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

I think that one of our greatest challenges is discipline and honor to the country. With all of the shortest of recruitment, we seem to be lowing our standards and our guard. We have let in the people of country that do not honor or care for the country as a hole. They are trying to use the military as to conquer democracy and spread racism and hate, i.e. the number of military personnel at Jan 6., the latest espionage where all of these top secret documents were placed on line. We must get the military, especially intel back to top notch and feat everyone. Intelligence exposure is more damaging than lack of personnel because it will cause all missions, no matter how large to fail.

Sexual assault. Stop covering up as every other organization in the world does when confronted with this heinous crime. Prosecute to the fullest extent of the law. Do not discharge the offenders and pass the problem on to the civilian world. Admit that men are being assaulted at rates that would shock the U.S. prison system. I thought that you had eliminated “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Or is this the result of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”?

The news of the past few days of a 21-year-old leaking Top Secret data did not result from "Wokeism", whatever the hell that "ism" tries to evoke, but from the far right nutcaseism (a made up ism). This divisiveness from Officers, Enlisted and Civilian workforce members will be the military's greatest challenge in 2023 and beyond. Trump lost and DeSantis and his ilk only add to the loss of military cohesiveness by using that word (Wokeism). I have never seen a definition of the word. It does not even show up on this website or others as a correctable spelling error (it only alerts to a possible "Spelling" error). From 1965 to 1969, I served in USAF Recruiting in St. Louis, MO and experienced all the alleged problems of "Physical Fitness, Failing the ASVAB test, Liberal Agenda, and some other so-called problems". When the Draft couldn't produce the numbers required, and in the standards dictated the STANDARDS were lowered to produce the necessary numbers needed for "Cannon Fodder". The challenge of 2023 will be getting the numbers needed and I believe the Draft can't be far behind. Hope this does not infuriate anyone, but if it does, then you have my sympathy.

recruitment, younger generation are looking for non physical and non mentally demanding jobs .

The "woke" new military is no longer a lethal fighting force. God help us when the Chinese decide to attack us. A "woke" military is incapable of being a cohesive and effective fighting force. Compound the fact that the US has not been maintaining the amount of munitions we will need very shortly for offensive operations. Our current "leadership" is entirely focused on maintaining their illicit "look the other way" strategy while the Chinese have built a massive military including new missile capabilities that we can not stop. What is it going to take for the citizens of our country to realize the pathetic status of our readiness ??

Definitely the retention and recruitment as others have said. Most of the kids coming in these days are entitled and don’t possess the hard work ethic that the army needs. Retention because we can’t keep the young bloods in if the average Joe who has been in 5-9 years wasn’t treated right and knows there are opportunities elsewhere. They will let the next generation know that the grass may just be greener.

I hate to be the echo chamber, but 100% agree with everyone here that says recruitment and retention.
It is becoming harder to upsell college benefits, retirement, and perhaps the more "patriotic" aspects of service when more Americans are pursuing careers that do not involve college degrees and read about the draining of social security and the dangers of that money "running out". It becomes a lot harder to recruit new servicemembers when the stories of soldiers like Vanessa Guillen are found to be more commonplace than the military wants to admit. I do not envy recruiters' jobs at all.
I will add this on the retention aspect: as a reservist it can be very hard to balance work/home and military obligations, and unfortunately many soldiers get jaded by this reality. You get asked to do work from home, and then getting 1380's approved is sometimes a challenge. You want to go to a school? Good f'ing luck, because the "unit" doesn't get slots for schools and often doesn't care enough to find slots for schools that soldiers reasonably can go to that benefit the unit because the unit spent all their funds on other things. You have a high speed E4 ready for their NCO schooling? Can't tell you how many times I've seen units drag their feet on getting a date assigned for those soldiers because the training NCO is absorbed in some other BS. Or my favorite: we don't go to the range because "money".
I don't think it has much to do with kids these days being "woke", I just think their priorities lie elsewhere and the military as a whole is having a hard time realigning to that. Nor do I think that reservists or active duty members are leaving because they aren't patriotic, they often are just done with not being given at least some career considerations.

The greatest challenge in today's military is recruitment and retention. Providing career paths for employees with excellent benefits and job satisfaction is difficult in combat arenas, and the complex demographic, psychological, and political contrasts in our country surrounding recruiting and retention make those two jobs increasingly difficult.

The military greatest challenge Recruitment, Retention, mentally health, accountability and sexual assaults'. Too many things that are swept under the rug with the suicide rate is insane and over worked military members. In order to fix this issue is to listen to your people. Invest in medical to help ensure we have healthy service member. Medical should take care of the service member first not the mission. We should hold people accountable no matter what the rank is. You still have hate, racisms, sexiest, rapist and etc. in the military. Just saying, it is too many thing to change within the military. Start with taking care of the service member health first.

One word…. Wokeness!