It’s old news that the U.S. Army has consistently missed its recruiting goals while President Joe Biden has been commander in chief.
What’s new is who is not enlisting to serve in the Army.
Citing its own analysis of military data, Military.com reported on Wednesday that the Army is failing to attract more white troops.
That failure “accounts for much of the service’s historic recruitment slump that has become the subject of increasing concern for Army leadership and Capitol Hill,” Military.com reported.
Read: Biden Takes Heat From Fellow Democrats After Greenlighting Houthi Strike
“The shift in demographics for incoming recruits would be irrelevant to war planners, except it coincides with an overall shortfall of about 10,000 recruits for the Army in 2023 as the service missed its target of 65,000 new soldiers.”
The outlet noted a couple of ways to view the Army’s ongoing recruiting debacle.
In 2018, for instance, 44,042 whites entered the Army. Last year, that number, which has declined consistently each year, dwindled to just 25,070, dropping 6% from 2022 to 2023 alone.
“No other demographic group has seen such a precipitous decline, though there have been ups and downs from year to year,” MIlitary.com reported.
The other way to study the data is to look at ratios.
Whites made up 56.4% of the 2018 recruiting class. In 2023, that was down to 44%.
Over that same time, the ratio of black recruits went from 20% to 24%, while the Hispanic soldiers increased from 17% to 24%.
While those seem like sizable gains, the truth was that recruiting totals for both groups remained flat but increased their shares of the total as the percentage of incoming white soldiers fell.
Read: Florida Rep. Steube Announces Veteran History Project Interview: U.S. Army Veteran Phillip Stotz
Military.com reported that Army officials can’t attribute the situation one specific cause.
Instead, it’s a compound problem, driven by more obese recruits, a public education system that is “underfunded” and largely Republican attacks on Biden’s Pentagon as too woke and too weak.
“Internally, some Army planners are alarmed over the data trends, but see it as a minefield to navigate given increasing partisan attacks against the military for its efforts to recruit and support a diverse force,” the website reported.
Interestingly, the Army would not disclose regional recruiting data so Military.com could see which areas of the country are not stepping up.
The Army also did not break down its data by sex, meaning it was impossible to tell if the drop-off in whites was caused by fewer men or women.
One unnamed Army official noted to Military.com that the criticism of the military’s wokeism, denounced by lawmakers such as GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, has “degraded” the “level of prestige” of service in conservative America.
The official noted that now for the first time ever in the most patriotic areas, one can “bad-mouth” the service without feeling any “cultural guilt.”
While the unidentified Army officials felt wrongfully targeted by conservative lawmakers, the truth is that it was Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin who broadened the divide by asserting, without evidence, that “white supremacy” was rampant in the military.
Military.com noted that the Army has tried to counteract this loss of prestige with appeals to conservative media and reviving its old “Be All You Can Be” slogan.
The outlet pointed out that this trend also led the Army to abandon its recent recruiting campaign called “The Calling” that included minority troops and one white women who noted she was raised by a lesbian couple and marched in gay pride parades.
As the Tampa Free Press reported in November, as tensions and violence remained high in eastern Europe and the Middle East, the Army unveiled a recruiting ad that was conspicuous for its lack of women and minorities.
The ad featured a cast of white male paratroopers jammed into a CH-47 Chinook helicopter and prepared for a parachute jump.
Android Users, Click To Download The Free Press App And Never Miss A Story. Follow Us On Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our free newsletter.