From Draft NOtices, October-December 2023
- Seth Kershner
The U.S. military, spurred by a worsening recruiting crisis, is testing new programs that present unique challenges to counter-recruiters.
Recruiters haven’t had it this bad since 1973, when the all-volunteer force made its shaky transition away from the draft. In fiscal year 23, the Army is on track to come up 10,000 short of its goal of 65,000 new recruits. A defense official told the Wall Street Journal over the summer that in fifteen years of tracking the recruiting market they had never seen a situation quite so serious.
Experts cite a variety of reasons for the recruiting shortfalls. First, there appears to be declining support for the military as a career path. In recent years, the media has spotlighted stories about women military members facing sexual harassment and the difficulty veterans face in accessing health services. When asked to explain the recruiting crisis, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth recently cited parental worries about whether their children are “going to be sexually harassed or are they going to be more prone to suicidal ideations” by serving in the military.
Even the recruiter’s most important influencer, the veteran, is no longer a reliable source of referrals. Lately veterans have been telling their children and grandchildren not to join. According to the Wall Street Journal, veterans are increasingly disaffected with the military, citing “wokeness,” poor pay, frequent relocation, and the humiliating withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.
Finally, there is the sobering fact that poor health, obesity, and academic deficiencies leave just twenty-three percent of seventeen-to-twenty-four-year-olds eligible to serve. Of that number, an even smaller proportion have any interest in enlisting.
The military knows how to train people, but it has a less stellar track record when it comes to ensuring a healthy climate for women who serve, and for taking care of its veterans. Not surprisingly, the initial response to the crisis has been to go with what it knows -- devising special courses to quickly bring up to speed hordes of unqualified potential recruits. To that end, they are building new preparatory programs to improve the eligibility of applicants who would otherwise fail to qualify for enlistment for academic or fitness reasons. Similar programs have been adopted by the National Guard and the Navy.
Since August 2022, the Army has been running its three-week-long Future Soldier Preparatory Course (FSPC) at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Army recruiters refer those with low scores on the military’s entrance test (i.e., the ASVAB) to the FSPC’s academic track, where they catch up on arithmetic and polish their test-taking skills. Meanwhile, those whose high body fat are keeping them from enlistment run through their paces on the FSPC’s fitness track.
Although participants in these programs may live in barracks and otherwise follow a militaristic regimen, this is a soft-core version of boot camp. “It’s a campus-style learning environment where it’s not so much ‘in-your-face’ yelling,” explained Maj. Chris Wedge, fitness team leader, in an Army press release. “It’s more of, ‘Hey, how can I help you achieve this goal of (moving on to basic training) and becoming a Soldier?’” Since it was established in August 2022, more than 6,000 have graduated from the Army’s prep program. Although the Army is not tracking how their FSPC graduates fare once they enter the military, defense officials are so impressed with the program that they plan to expand it.
Separately, the National Guard has referred over 500 of its own underqualified recruits to the Fort Jackson program. And earlier this year, the Navy launched its own version of the Army program at Great Lakes Naval Station, Illinois. Like its Army counterpart, the Future Sailor Preparatory Course has separate academic and fitness tracks. In a sign of just how desperate the Navy is to enroll new sailors, those who take the three-week program without improving can repeat the course up to four additional times.
Like the Army, the Navy’s marketing materials portray the program as a way to give second chances to underqualified youth. “The Future Sailor Preparatory Course is about building the complete person,” according to Rear Adm. Jennifer Couture, commander, Naval Service Training Command. “This course is about connecting their desire to serve,” she said in a Navy press release, “with an opportunity to meet our standards while receiving life-skills training which will serve them throughout their career.”
Media commentary on FSPC has so far been surprisingly critical. The Economist called it the army’s “fat camp,” while a September op-ed in Army Times suggested that prep programs were not a long-term solution to the Army’s recruiting crisis. The absence of a unifying narrative presents opportunities for counter-recruiters to critique the program and poke holes in the wholesome narrative being presented by the military. Tactically, the best approach might be to highlight how the program uses coercion and deception to prevent dropouts.
Individuals enrolled in the program can remain in the FSPC for up to ninety days, with opportunities every three weeks to ship to basic training if they improve enough to meet or exceed the Army’s enlistment standards. But what if they decide that the Army’s not for them? According to Bill Galvin, of the Center on Conscience and War, there appear to be no firm guidelines or regulations concerning how a “future soldier” or “future sailor” could choose to separate from the program. Galvin, who helps staff the GI Rights Hotline, says that he has fielded calls from people in the FSPC who were told that by leaving the program they would be going AWOL. However, since one doesn’t fall under the jurisdiction of the Uniform Code of Military Justice until formal accession (at boot camp), the AWOL charge doesn’t stick. “Since the program is to help them meet minimum standards for enlisting,” he asks, “how can they already be in the military if they don't meet minimum standards?”
The Center on Conscience and War and Draft NOtices, will continue to closely monitor this issue.
Sources:
“America’s Army Has Launched a Scheme to Slim Down Its Recruits,” Economist, Jan. 14, 2023.
“The Military Recruiting Crisis: Even Veterans Don't Want their Families to Join,” Wall Street Journal (Online edition), Jun. 30, 2023.
“Expanding the Future Soldier Prep Course Solves the Wrong Problem,” Army Times, Jul. 25, 2023.
This article is from Draft NOtices, the newsletter of the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (http://www.comdsd.org/).
