Deploy or get out: New Pentagon plan could boot thousands of non-deployable troops

The Army’s mission is to fight and win the nation’s wars. If you are non-deployable, then the proper steps need to be taken to get you the help you need. If you need longer care but are working towards being deployable and back in the fight, then there should be an exception to policy for this scenario. However, if you simply are non-deployable with no signs of getting off that list (or truthfully, no desire to do so), then you shouldn’t take up a slot for someone that could be there and be deployable.

Have things changed so much that this is even an issue?

From what I've seen, ~45% of the cases shouldn't even BE cases at all - I know when I was in if you missed your mandatory exam/vaccination/whatnot, you better have a super-good reason or you'd get paperwork, and a second chance. Miss your second chance without an even more super-good reason, you'd get Art 15ed for dereliction of duty and your third chance would be "escorted" by your supervisor, but by this point you'd usually be well on your way to being considered on your final enlistment if not on the way out the door then.

Pregnancy? I'm not a fan of this one, because there might be cases where 9 months + maternity leave of 3+ months + time to get back into conditioning. I've never been a fan of policy "forcing" the hands of command in "unique situations".

Which then explains my opposition to this with the "injured" ones. The story "downplays" them - injuries during regular duty/PT/etc. Guess what, those injuries are part and parcel of combat readiness, hacking oneself up trying to fix the vehicle or the fluke injury from training or conditioning to stay in shape. And some of these injuries need the year+ to recover from. Again, existing policies on evaluating potential to return to readiness vs. disability separation should cover this category.

If someone feels that this is this big of a problem, why not look into why the existing policies (assuming of course that they weren't abolished for some weird reason over the decades) aren't doing the job of maintaining force readiness...

About damn time. Either you can or cannot do this job. To those who can't. Bye.