Disaffection and Despair: Behind the Military’s Recruitment Woes
What we have asked our all-volunteer force and our military families to endure.
THE YOUNG, TWENTYSOMETHING AIRMAN knocked gingerly on my door. It was time for his out-processing appointment with me, his squadron commander. After we exchanged pleasantries, I asked him why he decided to separate from the military after four years.
“Sir, it’s not that I hate the Air Force. I appreciate everything it’s done for me. But I can make a lot more doing the same job as a contractor,” he said. “And as a contractor, I don’t have to move every four years, which is easier on my wife and our children. Military life is just too hard on the family.”
He wasn’t alone in feeling that way. From 2021 to 2023, I heard scores of my outgoing airmen relay their regrets about leaving the service. Nearly all of them were grateful for the experience. But the high operations tempo, the cutbacks in services, and the stresses on family life made it just too hard to stay—especially when there were higher-paying jobs outside the service. The decision to move into civilian life was fairly straightforward.
As the United States faces a daunting array of national security threats around the world, one of the gravest dangers is going largely unnoticed at home: The all-volunteer force is in crisis. Without serious reforms, it will not survive—let alone perform well in a shooting war with a near-peer adversary.
The all-volunteer force (AVF) was established in 1973, in the waning years of the Vietnam War, following a 1970 recommendation of President Nixon’s Gates Commission. The United States had relied on conscription to fight its earlier wars dating back to the Revolution. Complaints, protests, and public arguments against the draft were not unheard of—but the anti-draft protests during the Vietnam War roiled the country in a new way, spurring the implementation of the AVF.
The AVF was instituted in 1973, and after a transition period, the United States was left with a professional, comparatively small, and motivated force. This was the force in place as the Cold War ended and the Gulf War was fought. This was the force in place during a series of smaller deployments in the 1990s (when, according to some analysts, “AVF 2.0” emerged, relying more on reservists and contractors). This was the force in place as a computer-driven “revolution in military affairs” moved into high gear—meaning that a smaller, more technologically advanced, better trained force could overcome a larger, less advanced one.
And this was the force in place on September 11, 2001.
Today, this force is on the verge of collapse, primarily due to overuse: It was not designed to fight a two-decade-long war in multiple theaters while simultaneously managing the liberal international order.
The AVF’s problems are not limited to recruiting, but its recruitment problem is the most visible symptom of many lingering issues. Underneath the hood, the AVF suffers from an exhausted workforce using aging equipment in the context of a cumbersome bureaucracy that is resistant to change. Families are similarly overextended, and their unaddressed frustrations have taught them to be wary of the government’s inability to fix systemic issues. And recently retired service members—the veterans of the 9/11 generation—are in particularly bad shape. The Veterans Administration (VA) is not set up to adequately support veterans who spent twenty years fighting two unsuccessful and unpopular wars while incurring PTSD, moral injury, and other harms.
Families
While many words have been written (including by me) about the reasons for the military’s recruitment woes—especially the drop in active-duty service members who would recommend service—not enough attention has been paid to the role that military families play in not only supporting those in the service, but in recommending service to others. According to a Blue Star Family survey, only 32 percent of military families would recommend military service, a staggering 22 percent drop in seven years.
“Quality-of-life issues may be more tolerable during a war because we can see the purpose for the sacrifices,” said Jessica Strong, the senior director of applied research for Blue Star Families and herself a military spouse. These quality-of-life issues, she told The Bulwark, “are less tolerable when there’s no clear reason.”
Foremost among the quality-of-life challenges military families face is military spouse unemployment. A whopping 22 percent of military spouses were unemployed in 2021, the last time an estimate was made. That number is presumably lower today, as the strong job market right now has made it possible for many military spouses to re-enter the workforce. Then there is the further problem of underemployment—having some work, such as a part-time job, but not full employment—which affects almost a third of military spouses, according to U.S. Veterans Magazine. These are major concerns pushing people out of the military or preventing them from joining in the first place.
“There are jobs available for military spouses. However, maintaining a career is nearly impossible,” Sarah Pflugradt, an Air Force veteran and a military spouse, told The Bulwark. “Spouses with master’s degrees don’t want to take a job that pays $17 an hour just to be employed.”
Even with the rise in teleworking, the constant churn of military life is difficult. Through my twenty-year Air Force career, I moved fourteen times—disruptions that can make it difficult or impossible for military families to make friends and build community ties. I also deployed six times, and spent about half my time away from home. When you take into account the grueling work hours and the high operational tempo, you can get a sense of how stressful military life is for families.
“The military is hard on spouses and kids,” Jade Ferrell, whose mother serves in the military, told The Bulwark. “When my mother was deployed, my father was basically a single parent, and he didn’t have adequate military support.”
It’s not all downside: Military children get to see the world, gain resilience, and acquire different, larger perspectives on the United States and the need to defend it at home and abroad.
