicism in the US that is coming to believe less in ideals every day, a phenomenon that can be seen in both political parties and among political independents.

It’s not too late to turn things around. Public perceptions of the military are still positive, down to 60% from 75% in 2012 according to Gallup, so not trending favorably, but still comfortably in the black. 60% is far from 75%, and without taking action quickly and decisively — figuring out ways to treat the wound, not its symptoms — it’s possible that the military of the future will end up resembling the military of the distant past — no longer an all-volunteer force. That would be sad for the military. It’d be worse for the nation.

TOP READS IN MONEY & FINANCE

The WSJ took a look at the best credit cards to use for balance transfers. Useful information for folks struggling with credit card debt.

Another good piece from WSJ on life insurance policies, based on a comparison of the top plans.

How much you have and make, in relative terms, depends on where you live. Makes sense! $150k goes further in rural Montana than it does in New York City.

TOP READS IN THE MILITARY

The USMC worked behind the scenes to have a scurrilous and false news story removed from Fox News.

The Army invented the McRib in the 1960s, but you don’t want to know what was in it.

While the Senate figures out how to do their job, there’s an acting commandant in place for the USMC at Camp Pendleton.

TOP READS FOR VETERANS

WWII and Vietnam veteran dead at 108.

Far-right extremism is the primary domestic threat, and affects veterans disproportionately.

Keep politics and Congress away from the VA, according to this essay.

Other outlets picking up on the GAO report we covered Tuesday (though this reporter did a better job reporting on it than I did — she’s one of the finest reporters on the VA beat).

TOP READS AROUND THE WORLD

A huge source of concern among Japanese neighbors, Japan has begun releasing radioactive water into the Pacific.

The Biden administration approved $500 million in arms sales to Taiwan.

The U.S. is trying to make Cobalt extraction more equitable.

The first Republican debate took place Wednesday night.

BRICS, a chimera of an economic consortium created conceptually by a Goldman Sachs analyst a couple decades ago, is inviting in more members. The group’s core concept seems to be opposition to the West and the dollar. Never a good sign when your business model reads like the setup for a joke: “Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iran walked into a bar…”

NVIDIA chip sales are booming — driving its stock much higher.

HUMOR

If you’ve been in a frat or sorority or have a kid in one, you may relate to this Onion piece