A former US Marine has slammed the obesity crisis in the US as one of the key factors in a reduction in Army recruitment.
Captain Rye Barcott who served five years as a Marine in Bosnia, Iraq and the Horn of Africa, said that a “significant” number of young people are not reaching the standards required to serve in the armed forces.
It comes as three of America’s four major military services failed to recruit enough service members in 2023.
The Army has failed to meet its manpower goals for the last two years and missed its 2023 target by 10,000 soldiers, a 20 per cent shortfall, reports Vox.
Today, the active-duty Army stands at 445,000 soldiers, the smallest it has been since 1940.
Captain Barcott spoke out against the crisis
PA/GBNews
Captain Barcott told GB News: “I think there are a number of factors here. One is that we face an obesity crisis in the United States. So literally, you have significant numbers of young Americans that cannot qualify for very basic physical standards.
“Secondly, I think there is a there is a diminished awareness around service. Some of that will be natural, as the wars have fortunately come largely to a close. They’re not completely to a close. The Global War on Terrorism actually still, is still going and we have brave men and women that are still on the front lines of that.
“But it has left the public consciousness in a way that the young Americans don’t see it as much, and frankly and value it as much.
“Then I think the last contributing factor has been that when there’s when the economy is near full employment, that also can result in in individuals deciding to opt to the toward the private sector.”
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The US Army has suffered a recruitment crisis
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Captain Barcott, who is co-founder/CEO of With Honour Action, a bi-partisan organisation that aims to get more veterans into elected office also hit out at the increased politicisation in the Army, saying the Forces have unnecessarily been drawn into culture wars and “wokeism.”
He said: “I think the military has certainly gotten more politicised, and we see this in an Ipsos poll that we did where, when I started the organisation seven years ago with two fellow veterans, the trust in the US military was above 60 per cent of the US population.
“In fact, I think it might even been as high as 70 per cent and that’s dropped by significantly over over 20 per cent and and that has been a result of a number of factors, including some of those that that are tied to, you know, the military getting tight, roped into, you know, culture war issues and the wokeism.
“I think it’s had an effect. Admiral Michael Mullen wrote an op ed that just emphasised that the military itself has to for, you know, the strength of democracy, the military leadership should really be apolitical.
“I mean, it should not take political based stances. And for the most part, that is what you we have that a lot in the uniform military, and it doesn’t become a punching bag for politicians.”
It comes as President Vladimir Putin ordered the regular size of the Russian army to be increased by 180,000 troops to 1.5 million active servicemen in a move that would make it the second largest in the world after China’s.
In a decree published on the Kremlin’s website, Putin ordered the overall size of the armed forces to be increased to 2.38 million people, of which he said 1.5 million should be active servicemen.
Russian officials say this has been done to “ensure security” after Finland and Sweden both joined Nato.
Chairman of Russia’s lower house of parliament’s defence committee Andrei Kartapolov said: “For example, we now need to form new structures and military units to ensure security in the north-west (of Russia) since Finland, with which we border, has joined the NATO bloc…and in order to carry out this process, we need to increase the number of troops.”