Military recruiting has struggled throughout 2022.
The Gateway Pundit reported that earlier in 2022, military leaders announced they would be lowering their recruiting goal for the Army from 476,000 to about 466,000. Despite lowering this goal, the U.S Army is reporting it will miss recruiting goals for the year by 15,000 soldiers.
Recruiting across the branches has likely been hampered by COVID vaccine requirements but also the increasingly woke military atmosphere where trans soldiers are give special privileges while Christian soldiers are persecuted, bases host drag shows, and leaders with a history of anti-white statements are hired.
Concerns about Army recruiting goals for 2023 loom.
As the Army rolls along into 2023, everyone from recruiters to senior leaders to Congress are closely monitoring whether the Army will be able to shore up its recruiting and stem the end strength freefall that the service is currently experiencing.
The service experienced a shortfall of 15,000 recruits in fiscal 2022, which caused it to miss its congressionally-authorized end strength by nearly 20,000 soldiers.
And service officials have expressed fear that they won’t be able to rebound in fiscal 2023, telling Congress they think they will shrink to between 445,000 and 452,000 troops. Lawmakers responded by cutting their authorization to 452,000 in the compromise version of the defense policy bill.
It’s not clear how the continuing decline in manning will impact operations, though service officials insist that the Army will be able to meet all of its requirements with fewer troops, indicating that a potential restructuring of brigade combat teamscould help.
“End strength is supposed to be tied to requirements,” said Katherine Kuzminski of the Center for a New American Security think tank. “And so the question becomes: if the end strength is reduced, are the requirements reduced?”