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

Simple tell the "woke" that their children are not smart enough or good enough to join! That would get the parents to help push them into the military...

The only solution which would work immediately would be a change in leadership at the very top. A dismissal of all "WOKE" policies and take the message back to, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." The current message is not appealing to your target audience, nor is this administration. A return to the original message, prior Biden, would do the job. The military needs leaders, not equity police.

I just retired from the military after 41 years.

1: Todays kids are different from 20 or 30 years ago. What is in it for them is more important than what to do for their country.

2: Lots of comments on “Wokism”.

3: January 6th was considered patriotic.


4: people want everything to stay as it always has been. The way we have always done it. Yet change is inevitable.

So…let’s add those all up;
A+B+C+D = “Why should I join the military, when they don’t care about us? Applying a name (Wok) to a way of believing is ‘Anti-American”. ‘Patriotism’ is where attacking our own capital, is good? People think the military should stay in the past and not change, yet change WILL happen. Why should I join a force where people are afraid to adapt?”

As a Senior CW5, I went to classes to learn how to communicate and work with youths. Ya see, kids are way smarter technically today than 30 years ago. But they lack reality skills. My job NEEDED me to teach them. If I talk as I did 30 years ago, they would tune me out. If I treated them as adults and respected their intelligence and then bestowed knowledge on them, they wanted to learn.

I have always been a technogeek, a gamer and mild computer nerd. That meant even at 59 years old, I kept up with technilogt. Once a month we would have a gaming night at the facility. 20-30 people showed up for a good ol’ Call Of Duty brawl. There was no rank in the room and many a goal was to kick this old man’s ass. Problem…I often placed too 3 and could dish it out. This gained me a lot of respect. Add all my “titles” and certs, and the fact that I gave a damn about the folks doing the work, made a difference. I made it clear to the chain of command, I worked for the mission the soldiers and THEN the COC. My results made them look good. Not any sucking up. I protected the workers and crews from the COC crap, which gave me even more support.

My point. Be one with today. Live in the past only at your peril. The kids today know this, so why join??

Peace

This same question was asked on this very site about 12 yrs., ago when a certain individual was up for presidential reelection. At the risk of getting me kicked off or RP, I will give a very similar answer today, as I gave back then. However, this one may be a bit longer. I appreciate the patience of those who read through it.

We need a new generation of leaders and teachers who understand what patriotism truly means. They do not teach CIVICS or GOVERNMENT in our high schools anymore. Universities and colleges are worse. Patriotism is a dirty word amongst our leader and teachers. They somehow equate love of country with Fascism and militancy. We now have a generation of teachers who have contempt for this country, and they are instructing the next generation to hate it as well.

Teach students that this country is worth FIGHTING FOR! Our society has been taught to be ashamed of this country. That we are nothing special and should be equal with other nations. Reagan mentioned this hard fact in his farewell address to the nation in 1989. Our nation is the only nation in the world that has a unique form of government, where there are checks and balances against the abuse of power.

There are military leaders who are politically correct and more interested in making rank, getting a high-paying civilian job when they leave the service, and securing their retirement. They are more interested in seeing that our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and guardians (I did not forget you SPACE FORCE!) are indoctrinated into the latest LGBT, climate change, DEI, community service, & etc., agenda. There are very few people in our military who have a “killer,” instinct for battle. We have technocrats who are very skilled at making high-technology equipment.

How much time is spent training for actual war time scenarios? How much time is our military signing off on a political agenda? This means that most of our experienced enlisted and officers leave after the first or second tour. Some of you saw this first-hand. Potential recruits are seeing this, and they are clearly not inspired by it.

Now for the very politically incorrect part. The military is a man’s world. The physical demands of deployment require an individual capable of withstanding the rigors of living in an austere environment. An article from a few years ago by military.com showed that nearly half of females could not complete the US Army physical while males easily completed it. Pregnancies have an immediate negative impact on deployment. They Navy does not keep statistics on sailor pregnancy onboard ships but there was an article a few years ago that showed as much as 16% pregnancy rate of female sailor onboard ship. I am not saying women is a bad idea, it is just that men are more suited for frontline combat roles.





Michael S. Garrett

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When a football team keeps losing they don't get rid of all the players . They get rid of the coaches and that starts at the top on down in our military . Get rid of the woke programs and bring back learn how to fight and win .

