Good round up of the position in the US forces.
LA Times comment (military academic Peter Feaver) laments that politics has crept into the army, along with addiction to conspiracy theories, suicide and racism. Lol! So why are they begging for them to come back, then?
Matt Kennard’s book Irregular Army, a few years old now, documents how the existing guidelines were being breached in efforts to bump up the numbers of enlisted men. If you don’t ask dodgy blokes about their fondness for white supremacist groups, or street gang members about their experience of wet work, they sure as hell don’t volunteer that information. A predilection for psychotic actions can be an absolute asset to forces asked to enforce psychotic decisions.
Yet still they can’t fulfil enlistment quotas.
This is a mess, and I doubt they’re gonna go back. Lots had signed up for a second helping (???) and been paid a stipend for doing so. The army has been sending debt collectors to get it back. There’s a couple more dirty examples that I’ll post when I remember them