West Point’s Modern War Institute, in conjunction with Training and Doctrine Command, initiated a contest in July 2023 to elicit essays describing a novel approach to “solve the recruiting crisis”. Entries were accepted until September 3, 2023. To date, the winning entries have not been announced. The below reproduced short essay was originally written as a submission in that contest.
Water is wet. Fire will burn an unprotected hand. And the laws of supply and demand apply to military recruiting. Just as a doctor will tell a patient who is physically active but bulging around the midsection that he cannot outrun his fork, someone needs to finally break it to recruiting command that there is no magic bullet—no novel strategy—that breaks the laws of economics, allowing them to meet recruiting standards in a tight job market when they are unable to raise salaries or provide other economic incentives commensurate with the private sector.
The military has a non-negotiable contract with the American people, and I know that those military members assigned to recruiting take mission accomplishment just as seriously as the rest of us. But the military does not function in a vacuum, but rather in the context of its economic and political environment. The professionals in recruiting will do what they can—we can always raise age limits but hopefully do not rely too heavily on the old standby of lowering standards—but cannot be expected to fight the rain and win.
As someone who lived through the “Docupak girls” and the (entirely foreseeable) G-RAP recruiting scandal while serving with the Army National Guard (both in uniform and simultaneously in the ARNG G1 as a civilian branch chief), I can tell you that these heroic efforts never work. We know the solutions: pay people more to join, transfer more end strength from the active component to the Ready Reserve, or shrink our overseas military commitments and the force required to execute them. However, those decisions are either above our pay grade or threaten the institutional equities that the folks in the Pentagon spend their careers advancing.
What is required: a significant dose of reality served up to our elected representatives. Here is the situation. Here are the effects on readiness and operational reach of not making our military recruitment goals. You have some choices to make.
As we are observing through the lens of the Ukrainian war, conflict really does exist on all three of the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. As the dueling Western/Korean and Russian/Chinese/Iranian supply chains make clear, this conflict involves two visions of civilization at war with one another. Just as this involves the finite finances, resources, and materiel required to wage war, it similarly involves the available manpower willing to go to war. There is no point putting off the hard decisions; hoping that extra lithium reserves will be developed or that those 155 rounds will manufacture themselves is just as futile as trying to squeeze more soldiers, sailors and airmen out of a tight labor market with no additional inputs. War footing requires debt spending and perhaps the US is not in a position to have either.
Our best military advice should not involve some fantasyland scenario or depend on finding some magic beans that change the laws of physics or economics. Innovation is all well and good, and no doubt we will be able to fill an extra 10,000 slots through the application of some innovative recruiting strategies. That said, our advice to the national command authority should be clear-eyed and articulate the real challenges we face in “manning a ready force”. All the hard work and motivation in the world won’t make two plus two equal five.
About the Author: Garri Benjamin Hendell is a Major in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard with experience leading and serving on staffs at every level from platoon to division. He also served as a civilian branch chief in the Army National Guard G1.
The Angry Staff Officer 
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