$6 BILLION! When the main problem was the lame CRT/DEI/Woke ideology that was harming recruitment, retention, moral and readiness. See the evidence. Now that the woke agenda has thankfully been eliminated, recruitment has been soaring.
The other issue is needing to pay big financial incentives to join or stay feels like mercenaries instead of citizens serving out of duty and love for their country. Another result of woke ideology.
By Emily Hallas | Washington Examiner
The United States has shelled out over $6 billion since 2022 to recruit and retain military service members.
The investments came during a period when the U.S. struggled to meet enlistment goals, according to the Associated Press. The Army recruited 50,181, or 76.6%, of its target goal in fiscal 2023 and 44,901, or 74.8%, of the target goal in fiscal 2022.
In fiscal 2023, the U.S. Air Force fell about 10% short of its enlistment goal. Other branches have similarly suffered, particularly in the wake of the pandemic, which threw recruiting efforts for a loop.
However, in recent months, enlistment numbers have soared across multiple branches as the Army, Air Force, and Marines see record numbers of applications. The White House has claimed credit for the surge, with President Donald Trump saying Saturday, “I rebuilt that army and I rebuilt the military.”
“We rebuilt it like nobody has ever rebuilt it before,” the president said during a commencement address at West Point. “Our country is doing well. We’ve turned it around very quickly.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has argued that the Biden administration’s emphasis on incorporating “woke” policies such as diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives into the military contributed to the Pentagon’s struggle to attract talent in previous years. The Defense Department’s push to focus solely on “warfighting” has led to the enlistment surge since Trump took charge, Hegseth says.
“The warrior ethos is simple: readiness, accountability, lethality, warfighting. None of this woke DEI, CRT [critical race theory], gender pronoun, green new scam stuff. That’s all out,” the secretary said during a Fox News interview Thursday.
“If they want some woke garbage, they can go to college. If they want to train to be a warrior and be part of something bigger than themselves … join the U.S. military,” he continued.
Hegseth outlined the overhaul he’s leading at the Pentagon on Saturday.
“We’re sitting on four years — this is to put it kindly … four years of deferred maintenance. To put it honestly, four years of weakness that’s created chaos and opportunities for our enemies to enrich themselves,” he said. “And to our adversaries and peer adversaries: We have the capabilities. America will out-innovate you, outgrow you, and outmuscle you with what we have in the future.”
First published on Washington Examiner
By Lolita Baldor | Associated Press
The U.S. military spent more than $6 billion over the past three years to recruit and retain service members, in what has been a growing campaign to counter enlistment shortfalls.
The financial incentives to reenlist in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines increased dramatically from 2022 through last year, with the Navy vastly outspending the others, according to funding totals provided by the services. The overall amount of recruiting bonuses also rose steadily, fueled by significant jumps in spending by the Army and Marine Corps.
The military services have routinely poured money into recruiting and retention bonuses over the years. But the totals spiked as Pentagon leaders tried to reverse falling enlistment numbers, particularly as COVID-19 restrictions locked down public events, fairs and school visits that recruiters relied on to meet with young people.
STARRS NOTE: And the out of control CRT/DEI/Woke ideology being aggressively pushed on servicemembers.
Coupled with an array of new programs, an increased number of recruiters and adjustments to enlistment requirements, the additional incentives have helped the services bounce back from the shortfalls. All but the Navy met their recruiting targets last year and all are expected to do so this year.
President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth repeatedly point to Trump’s election as a reason for the recruiting rebound. But the enlistment increases began long before last November, and officials have tied them more directly to the widespread overhauls that the services have done, including the increased financial incentives.
The Army, the military’s largest service, spent more on recruiting bonuses in 2022 and 2024 than the other services. But it was significantly outspent by the Navy in 2023, when the sea service was struggling to overcome a large enlistment shortfall.
As a result, even though the Navy is a smaller service, it spent more overall in the three years than the Army did.
The Navy also has spent considerably more than the others to entice sailors to reenlist, doling out retention bonuses to roughly 70,000 service members for each of the past three years. That total is more than double the number of troops the Army gave retention bonuses to each year, even though the Army is a much larger service.
“Navy is dedicated to retaining our most capable sailors; retention is a critical component of achieving our end-strength goals,” Adm. James Kilby, the vice chief of naval operations, told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee in March.
He said reenlistment for enlisted sailors “remains healthy” but officers are a challenge in specific jobs, including aviation, explosive ordnance disposal, surface and submarine warfare, health professionals and naval special operations. He added that the Navy has struggled to fill all of its at-sea jobs and is using financial incentives as one way to combat the problem.
The Army has seen the greatest recruiting struggles over the past decade, and by using a range of new programs and policies has had one of the largest comebacks. The Navy has had the most trouble more recently, and took a number of steps to expand those eligible for service and spend more in bonuses.
While the Army spends hundreds of millions each year to recruit troops, it also has relied on an array of new programs and policies to woo young people. A key driver of the Army’s rebound has been its decision to create the Future Soldier Prep Course, at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, in August 2022.
That program gives lower-performing recruits up to 90 days of academic or fitness instruction to help them meet military standards and move on to basic training. It has resulted in thousands of enlistments.
The Air Force increased its spending on recruiting bonuses in 2023 as it also struggled to overcome shortfalls, but lowered the amount the following year. The payments were for jobs including munitions systems, aircraft maintenance and security forces. The Space Force does not currently authorize enlistment bonuses.
The Marine Corps and the tiny Space Force have consistently hit their recruiting goals, although the Marines had to dig deep into their pool of delayed entry candidates in 2022 to meet their target. The Corps, which is much smaller than the Army and Air Force, spends the least on bonuses and tends to spread the amount among a larger number of service members.
Maj. Jacoby Getty, a Marine spokesman, said the spike in retention bonuses from $126 million in 2023 to $201 million in 2024 was because Marines were allowed to reenlist a year early for the first time. More than 7,000 Marines got bonuses as a result, a jump of nearly 2,200 over the previous year.
When asked about bonuses in 2023, Gen. Eric Smith, the Marine commandant, famously told a naval conference that “your bonus is you get to call yourself a Marine.”
“That’s your bonus, right?” he said. “There’s no dollar amount that goes with that.”
The services tailor their recruiting and retention money to bolster harder-to-fill jobs, including cyber, intelligence and special operations forces. The Army and Marine Corps also use the money to woo troops to some combat, armor and artillery jobs.
Evidence that the DEI/CRT agenda in the military DOES hurt recruiting and retention
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