By Luther Ray Abel
Friday,
February 09, 2024
The U.S.
military’s recruitment shortcomings have received significant coverage of late,
and some of it is even informed. But much of that coverage has left unclear
exactly why the military is facing this crisis at this time. The recurring
suggestion that white recruits are opting out of service merely because of
wokeness concerns struck me as insufficient, to put it mildly — so I
reached out to two retiring Navy recruiters, Frank and Isaac, whose opinions I
trust and with whom I have worked in the past. (Note: Because both recruiters
have various claims processing with the Department of Veterans Affairs,
pseudonyms have been used to prevent repercussions.)
Their
accounts were revealing. Indeed, the military’s recruitment woes go much deeper
than culture-war politics.
To recap the stakes and theories concerning recruiting shortfalls
(from July 2022):
The simplest and best explanation for the
recruitment shortage is that potential recruits are disinclined to join because
of vaccination requirements, limited exposure to recruiters stemming from
lockdowns, and the dire warnings of family members and others who have served
and abhor the direction some parts of the military have gone.
Three years ago, the Army met its goal of 68,000 recruits. Today, it
struggles to hit a mark 11,000 below that. The economy was hot in 2019, with a
solid 3.6 percent unemployment rate, so I’m not buying the economic argument as
a primary reason. Further, the military was composed of a wide array of
political nonsense of all stripes in the same year and long before. During my
time in, we received absurd lectures along progressive lines on the regular;
Obama or Trump, it didn’t matter. . . . What changed was Covid.
The
following year, 2023, was no better for recruitment, with the Army, Navy, and
Air Force missing their goals by a combined 41,000 recruits; the U.S.
Army is now at its smallest since 1940. On the one hand, one
could argue that this contraction isn’t necessarily bad, as the deployment
demands for the Army are limited, and manning is expensive. On the other hand,
an army that can’t meet its self-appointed goals is in a far poorer state than
a service that intentionally pares its requirements. To think of it another
way, rapidly losing 15 pounds at random is alarming, while losing the same
amount following months of intentional dieting and exercise is not. The
military needs a consistent influx of recruits, unless forecasting says
otherwise, to replace those timing out of the service. Every branch, with the
exception of the Marines, failed to meet grade two years in a row. Why?
The
recruiters I interviewed made clear that Covid, and the Biden administration’s
reaction to it, (mandated vaccinations, lockdowns, etc.) was a major
contributing factor, albeit one with a window of effect from which recruiting
could recover. But it was only the first component of what became a bipartite
problem. The second issue, a seemingly permanent suppressant, is a consequence
of the least sexy thing in the world: a modernized health-records system called
Military Health System Genesis, created and delivered by Leidos for $4.3
billion, which arrived at all recruit-processing centers in March 2022.
Genesis
Yes,
the thing retarding recruitment below pre-2022 levels may be, at least in part,
a military-wide health-records update that, much like MyChart in the civilian
health-care world, tracks the medications of all service members. At first
glance, Genesis sounds like a huge improvement over flying coach from boot camp
with one’s entire medical history in a manila envelope on one’s lap. Pre-2022,
almost all records were on paper, and each base clinic, carrier medical bay, or
hospital had its own records system. Think Soviet health care but with less
clear alcohol. The sailor or Marine was responsible for transporting the
history of his innards to his next command. The paper-records system was in
need of modernization. For those currently serving, Genesis is almost certainly
helpful during the separation transition in that it synchronizes one’s health
history.
But
it may also have inadvertently suppressed recruitment. Isaac explained the
concern simply: “You can’t hide anything anymore.”
Nor
am I the first to report as much. Already in April of 2023, reporters Irene
Loewenson and Geoff Ziezulewicz wrote for the Military Times about the
integration issues with Genesis and its effect on recruiting according to those
closest to the effort. Unfortunately, published in a more or less industry
publication, the piece did not appear to register in the national discourse.
Now a year later and knowing 2023’s shortfalls, it’s that much more obvious
that Loewenson and Ziezulewicz were onto something.
