Tag: Recruiting

Does anyone think offering accelerated citizenship to foreigners to join the military to make up for the recruiting shortage is a good idea?:

 The Air Force has graduated its first group of airmen who became American citizens during basic training as part of an accelerated naturalization process, which the service hopes will help solve recent difficulties in recruiting.

Fourteen foreign-born men and women who joined the Air Force were naturalized during several weeks of basic training this month at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas, the service said. They graduated from basic training and signed their U.S. Certificate of Citizenship on Wednesday.

“I will always be grateful for every opportunity I have here in the best country of the world,” said Airman 1st Class Natalia Laziuk, a member of the inaugural group and a native of Russia.

The enhanced process lets foreign-born recruits settle legal citizenship requirements immediately upon entering basic training. During seven and a half weeks, they can supply all the needed paperwork, take the citizenship test and satisfy other requirements to become naturalized Americans by the time that they graduate.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but I think if the recruits are already in the process of getting their citizenship I don’t have any issues with it. However, I think what we do need to be careful of is offering citizenship to foreigners to join the military that are not even eligible for citizenship. If a country can’t recruit its own citizens to defend it, is it still a country still worth defending? With that said I believe the current recruiting shortages are caused by self inflicted issues that can be fixed.

By the way I recommend everyone read what happened to the Roman military when it allowed large masses of foreigners to fill their ranks to make up for their recruiting shortages. It did not end well. Fortunately the U.S. military is no where near the issues Rome had, but what will it be like a hundred years from now if cutting military benefits and increasingly using foreigners to fill recruiting shortages becomes a popular way to fill the military?

The Army is gearing up for what is expected to be a very challenging year of recruiting after missing last year’s recruiting numbers by 15,000 troops:

Some of the recruiting troubles, such as declining trust in military institutions, have been known for years, defense officials have said. Others, like the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, are new.

“Only 9% of young Americans are interested in serving in the military,” Wormuth said, referring to a recent Defense Department survey that found only about 23% of young Americans between the ages of 17 and 24 years old meet all eligibility requirements without a waiver. Nine percent is the lowest amount since 2007.

Wormuth, 53, who has been Army secretary since May 2021 and was formerly undersecretary of defense for policy under President Barack Obama, identified many problem areas – but also detailed a series of new changes that are intended to solve them.

A key component, she said, is refuting negative perceptions about the Army, particularly when it comes to Generation Z Americans, who were born between the latter half of the 1990s and the early 2010s. (……….)

“They want community. They want purpose. They want what they’re doing to matter,” said Wormuth, who was director of the RAND International Security and Defense Policy Center before she became Army secretary. “I think we really need to reintroduce the Army to the country, to young people, to their parents, to influencers.”

In September, officials from four military branches also told a Senate panel that recruiting is becoming more difficult and they underscored many of the same challenges that Wormuth pointed out.

“We anticipate the recruiting environment to be even more challenging in 2023 and beyond,” Lt. Gen. Caroline Miller, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel and services, told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Some of the most serious problems, Wormuth said Friday, are the change in lifestyle that comes with joining the Army and the negative perceptions in the public psyche, particularly among parents.

“[Parents are] worried that if [their] kid joins the Army they’re going to suffer psychological harm or they’re going to be sexually harassed,” she said. “So we have to put our money where our mouth is — actions speak louder than words. We have got to show results in this area and not just talk about it.”

“Life in the Army is not easy,” she added. “So, we have got to take care of our soldiers. We have to make sure they have safe workplaces where there is good morale.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

It is official now that the Army did not meet its recruiting goals for this past fiscal year:

The Army fell about 15,000 soldiers — or 25% — short of its recruitment goal this year, officials confirmed Friday, despite a frantic effort to make up the widely expected gap in a year when all the military services struggled in a tight jobs market to find young people willing and fit to enlist.

While the Army was the only service that didn’t meet its target, all of the others had to dig deep into their pools of delayed entry applicants, which will put them behind as they begin the next recruiting year on Saturday. (……)

“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,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said in a statement to The Associated Press. “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.”

Officials said the Army brought in about 45,000 soldiers during the fiscal year that ended Friday. The goal was 60,000.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

The recruiting environment out there is tough right now and the Army is adjusting its recruiting requirements to adjust:

The U.S. Army is doing away with its requirement that enlistees have a GED or high school diploma, a move designed to help meet recruiting goals.

In what it described as “limited eligibility,” U.S. Army Recruiting Command said it is moving to a “whole of person” approach, “understanding some quality candidates may have just reason for being unable to complete their education.” The change means a high school diploma or its equivalent won’t be required, but applicants must score 50 or greater on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery and meet all other standard enlistment criteria.

“This opportunity means that individuals who left high school prior to graduating due to uncontrollable circumstances, such as caring for a terminally ill family member or working to provide for their family, will not be considered ineligible for service solely because they were unable to graduate,” Recruiting Command said.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

I actually thought these Army recruiting videos were pretty clever. Having worked recruiting before patriotism and serving your country is not the number one reason most people join; the benefits is a major reason which these ads help to highlight:

The Army’s latest recruitment video series has targeted American society in a daring bid to entice the country’s youth to become soldiers.

