{"id":1532029,"date":"2022-06-29T08:19:42","date_gmt":"2022-06-29T12:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1532029"},"modified":"2022-06-29T08:19:50","modified_gmt":"2022-06-29T12:19:50","slug":"thanks-to-leftist-corruption-u-s-military-recruiting-is-in-total-freefall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/thanks-to-leftist-corruption-u-s-military-recruiting-is-in-total-freefall\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanks To Leftist Corruption, U.S. Military Recruiting Is In Total Freefall"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthanks-to-leftist-corruption-u-s-military-recruiting-is-in-total-freefall%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1532029&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/mil-e1656464857841.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Amid the first conventional war in Europe since 1945 and China\u2019s massive military buildup \u2014 including nuclear weapons \u2014 the U.S. military is experiencing a dangerous drop in its warfighting capability. The U.S. Army, the largest service, has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/military\/every-branch-us-military-struggling-meet-2022-recruiting-goals-officia-rcna35078\">only reached 40 percent of its recruiting goal<\/a> with just more than three months remaining in the fiscal year.<\/p>\n<p>This military decay will continue under President Joe Biden\u2019s disastrous anti-leadership and likely will take many years of concerted effort to reverse. Further, combined with the chaotic defeat in Afghanistan, America\u2019s ability to deter its enemies from taking hostile action is at a low not seen since the late 1970s, making a major war far more likely. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>There are three growing signs of trouble: an alarming collapse in recruiting, a profoundly unserious national security leadership, and weakness in the military supply chain and procurement.<\/p>\n<h2>Recruiting Collapse<\/h2>\n<p>The military is facing its most severe staffing crisis since the advent of the all-volunteer force in 1973. In March, the Department of Defense (DoD) announced it would <a href=\"https:\/\/www.janes.com\/defence-news\/news-detail\/pentagon-budget-2023-dod-to-trim-military-end-strength#:~:text=The%20air%20and%20space%20forces,up%2094%20from%20FY%202022.&#038;text=military%2Dend%2Dstrength-,The%20US%20Department%20of%20Defense%20(DoD)%20plans%20to%20reduce%20its,people%20or%200.2%25\">reduce its active-duty end strength by 0.2 percent to a little more than 2.1 million<\/a>. Pentagon comptroller Michael McCord <a href=\"https:\/\/www.janes.com\/defence-news\/news-detail\/pentagon-budget-2023-dod-to-trim-military-end-strength#:~:text=The%20air%20and%20space%20forces,up%2094%20from%20FY%202022.&#038;text=military%2Dend%2Dstrength-,The%20US%20Department%20of%20Defense%20(DoD)%20plans%20to%20reduce%20its,people%20or%200.2%25\">assured us that it\u2019s<\/a> \u201cnot about making the force bigger. We\u2019re looking at making the force more capable.\u201d But only three months later, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/military\/every-branch-us-military-struggling-meet-2022-recruiting-goals-officia-rcna35078\">word broke that every branch in the military is having trouble meeting its recruiting goals<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As a result of its massive recruiting shortfalls, the U.S. Army has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.military.com\/daily-news\/2022\/06\/24\/army-drops-requirement-high-school-diploma-amid-recruiting-crisis.html\">lowered its standards<\/a>, dropping requirements for recruits to have a high school diploma or GED to enlist, while relaxing tattoo restrictions to allow tattoos on hands and neck without a waiver. These two decisions will result in a less capable force with troublesome discipline issues. The Army is even offering enlistment contracts as short as two years \u2014 barely enough time to learn the basics of modern warfare.<\/p>\n<p>The DoD is even reviewing more than <a href=\"https:\/\/www.janes.com\/defence-news\/news-detail\/pentagon-budget-2023-dod-to-trim-military-end-strength#:~:text=The%20air%20and%20space%20forces,up%2094%20from%20FY%202022.&#038;text=military%2Dend%2Dstrength-,The%20US%20Department%20of%20Defense%20(DoD)%20plans%20to%20reduce%20its,people%20or%200.2%25\">250 disqualifications for service, such as asthma and ADHD<\/a>. With only <a href=\"https:\/\/www.janes.com\/defence-news\/news-detail\/pentagon-budget-2023-dod-to-trim-military-end-strength#:~:text=The%20air%20and%20space%20forces,up%2094%20from%20FY%202022.&#038;text=military%2Dend%2Dstrength-,The%20US%20Department%20of%20Defense%20(DoD)%20plans%20to%20reduce%20its,people%20or%200.2%25\">23 percent of Americans ages 17-24 qualified to serve in uniform without a waiver and just 9 percent of those eligible to serve even interested<\/a> \u2014 the lowest since the Iraq War troop surge in 2007 \u2014 something has to give, with some experts suggesting that a draft might be needed again. Fears over not being able to meet uniformed staffing levels might have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/policy\/defense-national-security\/conservatives-rage-over-push-to-force-women-to-register-for-draft\">informed the seven Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee who voted to require women to register for a military draft<\/a> in June.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Biden\u2019s defense officials may hope money solves the problem, but they\u2019d be better advised to look in the mirror instead. When you openly accuse the military of being rightwing and harboring white supremacists, insist on schooling them in transgender pronoun usage, and then force them to get vaccinated for a Covid-19 virus that\u2019s less threatening than the flu for the young and healthy military demographic, you shouldn\u2019t be shocked that they don\u2019t want to enlist under a leadership they neither trust nor admire.<\/p>\n<p>To doublecheck that the economy wasn\u2019t the overriding reason why recruiting is failing, I spoke with a friend who leads a large police academy in Texas. He said the classes are full of new recruits (although in Chicago, Oregon, and Washington State, areas where police are under attack, things are different). He even noted an influx of police coming into Texas from other states to escape Covid-19 vaccination requirements for public safety employees.<\/p>\n<h2>Profoundly Unserious Leadership<\/h2>\n<p>There are multiple warning flags that our civilian and senior military leadership are majoring in the minors while ignoring warfighting at our collective peril. Whether it\u2019s the aforementioned policies or claiming climate change is an existential threat, our national security apparatus appears intent on losing its first engagement with a revanchist People\u2019s Republic of China.