Should the Army always maintain the same standards for entry or should they fluctuate with requirements?

Accession standards have changed all the time. The true standard is to obtain a certain number of trained body count. Need a lot of them in a major war; not so many when nothing is going on. If you bring in people with "issues", then you need to overshoot the mark because attrition will be greater. The top brass haven't figured out a better way than to push the problem down to the junior NCO/Officer's back. Yes we bitch about it, but those who bitch the loudest have the least to contribute to a solution other than "Somebody ought to do something." It's the nature of the beast. One thing would be to put emphasis on identifying the "nonworkables" earlier. Save time and money and move on. The last thing we need is more overhead expense taking away from actual warfighting. Bottom line, it's a body count vs. money vs. time quandary. Looking at the recent Army changes, it depends where the druggies and cutters are on the spectrum and have their frontal lobes finally activated. I've been around a number of them. The sweet spot for bringing them in is when they finally GET IT. You'll still have failures, just not as many. BTW for a number of jobs, psych screening is required, hence the full gamut of MOS's won't be available.

Depends on how badly the military needs people; and its always fluctuated. I wouldn't have been allowed entry into the Army if today's standards were in place then (too old). In World War 2, their standards had to be seriously relaxed out of real desperation. Quoting a Navy vet interviewed in a St. Paul Pioneer Press article from Veterans Day, after being turned away after trying to enlist following Pearl Harbor due to high blood pressure, he tried again and “That time, they said, ‘If you’re breathing, you’re in!’ ”.

Not sure if it should ever be "anything goes", but desperate times do call for desperate measures. I hate to think about just how bad the situation must be to take in nearly anybody, and we damn sure ain't anywhere close to that today, thankfully. The military should set the highest bar as (reasonably) possible under normal circumstances, especially when the need for SMs isn't as great. The benefit would be during periods when the needs of the military aren't as great, the quality of what you have in your ranks will be very high--useful anytime, but necessary for training, leadership and mentoring of new SMs when the quality bar for entry will need to be set lower.

Everyone male and female should be held to the same standard no ands ifs or buts it's bullshit that it does not work that way

Back in the day I enlisted you had to have a certain score on the asvab and they allowed persons who had not graduated high school I was one of those who was
Not a hs grad after boot camp my CO called me in and ordered me to attend night classes and graduate which I did my next CO required me to continue my education and I thrived in the Corps so I say ruling out a person because of lack of education is wrong if they have the desire to serve and have high enough scores on the asvab let them enlist

None of the service branches should.

There are two underlying assuptions here that are wrong. First that there can be some sort of standard when piority should be winning wars and saving money. Second is that volunteer recruitment is the best way to fill the ranks.
I would insist we adopt Switzerland/South Korea's system of a massed conscript reservist force. The firmly ties the interests of the military to the interests of the nation and creates high levels of camraderie at low cost.

Do we really want people with serious mental health issues in any of our services? Minor problems OK, kids in trouble but otherwise healthy, OK ... heck some of our people in all the services have come from troubled backgrounds. Violent, abusive or psychotic behavior, and your gonna train them to kill people? Really? Who does that make sense to?

COL (Join to see) Real world scenario; put your best foot forward! The military operates with ‘bodies’.

Being able to make the best use of available resources is a commanders best asset!

Regretfully, when all is said and done; those same resources become excess to the force!

War is war, if it becomes full blown they will activate the draft! If that happens there are no standards! Just able bodies.

Should never change standards FOR ANYONE. Regardless of retention issues. That’s why we have the bunch of retards running the joint now.