US military force at 80-year low, Pentagon urges ‘national call to service’

[FireDragon76]

A new study from the Pentagon shows that 77% of young Americans would not qualify for military service without a waiver due to being overweight, using drugs or having mental and physical health problems.

A slide detailing the findings from the Pentagon's 2020 Qualified Military Available Study shared with Military.com shows a 6% increase from the latest 2017 Department of Defense research that showed 71% of Americans would be ineligible for service.

Even More Young Americans Are Unfit to Serve, a New Study Finds. Here's Why.

The updated figures paint a picture of what is currently plaguing military recruiters in many of the service branches, with a shrinking pool of potential service members available to them.

www.military.com

Additional factors as noted by the US Army Recruiting Command (2020 data):

Labor market: Most challenging labor market since the inception of the all-volunteer force
Awareness: 50% of youth admit they know little to nothing about military service
Qualified youth: 71% of youth do not qualify for military service because of obesity, drugs, physical and mental health problems, misconduct, and aptitude
Family business: 79% of recruits have a relative who served
Disconnect with society: Only 1% of the population currently serves; veteran population is declining.

Facts and Figures

recruiting.army.mil

Some generals have been saying obesity is a national security issue, for over a decade, but our politicians aren't taking obesity very seriously as a public health problem. It's a very complicated problem, but what is needed is national leadership, because we need multifaceted changes to food policy and the built environment in which people live, to tackle the problem.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Some generals have been saying obesity is a national security issue, for over a decade, but our politicians aren't taking obesity very seriously as a public health problem. It's a very complicated problem, but what is needed is national leadership, because we need multifaceted changes to food policy and the built environment in which people live, to tackle the problem.

Michelle Obama tried, but the military-loving Republicans complained about “government control” of public schools.

 

[RDKirk]

A new study from the Pentagon shows that 77% of young Americans would not qualify for military service without a waiver due to being overweight, using drugs or having mental and physical health problems.

A slide detailing the findings from the Pentagon's 2020 Qualified Military Available Study shared with Military.com shows a 6% increase from the latest 2017 Department of Defense research that showed 71% of Americans would be ineligible for service.

Even More Young Americans Are Unfit to Serve, a New Study Finds. Here's Why.

The updated figures paint a picture of what is currently plaguing military recruiters in many of the service branches, with a shrinking pool of potential service members available to them.

www.military.com

Additional factors as noted by the US Army Recruiting Command (2020 data):

Labor market: Most challenging labor market since the inception of the all-volunteer force
Awareness: 50% of youth admit they know little to nothing about military service
Qualified youth: 71% of youth do not qualify for military service because of obesity, drugs, physical and mental health problems, misconduct, and aptitude
Family business: 79% of recruits have a relative who served
Disconnect with society: Only 1% of the population currently serves; veteran population is declining.

Facts and Figures

recruiting.army.mil

I would point out, again, that this study is not of all American youth overall, but rather a study of the disqualifications the DoD has done of those who have applied for military service.

Young people who have ample alternatives to military service--the ones who do not apply--are also likely to have fewer disqualification factors, such as less drug use, no criminal records, and even less obesity.

 

[RDKirk]

Some generals have been saying obesity is a national security issue, for over a decade, but our politicians aren't taking obesity very seriously as a public health problem. It's a very complicated problem, but what is needed is national leadership, because we need multifaceted changes to food policy and the built environment in which people live, to tackle the problem.

It's a business problem on one side and a social problem on the other. Speaking from a black-but-slightly-classical-conservative point of view, black people are following a left-wing Pied Piper to catastrophe in that regard. That Pied Piper is telling us that how we are is who we are, and we should not be any different. If our bodies are fat and our families are broken, if we eat McDonald's six days a week and Popeye's Chicken on the seventh...that's all fine. That's who we are, and we should not listen to anyone saying anything different.

 

[Ana the Ist]

It's a business problem on one side and a social problem on the other. Speaking from a black-but-slightly-classical-conservative point of view, black people are following a left-wing Pied Piper to catastrophe in that regard. That Pied Piper is telling us that how we are is who we are, and we should not be any different. If our bodies are fat and our families are broken, if we eat McDonald's six days a week and Popeye's Chicken on the seventh...that's all fine. That's who we are, and we should not listen to anyone saying anything different.

Did you see that the "fat acceptance movement" is dying? Not that it's losing momentum....the people pushing it are literally dying.

 

[RDKirk]

Did you see that the "fat acceptance movement" is dying? Not that it's losing momentum....the people pushing it are literally dying.

The fat acceptance movement is alive and well among black people, particularly black women. It's claimed to be genetic, and warnings to reduce weight are claimed to be racist.

However, I keep telling people to look at our history. Go through Google images of black people up through the 70s. Go through your own old family photographs of relatives up through the 70s. Black people--like everyone else--were slender people. We became obese in the 80s for a number of known reasons...and if anything is racist, the fattening of black people is certainly more arguably racist than calls for us to lose weight.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Do facts "matter" in some way"? Surely in some way facts matter - even if we don't really care...well, why should we care about them when they don't care about us

Right well...does the historical disparities matter or are we just looking at today?