When
a prospective recruit requests to join, his medication history is pulled from
MyChart to integrate with Genesis. The system wants all medical records
pertaining to any would-be recruit’s prescription history, and allows MEPS
(Military Entrance Processing Stations) to look at all prescription medication
someone has received, Isaac said. “There is a medical release form that
everyone has to sign now; if they don’t sign, they can’t join. So if someone
has had painkillers prescribed by a doctor working at a hospital, more than
likely they got surgery. We then need all the documents explaining why a
prescription was made.”
The
military doesn’t like a medicated recruit unless he’s a Motrin devotee. Any and
every medication a young person has ever received a prescription for,
regardless of whether he actually ingested it or how long he took it, can be grounds for rejection. Prescribed Ritalin for ADHD
at 16 or Zoloft for managed anxiety? Broke a bone snowboarding that’s since
healed? It might be a problem.
See,
back in the day (pre-2022), the recruiter would often take a recruit aside
before sending the young man to MEPS and say some version of the following:
“You have no medical issues, okay? If the doctor who inspects you at MEPS asks
if you’ve had surgery, you say ‘No, sir.’ If he asks about the cut on your
chest that suggests open-heart surgery, you say it’s a birthmark. You’ve never
drunk, smoked pot, or taken the Lord’s name in vain. You are the healthiest
American ever beheld by medical science — at least until he sees my next
recruit. Good?” Practically every recruit has lied in some capacity to join the
military because the standards are absurd, and the series of waivers and
records requests to show proof of, and reasons for, treatment can feel never-ending.
An
example: I didn’t lie and was shown the door my first time at MEPS because I
disclosed to the doctor there that I had been prescribed orthotics (arch
supports for the foot) years before — a minor detail that hadn’t come up on the
initial screening from the recruiter. Instead of saying, “Oh, no problem,” he
ushered me to the front desk and forbade my return until the podiatrist had
signed off on the orthotics I hadn’t used in over two years. Months of
paperwork later — including a visit to the prescribing podiatrist that, even
with a good insurance policy, cost more than $50 — I was cleared to return to
MEPS, face the doctor, and pass through to receive a ship date for boot camp.
Compare that instance of bureaucratic hoop-jumping with today’s access to a
full medication list, and one can see the monumental burden the military has
heaped on the applicant and his recruiter. Gone are the days of sidestepping
via white lies to present a clean medical record while giving the military
plausible deniability. They didn’t ask too intently, and recruits didn’t
volunteer extraneous information. The system worked.
The
reality is that many recruits fall into the military. An ugly break-up, getting
kicked out of the house, or finding little success in job-searching may bring
an 18-year-old into the recruiter’s office. The greater the administrative
burden placed on the applicant, the more likely he is to slide into an Amazon
warehouse or community college or fall away from productive society entirely.
This isn’t the case for all recruits, of course, but both recruiters confirmed
it to be common to the point of obvious.
What
makes the Genesis situation all the more challenging is that the military can’t
very well publicize that the records update has harmed recruitment because then
the brass would have to admit what anyone who’s served knows: Our 250 years of
martial success have come about through bald-faced lies to a medical
professional. There’s a proud tradition of patriotic fibs to serve one’s
country: JFK, John Boucher, and Gerry
Barlow, for instance.
What
all of this means for recruiting efforts is a two-pronged detriment. For the
sort of recruit for whom joining up is a whim, he can no longer ask for the
earliest ship date and expect it’ll be in a matter of days. “Genesis has slowed
down the process drastically,” as Frank put it. Instead of a few days of
processing and a bus pass to Great Lakes, Ill., the young man has
record-finding to do, and guys getting tossed from the house are probably not
big on keeping records or remembering doctors; they’ve got enough going on. The
Army or Navy has historically been the place to go when someone needs a bed,
three hot meals, and some money. Now the barrier to entry — to public service —
is more difficult to clear.
That
barrier is there for the other sort of recruit, too — the highly desirable
young man or woman who scores 80-plus on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude
Battery (ASVAB) or who is physically capable of trying for special forces.
