Fat, unhealthy Americans threaten Trump’s defense surgeThe military depends on a constant flow of volunteers every year. According to 2017 Pentagon data, 71 percent of young Americans between 17 and 24 are ineligible to serve in the United States military. Put another way: Over 24 million of the 34 million people of that age group cannot join the armed forces—even if they wanted to. This is an alarming situation that threatens the country’s fundamental national security. If only 29 percent of the nation’s young adults are qualified to serve, and if this trend continues, it is inevitable that the U.S. military will suffer from a lack of manpower. A manpower shortage in the United States Armed Forces directly compromises national security.
Biggest problem...Kids just too fat and out of shape. At 18-24.
But health problems are the clearest impediment to military service — especially the alarming number of youngsters who are overweight.
"We need to increase physical fitness and better eating habits in schools," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Norm Seip, chairman of the Council for a Strong America, "and not get on that obesity scale that is going in the wrong direction."
The council is a bipartisan foundation made up of former law enforcement leaders, retired military officers, business executives, pastors and prominent coaches and athletes "who promote solutions that ensure our next generation of Americans will be citizen-ready."
In Army medicine we've been internally guided that if someone can't deploy or do a fitness test for 12 months, they are essentially permanently unusable. Whatever years its going to take for that medical issue to resolve is too long for the military. So these people are being moved out.
Mattis has just made that Armed Forces wide policy:
Mattis: Deploy-or-get-out rule is about fairness
You’re either deployable, or you need to find something else to do. I’m not going have some people deploying constantly and then other people, who seem to not pay that price, in the U.S. military,” Mattis told reporters Feb. 17 in his first comments on the issue since the new policy was formally introduced.
“If you can’t go overseas [and] carry a combat load, then obviously someone else has got to go. I want this spread fairly and expertly across the force.”
Under new rules first reported on by Military Times, military members who have been non-deployable for the past 12 months or more will be separated from the military.
Approximately 11 percent, or 235,000, of the 2.1 million personnel serving on active duty, in the reserves or National Guard are currently non-deployable, Command Sgt. Maj. John Troxell, the senior enlisted adviser to Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford, told Military Times earlier this month.
When I was deployed, I saw units that were rapidly below 80% strength due to medical readiness. That is, people with hidden medical problems presented themselves once in an deployed environment and unable to hide their issue. Now the mission and their peers are in danger. Not due to funding or training, but health.
The recruits are too fat.
Too many in are too fat and broken.
This is a disaster coming.