“Three of America’s four major military services failed to recruit enough servicemembers in 2023. The Army has failed to meet its manpower goals for the last two years and missed its 2023 target by 10,000 soldiers, a 20 percent shortfall. Today, the active-duty Army stands at 445,000 soldiers, 41,000 fewer than in 2021 and the smallest it has been since 1940.
The Navy and Air Force missed their recruiting goals, too, the Navy failing across the board. The Marine Corps was the only service to achieve its targets (not counting the tiny Space Force). But the Marines’ success is partially attributable to significant force structure cuts as part of its Force Design 2030 overhaul. As a result, Marine recruiters have nearly 19,000 fewer active duty and selected reserve slots to fill today than they did as recently as 2020.
A decrease in the size of the active force might be less worrying if a large reserve pool could be mobilized in the event of a major war or national emergency. But recruiting challenges have impacted the reserve components even more severely than the active duty force. The National Guard and Reserves have been shrinking since 2020. Last year, the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve each missed their recruiting targets by 30 percent. The Army Reserve had just 9,319 enlistees after aiming to recruit 14,650 new soldiers. Numbers for the Navy Reserve were just as bad — the service missed its enlisted and officer targets by 35 and 40 percent, respectively.
Should a true national security emergency arise, America lacks the ability to mobilize as Israel and Russia have done. The Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) — comprising former active duty or selected reserve personnel who could be reactivated by the Secretary of Defense during wartime or a national emergency — is designed to act as a bridge from the AVF to a revived draft. Almost forgotten even by servicemembers, the IRR earned brief notoriety when some servicemembers were “stop-lossed” during the Iraq War — pulled from the IRR and returned to active duty involuntarily, usually to deploy again.
Today, there are just over 264,000 servicemembers in the entire IRR. The Army’s IRR pool has shrunk from 700,000 in 1973 to 76,000 in 2023. Forget building new units in wartime: the IRR is now incapable of even providing sufficient casualty replacements for losses from the first battles of a high-intensity war.
And even if more Americans could be encouraged to sign up, they may not be able to serve. Before Covid, fewer than three in 10 Americans in the prime recruiting demographic — ages 17 to 24 — were eligible to serve in uniform. Those numbers have shrunk further since the pandemic began. Only 23 percent of young Americans are qualified to enlist without a waiver, based on the most recent data. Endemic youth obesity, record levels of physical unfitness, mental health issues exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, and drug use have rendered the vast majority of young Americans ineligible for military service. Scores on the ASVAB — the military’s standardized exam for recruits, which tests aptitude for service — plummeted during the pandemic.”
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“The recruiting crisis is a greater national security threat to the United States than the wars that currently dominate the headlines. If there is one lesson America’s leaders should take from the conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, it is that troop mobilization and depth are still essential for fighting wars. As both Israel and Ukraine have learned, no amount of high-tech wizardry has changed this enduring reality of warfare. Should the United States fail to fix its military recruiting, it will risk losing a great power war — with enormous consequences for all Americans.”
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/368528/us-military-army-navy-recruit-numbers