(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) The U.S. Air Force, which is now captured by the woke ideologues, missed its active-duty recruiting goal for 2024 by about 10% — the first time in more than 20 years.
On Monday, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said that this is the first time the military branch wasn’t able to meet the quota since 1999, Military.com reported.
The latest available data from the Department of Defense indicated that, as of July of this year, with two months left in the fiscal year, the military branch achieved 19,413 new active duty recruits out of a goal of 22,660, or about 86%.
The news source reported that the reason why the numbers turned out to be so low was because of COVID-19, strong private sector competition and fewer young Americans applying either because they are not eligible or not interested in joining the military.
“We’re almost to the end of the fiscal year, and the expectation is we’re going to come in short about 10%. I’m overall encouraged by where we are in recruiting, but we still have a lot of work,” Kendall said.
As shown by the Air Force Recruitment Service, the year 1999, the time when Millennials began to reach the age of service, was the last time the Air Force came short of its recruiting goals. Something similar happened in 1979 as Generation X was coming of age, as was reported in the internal research paper from 2002.
Despite the low recruitment numbers, the military branch said that it believes recruiting for the fiscal year 2024 will produce more positive outcomes, with Air Force Recruiting Service spokeswoman Leslie Brown saying that she is “cautiously optimistic.”
However, the reasons to be even “cautiously” optimistic are not clear, since the military branch recently needed to use different tactics to attract recruits.
Among those tactics were offering promotions and awards for airmen who convinced others to join, giving out $10,000 bonuses for prior-service airmen who agree to a three-year Reserves commitment, raising body fat standards, offering up to $65,000 in college loan repayments and relaxing its tattoo policy.
Additionally, the Air Force created a smartphone app feature that allowed anyone to submit another person’s information to the Air Force recruiting office.
The problems with recruitment didn’t come out of nowhere. In recent years — and during the Biden regime, in particular — the Air Force became very woke by pushing DEI, making Critical Race Theory its top priority and even organizing drag shows at its bases.
The situation with the Air Force — and the military, in general — became so bad that even American veterans started warning family members to avoid serving in the military.