A lot of responses here blaming "kids these days" or culture being too "woke" - a word they'd struggle to define. That's the problem with recruiting. The military has become a bastion of anti-intellectualism, anti-LGBT, Christian Nationalism, and far right ideologies. It's not service people are avoiding. It's assholes. Sure, you call it "being a man!" No, it's being a dick. Real men don't put down others. Real men don't blame "wokeism" for why their wives left them. Real men respect each other based on the work and experience/education they bring to the table and don't poke around in the private lives of other people like they're some Nosey Nancy. Real men don't define "American" based on a narrow, fascistic window of dumb hick demands. The problem isn't the young adults out there not being able to handle it. "Kids these days" have been through the same shit every other generation has been through. Stop whining about how your generation, specifically, had it so hard. It's embarrassing to watch. The trouble with recruitment is simple: nobody wants to be around the hateful culture trolls that represent the toxic culture of the military. What it all comes down to is it's not them, it's you. People are avoiding being around you.

Interestingly my son in the Army, reluctantly volunteered to recruiting duty for 2 years. He went through a divorce a couple years ago, and the decree states that the children cannot leave the state. He was concerned he was about at the rotational time at current place. However it appears he's doing pretty good as he has earned a couple awards from his performance and recently promoted to SFC . I haven't actually seen him in 4 years, but I will in a couple weeks, perhaps the subject will come up on how he does it. Maybe I will be able to make a better comment after that time.
I do know my brother did 31 years Navy and was forced to do 2 years of recruiting, said that was the worst part of his entire career. Retired as senior master chief. Ironically our dad retired Master Sargent Air Force, I retired MSG Army. So 7-8-9.

The question is what can we do to solve the problem. So, let’s define the problem first. 17 and 18-year-olds don’t want to, or can’t qualify for military service. I don’t think that they can’t qualify is a large part of the problem. Although there is certainly many young Americans who couldn’t make the grade. There are more than enough if they wanted to join. If you are a parent of a 16-year-old telling them to plan their future, what would you advise them to do. If they have the ability, go out and become a doctor or lawyer or an Indian chief. Very few people recommend their children choose ditch digging as their first choice. The military is a noble profession, but whenever the economy is doing good. It must step up and show why it’s a desirable profession. Stories about the Navy forcing its enlisted people to live on ships in port is both embarrassing, and anti-recruiting. Stories about rape, hazing, suicide, and other deaths are anti-recruiting.
Leadership, is what’s called for. You the ranking officers and you the ranking NCOs need to look at yourselves and say have we living up to our duty of “taking care of our people.” Way back in the early 60s when I was a staff sergeant. I remember a couple new lieutenants saying all we need to do is give them some more metals and ribbons. I pointed out that my next-door neighbor was an E3 with newborn twins, living on food stamps because military pay was so low back then. They just didn’t get it.
Ad campaigns like “be all that you can be” and “an army of one” are all good, but if the news is telling all the horror stories, about poor housing, shortage of food and uniforms, you’re not going to get the young men and women or their parents to be interested in the military profession.
The military just like any other business must make itself look good, to draw recruits.
What would I do. Hold senior NCOs and officers responsible.

According to what I have read in several sources, the current recruiting shortfall is due to five factors, in roughly the following order of importance: (1) our governments history of engaging in unwise foreign wars of choice which end badly 2) low pay and benefits for service members compared to those available in civilian jobs (3) high demand for workers in the civilian economy, (4) emphasis on "woke" hiring, promotion, and retention in the US military, and (5) veterans telling their children not to enlist, for reasons (1) through (4). (1) and (2) are controllable only by Congress. (3) is not controllable. Only (4) is controllable by the military services, against which is political correctness.
The manpower shortfall might resolve if problems (1)-(4) are solved, but I don't see anything changing until the US is in a shooting war and reinstates a draft.

I'm gonna be brutally honest, Sarn't... the DOD wouldn't have to have ridiculous recruiting goals if they were able to retain talented, willing, usable people instead of throwing them away. There's a whole demographic of veterans (myself included) who would've rather stayed in rather getting forced out, over shit that's not even disqualifiable anymore. Stupid shit like "didn't get a vaccination on a fast enough time table" or "is of XYZ identity."

Personally, there was a brief window where, if asked, I would've immediately put the uniform back on. Hell, if someone shows up at my door tomorrow with a set of recall orders, I'll gladly go with them. But the problem is, my trust has been burned juuuuust enough that I won't go out of my way to get waivers for non-dq'able bullshit so I can raise my right hand again. If Uncle Sam ever wants me back, one of his representatives will have to come to me and express it... not the other way around