We are running out of troops

[MillCreek]

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/368528/us-military-army-navy-recruit-numbers

We went to a retirement party last week, and the person retiring had her son there at the party.   He is an Army SFC who had just finished a stint as a recruiter and was on leave before returning back to an armored brigade. He was at a recruiting station in Nebraska and was telling stories about how hard it is to find people interested in enlisting. The thing that surprised me was his story about how many young men were medically ineligible due to being overweight or being prescribed various drugs.  The young women had far fewer medical disqualifications.  And then the Vox story came up in my news feed and I guess the recruiter was absolutely right.

[Unisaw]

I saw a statistic that only 23% of the US population even qualifies for military service.  I've noticed that even elite units like the 160th SOAR are running recruiting ads on Instagram.  I know the former commander of the 160th SOAR and asked him about it.  He said that overall recruiting problems ripple down to recruiting for helicopter crews, which then ripples down to their recruiting pool.  And, they don't settle during selection.

[dogmush]

No big deal. As the economy continues to collapse, military service will be popular again.  We can just add three weeks to red phase of basic training  to help them loose the weight.

The "kinder, gentler" TRADOC basic training ideas are a result of us having the luxury of not fighting and that's going away, so we can get back to real discipline.