What do you see as the military's greatest challenge in 2023 and why?

The biggest challenge is many young people are not equipped to take orders or constructive criticism which restricts the number of young people who can be successful in the military.

The upcoming war is going to divide the northern and southern states. With the rising inflation and other countries trying to rule out the dollar's value, times are fixing to get really hard for many people and we will face difficult challenges.

I have been out for a few years, but if the news is accurate, it seems recruitment is an issue. Like many problems there isn't a single quick an easy fix. Work ethic taught to children and young adults seems to be nonexistent. Lack of trust in the government seems to be more prevalent. Worries over losing your career, and having to walk on eggshells if you easily offend someone of a certain category isn't helpful. And what I believe to be the main issue is what JFK said doesn't seem to apply anymore to any age group today. "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country". Now the patriotic motto seems to be "gimme, gimme, gimme". It's sad times right now.

The frequency of deployments and the possible of war with China and the ongoing war in the Middle East. The increase of cost to the service member for the benefits that have been earned and entitled to receive.

As we are not engaged in a major military conflict at this time, the greatest challenge our military faces in 2023 isn't external but internal. We have hundreds of thousands of troops who served heroically in the Middle East fighting engagements involving dozens to a couple hundred "bad guys" at a time. The challenge for our military is training our troops to prepare for nation states like China which would necessitate fighting engagements involving thousands of "bad guys" at a time. This also means the supply and logistics train to equip troops engaged in such large-scale fighting would have to be much more robust than what was required in the 2000s and 2010s.

Recruitment is failing due to woke policies and piss poor leadership. This causes two issues. One upfront is recruitment and then retention as well. Why would people stay for a mismanaged and woke policy military. Majority of the military members come from republican states and the woke policies forced down their throat are a deterrent and a wake up call from staying in.

Recruitment not enforcing military education and physical readiness therefore AWOL from boot camps happens.

What I see as the greatest challenge is the retention of the right numbers and skills of members. This is a big challenge due to the huge pull of civilian industries that are offering better paying jobs and stability in location away from combat and frequent moves.

Recruiting good enlisted, it’s getting hard to find them

I think that as it has long been is recruiting, the adaptation of more technical & mechanical with complicated maintenance & operations has put extra pressure on recruitment. The need for more advanced training seems to be a bottleneck and needs to be addressed.