Uh-huh, I find that hard to believe.

Why?

Okay but so what being as no such statement was made or implied.

It's implied in the very first line you wrote in this post.

Matter? Yeah, there ever was only one point for the call for diversity - the subjugation of white men.

Uh huh...

Look, if you don't have any places where you demand white men are fairly represented....then you don't have diversity so much as you just have racial discrimination.

Oh well, fortunately you have explained quite thoroughly, over and over in many, many threads that no one really cares about these things! It's come to the point where, apparently, merely posting a few statistics is enough to trigger these rants.

Uh huh...actually, if you read my other posts and not just the one you replied to, you'd see I already represented the stats pretty fairly...but ty anyway.

Posting a few stats is self-explanatory. The cites were provided for your convenience.


Wow, are you really demanding that I explain the stats to you? Isn't providing them enough?

You're the one making a big deal of it.

Could there possibly be complex causes? What a bewildering mystery this might be!!

Complex causes? On the left?

Why not call it systemic racism and call it a day?

Yeah, you are often sure that I am wrong and that, no matter what I may think I mean, you realize that I am mistaken and think something entirely different than what I think I mean. We are so lucky to have you here to explain ourselves to ourselves!

It doesn't make much sense how you wrote it.

Gosh, you're right! Officers do outnumber enlisted personnel by a healthy margin! And only 69% of them White!

And? Complex causes?

And candidates are well known for keeping their campaign promises.

Trump didn't start any new wars...I don't know what Ramaswamy intends.

You do remember that, right? Trump ran as anti-war and didn't start any new wars?

 

[FireDragon76]

Michelle Obama tried, but the military-loving Republicans complained about “government control” of public schools.

The deeper issue is corruption in our political system. Wealthy interests have an outsized influence, and most of them don't directly suffer the consequences of the policies they advocate.

 

[RDKirk]

The deeper issue is corruption in our political system. Wealthy interests have an outsized influence, and most of them don't directly suffer the consequences of the policies they advocate.

The problem Michelle Obama was having with the school lunch policy wasn't from the wealthy interests. It was from those who were determined "We ain't goin' along with anything that ****** ***** has to say." (Asterisks are mine.)

 

[FireDragon76]

The problem Michelle Obama was having with the school lunch policy wasn't from the wealthy interests. It was from those who were determined "We ain't goin' along with anything that ****** ***** has to say." (Asterisks are mine.)

The reflexive partisanship, and partisan attacks, are a consequence of that corruption.

 

[Pommer]

The reflexive partisanship, and partisan attacks, are a consequence of that corruption.

Part of the art of politics is keeping the corruption to a minimum, as it is, we’re at “solar maximum“ and have been for sometime.

 

[RDKirk]

Here is an opinion from a veteran that I agree with quite a bit:

MSN

www.msn.com

I'd point out, though, that the derision of military service is not limited to Democratic administrations. Trump's contempt for those who served was also noted by us during his term in office. Disdain for the military as a job option has been practically a required course in most school systems for fifty years...it's rather a surprise that it's taken this long to show its effect, and that's probably a matter of a number of factors. I was in position to notice a distinctly sudden downturn of lower-middle-class white youth interest (the traditional backbone of military recruiting) when the US invaded Iraq...under a Republican administration.

I served under six presidents. Every one of them sucked in some way or another, from a soldier's point of view. The current short-termer in the White House has little to do with it, but the overall view of the military made known through the zeitgeist of the nation seeps into a child's psyche over the course of 18 years...and that does matter.

 

[Laodicean60]

Here is an opinion from a veteran that I agree with quite a bit:

I'm curious why you joined the service? Looking back, I was brainwashed into doing so by the media. All the war movies and our fight against communism made me a patriot. Back then we did some good in the world and of course my dad fought Korea and Vietnam. Maybe it's not being glorified by the media?
“Young people today are not rejecting military service; the challenge is that they are not even thinking about it,”

 

[dogs4thewin]

I'm curious why you joined the service? Looking back, I was brainwashed into doing so by the media. All the war movies and our fight against communism made me a patriot. Back then we did some good in the world and of course my dad fought Korea and Vietnam. Maybe it's not being glorified by the media?
“Young people today are not rejecting military service; the challenge is that they are not even thinking about it,”

and then there is probably the issue of younger people having more access to hw veterans are treated after their service.

 

[Laodicean60]

However, I keep telling people to look at our history. Go through Google images of black people up through the 70s. Go through your own old family photographs of relatives up through the 70s.

Lol I did that for my kids and told them that today's standard we looked mal nutritioned. You are right about the 80s when doctors couldn't explain fatty liver that alcoholics used to get, so it became nonalcoholic fatty liver. Unfortunately, children are getting it today. The common denominator is sugar.

