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

Hit them in the face with Patriotism because we know the money is not going to cut it.
Also let's please blaming: woke" and DEI as the reasons why the young adults of today are not enlisting!

Up the enlistment bonus and better commercials. Show how military experience will get you a better job in the civilian sector.

Bring back the draft and watch the children run.

It's a simple matter of economics and quality of life.
Is the life of a recruit greater than or equal to the life of of an equivalent position outside the service. The answer is almost overwhelmingly no. In the Roman military pay, food, and care were superior than the average person. If you made it to retirement you also were guaranteed a relatively huge stipend and retirement.
In the modern military, pay, food, and quality of life are on average significantly worse. Most members don't make it to retirement incentives that cannot be gotten until after a term is hardly motivation to join, when we have horror story after horror story on blast because of social media.

So how do we increase retention and enlistment
1) NCOs and officers all need course in organizational psychology
2) bad leadership needs to be identified and purged from service, publicly so people see changes are being made
3) quality of life, pay, and food need to be equal to or supercede the civilian equivalent.
4) implement tiered incentives based on time in service so that people don't have to wait until the end of service to get benefits

Conscripted service. Every 18 yo should be required to provide a service to their country. Nearly every public service institution in America is understaffed. 18 months minimum service for which a one for one month of college tuition is provided upon successful completion. These are all paid as internships or apprenticeships.

It would of course be objected too at first as every change is. However overtime, this would be acceptable as the norm.

Also, as a path to citizenship for Dreamers and legal immigrants. Has been a very successful program in the past. 100's of thousands of Philippino's now US citizens due to this program.

Get rid of the Anti Military Traitor joe Administration and his Pentagon lackeys! Go back to recruiting able bodied recruits and dump the woke wannabe but do not want to live the military life! Elect a president who is pro military, not some run and hide in Canada pot smoking druggie! The young people today do not understand havinto work 8 hours much less 24 hours in a war zone! Just my opinion!

Maybe a look at Israel or South Korea. Mandatory 2 years service after graduation. Have PE programs in schools to teach physical fitness and not square dancing and twerking. I know I am old school, but we actually had to sweat in PE and Sports. Along with the physical fitness, revisit teaching American History and Government Classes. See why we are America. Prepare them for service. On a lighter side, bring back the "Shark Attack" in Basic Training.

Have a Commander-in-Chief who you can respect and who respects the military.

Personally I would bring back the Draft, this time no deferments. It would give everyone in this country a chance of ownership in this nation. Currently less than 1% now serve, and they are carrying the 99% that don't serve. The people who were drafted wouldn't necessarily go into the military but serve as needed, Firefighters, Police, forestry workers, prison guards, etc.

Since the inception of volunteer enlistment, the same standard practice of medical processing has been utilized and military doctors had to go off only what was listed on the pre-screen. Recruiting has seen a slight short fall for several years but what has caused a huge downfall in the number of people joining the military? For nearly 2 years meps medical has been mandated by DOD to use a system called MH Genesis which pulls an applicants past medical history from the health information exchange which completely changed everything yet we expect the same result. The point of this was to reduce the high attrition rate within initial training.