Biden warms up the Individual Ready Reserve

[Ivanhoe]

https://taskandpurpose.com/military-life/army-recruitment-college-degrees/
 

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The Army wants as many as one-third of its future enlisted recruits to have college degrees and plans to create two new jobs — one enlisted, one warrant officer — to keep high-performing recruiters looking for them, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said Tuesday.

As the Army faces recruiting challenges, the service is also going through “a moment of transformation” with potential changes to the entire force structure and overall modernization, Wormuth said in a roundtable with reporters.

“There are a lot of things happening that are outside of the United States Army’s ability to control: the declining percentage of young Americans who are eligible to join the military, the declining propensity,” Wormuth said. “What we’ve really tried to focus on since this is an existential issue for us is, what can we change right now?”

 

Amusing, especially given the following;

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-recruiting-cities-gen-townsend/
 

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The Army is looking for new soldiers in 22 cities that have not been traditional hotbeds of recruiting, said Gen. Stephen Townsend, head of Training and Doctrine Command.

Those cities include New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Atlanta, Oklahoma City, Miami, Seattle, Phoenix, and Boston, Townsend told reporters at then Association of the United States Army’s annual conference.

“The Southeast, the Deep South, and the Midwest have been our traditional recruiting strongholds,” Townsend said. “We’ve used those areas to offset our lack of performance in the other parts of the country. Well, that’s not where the population is growing the most. The population is growing the most in other parts of the country and we have to succeed in those areas.”

 

Good ol' TRADOC, couldn't even pass the final exam in 8th grade geography. Stupid, or dishonest? You decide;

 

 

[FALightFighter]

On 12/31/2023 at 10:42 AM, Ivanhoe said:

https://taskandpurpose.com/military-life/army-recruitment-college-degrees/
 

Amusing, especially given the following;

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-recruiting-cities-gen-townsend/
 

Good ol' TRADOC, couldn't even pass the final exam in 8th grade geography. Stupid, or dishonest? You decide;

 

 

GEN Townsend hasn't been the TRADOC commander for 4-1/2 years, and that article is over 5 years old.

You do realize that things change, right?

[Ivanhoe]

https://www.foxnews.com/us/navy-lowers-bar-enlist-again-amid-continued-recruiting-woes

 

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The U.S. Navy will start to enlist applicants who have not graduated from high school or obtained a GED as the service continues to struggle with its recruiting goals.

"We get thousands of people into our recruiting stations every year that want to join the Navy but do not have an education credential. And we just turn them away," Vice Adm. Rick Cheeseman, the Navy's chief of personnel, said of the change, according to a report in The Associated Press.

The new plan will allow recruits who don't have an education credential to enlist as long as they score a 50 or above out of 99 on the qualification test, according to the report, marking the first time the Navy has allowed such recruits since the year 2000.

 

Anyone who scores over 50 needs to be forced to get their GED in the first year or two, so they can start taking college classes from a decent online program. IMHO, promotion = retention and I know they are making it stupid hard for some Army soldiers to get promotion points. Unfortunately, with all the chaos I doubt anyone is thinking about that.

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Cheeseman acknowledged that risk and said recruits enlisted under the lower test score standards last year did wash out of boot camp at a slightly higher rate, 11.4%, than those who achieved higher scores before enlistment, 6.4%.

I guess 11.4 is just slightly higher than 6.4, in BuPers math?

 

 

[Ivanhoe]

https://thefederalist.com/2024/03/29/if-diversity-is-our-strength-why-is-our-military-so-weak/

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This astonishing proposal disregarded military requirements and culture, which requires identical treatment of personnel to build cohesion and mutual trust for survival in combat. Instead, the MLDC relied on a 1996 Harvard Business Review article advising corporate managers on how to stress differences, not unity.

https://dailycaller.com/2024/02/13/exclusive-a-huge-blow-decline-in-white-recruits-fueling-the-militarys-worst-ever-recruiting-crisis-data-shows/
 

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The data “reveals the decline of white recruits is almost entirely responsible for the recruiting crisis,” Will Thibeau, director of the American Military Project at the Claremont Institute, told the DCNF.

“A smaller proportion of white Americans serve now than ever before. This is fundamental, because complimentary increases in black and Hispanic recruits have not taken place,” he added.