 

[RDKirk]

I'm curious why you joined the service? Looking back, I was brainwashed into doing so by the media. All the war movies and our fight against communism made me a patriot. Back then we did some good in the world and of course my dad fought Korea and Vietnam. Maybe it's not being glorified by the media?
“Young people today are not rejecting military service; the challenge is that they are not even thinking about it,”

My family had been solidly military since the Spanish-American War. All the men had been soldiers, many career, all the woman married soldiers. It was a family business. As I grew up in the 60s, through the race riots and turmoil in the civilian community, the chances of my own success seemed more likely in uniform. For instance, as a teenager in what was still a very racist city, I had a pretty sweet "indoor job" on the Army post (totally because the access at the right time and place afforded by my military ID card) compared to other black kids who had to take the job scraps off post.

 

[DaisyDay]

Right well...does the historical disparities matter or are we just looking at today?

"Do." Matter in what way, to whom and for what purpose? Does it matter to you that I already said that "Surely in some way facts matter"? Since half the stats I posted were from 2011 and half (not literally) were from 2020-2022, why would you conclude that only today matters?

Why?

Your disingenuity. "I didn't realize that calls for diversity have absolutely nothing to do with historical events or past trends of diversity. "

It's implied in the very first line you wrote in this post.

Naw, you interpreted what you read wrongly.

Uh huh...
Look, if you don't have any places where you demand white men are fairly represented....then you don't have diversity so much as you just have racial discrimination.

And why do you think that no such places exist?

Uh huh...actually, if you read my other posts and not just the one you replied to, you'd see I already represented the stats pretty fairly...but ty anyway.

Why take such umbrage to someone else providing stats with links? I apologize if I missed where you provided stats, but in the post I did reply to you did not represent "the stats" at all well.

You're the one making a big deal of it.

Lols, no, you are. I made a post with cited stats and you demanded that I explain them. Short answer: situations change over time as shown by the stats.

Complex causes? On the left?

More disingenuity with a heaping helping of scorn.

Why not call it systemic racism and call it a day?

Why not acknowledge that how and in what ways racism is/isn't systemic today has its roots in in past?

It doesn't make much sense how you wrote it.

Sure it does. You claimed that the military has been disproportionately white men which, while true historically, no longer is. The proportion of Black enlisted men to total enlisted men is higher than the proportion of Black people to the general population while the proportion of Black officers to total officers is a bit lower than the proportion of Black people in the general population. At the same time, the proportion of White enlisted men to total enlisted men is lower than the proportion of White people in the general population while the proportion of White officers to total officers is a way higher than the proportion of White people to the general population. Is that clear enough?

And? Complex causes?

Yes, what specifically are you not understanding that our current demographics have complex causes?

Trump didn't art any new wars...I don't know what Ramaswamy intends.
You do remember that, right? Trump ran as anti-war and didn't start any new wars?

Yes, I remember that not happening! Sadly however past performance is no guarantee of future results.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Here is an opinion from a veteran that I agree with quite a bit:

MSN

www.msn.com

I was waiting for some kind of insight from that guy, but then the piece just ended. How would Hillary’s “deplorable “ comment have impacted recruitment numbers unless their were a bunch of youngsters on the cusp of signing up who heard her comments, associated them with the military (even though they had nothing to do with the military), and then thought, “nah maybe this isn’t for me.” What 17 yo fits that description?

If previous bad actions are a disincentive to military service, the fault isn’t with the folks who undermined the propaganda; it’s with the people who undertook the bad actions in the first place.

 

[RDKirk]

Sure it does. You claimed that the military has been disproportionately white men which, while true historically, no longer is. The proportion of Black enlisted men to total enlisted men is higher than the proportion of Black people to the general population while the proportion of Black officers to total officers is a bit lower than the proportion of Black people in the general population. At the same time, the proportion of White enlisted men to total enlisted men is lower than the proportion of White people in the general population while the proportion of White officers to total officers is a way higher than the proportion of White people to the general population. Is that clear enough?

What is significant to me is that both black officers (as college graduates) and black enlisted (as non-college graduates) are both overrepresented in the military compared to their percentages of the civilian population. That means other current recruiting issues notwithstanding, blacks are still seeing better opportunities in the military than whites are...which has been the case since the Civil War.

 

[RDKirk]

I was waiting for some kind of insight from that guy, but then the piece just ended. How would Hillary’s “deplorable “ comment have impacted recruitment numbers unless their were a bunch of youngsters on the cusp of signing up who heard her comments, associated them with the military (even though they had nothing to do with the military), and then thought, “nah maybe this isn’t for me.” What 17 yo fits that description?

If previous bad actions are a disincentive to military service, the fault isn’t with the folks who undermined the propaganda; it’s with the people who undertook the bad actions in the first place.

The propensity to enlist in military service is largely class-based. The Democratic Party has very greatly alienated the working-class white male representing the bulk of young males who would (or whose adult male relatives would encourage them to) join the military, and that's been over the course of the last couple of Democratic administrations. Even young black males are being alienated by the Democratic Party, which is a phenomenon running under the radar of most people.