U.S. defense officials face the bleakest recruiting environment since the aftermath of the Vietnam War, with less than a quarter of Americans ages 17 to 24 years old eligible to serve — and just 9 percent willing to do so.
The issue came before the Senate Armed Services Committee as The situation probably will take years to correct, they told the senators, forecasting that the Army, Air Force and Navy all will fall short of their goals this year, possibly by thousands of recruits.
A few years ago, the Army set out to grow to more than 500,000 active-duty soldiers, but it has since revised those numbers downward several times. By next year, it could have fewer than 450,000, officials have said.The problem is less serious in the Navy and Air Force but still trending in the wrong direction. Senior Air Force officials said this month that they expect to miss their recruiting goal of about 30,000 by roughly 10 percent.
“I and almost everyone else on this committee could tell you a story about what we had to do to help some outstanding young man or woman overcome some supposedly disqualifying injury or condition,” Cotton said. Sen. Roger Wicker , the committee’s top Republican, said the Pentagon spent “a lot of hours” researching extremism when the administration first took office, declining to note that dozens of veterans were among those arrested for actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. The Pentagon documented 100 cases of extremism across the entire force, Wicker said, concluding that a problem there “doesn’t exist.”Sen.
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