The Pentagon’s new recruitment policy is a disaster

Recruitment of military personnel has decreased significantly. More than half of adults under 30 negative view of the military. white progressives, least likely to volunteer. If free fall is not arrested, conscription will be required.

Equally alarming is the Pentagon’s erosion of its own hiring base. For 50 years, non-commissioned officers have vigorously recruited troops and tested their physical strength and intelligence first-hand. Recruiters were given the authority to make decisions regarding other bureaucratic requirements, such as: Health orders on page 59will undergo a final mass examination by military doctors who tend to enlist determined volunteers.

The Pentagon moved hiring managers to an electronic screening system inappropriately named “Military Health System Genesis,” which immediately reduced the number of available positions. Genesis is an intrusive magnifying glass that explores the clouds, highlighting doctor visits and prescriptions all the way back to your childhood. Understaffed health forces (mostly civilian today) must investigate all red flags. This is the equivalent of ordering a small police force to investigate all speeding drivers. The Pentagon also banned mass health exams for fear of body shaming. Instead of examining 12 recruits in 15 minutes, doctors now take up to 90 minutes to complete individual interrogations.

The bureaucratic outcome was predictable. Genesis’ perverse incentive system has led to risk aversion among medical examiners who require new employees to spend time and money tracking down amplified evidence, from retired doctors to fifth-year prescriptions. .of processing time Acceptance has doubled. Tens of thousands of other discouraged volunteers have filed appeals, been removed from the queue, or been disqualified altogether. The military currently overrides doctors’ refusal of treatment. 1 in 6 new employees.

This is clear evidence that regulation has replaced common sense. Genesis should be removed from the hiring process before it causes further damage.

The military never wanted Genesis. The system was imposed to minimize the number of soldiers who lose time due to pre-existing conditions, which contributed to ballooning VA payments. During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Congress dramatically expanded eligibility for veterans. His 15 percent of World War II veterans received disability benefits. 43 percent of post-9/11 veterans You can receive payment at a higher disability rating.

What has changed? Soldiers injured in combat or training, or weakened by long hours of labor, continue to receive inadequate compensation. Those who temporarily served in the United States and evoked existing trauma receive too much. This is a hard-to-differentiate problem that our generals refuse to address. Restricting upstream entry to reduce downstream VA payments and significantly increasing recruitment costs is self-defeating.

Our senior service leaders didn’t want to complain – a $5 billion program would have that effect. Fortunately, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) investigatingasks, among other questions, whether this red tape is causing some healthy applicants to drop out of the hiring process altogether.

It depends on your definition of health. The Department of Defense lists more than 500 disqualifying conditions. For example, asthma has skyrocketed over the past 20 years; The most common symptoms among Olympic athletes, interest rates are approaching 25% in cardiovascular sports. The Pentagon has stuck to a caricature of easily manageable symptoms, disqualifying thousands from serving at the highest physical level.

Genesis is also biased against athletes. Injury rates among teenage athletes are high. 3-5 times higher Causes additional screening than sedentary colleagues. His 25% of special operations forces are injured each year. Most people have a sports background. Are they disqualified? The result of this perverse system is that obese high school dropouts are accepted, while top college athletes with regular sports injuries are rejected before they even get tested.

Genesis not only eradicates the American tradition of allowing disabled people to join the fight, as Audie Murphy and John F. Kennedy did. If Genesis had been back-tested with an all-volunteer force over the past 30 years, tens of thousands of people who performed well under stressful physical conditions would have been barred from admission.

Service chiefs and service secretaries need to present a united front and remove Genesis from the recruiting ecosystem. Health requirements need to be replaced with simple, modern standards based on performance. You no longer have the luxury of adding restrictions upon restrictions to sort through an overflow of volunteers. Finally, recruiters need to be given the freedom to leverage their hard-earned experience to find top performers. The time has come to return to the grassroots common sense that the military-industrial bureaucracy is trying to suppress.

Owen West is a former assistant secretary of defense for special operations who served two tours in Iraq as a Marine.