Has DoD Dropped Standards Too Low Just to Make Recruiting Goals?

Recruits are like a box of chocolate. You really often don't know what you've got until they are on board. Especially with 18/19 year olds

I wonder when the DOD is going to try to improve manning numbers at the exit door rather than at the entrance door.

As others have said standards change to meet recruiting goals. During the Iraq surge years we were waivering felonies and granting commissions to people who didn’t even have degrees. I’d say standards as high as they’ve ever been in the last two decades. I left the Army in 2000 and the misconduct was just as bad. I remember we had a kid get kicked out of the 75th because while on a training exercise in Germany he got drunk and ran a car into some tank barriers. I remember my old PA telling me that when he was in the mechanized infantry in the 90s his squad leader would do lines of coke off the Bradley in the field.
Now we have more prohibitions against certain types of misconduct than we did before. For instance, the Lautenberg Amendment prevents people with domestic violence convictions from carrying guns, so DV is now a permanent disqualifier. Back around 2013 the military added any conviction of sexual assault as a permanent disqualifier as well. Hard to believe, but 10 years ago you could be in the Army if you had a previous sexual assault conviction.

Everyone wants to believe that their generation had the most bestest super troopers. Reality is there were bad service members "back in the day"and there are bad service members now. In 1985 you didn't just find out through twitter that a SM screwed the pooch in Yongsan. Information moves much faster now. Dirty little secrets were contained a little easier "back in the day".

There’s a correlation between high quality recruits and the unemployment rate:

https://militarypay.defense.gov/Portals/3/Documents/Reports/SR05_Chapter_2.pdf

https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2020/05/20/army-retention-rises-as-economy-slumps-but-recruiting-hasnt-seen-a-boom-yet/

MSgt Steven Holt, NRP, CCEMT-P I Think this Falls in the Category "I Remember Way Back When During the Great War Category". Romanticism for a Military that Never Was. I Joined Shortly after the Vietnam War, The Vast Majority of My Middle Level PO's were Stoners the Vast Majority of My Chiefs were Alcoholics.

I’ve been witness to good Sailors being asked to leave because they reach HYT or couldn’t keep their weight within standards and watched dirtbags get to stay in. Sounds like not much had changed.

I currently still serve and I find that in my younger days, the punishments for fucking up were extra PT and extra duty. If you did something worse than you received UCMJ action. Nowadays if you try to discipline a troop, they automatically act like they are on the street and have zero respect for authority. Maybe it’s the generation, I’m not sure, but it is unacceptable and the higher ups are afraid to do anything because they don’t want to be labeled in this “Cancel Culture” environment and lose everything they worked to get. The troops are very quick to throw out race cards, sex cards, or any other card they can think of. And Toxic Leadership on the higher levels are very much to blame now too. So yes, I think the standard has been lowered drastically and the promotion system doesn’t look at that either. The shit bag troops fall in to slots and get promoted strictly off of PT and MOS.

Standards to get in and standards to complete basic are different things. The real question is are more folks washing out of basic training than normal?

MEPS determines overall eligibility, based on periodic guidance from above. The waivers and questionable inductees are on the Services, based on need. Supply and demand. Risk/reward. Cost/benefit.