There’s a story about the dangers of slow, incremental change. The story says if you throw a frog in hot, boiling water, he’ll jump right out. The way to boil a frog is to start with room-temperature water, and then slowly increase the temperature one degree at a time. Unable to sense the incremental change, the frog doesn’t jump out of the water. The all-volunteer force, like the frog, didn’t meet its current challenges through rapid change — it happened slowly, one degree at a time. For many senior leaders, the change is unrecognized since it happened over decades, spanning their own careers. Unfortunately, for the frog and the U.S. military, it’s an unpleasant end to the story if the water is left to boil. The U.S. military, in pursuit of providing a qualitatively superior force within the constraints of a given budget since 1945, has incrementally increased the demand for qualitative standards that are now mathematically impossible to achieve for military recruiters.

Incremental Change

There are two dominant incremental changes that occurred since the advent of the all-volunteer force in 1973. First, the U.S. military end strength has decreased since World War II. Second, because of this continual decline in end strength, senior military leaders have focused on increasing qualitative standards. While initially beneficial and commonsense, the focus on quality produces long-term challenges in the ability to find candidates able to meet recruiting and retention standards. For recruiting, this manifests in the increase in educational levels and physical prerequisites over time. This trend is also reflected within retention standards that tend to focus on increased physical fitness performance. The argument I am presenting seems counterintuitive, with many readers asking, “Isn’t this a good thing?” In a way, it is a good thing. Senior leaders focus on standards to provide civilian leaders and lawmakers the highest quality force for a given budget. Senior military leaders can then communicate an increase in quality within the constraints of decreasing quantity. However, there are long-term problems when this approach is repeated.

First, the increase in the ability to meet standards reflects the U.S. military’s approach to personnel relying upon “youth and vigor” determined more by “physical ability” than “intelligence and technical expertise.” Second, and foremost among the negative effects of such an approach, when repeated over time, these successive increases in standards for new recruits become impossible to achieve. This results from a lack of historical context considering how those standards came to be and how often they increased, and a lack of consideration for how the achievement of those standards will be satisfied in the future. The result is an all-volunteer force with standards, specifically recruiting, that are out of step with the society from which it recruits.

As a result of archival research, I noticed a trend that plays out in the following sequence. The sequence begins with the National Defense Authorization Act. This law provides each military service an authorized end strength. Since 1945, the end strengths for the military services have decreased, requiring the services to downsize. While downsizing, military services focus on the ability for new recruits and retained servicemembers to meet quality standards, which makes sense. The result is an increase in recruiting requirements while seeking to retain the highest performers for that given fiscal year or service chief tenure. The focus on quality results in the services increasing requirements for service. At that moment in time, the increase in performance seems like a win for the services.

However, such changes do not occur in isolation. While the military services have downsized since 1945, external conditions also changed. In this case, family models and societal demographics have shifted, along with a decrease in the proportion of American youth who are both qualified for and have a propensity toward military service. Such shifts occurred over the same time period the military downsized and increased qualitative standards, creating a challenging recruiting environment for the military services.

With performance standards increasing, and societal preference and qualifications decreasing, the result is that the increase in standards and requirements over time have created an increasingly challenging environment for military recruiters. Senior military leaders face the undesirable task of admitting they cannot achieve the standards set by their predecessors with many factors outside of their control. The services also face the reality that by increasing performance requirements, they are competing to acquire and retain some of the brightest minds in the country who have options outside of military service. By increasing standards, the services have unintentionally narrowed the pool of available candidates from which they can recruit.

The result is that senior leaders maintain previously established standards despite evidence that attaining recruiting goals with the existing requirements costs vast resources in terms of time, money, and personnel to satisfy. Even when services seek to revisit previous requirements — a recent example being the U.S. Navy — the services face an outcry of “lowering the standard” across social media platforms, painting an inaccurate picture. The outcries neither consider how the services arrived at the current requirements nor accept that the U.S. military, like any business, must both appeal to future employees and also have entrance standards that allow them to enter military service.

Impossible Standards to Satisfy

In a 2016 interview with Brad Carson, then serving as acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, he identified that 16 million contacts (people contacted about military service) were needed to generate 60,000 contracts (people signed up to enter military service) for the U.S. Army. Carson provides a grim scenario given today’s recruiting environment. Previous arguments at War on the Rocks illustrate the ratio has likely worsened with a civilian population that has a lower propensity for military service, is less eligible, and is less likely to recommend military service. But using Carson’s 2016 ratio of contacts to enlistments welcomes the warranted criticism that those numbers and statistics are out of date, given they’re almost a decade old.

Using fiscal year 2023 accession requirements by service (rounding down), the Department of Defense has to recruit approximately 90,000 individuals annually. Examining the age demographics for 18- to 24-year-olds in the United States reveals approximately 31 million Americans from which the military has historically recruited. Of that demographic, approximately 23 percent, or 7 million, qualify for military service. If 7 million men and women are qualified for military service, using the most recent Joint Advertising, Market Research, and Studies data and assuming a best case scenario that 11 percent have a propensity for military service, the optimistic estimate provides approximately 770,000 men and women from which the services can recruit. If one in 30 applicants are “clean as a whistle,” the Department of Defense is left with slightly less than 26,000 individuals that can be contracted without a waiver for military service, with an annual requirement three times that. In reality, the number the Department of Defense is left with is likely lower given not everyone with a propensity for military service is likely qualified, and not everyone qualified will have a propensity for military service. If one were to use a larger percentage, specifically the 31 percent who responded “probably not” to military service, that still produces a shortfall, only providing 72,000 individuals, or two-thirds of the annual requirement. If the 1996 Department of Defense recruiter survey is any indication of how challenging the present moment is, one can only assume the quality of life for recruiters has continued to degrade since 1996, especially when considering current recruiting challenges.