“I loved military life. I loved to travel,” Alexandra Linge, whose father serves in the military, told The Bulwark. “Now it’s kind of weird not moving every 3-4 years.”
The frequent moving also makes successfully navigating the military’s never-ending bureaucracy, especially the DoD’s Tricare military medical system, a virtually impossible task. Forty percent of service members reported their families waited for two months or more to see a specialist.
Constant moves, long nights, the steady drumbeat of war, and the lack of career opportunities for spouses all play a significant role in the AVF crisis. But the biggest impediment to recruitment and retention is the experience of recently retired or separated service members.
The 9/11 Generation
Hundreds of thousands of career service members with multiple deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Africa will retire over the next five to ten years. No other generation in American history has had to carry such a burden. Roughly half of the 9/11 generation of veterans have seen combat, nearly double the rates of previous generations. Many, like myself, are reeling from wounds both visible and invisible. They will struggle, or have struggled, with reintegrating into a civilian world that seemed to forget about the wars fought in their name even while those wars were still underway.
“It wasn’t going off to war that eventually drove me to drinking,” one Air Force veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Adam Saxe, told The Bulwark. “It was coming home after the war, and feeling like a total stranger in the land I went to protect. The guys that stayed home spent their twenties and thirties building a life. I missed out on all that, and buried that painful reality in liquor.”
I’ve experienced this firsthand since my retirement in January. Civilians still commonly say “Thank you for your service”—but after that ritualized sentiment, conversation often abruptly halts. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if they don’t know what else to say, or just don’t want to talk about it. Although several organizations and projects have been created to help veterans transition, many veterans feel alone in handling problems associated with the post-9/11 wars.
The statistics are shocking. Nearly a third of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have or will deal with PTSD sometime in their lives. Although DoD is playing catch-up on traumatic brain injuries, 400,000 veterans/service members reported TBIs between 2000 and 2019. More than 500,000 veterans/service members have been diagnosed with cancer over the last two decades, with many cases likely due to exposure to burn pits and operating in regions with lax environmental regulations. All of these issues lead to high rates of substance abuse and incarceration.
And most jarringly, despite DoD’s best efforts, suicide has claimed more lives than combat during the post-9/11 wars.
The problems with mental health could prove to be the most difficult for the VA to manage. Since 2020, the VA inspector general found issues with the provision of care for mental health in nearly half of its routine inspections. The issues ranged from problems with mental health screening to failures to follow up with routine care, in some cases leading to suicide or homicide.
“The VA learned a lot from Vietnam-era veterans and has dedicated significant effort towards its own capacity-building,” a senior VA official told The Bulwark on condition of anonymity so as to speak freely. “Nonetheless, the system is oversaturated and likely won’t be able to accommodate the immense needs of the veteran community, leading to significant gaps in their ability to access timely and meaningful healthcare—particularly in the realm of mental health.”
Part of the problem is that the VA is straining under an avalanche of claims. With the implementation of President Joe Biden’s much touted PACT Act, which expands care and benefits to veterans exposed to burn pits and other toxins, the VA is handling even more claims than usual, causing significant strain on an already overworked force.
The VA’s problems will only multiply as more disaffected 9/11-generation combat veterans retire from active duty. Like their Vietnam-era brethren, Afghanistan combat veterans, while proud of their service, feel angry, humiliated, and betrayed by America’s retreat from Afghanistan.
“The military doesn’t do enough for the mental health of its members,” military spouse Katie O’Brien, whose husband deployed for two years to Afghanistan, told The Bulwark. Her husband “was completely devastated watching Afghanistan fall. He’s a pro at compartmentalizing problems, but I could tell it hurt him deeply.”
As the demoralizing conclusions of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars recede into history, these problems will remain—for both recent veterans and service members still on active duty, further eroding the AVF.
Active Duty
The AVF is small—too small. The Army is authorized to have 494,000 personnel, but only has 445,000, and hopes to get to 470,000 within the next five years. The Navy is short about 16,000 sailors and, worryingly for the future of the force, the dearth of junior sailors is particularly acute. The Air Force is facing such serious personnel shortfalls that it’s offering pilots as much as $600,000 to stay in the service. Only the Marine Corps and Space Force, the two smallest services, met their recruitment goals last year—barely.
This underweight AVF faces the most complex and dangerous geopolitical landscape since the Cold War. European Command is knee-deep in helping the Ukrainians while bolstering our NATO allies, which includes more and bigger exercises. Central Command is sparring with Iran and its proxies in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, while providing security assistance to the Israeli Defense Forces. Indo-Pacific Command is keeping a steady eye on Chinese revanchism throughout the Pacific. Add the persistent threat of radical Islamic terrorism, and it should come as little surprise that the U.S. military is in some ways just as busy as it was during the heights of the Iraq and Afghanistan War, despite being at its smallest size since World War II.
