A significant part of the reduction in recruitment is from families of service.  

Thirty years ago, 40 percent of recruits had a parent who served.  That figure was down to 15% in 2018, and is apparently still dropping.  DEI polices that disparage white males simply by virtue of their gender and skin color, coupled with rapidly accelerating woke policies, have created the impression that national defense is no longer the military's priority, and that white males who enlist are likely to face at least harassment, if not also outright discrimination.  Couple that situation with the sudden and poorly planned withdrawal from Afghanistan and you end up with many patriotic families who no longer encourage their children to join, because why would they?  Hell, you have senior military leaders in the Biden admin saying they don't want a recruit pipeline fed by a "warrior caste" (i.e., children of veterans).

But there is another major factor that has significantly affected recruitment and that has not received much attention - the fielding of the Military Health System Genesis, which arrived at recruit-processing centers in March 2022

Why?  

Well, the short version is that it integrates with civilian medical record systems, like MyChart, and the result is that a large number of recruits are being filtered for conditions that would have gone undetected previously, because recruits would have done what we have always done.  Lied.  But no longer.  You were prescribed Ritalin for ADHD at 16, or Zoloft for anxiety? Broke a bone snowboarding that's since healed?  Had a cortisone injection for a shoulder you torqued playing HS football?  Now they know. They know it all.  And it is filtering out a number of recruits that would have gotten in prior to that rollout.

The linked article is a good read, but here is one nugget from it:


The result is that the system is now disproportionately filtering out recruits whose parents routinely took them to doctors for preventive care and to treat various ailments.  That's the irony.  A kid who was never taken to the doctor has zero black marks on their medical record at MEPS.  

And there is a racial component because white kids are twice as likely to be treated for mental health conditions as black kids.  The reasons why are a separate discussion, but the result is that your average white kid is more likely to enter MEPS with one or more medical strikes against them when many black and Latino kids come in with a clean medical slate.  Not 100% true, of course, but it is a significant factor that is not getting much attention, because it would require military leaders to acknowledge that the rollout of the medical system has had unintended adverse consequences, and that previously the military relied on recruits lying, often prompted by their recruiter.  Recruits like JFK.  And me.  

So is diversity our strength, or not?  I'm confused.

And they'll tell other kids they need a waiver, for a medical condition or event that may have resolved itself 10 years earlier.  So now some kid who decided to join needs to hunt down a doctor they saw a decade ago or wait perhaps months for an appointment (or series of appointments) with a new doctor to try and get that waiver.  Or waivers plural.  

Those added hoops create enough friction to motivate many (perhaps most) kids who end up in this situation to change their mind and consider other alternatives.  In other words, it devastates the recruit pipeline of kids who decide to join without much pre-planning, perhaps going into a recruit station because they were walking/driving by, or because they find themselves in a bad situation, perhaps after a job loss, a breakup, or a falling out with their parents.  While the military may not like to admit it, those kids fed the pipeline, and you don't want to setup barriers to their entry.

I try to craft the content you folks deserve.