Posted on Jul 16, 2022
With Few Able and Fewer Willing, U.S. Military Can’t Find Recruits
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The local Army recruiting station was empty. The normally reliable recruiting grounds at the nearby Walmart were a bust. With the Army still thousands of soldiers short of its recruiting goal, the station commander, Sgt. First Class James Pulliam, dressed head to toe in camouflage, scanned a strip-mall parking lot for targets.
He spotted a young woman getting out of a car, and put on his best salesman smile.
“Hey, how’d you know I was going to be here today!” the sergeant said with an affable Carolina drawl, as if greeting an old friend. “I’m going to help put you in the Army!”
These are tough times for military recruiting. Almost across the board, the armed forces are experiencing large shortfalls in enlistments this year — a deficit of thousands of entry-level troops that is on pace to be worse than any since just after the Vietnam War. It threatens to throw a wrench into the military’s machinery, leaving critical jobs unfilled and some platoons with too few people to function.
He spotted a young woman getting out of a car, and put on his best salesman smile.
“Hey, how’d you know I was going to be here today!” the sergeant said with an affable Carolina drawl, as if greeting an old friend. “I’m going to help put you in the Army!”
These are tough times for military recruiting. Almost across the board, the armed forces are experiencing large shortfalls in enlistments this year — a deficit of thousands of entry-level troops that is on pace to be worse than any since just after the Vietnam War. It threatens to throw a wrench into the military’s machinery, leaving critical jobs unfilled and some platoons with too few people to function.
With Few Able and Fewer Willing, U.S. Military Can’t Find Recruits
Posted from nytimes.com
Recruiting
Walmart
Colorado Springs
Service
Posted 2 y ago
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Pentagon: 7 in 10 Youths Would Fail to Qualify for Military Service
"The quality of people willing to serve has been declining rapidly," the U.S. Army Recruiting Command's commanding general says
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."That pattern has made the armed forces something of a family business, and led to some communities, many of them in the Southeast, supplying a disproportionate share of recruits. But even in those kinds of communities, recruiting has been tough this year.
The city of Fountain, a few miles from Fort Carson, is a patchwork of working-class neighborhoods with strong military ties. But the recruiting station here has not met its goals for three months.
On a recent evening, Sergeant Pulliam met with six prospective recruits at a park for a weekly workout of push-ups and situps. In the group were three recent high school graduates who had been planning for years to join; a young woman trying to get away from a home life she did not want to talk about; and a 26-year-old man named Francisco Borja, whose father had been in the Army.
Mr. Borja had tried to join up before but was rejected because of poor eyesight. He was hoping the Army would take him this time around.
“I want to do it for my family, my kids,” he said. “To better our lives.”
..."That pattern has made the armed forces something of a family business, and led to some communities, many of them in the Southeast, supplying a disproportionate share of recruits. But even in those kinds of communities, recruiting has been tough this year.
The city of Fountain, a few miles from Fort Carson, is a patchwork of working-class neighborhoods with strong military ties. But the recruiting station here has not met its goals for three months.
On a recent evening, Sergeant Pulliam met with six prospective recruits at a park for a weekly workout of push-ups and situps. In the group were three recent high school graduates who had been planning for years to join; a young woman trying to get away from a home life she did not want to talk about; and a 26-year-old man named Francisco Borja, whose father had been in the Army.
Mr. Borja had tried to join up before but was rejected because of poor eyesight. He was hoping the Army would take him this time around.
“I want to do it for my family, my kids,” he said. “To better our lives.”
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