Sending Uncle Sam to voicemail

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, July 25th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: be all that you can be. Remember that?

REICHARD: Oh yeah.

EICHER: Yeah, probably just Mary and me.

Welp, the U.S. Army is dusting off that old slogan from the Reagan years, hoping to attract more young people to the ranks. But recruiting numbers are down. Way down. And it’ll probably take more than an old ad campaign to turn it around. WORLD reporter Todd Vician has more.

AUDIO: [Sound of recruits doing calisthenics and Army sergeant calling out orders]

TODD VICIAN, REPORTER: It was only 9 a.m. on a recent Friday outside Austin, Texas, but temperatures had already climbed into the 90s.

About 20 young men and women gathered in somewhat uniform lines on a grassy area near baseball diamonds and soccer fields. They were there to learn how to stand at attention and maintain their composure with a drill sergeant yelling in their faces. They also had to throw a 10-pound ball over their heads, testing the muscles that soldiers use when lifting someone over an obstacle in combat.

AUDIO: [Sound of recruits training]

These are new recruits, recent high school graduates hoping to “be all they can be” in the Army or Army Reserve. This summer, each recruit will ship off to basic training. Some left just two weeks after that morning session.

The military devotes millions of dollars and manpower each year to recruiting. Recruiters aim to convince America’s youth they can achieve their personal goals while serving a greater good. But this year, the military won’t persuade as many potential recruits as it needs to.

WICKER: Although the military has experienced intermittent recruiting problems in its history, today’s challenge is unprecedented.

That’s Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi.

WICKER: The previous low watermark for recruiting occurred in the late 1970s when the services collectively achieved 90 percent of their goals.

In March, he described the historic nature of the problem during a Senate hearing.

WICKER: This year, if trends continue, our armed forces are projected to achieve roughly 75 percent of active duty recruiting goals. The three largest services will all miss their individual recruiting objectives, and the Army will miss the target for the third time in five years.

The causes of the recruiting woes vary: Competition from businesses offering high starting wages and benefits, several years of closed high school campuses during COVID, and fewer youth qualified or even interested in military service. About 75 percent of enlistment-eligible youth nationwide have little to no knowledge about the military, and only 9 percent say they are interested in serving, the lowest in more than a decade.

The American military missed its recruiting goal by the largest margin ever last year, but not everyone is calling this a crisis. Here’s Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall.

KENDALL: We have knobs that we can turn, if you will, that can increase our recruiting, and we're looking at it as a multi-year issue, not as a one-year, temporary issue. I think we’re going to work our way through this and the shortfall that we’re having is not too troubling.

Service leaders say politics and gender ideology are not a significant detractor for potential recruits. But Republican Senator and former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville disagrees. During the same March Senate hearing, Tuberville read excerpts from a Navy training module that suggested sailors could get in trouble for expressing traditional religious views on marriage, abortion, and gay rights.

TUBERVILLE: The Navy spending millions of man hours on training that blatantly calls many of its service members abnormal and then being surprised that recruiting numbers are down would be like a college football coach walking into a recruit’s house and calling the mom’s wallpaper ugly. I mean it just doesn't work. I know a little bit about recruiting and I think we’ve got to do a lot better job than that.

Even when recruits want to serve, many of them don’t meet the physical fitness or aptitude requirements. If an applicant has had any previous trouble with the law or illegal drug use, recruiters have to navigate a lengthy waiver process.

Recruits need medical waivers for issues like broken bones, flat feet, and asthma. But increasingly, they cover mental health conditions and the drugs used to treat them.

Air Force Master Sgt. Christopher McKinney recruits along Interstate 35, northeast of San Antonio. He says the most common need for the waivers he requests are related to behavioral health.

MCKINNEY: One of the biggest hurdles is ADD and ADHD medicine. Usually when you go out to a school and you’re talking to a group of kids and you’ve got them sold on the Air Force, they’re looking forward to bigger and better things. And then you have one of them who would probably be an extremely good fit for the Air Force, they tell you, ‘Hey, I’m currently taking medication for ADD or ADHD’ or ‘I’m on depression and anxiety medication.’ And you have to look at them and tell them, ‘Hey, otherwise you would be qualified, but I can’t get you in right now.’

While the services spend millions each year on advertising and branding efforts, recruiters will tell you the most effective efforts are still in-person conversations.

AUDIO: [Doorbell ring, student entering office]

McKinney divides his time between high school visits and his cramped cubicle in a strip mall. Last year was his first full year of recruiting. He enlisted 47 new airmen. But as Air Force leaders realized they would miss their mark of 35,000 recruits this year, they raised McKinney’s goal. This summer, his goal is to find 15 recruits in just three months.

The youthful-looking father of four is used to the pressure to perform, but even he admits this year’s pace is exhausting.

MCKINNEY: That's my baseline that I'm expected to meet, and if we base it off those numbers, those would have been the best numbers that I ever achieved. And I’ve been close and I’ve grinded and I’ve tried to get there. I’ve been close to that number, but I don’t know. We’ll give it all we’ve got.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Todd Vician in San Antonio, Texas, home to basic training for the Air Force and the Space Force.

EICHER: To read more on this, check out Todd’s piece in WORLD Magazine, cover date July 12th.

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