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While a hot take, you're not wrong. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/368528/us-military-army-n... > Should a true national security emergency arise, America lacks the ability to mobilize as Israel and Russia have done. The Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) — comprising former active duty or selected reserve personnel who could be reactivated by the Secretary of Defense during wartime or a national emergency — is designed to act as a bridge from the AVF to a revived draft. Almost forgotten even by servicemembers, the IRR earned brief notoriety when some servicemembers were “stop-lossed” during the Iraq War — pulled from the IRR and returned to active duty involuntarily, usually to deploy again. > Today, there are just over 264,000 servicemembers in the entire IRR. The Army’s IRR pool has shrunk from 700,000 in 1973 to 76,000 in 2023. Forget building new units in wartime: the IRR is now incapable of even providing sufficient casualty replacements for losses from the first battles of a high-intensity war. > And even if more Americans could be encouraged to sign up, they may not be able to serve. Before Covid, fewer than three in 10 Americans in the prime recruiting demographic — ages 17 to 24 — were eligible to serve in uniform. Those numbers have shrunk further since the pandemic began. Only 23 percent of young Americans are qualified to enlist without a waiver, based on the most recent data. Endemic youth obesity, record levels of physical unfitness, mental health issues exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, and drug use have rendered the vast majority of young Americans ineligible for military service. Scores on the ASVAB — the military’s standardized exam for recruits, which tests aptitude for service — plummeted during the pandemic. Turns out, if you don't build a system for your human pipeline to thrive, it comes back to bite. You can only neglect it for so long until the system goes from hobbling along to system failure. |