Recommendations

There are three approaches the Department of Defense can take to address the current problems. Regardless of how the department proceeds, it should apply the following two assumptions: Available personnel, like budgetary resources, will only decline, and competition with the civilian sector will only intensify.

The first option, and the most realistic, is to allow the services to independently navigate the current issues by relying upon waivers along with adjusting performance standards and requirements where they see fit. This begs the question: If everything requires a waiver, is it really a standard? The benefit here is each individual service can tailor its approach to its own needs. The drawback is the lack of uniformity when trying to implement large-scale organizational change across the Department of Defense. Also, services are likely to generate “band-aid” solutions to navigate the present moment without solving the long-term issues that will continue to plague the U.S. military if left unaddressed.

The second option, which is not as likely as the first but still feasible, is to have the Department of Defense lead a revision of the current entrance and performance requirements across the services. The department can serve as the focal point, allowing the service chiefs and secretaries to provide how the current standards and requirements were established and, more importantly, how the current requirements directly relate to the occupations and requirements set for each service. While this is a more comprehensive option that can pool greater resources and look to provide long-term solutions, it requires the time, effort, and focus of senior leaders while marginalizing one of the myriad requirements within the Pentagon from a senior leader’s calendar.

Lastly, the long-shot option, is to establish a new Gates Commission. Some may balk at this suggestion, but there is good reason to consider this given the current recruiting environment.

First, the Gates Commission focused on the economic considerations for military employment and maintaining the volunteer force. Fifty years later, much has changed — available age demographics, incentives, generational preferences — all while maintaining an industrial-era personnel model. If anything, the pension system is one aspect of the U.S. military personnel system that was updated, leaving the remainder of the legacy system in place that is “fundamentally the same one put into place after World War II.” By only updating the pension system, the military personnel system lost the “delayed ‘carrot’ that induces personnel to invest in military-specific job skills, to accept onerous or hazardous assignments, and generally exert work effort early in their careers.”

The current system can only limp along so long before ultimately succumbing to the slowly rising temperature of the water, as does the frog. A commission, more so than the other options, offers the most holistic and timely reform, given the current challenges facing recruiting coupled with global events across multiple theaters requiring military forces. While not directly related to recruiting, a commission can also review the global force requirements the military services are levied against to prevent overstretching a declining force too thin. This prevents the U.S. military from becoming “a hollow shell, over-deployed,” a warning provided by Secretary of State George Marshall in 1948 and echoed by Senator John McCain in the 1990s. While recruiting may be the topic of this article, it is important to remember how a shortage in recruiting will impact retention —specifically, how fewer men and women will be required to meet constant or growing domestic and global requirements.

Resistance

Suggesting a review and revision of current requirements and standards will likely be met by opposition from leaders across the Department of Defense and veterans. The most likely rebuttal is that the U.S. military will not lower its standards. This response illustrates a failure to appreciate historic context. Reactions such as this result as a failure to understand the starting point for a given standard and the current requirement. Faulty conclusions are drawn, promoting the narrative that the U.S. military is lowering standards — echoing the old saw of “That’s not how it was in my day.” While it may result in a decrease or lowering of a standard, it is important to see just how far those requirements have increased over decades, not just over the course of the career of the individual offering the criticism.

Second, some may argue to maintain the status quo with the argument that warfare is still inherently physical. While one cannot deny the physical requirements of combat, that argument fails to identify the number of occupations directly related to combat in proportion to supporting occupations. Also, that argument must consider the growing role of technical occupations within the U.S. military that require less physical ability and more cognitive capability. While certain occupations within the military will remain physically intensive, specifically combat arms, the argument that warfare is inherently physical ignores the outsized growth of technology, specifically since the 1990s, in both national and military strategies. The argument also fails to acknowledge that performance standards can, and should, vary by occupation. Currently, the system makes “no distinction between an infantry soldier, whose youth can be an extremely desirable asset, and a computer network troubleshooter, whose skills generally continue to grow with experience.” This article is not arguing that physically intensive occupations can’t have additional requirements, only what the baseline requirement for military service should be.

Conclusion

Where the U.S. military is today did not happen overnight, as evinced by the frog analogy, and will not remedy itself overnight, as even boiling water takes time to cool. There are steps that military leaders can take to address the current challenges, and questioning the standards applied to those looking to serve and those still serving should be reviewed to determine their effectiveness and if they are still applicable to the military requirements. If the current system is derived from World War II, and the focus of many of the policies is on physical performance, perhaps it’s time to consider standards that reflect a military that leverages advanced technology and concepts.

Ryan Pallas is an active-duty Marine Corps officer who has completed tours at Miramar, CA; Yuma, AZ; Kaneohe Bay, HI; and Quantico, VA. He currently serves as a Commandant of the Marine Corps strategist fellow in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University in Arlington, VA, where he is studying the all-volunteer force.

The views are those of the author and do not reflect those of the Marine Corps, Department of Defense, or any other government agency.

Image: Petty Officer 1st Class Stephane Belcher