In
the Navy, the high testers are destined for the nuclear program, cryptology,
air-traffic control, and similarly brainy endeavors — but with mental
horsepower can come personality quirks and socialization oddities that can be
targeted with medication. And kids scoring that high are usually coming from steadier homes where the parents
are interested enough in the kid’s well-being to take him to a doctor to
inquire about what he might need.
Furthermore,
to the point about the number of white recruits falling off while
numbers remain steady among minority groups, it’s worth mentioning that white
kids are treated for mental health at twice the rate of others,
and boys (9.8 percent) were medicated more often than girls (7 percent). While
the drop began before Genesis went DOD-wide, the largest drop (six percentage
points) occurred from 2022 to 2023.
“Between
2019 and 2022, while I was recruiting, at least a third of people we talked to
had a history of ADHD with some sort of IEP or prescribed medication,” Frank
said when asked about the scale of the issue. “Of that third, I’d say maybe 10
percent were able to get waivers. Now, of that third of people with a history
of ADHD, I couldn’t tell you how many were told to just not talk about it at
MEPS and enlisted without disclosing it.”
Ritalin
and similar stimulants were not unknown to Nuke students while I attended the
Rickover Center (home to naval nuclear engineering) in 2013, with an extreme
example of dependency coming when a Nuke student robbed a pharmacy in Ballston Spa, N.Y. While this
might seem like a compelling reason to prevent ADHD-diagnosed kids from
joining, the reality is that the well-adjusted STEM types go straight to
college while the Navy is the beneficiary of ADHD kids failing in school and
then succeeding with military structure and keeping the ships powered. With
that in mind, it’s probably best to review the standard and continue the
treatment regimen upon enlistment. The need for a moderating stimulant remains,
and some practice self-medication, consuming excessive energy drinks,
non-Navy-prescribed meds, or, in extreme cases, cocaine and meth.
Then
there are the special-forces recruits who, being athletically gifted, are
likely to have participated in competitive-sports programs. The probability of
their having had minor injuries and surgical repair (of torn labrums, knees,
etc.) is high, but they may not have shared this information until now, when
Genesis will catch prescriptions for painkillers coming from hospital systems
and demand all associated paperwork. The service thus keeps a now-recovered
recruit at arm’s length until he can provide documentation for every little
thing. Guys who are interested in special warfare have to be somewhat
intelligent and physically fit; they have options and can walk away. Again, the
system is producing more friction for high-value recruits.
To
be clear, Genesis offers a long-term upside for veteran care, but until medical standards and waivers are streamlined for
recruits (i.e., comport with the reality of American teens), the U.S.
military is likely to see continued shortfalls as candidates who previously
would have been seen as viable are prevented from joining. Even if a sixth of
applicants, rather than a third, as Frank experienced, are now disqualified
from service, that’s an unacceptable figure and would go most of the way toward
explaining the recruiting downturn that began in 2022.
Leidos
had “no comment” when asked about what role Genesis may or may not have in
slowing recruitment.
Covid
Covid’s
effects and the Biden administration’s reaction to it can be best explained by
reduced inputs and increased outputs. Once the vaccination requirements were
implemented, a good number of recruits waiting to leave for boot camp in DEP
(Delayed Entry Program) disappeared, never to return. Frank said, “The big
thing too was with the vaccine, we had a lot of people that were in the DEP
pool that when [DOD was] talking about making it mandatory, they dipped out,
they said, ‘No, no, thank you.’” I asked what proportion that would’ve been:
“In the division I was running, I’d say a quarter.” To make up for these holes
in the boot-camp roll, the Navy turned to early-departure bonuses starting at $10,000 and
going as high as $35,000.
But
stealing from the future only works if one has a way to replenish the losses,
and the military’s access to high schools — prime recruiting locations —
remained constricted well into 2023. “Covid made it extremely difficult to
recruit; some schools used Covid to prevent us from going to schools when
things started to open up again,” Isaac said. “I get it, we talk to a lot of
people, so there is greater risk. But some schools are still preventing us from
going, citing that parents are worried about Covid re-emerging, but they allow
other organizations to go inside schools. It’s applied to us but not to other
organizations.”
