US Army Falling Short?

(TheLastPatriotNews.com) – The US Army failed to meet its recruitment goals for 2022 in what has become its worst year since the US military became an all-volunteer professional force almost half a century ago.

After the 2022 fiscal year ended on September 30, it has emerged that the Army is 15,000 recruits short of its goals for the year, AP reported, as cited by Fox News.

That is only 75% of the 60,000 new soldiers the US Army planned to recruit last fiscal year.

“In the Army’s most challenging recruiting year since the start of the all-volunteer force, we will only achieve 75% of our fiscal year 22 recruiting goal,” said Army Secretary Christine Wormuth.

“The Army will maintain its readiness and meet all our national security requirements. If recruiting challenges persist, we will draw on the Guard and Reserve to augment active-duty forces, and may need to trim our force structure,” Wormuth added.

The other US military branches – the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marine Corps – did meet their goals for FY 2022 but also “suffered recruiting struggles.”

The difficulties forced them to resort to their delayed entry program recruits, leaving them behind on their recruitment objectives for 2023.

Thus, the Marine Corps, which usually starts the new fiscal year having met 50% of its recruitment goals, is starting FY 2023 with only 30% of its targets.

The Air Force and Navy are starting the new recruiting year with only 10% of their 2023 goals already met, while the number typically hovers around 25%.

“Using Air Force lexicon, I would say we’re doing a dead stick landing as we come into the end of fiscal ’22, and we’re going to need to turn around on October 1 and do an afterburner takeoff,” Maj. Gen. Edward Thomas, head of the Air Force Recruiting Service, told a conference last week.

“We’re going to be starting 2023 in a tougher position than we started 2022,” he added.

With only 23% of the American service-aged population meeting the requirements and a tight job market, speculations have arisen that the US military might have to restructure itself.

The military must rely on Reserve and National Guard troops if recruitment numbers do not rebound.

Critics insisted that recruitment may have been hurt by the US military becoming “woke” over the last few years.

“How can we ask young men and women who have decided to risk their lives for America, even die for America, to affirm that our country is inherently racist… A woke military is a weak military,” former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote in a Fox News column last week.