RECRUITMENTThe Bureaucratic Fix to the Military Recruitment Crisis
Declining recruitment numbers are vexing nearly all branches of the U.S. military. Removing a medical bottleneck could dramatically streamline recruiting for applicants and personnel.
The U.S. Armed Forces are facing an unprecedented recruiting crisis. The inability of the military to fill its ranks is an obvious national security issue that every American should care about. There is divergence on the cited reason for declining recruitment numbers, varying from propensity to serve, access to interested audiences, the temperament of Generation Z, and physical and mental fitness to serve. All of these are worthy discussion topics, but exceptionally difficult to resolve.
One simpler option for mitigating the recruitment challenge could be to rethink the military’s recent medical modernization effort designed to streamline medical care, before, during, and after service—specifically the application of Military Health System Genesis (MHS Genesis). This system was conceived to minimize medical attrition, ease downstream disability payments by early identification of disqualifying conditions, and reduce the time spent by a recruiter tracking down medical documentation. Instead, it has extended timelines, created unintended impediments to service, and generally slowed recruiting efforts for all services nationally. MHS Genesis should be stopped and adapted at every level to address its negative effects on recruiting now.
As a colonel in the Marine Corps, I was most recently responsible for officer and enlisted recruiting for one-sixth of the country. This included assessing expert perspectives, understanding the unique factors of recruiting today, and developing a vision to accomplish the assigned recruiting mission and its contribution to Marine Corps end strength. While I acknowledge that the broader factors mentioned above have had some impact, my experience points to one objective reason for the sudden decline in military recruitment: the Department of Defense application of MHS Genesis has overwhelmed the system. Our elected officials sense it also. In September, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) wrote Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin a letter seeking answers about whether MHS Genesis “may be contributing to delays in the military recruitment process,” and citing a report indicating that in one case, “a healthy applicant tried to enlist but had to wait two extra months to process her application because she had sprained her wrist as a child.”