With
young people disengaging from society by edict and then choice, there’s been a
reduction in venues where recruiters can make their case and press business
cards on the interested, the unsuspecting, and the polite. While colleges and
now even tech schools get frequent access to schools, the military as a viable
post-grad option for high-schoolers has been relegated further from the view of
young Americans. Isaac and Frank both mentioned that districts make their own
rules regarding access; some dislike the low scores their graduating seniors
receive on the ASVAB (abysmally low, in some cases), while others prefer to
push college attendance (for reasons either stat-related or ideological).
Meanwhile,
branches were shedding qualified manpower as service members either refused to
receive the vaccine and were processed toward separation (8,000 in the Navy and its reserves alone), or received the
vaccine but were tired of the acrimony and strong-arming from the chain of
command and decided to call it quits after their next contract concluded. While
separation figures are more difficult to verify, the Navy’s 2021 recruiting goal was 33,400, increased by 4,000 for
2022, and then rose another 3,000 for 2023. These numbers would indicate that
year-over-year the Navy has lost thousands more than it has gained, and the
living conditions during that time were . . . unpleasant. The shuttering of all early separation programs practically
confirms as much.
While
the vaccine mandates have since been revoked, and the various branches and
their deployments have returned to normal (aside from the shooting war in the
Middle East), the manning deficits that resulted from Covid put the military in
a hole it’ll be difficult to climb out of given the systemic recruiting
handicaps.
Wokeness
and the Biden Administration
Perhaps
the least convincing reason for such a dramatic decline in recruitment since
2021 is wokeness, i.e., the idea that the Biden administration has made
military service, or patriotism itself, objectionable or distasteful to
Americans. While I agree with others who bemoan inclusivity training, lowered
standards, and many of the other social-engineering items foisted on the ranks,
the reality is that the military has been fairly woke since the Obama years,
and the people who are most bothered by the wokeness aren’t currently serving
or the age to serve.
Remember,
young people looking to enlist have grown up in the milieu of progressive
thought. Even though most of them don’t care enough about woke ideas to have a
strong opinion, they’re coming out of public schools and have grown up with
TikTok and YouTube, so woke precepts have already been assimilated into their
knowledge of the world. Well-meaning family and friends are warning young
people about the dangers of things that can be viewed in even more extreme
forms in a living room or on a bus. Recruitment held up in 2020 and 2021, the
two most socially unstable years in recent memory. There are almost certainly
some young men and women who’ve opted out of serving because of wokeness, but
the data available suggest there are simpler corrections that can happen under
any administration. One must work with what is available and possible.
As
Frank put it, “the reality is it doesn’t matter if it was Trump in office, and
it doesn’t matter if it was Biden in office. We used to get told all the time
by parents, ‘Well, I’m not letting my kid do this, or I’m not gonna go serve
under so and so.’ When in reality, any job you’ve ever worked — unless it was
like a mom-and-pop, little place — how much interaction did you actually have
with the CEO of your company? Zero.” Pointing to his own experience, he
continued, “I worked for four presidents in my time. I’ve never seen a single
one of them. It didn’t matter what laws they were enacting. You know that as
well as I do. The people who either made our lives good or made our lives
miserable were our leadership locally on the ship.”
If
sailors have to sit through a training about pronouns or assaults or
microaggressions, they’ll mock the content (remember these are teenagers);
they’ve signed the muster to prove attendance and will look for an opportunity
to slide out the door and head to lunch. When a sailor is running a shop and
low on sleep, the last thing he’s going to do is take a nontechnical training
seriously. You smile for the civilian trainer and then bounce as soon as
humanly possible. While there might be some potential recruits on the margins
who decide not to enlist because of what a family member who served says, for
most recruits with veterans in the family it’s the fact that they served — and
wanting to be part of that tradition — that matters, far more than whatever is
coming out of an uncle’s mouth.
More
likely, the DOD and the last two administrations inadvertently dampened
recruitment (the Genesis problem) while decreasing the likelihood of retention
(the Covid policies). It would appear the only thing worse than a butterbar with
an idea is an Oval Office and some brass with two.
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