Rather than highlighting the unique opportunities that military service can provide, the branch has gone full petty, comparing what some consider baseline human rights benefits to the much weaker ones provided by the average American workplace.

The clips, featured on YouTube, essentially say, “the Army isn’t great, but it’s a hell of a lot better than working elsewhere.”

Focused on benefits like homebuying, paid parental leave, vacation days and pension plans, the underlying message of these videos seem less about recruiting and serve more as a commentary about the sad state of affairs for the average civilian employee. There are currently five of the ads, all part of a series called “Know Your Army.”

Army Times

You can read more at the link, but here is my favorite commercial:

This is not the type of attention that US Army Recruiting Command was looking for with this ad campaign:

Two weeks ago, the Army’s official recruiting website released a series of animated advertisementsshowcasing the stories of several soldiers on their journey to join the nation’s oldest branch.

One in particular features Cpl. Emma Malonelord, a soldier raised in California by two moms.

Since its upload to YouTube, however, this video’s comment section has been disabled. It currently has nearly a million views, 36,000 dislikes and only 775 likes.

“Beginning May 12 we started noticing a significant uptick in negative commentary,” Laura DeFrancisco, public affairs chief for the Army Enterprise Marketing Office, told Army Times. “The comments violated our social media policy and were not aligned with Army values. Out of respect for the safety and wellbeing of our soldiers and their families, we have disabled the comments.”

Hers is one of five stories selected by the branch for recruiting advertisements under the series, titled “The Calling.”

Army Times

You can read more at the link, but Ted Cruz had to comment about all this using a Russian propaganda video:

The recruiting Youtube video is not at only 1k likes and 46 dislikes. You would think they would have turned off this feature by now. Plenty of bot accounts from foreign adversaries are sure to go and troll a US military video like this.

Here we go again with the media advocating for the MAVNI program:

Over the course of 12 months, the U.S. Army discharged more than 500 immigrant enlistees who were recruited across the globe for their language or medical skills and promised a fast track to citizenship in exchange for their service, The Associated Press has found.

The decade-old Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest recruiting program was put on hold in 2016 amid concerns that immigrant recruits were not being screened sufficiently. The Army began booting out those enlistees last year without explanation .

The AP has interviewed more than a dozen recruits from countries such as Brazil, Pakistan, Iran, China and Mongolia who all said they were devastated by their unexpected discharges or canceled contracts.

Until now, it’s been unclear how many were discharged and for what reason because the Army has refused to discuss specific cases. But the Army’s own list, submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia last month, says 502 service members who enlisted under MAVNI were discharged between July 2017 and July 2018.

The list, which was unsealed this week after a request from the AP, offers “refuse to enlist” as the reason for expelling two-thirds of the recruits. That is the reason given for 35 percent of enlistee discharges Army-wide, according to a research study posted on a Defense Department website.

But at least one recruit whose paperwork said he was being discharged from the program for that reason said it was not accurate.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link, but according to documents most of these MAVNI recruits ended up refusing to enlist.  Plus I like how the Associated Press reporters did not mention in the article the espionage threat potential from these recruits.  Just last month a Chinese agent who was a MAVNI recruit was arrested:

The complaint charges Ji with one count of knowingly acting in the United States as an agent of a foreign government without prior notification to the Attorney General.  He will make an initial court appearance today at 5:00 p.m. EDT (4:00 p.m. CDT) before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael T. Mason in Courtroom 2266 of the Everett M. Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago.

According to the complaint, Ji was born in China and arrived in the United States in 2013 on an F1 Visa, for the purpose of studying electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.  In 2016, Ji enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves as an E4 Specialist under the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) program, which authorizes the U.S. Armed Forces to recruit certain legal aliens whose skills are considered vital to the national interest.  In his application to participate in the MAVNI program, Ji specifically denied having had contact with a foreign government within the past seven years, the complaint states.  In a subsequent interview with a U.S. Army officer, Ji again failed to disclose his relationship and contacts with the intelligence officer, the charge alleges.  [Department of Justice]

My personal opinion on this is that I would rather have a smaller group of highly qualified soldiers than a larger group of soldiers with standards dropped.  However, the Army is saying they are only allowing in soldiers who have admitted to marijuana use which is on the lower end of criminal activity:

Faced with increasing demand for new soldiers, the Army has reached deeper into the pool of marginally qualified recruits, offered hundreds of millions in bonuses and relaxed the process for granting waivers for marijuana use.

The Army will reach its goal of 80,000 new soldiers without compromising quality, predicted Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Snow, who leads its recruiting command. The need for new soldiers comes as Congress has reversed trends begun in the Obama administration to downsize the military. An additional headwind for recruiting in all the service branches: a growing economy where civilian jobs, not joining the military, attract young people.

“It’s in an environment where unemployment is 4.5%,” Snow said. “We’ve got our work cut out for us.”  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but I wonder if this will mean weight and fitness standards for soldiers coming out of basic and AIT will be lowered as well like there were before?