 

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/01/10/army-sees-sharp-decline-white-recruits.html
 

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In 2018, 56.4% of new recruits were categorized as white. In 2023, that number had fallen to 44%. During that same five-year period, Black recruits have gone from 20% to 24% of the pool, and Hispanic recruits have risen from 17% to 24%, with both groups seeing largely flat recruiting totals but increasing as a percentage of incoming soldiers as white recruiting has fallen.

The rate at which white recruitment has fallen far outpaces nationwide demographic shifts, data experts and Army officials interviewed by Military.com noted. They don't see a single cause to the recruiting problem, but pointed to a confluence of issues for Army recruiting, including partisan scrutiny of the service, a growing obesity epidemic and an underfunded public education system.

 

If obesity was the problem, shortfalls in white recruits would be concomitant with shortfalls in other race/ethnicity cateogies.

 

[Ivanhoe]

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2024/06/15/automatic-draft-registration-bill-passes-the-house-a-clear-sign-that-we-are-getting-ready-for-war-1465973/
 

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U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan’s automatic draft registration bill has passed the House, shocking critics who believe America is preparing for war.

The bill was included in this year’s annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

As previously reported, Houlahan, a Democrat, proposed requiring all men who turn 18 to automatically be registered into the draft. This would differ from the current system in which 18 to 25-year-old men are required to “voluntarily” register with Selective Service.

While debating the proposal last month, she argued that an automatic draft sign-up would free up money to spend on “readiness and towards mobilization” versus “education and advertising campaigns driven to register people” for the draft, according to Task & Purpose.

In fairness to her, only 84 percent of qualified men signed up for Selective Service in 2022. Moreover, Selective Service was slated to spend $33 million this year alone “to improve registration compliance rates.”

 

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Fair enough, but it’s also true that most U.S. states, the four territories, and Washington, D.C. already automatically register eligible men for Selective Service whenever they obtain a driver’s license, driver’s permit, or other motor vehicle-related piece of identification.

Moreover, eligible men who fail to sign up already face a whole host of draconian repercussions, including ineligibility for federal student aid and jobs at federal agencies, not to mention security clearances.

 

Amusingly in retrospect, when I got my first security clearance and saw the draft registration thing on the SF-86, I dug up my little registration form and realized that I had completely forgotten the requirement to notify the Selective Service Administration of my numerous address changes over the course of a decade plus. What a clunky system!

That said, with the pervasive and invasive federal monitoring of citizens going on, with the help of the USPS, FBI, IRS, etc. the Selective Service administration will have zero difficulty tracking down draftees. Heck, they surely know which 18-19 year olds have been on Ritalin and/or psychotropics and thus can be weeded out of the draftee pool.

Dennis Kucinich delivers an owie;

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“I believe it is honorable, a sacred obligation, to serve in defense of one’s country. But our leaders have a deeper obligation, a solemn duty to explain why. They have not done so,” he added.

From sss.gov;

 

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Selective Service received your name from one of several lists used to identify people who may be eligible to register, including lists from the following:

• Department of Motor Vehicles
• Department of Education
• Department of Homeland Security
• Department of Labor’s Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act or Job Corps Program
• Department of Defense’s recruiting
• Public high schools

 

Reading between the lines of the FAQ on that site, even with online registration there are still many flaws in the system.

Of general concern is the issue of Social Security Number screwups, whether accidental or due to identity theft. Its not hard to imagine the SSA getting all pissed off at Draftee Snuffy for not showing up to MEPS because his draft notice was delivered to his retirement home and tossed in the dumpster.

 

 

 

 

[Ivanhoe]

2020 Qualified Military Available (QMA) Study;

https://prod-media.asvabprogram.com/CEP_PDF_Contents/Qualified_Military_Available.pdf

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The proportion of youth eligible for military service without a waiver is 23%. This is a decrease from previous
estimates (29%).

From https://dwp.dmdc.osd.mil/dwp/app/dod-data-reports/workforce-reports

total Army personnel;

06/30/24  07/31/23
 443,444   452,689

https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2023/02/17/army-reserve-officers-are-bailing-out-this-general-has-a-plan/
 

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Currently serving officers interviewed by Army Times believe in Daniels’ vision but worry that the message isn’t getting through. They requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media.

“I think [Daniels] is completely squared away,” said one current Reserve battalion commander. “The problem is she needs to fire every f------ [general] she has…because all of them are still looking at metrics.”