After years of being told to do more with less, the AVF is under enormous strain. Lack of sleep is a persistent problem. This, too, I saw firsthand. Most of my airmen’s work schedules changed constantly, from the graveyard shift one day to a mid-afternoon shift the next and a dawn shift after that. These changes affected not only their health, but their family lives, too. It’s little wonder the military has the highest divorce rate of any career field.
The financial strains associated with military service don’t help. Partly due to inflation, the men and women of the AVF are struggling to put food on the table. A whopping 24 percent of active-duty troops face some type of food insecurity. Hundreds of thousands of military families live on base to offset rising housing costs, but face unconscionable conditions. While the DoD works to improve childcare costs, its daycare centers have been slow to report abuse, sapping what’s left of confidence in the system and driving some families to costlier private options.
When service members suffer, the military suffers. After two decades of war, DoD has an enormous problem with readiness, “the ability of military forces to fight and meet the demands of assigned missions.” Its personnel are tired, demoralized, and fighting with older equipment not likely to withstand the rigors of conflict against either Russia or China. The Navy is struggling to keep pace with the expanding Chinese Navy—its total number of ships is about half of the 529 it had at the end of the Cold War and at least 80 short of what it says it needs. To reach those goals, the Navy plans to hang onto older ships long past when it expected to retire them. The Air Force—with its active inventory of aircraft now “the oldest, smallest, and least ready in its 76-year history”—has been slow to the drone fight, as it remains wedded to an antiquated style of aerial combat. Both the Army and Marine Corps are restructuring their forces, causing howls of indignation and opposition in cultures that are often resistant to change. It is little wonder that DoD is “freaking out” about a potential conflict with China.
‘The Pitch or the Product?’
DoD is trying everything it can think of to mitigate the recruitment crisis. The Air Force even tried luring retired members back into the force. (Sorry, I’ll pass.) The Navy is starting to allow new recruits to join without a GED or a high school diploma. The Army has found some success with its future-prep course, which provides recruits ninety days of preparatory training so as to meet military standards before even shipping off to basic training. Yet, despite all of the new ideas, the military will struggle to meet its recruitment goals in 2024.
“Does the recruiting crisis ultimately come down to the pitch or the product? If it’s the product, that’s a much bigger problem,” Gil Barndollar, a senior fellow at Defense Priorities who served as a Marine infantry officer from 2009 to 2016, told The Bulwark.
The product is the problem. The creation of the AVF gave rise to what is now known as the civilian-military gap, in which the general public understands very little about the military, and the military is disconnected from broader American society. The result is a mirage of stability. The vast majority of Americans assume that defending the country is something other people do, which can leave those who volunteer feeling misunderstood, neglected, and abandoned.
The United States now faces stark choices. While the idea of mandatory national service (military or civilian) is a subject of perennial discussion, it’s unlikely to happen in today’s political environment. The United States needs to do more to address this crisis now, or we won’t be able to rely on the AVF in the next war.
There are plenty of policy changes available to address the issue. Congress’s proposed 15 percent pay increase for junior enlisted service members would help offset inflation and make entry pay more competitive. A proposed GI Bill for Child Care would provide grants of up to $15,000 per kid for six to nine months while spouses re-enter the workforce. Instead of pumping veterans full of pills, the VA could allow combat veterans to use alternative medicine, like cannabis, psilocybin, and MDMA, to treat PTSD and moral injury.
While spending more money on the VA, military families, and modernization efforts are a key part in dealing with this crisis, it will not be enough. The military and the civilians they protect are going to have to close the civ-mil gap and learn about each other again. There’s no panacea for a problem this complex, but there are three important steps that could help ameliorate it. First, DoD needs to lower its force-protection threshold and allow civilians back on base. Pre-9/11 restrictions were nowhere near as tight, allowing more interactions between civilians and the military. There were still restricted areas, and there always will be. But some areas could be open to the public like they used to be.
Second, we need to start educating our children about the armed forces. Recruiters would have an easier time fighting military stereotypes if our children understood the basic structure of the military—not to mention the reality of military life as distinct from what’s in movies and video games.
Third, to restore confidence in the AVF, the military must start holding its senior leaders accountable. It’s been nearly two half years since the fall of Kabul, and nobody in uniform has been relieved of duties. During World War II, generals were routinely removed from command for being ineffective. That only happened once in Afghanistan, when Secretary of Defense Robert Gates relieved General David McKiernan of command in 2009.
“There needs to be more accountability throughout the military, and not just for poor battlefield decisions, but also for problems in garrison too,” Allison Jaslow, the CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, told The Bulwark.
The liberal international order depends on the strength of the United States Armed Forces. Great power competition has returned. Spending more is necessary but not sufficient for the national defense. The United States must find a way to rebuild, reinforce, and reinvigorate its military—and quickly.
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