How would you solve the military recruiting challenges currently facing DOD?

SFC (Join to see) - Based on some of your responses, I would guess you were booted for cause.

MSG James McGuire - good guess- failure to adapt to a military lifestyle. (general discharge without a bar to enlistment) in fact i later enlisted in a reserve unit. I have a million excuses ( our section sargeant sold our TOE for his cocaine habit, we were in division HQ with more officers then enlisted- so we had no mssion etc. etc.) but yeah, I became a rag-bag, after I got pulled from a line unit because DIV HQ wanted someone with a GT score. But, listen- that was back in 1979, so a lot of life happened since then- and while I was by no means a strac individual then, I have made substantial achievements and accomplished many worthy goals since then. So, MSG, as leader of men you should know a enough to give a man his due... as for my posts and opinions- I calls them as I sees the them, so I have nothing to apologize for- if you want to challenges those opinions or observations, then do so, and get off your tired old ass and stop being intellectually lazy

PFC John Roscoe - Actually, the comment was meant for the SFC who has his head in a very dark place.

well, then....my apologies

Lol is it?

Geeze ... we don't want most of these slugs in the military.

In a "free" society, the government cannot (well, should not) draft people to fight its wars. One of the ways in which people can tell the government how they feel about a particular war is by whether or not they enlist to help fight it. Drafting people into the military is really just a desperate measure to force young people to fight and possibly die for a conflict they do not believe in.

Bonuses are nice but that s not really a driver. I never met anyone who enlisted or reenlisted JUST for a bonus. Starbucks isn't going to pay your housing healthcare and education benefits. We are not competing with Starbucks. But with low unemployment we may be competing with a lot more than just Starbucks or flipping burgers at McDonald's.

SFC Johnny Connor maybe not in the Army, plenty of airmen reenlist for bonuses. And we absolutely are competing with those places for young people, what we have to offer versus being able to quit whenever you want is a big driver for a lot of people. The bigger issue is qualifications anyway.

TSgt (Join to see) I won't claim to know the airforce but I feel like the bonus is just a bonus but you have to sell the package that is the military experience and the benefits that come with it. Anyone that is pursuing pay can go to private companies and the military will never compete. With my mos I could be making a lot more in the civilian more and the military simply cannot compete. But what kept me in is other factors like job stability, being accustomed to military life, medical care for my family.

For example, one of my SSG/E6 is being offered 175k. There's no way the military can compete with that. He has 6 years of service so we are having a hard time retaining him.

Bonuses are taxable anyway. For new recruits it s only a small group that qualify for bonuses.

I remember in my ait a soldier that got 40k and another got nothing. They came from the same station.

SFC Johnny Connor - its the foreign influence... the military is being rebranded as an inclusive force.... it needs to remain an exclusive force.... the concerns about students not being able to asvab well enough to join? (which is crazy) thats the cultural war going on.... same with the kids being fat and not used to physicality... its all by design.... its a psyop running decades..... im betting as soon as we have new management in the gov recruitment will pick back up..... watch it happen....

SFC (Verify To See) - Your attempt at insulting me aside, you are right, not everyone qualifies at everything. BUT, it doesn't take a lot of intelligence to carry a weapon and hump a pack. The draft during Vietnam proves that simple point.

SFC (Verify To See) - And there is another insult. It does not mean a draft is out of the question.

Or we could spend a ridiculous amount of money training and preparing and equipping people who actually want to be there...are motivated. I mean haven't we already experimented with that by taking slots away from males and giving them to females who can't even meet the standard, totally efficient cost effective way to make sure yet get the best of the best, SIR. Never mind that the average male candidate is going to execute better than these unicorn women which not a single one went to battalion. Yeah, let's go from looking for needles in the hay stack to multiplying the size of the hay stack. I really don't think funding a portion of the army that will claim a hardship at the moment of truth is the answer here. But you are right, employing the tactics of propaganda is effective so long as there aren't glaring failures militarily out there in the world that took decades to unfold, a career really. Not sure what a poster would need to look like to convince someone to ignore all the horrors and labor military personnel endured in Afghanistan seeing it now....what a waste of time. We could have never gone in there and just conducted ISR and OTH for twenties years and been better off. There will be people who will probably get lit seeing this, but don't be mad at me....direct that anger towards the talkers in Washington, they did everything that could be done to produce a failed state, and yeah, they wasted a ton of people's time on both sides. Nobody lost as much as the Afghans save for the dead and their families. The intelligence analyst doesn't seem to understand anything that is put out here.

As was once said, isn't "military intelligence" an oxymoron :)

SFC Kelly Fuerhoff - You could certainly say there is a lack of understanding of the current generation but that has always been a struggle regardless of the decade. But to say there wasn't a significant drop in recent years due to current events and policies would be ignoring what's happening out there and would also disregard how much closer this younger generation follows the news. My wife teaches High School and from personal observation and interaction young adults are paying more attention to what's happening in the world. They watch the news and see things like the fall of Afghanistan and many of them are fearful of being in that type of situation.

SFC Kelly Fuerhoff - The military industrial complex definitely has a part to play in the recruiting decline. But it isn't binary. There is more than one factor and I would certainly add the current Administration in that as one of the factors. Not the only reason but they are in the basket to be counted.

Uhm. This administration? We've been out of 9/11 war cry's for two decades and the Republican Party is now in league with an autocrat. I'm not sure this administration is a problem or it's a societal issue at large that voluntary service doesn't provide much incentive unless your poor or want to get out of your hometown. Gen Z saw 20 years of war and flat out rejected it. Plus, war is only fun in COD.

PO3 Bryan Dyer I’m not saying the problem is solely that of the current Admin but to say it I doesn’t have any ownership would be incorrect too. The recruiting issue popped up in the last couple of years and the two biggest contributors of that would be post covid work issues and how poorly the Afghanistan withdrawl went. People don’t want to be in the military for work if they don’t have to and the current treatment of the military hasn’t been great. There are plenty of other failures in regards to the military that has boiled over during the current admin as well to include retirement system issues, pay, housing and benefits. A lot of things are falling apart right now and it’s getting a lot of visibility.

Not for long. When we start worrying about “misgendering” in the USMC, all hope is gone.