<\/p>\n<p>Even today\u2019s extended 1 million barrels per day peacetime drawdown of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is aimed at the threat to Biden\u2019s approval rating rather than the potential loss of our ability to import oil during a crisis. As of June 24, the reserve stood at 497.9 million barrels, the lowest since 1985, eight years after the program\u2019s start. That\u2019s a 59-day supply of imports.<\/p>\n<p>The over-hyped fear of a military overrun with right-wing extremists is especially maddening as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin initiated a military-wide standdown and struggle session on the premise of false reports from CNN and NPR. These outlets claimed that the ranks of those arrested in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot were doubly overrepresented by veterans. The claim, based on three math errors, was off by about 100 percent \u2014 meaning that the share of veterans among those arrested was exactly what one would expect from any <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/01\/10\/no-veterans-are-not-more-likely-to-have-rioted-in-the-u-s-capitol\/\">random group of American adults who were almost 90 percent men<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, retired Adm. John Kirby, then Austin\u2019s spokesman, now communications chief for the National Security Council in the White House, darkly warned, \u201cThere may be cultural issues we have to deal with here.\u201d Cultural issues? Tennessee Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen said the quiet part out loud when he worried that the National Guard soldiers sent to secure the Capitol in a symbolic show of force in 2021 were \u201cpredominantly more conservative\u201d than Americans.<\/p>\n<h2>Military Procurement Weaknesses<\/h2>\n<p>The U.S. military supply chain has become increasingly reliant on the import of key items, such as computer chips. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/01\/26\/us\/politics\/computer-chip-shortage-taiwan.html\">America makes 10 percent of the world\u2019s computer chips with 75 percent of global production in East Asia<\/a> and some 90 percent of the most advanced chips made in Taiwan.<\/p>\n<p>Every Javelin missile launched in Ukraine at invading Russian forces uses a Javelin missile Command Launch Unit (CLU), and every CLU has more than <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/livecoverage\/russia-ukraine-latest-news-2022-04-27\/card\/chip-shortage-limits-u-s-s-ability-to-supply-weapons-to-ukraine-commerce-secretary-says-pCWERV2HkSPzTdQG4CRI\">250 computer chips in it<\/a>. As of mid-April, Ukraine received some 5,500 Javelin systems \u2014 CLU and missile \u2014 with reports that the United States has supplied 7,000 missiles so far, about one-third of its stockpile. <\/p>\n<p>Javelin orders take 32 months to deliver, and in recent years, the United States has been buying only 1,000 Javelins per year with a maximum production rate of 6,480 per year. But the semiconductor-using industry typically has less than five days of chips on hand and it will likely take a year or more to reach the maximum production rate \u2014 assuming the chips will be available.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, a land war in which American supplies of anti-tank missiles, anti-aircraft missile, and artillery, have been sent in large numbers, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would mostly involve the Navy and Air Force. Unfortunately, naval ship building and drydock repair is a glaring weak spot in our national security. America now builds fewer than <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/lorenthompson\/2021\/07\/23\/us-shipbuilding-is-at-its-lowest-ebb-ever-how-did-america-fall-so-far\/?sh=73fc4d5e6c87\">10 vessels for oceangoing trade every year \u2014 China builds more than 1,000<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>In military shipbuilding, America strains to build more than four combat vessels per year. The U.S. Navy used to <a href=\"http:\/\/shipbuildinghistory.com\/shipyards\/public.htm\">operate 13 shipyards \u2014 it has five now<\/a>, with 14 new construction shipyards (commercial and government) lost since 1970. The U.S. Navy had <a href=\"https:\/\/sgp.fas.org\/crs\/weapons\/RL32665.pdf\">298 battle force ships in April<\/a> (including the U.S.S. Constitution, built in 1797) and about another 190 support and reserve ships. Meanwhile, China has 350 warships and that number is climbing quickly.<\/p>\n<p>My own decision to enlist the military in 1983 was motivated by President Ronald Reagan and his call to defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War. In 2007, I retired as a lieutenant colonel. If I were 20 today, there\u2019d be zero chance I\u2019d enlist to serve under a group of people whom I thought hated me and despised my political views \u2014 and who would use my time in military service as a cross between a reeducation camp and an armed international social service agency.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Chuck DeVore is vice president of national initiatives at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a former California legislator, special assistant for foreign affairs in the Reagan-era Pentagon, and a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army (retired) Reserve. He&#8217;s the author of two books, &#8220;The Texas Model: Prosperity in the Lone Star State and Lessons for America,&#8221; and &#8220;China Attacks,&#8221; a novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amid the first conventional war in Europe since 1945 and China\u2019s massive military buildup \u2014 including nuclear weapons \u2014 the U.S. military is experiencing a dangerous drop in its warfighting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":563,"featured_media":1897744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1532029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_finder_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/06\/29\/thanks-to-leftist-corruption-u-s-military-recruiting-is-in-total-freefall\/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=thanks-to-leftist-corruption-u-s-military-recruiting-is-in-total-freefall","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/563"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1532029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1897744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1532029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1532029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1532029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}