Army Job Cuts is Response to Recruiting Problems: Retired Officer

U.S. soldiers competing in the 2022 U.S. Army Small Arms Championships at Fort Benning, Georgia, on March 13-19, 2022. Michelle Lunato/U.S. Army

The U.S. Army’s recent announcement that it’s shrinking its force by 24,000 soldiers is “undoubtedly” related to its failures in recent years to reach its recruitment goals, according to a retired Army major.

By fiscal year 2029, the Army plans to “shrink excess” and reduce its number of personnel from 494,000 to 470,000.

The Army said it is ridding itself of a “largely unmanned ‘hollow’ force structure, build new formations equipped with new capabilities needed for large scale combat operations.”

To retired Maj. Charles “Chase” Spears, who was once assigned to U.S. Army Recruiting Command, the Army’s restructuring proposal is “an institutional reaction to its inability to solve the recruiting problem.”

Mr. Spears previously told The Epoch Times that when he was assigned to Army Recruiting Command, he was prohibited from publicly acknowledging how “woke” policies were harming recruitment.

“The Army isn’t cutting people that they already have; they are already missing thousands,” he said. The Army has missed its recruitment goals for the past two consecutive fiscal years.

Lt. Col. Rob Lodewick of the Army’s Office of the Chief of Public Affairs (OCPA) disagreed with Mr. Spears’s assessment, telling The Epoch Times, “The Army’s Force Structure Transformation is not solely in response to recent recruiting shortfalls, but is in response to the changing nature of future warfare.”

According to him, “recent recruiting challenges do in fact represent a current reality we are forced to address, the Army’s structure changes are occurring due to a need to modernize and transform the Army force so that we can deliver trained, cohesive and lethal forces to meet future challenges in complex operational environments.”

“This transformation would have occurred with or without the recruitment shortfalls experienced over the last couple of years as it is intended to reorganize forces and units to become more responsive to the future of warfare,” Mr. Lodewick added.

Even so, what’s concerning to Mr. Spears about the Army’s restructuring is that “the positions being eliminated are not positions within the headquarters, but are predominantly positions at the ground combat level.”

With that, he said, “the inability to recruit interferes with the force’s ability to fill entry and lower-level ranking positions.”

“You can’t simply pull senior officers and noncommissioned officers out of higher level headquarters positions to staff units at the trigger-puller level.”

Though Army officials clearly would prefer not to face what is acknowledged as a strategic shortfall in manning the force, Mr. Spears said this occasion offers a moment that could be “a long-term benefit” for the military.

“The current active-duty force has been far too large since the end of WWII, which has fed a hunger among lawmakers for using it too casually,” Mr. Spears said.

For him, “This is counter to the military’s Constitutional role, and has been far too costly in American blood and treasure.”

“There is not a moral way to justify funding an active-duty force of over 400,000 to send abroad, as our own border is unsecured,” he added.

Equally concerning to Mr. Spears are the reports he has heard from peers that “a concerning percentage of newer soldiers are intellectually fragile and self-centered, not typically wanting to be part of a ground fighting force.”

While most of the military remains represented by “patriotic men and women,” he said, many of those considering the military have been “turned off and pushed away” by a failed Afghanistan withdrawal, the “draconic enforcement” of the COVID-19 military vaccine mandate, and growing “socially progressive” policies within the military. For many of these same reasons, parents and relatives who once served, or currently serve, no longer encourage younger generations to pursue a military career.

In an independent survey conducted by the author last fall, over 200 individuals serving in the U.S. military identified the now-rescinded COVID-19 military vaccine mandate as the greatest harm to recruiting. “Dangerous rhetoric toward traditional American values” and “a lack of confidence in military leadership” were the second and third biggest reasons, respectively.

Ninety-eight percent of the survey’s 229 participants also said they would not recommend their children, other family members, or friends to serve in the military. The number one reason was attributed to Secretary Lloyd Austin’s 2021 military vaccine mandate.