Retention and Recruitment Crisis

We can all get fired about Emma’s mommy’s. We can take the war dodger Tucker Carlson’s opinion as fact that wokeness is killing recruitment. I’ll even entertain and probably agree to an extent that COVID set SOF back a decade with lost experience…

I’ll still argue that a generally better educated population and a generation raised to be skeptical of power has no desire to serve in units that are based around earning OER bullets at the expense of tye SMs free time.

And that complete lack of care for the enlisted men and women of the DOD is what is killing recruitment more than anything.

ETA- you think I tell the young men in my family to not enlist because of the trans agenda? No, I tell them not to do it because I’ve lost an inordinate amount of my time to Army bullshit.

Who the fuck would want to be in a job where they can keep you at work for an undisclosed amount of time if someone else steals a piece of equipment? Does that sound like a good job in 21st century America?

And during “peace” time? Fuck outta here…
 
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No. It's air assault.
That’s what I thought. So what’s the Army’s second Airborne division? The 173rd? I thought the 173rd was a brigade. It was a brigade still in OIF.

Sending 30,000 soldiers through jump school a year just sounds excessive to me considering the Army hasn’t done division size drops since Varsity in ‘45. I’m not talking about smaller scale SOF or Ranger drops in OEF or Panama, Grenada etc.
Seems to me a lot of guys airborne qualified who’s jobs don’t require it and who’ll never jump in combat.
 
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We can all get fired about Emma’s mommy’s. We can take the war dodger Tucker Carlson’s opinion as fact that wokeness is killing recruitment. I’ll even entertain and probably agree to an extent that COVID set SOF back a decade with lost experience…

I’ll still argue that a generally better educated population and a generation raised to be skeptical of power has no desire to serve in units that are based around earning OER bullets at the expense of tye SMs free time.

And that complete lack of care for the enlisted men and women of the DOD is what is killing recruitment more than anything.

ETA- you think I tell the young men in my family to not enlist because of the trans agenda? No, I tell them not to do it because I’ve lost an inordinate amount of my time to Army bullshit.

Who the fuck would want to be in a job where they can keep you at work for an undisclosed amount of time if someone else steals a piece of equipment? Does that sound like a good job in 21st century America?

And during “peace” time? Fuck outta here…

USArmyWTFM probably the largest recruiting tool in the Army...well anti-recruiting tool.
 
That’s what I thought. So what’s the Army’s second Airborne division? The 173rd? I thought the 173rd was a brigade. It was a brigade still in OIF.

Sending 30,000 soldiers through jump school a year just sounds excessive to me considering the Army hasn’t done division size drops since Varsity in ‘45. I’m not talking about smaller scale SOF or Ranger drops in OEF or Panama, Grenada etc.
Seems to me a lot of guys airborne qualified who’s jobs don’t require it and who’ll never jump in combat.
The 11th.
 
The 11th.
1/11 is just a IBCT now, so hard to call 11 ID an airborne division even though it says that on their patch. Which was why I said two independent airborne brigades. (Pedantic, I know)

But Army force structure nonsense always is hilarious and makes no sense.
 
That’s what I thought. So what’s the Army’s second Airborne division? The 173rd? I thought the 173rd was a brigade. It was a brigade still in OIF.

Sending 30,000 soldiers through jump school a year just sounds excessive to me considering the Army hasn’t done division size drops since Varsity in ‘45. I’m not talking about smaller scale SOF or Ranger drops in OEF or Panama, Grenada etc.
Seems to me a lot of guys airborne qualified who’s jobs don’t require it and who’ll never jump in combat.
82nd did the jump into Panama. 173rd made the jump into N. Iraq in 2003. There have been uses in the past.
1/11 is just a IBCT now, so hard to call 11 ID an airborne division even though it says that on their patch. Which was why I said two independent airborne brigades. (Pedantic, I know)

But Army force structure nonsense always is hilarious and makes no sense.
The long term plan is to get all the patched 11th Airborne personnel through Airborne, hence the back log.

Stop being pedantic. No one likes that. It’s the conversational equivalent of literally shitting the bed the first time you’re staying over with a woman.

It makes things weird.
 
Seems to me a lot of guys airborne qualified who’s jobs don’t require it and who’ll never jump in combat.
The long term plan is to get all the patched 11th Airborne personnel through Airborne, hence the back log.

@Gunz , when I was on I&I staff we'd get memos offering slots for airborne, and we were a FSSG unit.

@DasBoot , didn't Ft. Bragg stand up a jump school from time to time for ROTC and West Pointers doing summer training? Could the army not do that do decrease the backlog?
 
Unless I’m horribly mistaken, the military isn’t having a hard time getting guys to join to blow stuff up, and shoot guns. The people who want to do that want to do that.

The military has a problem getting all the other people it needs to join. That takes a different type of recruiting.

To the first part, yes.

To the last, this isn't new, but definitely worsening. We all know about the economy, but people who want to bury their noses in computers and cyber this and that make bank on 'the outside,' and it's these highly specialized, highly technical fields the military has an increasingly difficult time recruiting. And while we will always need knuckle-dragging troglodytes such as myself, the military on the whole is becoming much more technical and sophisticated.
 
While we’re on the subject are Marines still going through the course at Fort Benning or have they gone in house? Only reason I ask is my former Corpsman’s son was in Bravo 2nd Recon and I think they were jumping out of Ospreys at Geiger.
 
While we’re on the subject are Marines still going through the course at Fort Benning or have they gone in house? Only reason I ask is my former Corpsman’s son was in Bravo 2nd Recon and I think they were jumping out of Ospreys at Geiger.

I do not think they have an in-house airborne course. The corpsmen in the SOIDC pipeline go to Ft. Benning.

Once upon a time the Navy had multiple sites for SCUBA and Marines and corpsmen could go to one of several sites; now, it's all in Florida. I am not sure there is a backlog for diver like airborne but it seems that of there is such a backlog for airborne they can take the show on the road. Or, I have no idea what I am talking about. I am open to that.
 
I went through airborne with a MARSOC guy. I remember him saying the Navy had its own static-line course, but that it was perceived worse with safety issues.

There may have also been something about graduates of the navy course not being allowed to attend HALO? Not sure if that's correct, because this was just a passing conversation a bit over 3 years ago.
 
I went through airborne with a MARSOC guy. I remember him saying the Navy had its own static-line course, but that it was perceived worse with safety issues.

There may have also been something about graduates of the navy course not being allowed to attend HALO? Not sure if that's correct, because this was just a passing conversation a bit over 3 years ago.

The SEALs went to their own combined static-MFF-HALO course. I know it wasn't, um, popular with a lot of people because it cut corners and condensed a lot. I do not know if it is the same thing.
 
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