Gen. Jack Keane: Military recruitment worse than 1975

Fox News senior strategic analyst and retired U.S. Army general Jack Keane sat down with Martha MacCallum on “The Story” Wednesday to break down the worst recruitment shortage suffered by the military since the 1970s. This is the latest of public relations challenge faced by the Biden administration regarding the military.

GEN. JACK KEANE: This is pretty challenging. We’ve had an all–volunteer force since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, and we’ve had our ups and downs before with recruiting. But this one is particularly significant. 

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I mean, there’s two real issues here. One is the eligibility pool itself, Martha, and that is those who are qualified to meet the requirements of the United States military, that number is down to 23%.

When I was on active duty, we were concerned when it was at 35%. So 75% plus of American youth are not qualified to be in its military. Why is that? One, for moral reasons, and that’s largely crime. If you’re committing a crime, we’re just not going to take you.

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The second issue is medical. And this has exploded. We have far too many people who have co-morbidity issues at such a young age, largely obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and other issues that disqualify them. Some, in some cases, they can get a waiver. But that also takes time to do. 

And then the third thing, I referred to it as mental, but it’s also academics in the sense that we have far too many people, Martha, who can’t pass the aptitude test to get inside the United States military. That is an indictment, in my judgment, of our secondary high school education system, because the major reason they can’t pass the test is they can’t read at the proper level. 

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