From that first article:
The numbers are staggering: Seventy-one percent of young people are ineligible to join the military, according to 2017 Pentagon data. The reasons: obesity, no high school diploma or a criminal record.
The problem isn't just a military one, though: It's an issue for businesses as well because the vast majority of that age group isn't eligible for many jobs either, said retired Rear Admiral Thomas Wilson.
That's why Wilson recently raised the issue at a gathering of business and community leaders in York County, Pennsylvania. The 29 percent of 17- to 24-year-olds who are qualified become prime targets for all recruiting: military, college and jobs.
In Army magazine I proposed courses in life saving and military familiarization to expand the awareness in unrecruited portions of that 29%. Perhaps I'm thinking too small.
When I went to basic training, new recruits unable to pass the initial physical test to see if you were even capable of starting basic training went to a conditioning class (for a few weeks, I think) before being put into basic training. This is clearly insufficient for the new problems. But it is an example of coping with a problem from the civilian world.
Perhaps the military should jointly create a Purple Community College that takes new recruits and puts them into a military college boarding school. It would require campuses across the United States, but it could be done.
Depending on the student needs, the school--with the recruit-students under supervision by drill sergeants--would address the lack of a diploma, get recruit students in reasonable weight ranges and in better shape in general, and isolate recruit-students from a criminal environment to evaluate whether the recruit-students with criminal records can be salvaged. Graduates would be liable for a longer term of service to make up for the added cost and risk that is giving them a second chance in life.
Weight problems might require a couple years to resolve, as criminal background might. Educational shortfalls could be solved more quickly. And the school would certainly prepare recruits for basic training.
Still, with anywhere from a semester to a full two years to improve the recruit-students, the military could make recruits ineligible to enlist into recruits with an actual edge in graduating.
Indeed, could such PCCs be established abroad to add English language instruction to better prepare foreign recruits to join the military? Graduating from such a school and entering the military could add to the recruits ability to gain American citizenship.
If the recruit-students learned much of the classroom instruction and military familiarization that takes place in basic training, maybe graduates of PCC could attend special shortened basic training that focuses on physical and weapons training.
Or perhaps the services will find that the PCC graduates should be put into regular initial training classes where their experience might make them candidates for standard bearers, squad leaders, and platoon guides.
The military certainly needs to expand efforts to reach all of the 29% who could join the military. But the military can't count on society to eventually expand that 29%.
The military services need to jointly expand the 29% right now.
