Friday Short Takes – Army/Navy shortfalls, Sludge Light down
Well, looks like the Army is not going to meet its recruiting goals yet again this year.
Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday that the service would fall short of its goal of 65,000 new recruits. The Army fell roughly 15,000 active-duty troops short of its goal last year of having 60,000 new soldiers. MSN
You have to wonder what the raw numbers look like if 6 months out failure seems inevitable. H/t to Jeff again
And on the water-borne front, the Marines are facing a shortage of Navy ships to transport them.They think they need 38 amphibious ships for support, worst case 34, whereas the Pentagon (ie. Big Navy) says they can do with 31…or less. It’s a complex situation (read the cited article) but one salient factor is that the readiness rate of these ships is about 40%.
That rate means in a fleet of 31 ships, 12 or 13 might be available at any given time. If six are supposed to be deployed, and another six are getting ready to deploy next, that leaves little to no additional capacity for training or surging in response to natural disasters or conflicts.
Hundreds of Americans trapped in war-torn Sudan last month needed a way out of the country, but the U.S. Marine Corps, the go-to service for such rescues, couldn’t help. Typically, this kind of mission would be standard for the Navy and Marine Corps’ amphibious ready group and Marine expeditionary unit, made up of 2,300 Marines aboard three ships who are trained to fight their way into and evacuate citizens from dangerous locations.
Instead, as violence surged, the Pentagon relied on drones to monitor a 500-mile escape route from the capital of Khartoum to the Red Sea city of Port Sudan. For the Americans who fled to the coast, the Pentagon sent an auxiliary transport ship to shuttle them to safety in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. DefenseNews
Sorta thought the whole Navy-Marine relationship was based on the Navy transporting the Marines to go do Marine stuff. Well, we wondered at the anemic response in Sudan – there’s your answer. Kinda makes you wonder how we would be able to fight a major war?
The Bud Light fouforaw is affecting the parent company. Remember when InBev bought the biggest-selling beer company in the US? Despite early denials, Bud Light sales are down so far it is dragging down the parent company.
Figures released by Bump Williams Consulting, a firm that specializes in the alcohol beverage market, found Bud Light sales have progressively slumped throughout the month of April. In the second week of the month, they were down 11 percent and plummeted 21 percent the following week. (4th week totals reportedly are down 27% – Ed.)
Overall sales are now reportedly down 8 percent on the year, jeopardizing parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev’s position as the market leader.
“I think it runs the risk of losing that No. 1 position at the end of calendar year 2023 to Modelo Especial,” Bump Williams, the market research company chief, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Monday. AOL News
What was that phrase…”Get woke, something…?
Category: Army, Dick Stepping, Marines, Navy
Seems odd that recruiting since Pedo Joe & Crew took over is DOA. I wonder why?
Now the Navy has some drag queen as a “digital ambassador” to help with recruting young people. WTF?
I seen a few clips of this guy. If he’d been on my ship in my day, he would have been dubbed ‘Sweat Pea’. You can’t lighten his loafers any more or he’d float away.
“What in the hell is the world coming too?”
True dat. All the sexual deviants can now openly serve while performing their particular sexual deviancies, I am shocked to see that the military is apparently not their cup of tea.
Clearly, the Army doesn’t employ enough Drag Queens, in order to attract the deviants needed to flesh-out the ranks.
Perhaps they could induce enough Navy aberrants to change branches, to help with recruiting efforts.
Cross dressing, sort of?
Well…..yeah, actually.
Anheuser-Busch’s CEO Michel Doukeris will triple media spending on a Bud Light summer marketing blitz focusing on sports and music. In a letter to wholesalers to dispel “confusion” and “misinformation” he stated,
“This was one single can given to one social media influencer,” Anheuser-Busch said in the letter, adding, “This can was not made for production or sale to the general public” nor was it “a formal campaign or advertisement.”
For perspective, here’s a CNN article from early in the firestorm.
Bud Light’s inclusive ad campaigns are good for business, experts say
CNN Business
Cheers!
Never tried Bud Light. I don’t drink three two beer.
Now if they suddenly came out with a MAGA themed can I just
might give it try.
I drink beer for the alcohol buzz but a MAGA themed container
would give me a whole new reason.
I drink beer for the taste, getting a buzz is just a side effect. Buttwiper is just beer poorly flavored, carbonated water.
I always considered Bud Light to be overpriced pisswater, and it being owned by some huge conglomerate out of touch with reality makes this fiasco even more amusing to me!
“Key demographic” – TGs are a tiny percentage of the population, and the popular image is of extreme weight consciousness. How many actually drink beer, light beer, or Bud Light? Seems like BL is chasing a pretty tiny “key” demographic.
The TG’s are always into seltzers, wine and cocktails, thus their decision was no less than corporate seppuku to me!
Somewhat off-topic, but… This is the “woke” mentality all the “inclusive” drag stuff is supposed to improve recruiting with:
https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1654178997717090304?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1654178997717090304%7Ctwgr%5E5393e10e22c8497c86e1fd4a8fc498f3a3cc98df%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.yahoo.com%2Fhate-trans-activist-shrieks-san-222045193.html
It’s obvious that going “woke” is social and/or financial ruin, but the moonbats who espouse it say it just needs to be given one more chance, like they say about socialism!
Don’t forget, those left/libtards are usually like this:
David exactly summarized my impressions of the Army’s current recruiting shortfall: “You have to wonder what the raw numbers look like if 6 months out failure seems inevitable.”
It’s like whiney Christie Wormuth thinks recruiting is too hard so why work any harder or even smarter. We can simply get ahead of the story now by publicly embracing our ultimate, certain failure.
That’s public relations not executive leadership. Yet, no doubt Christie will receive a substantial bonus at the conclusion of this fiscal year.
This is confusing because peak recruiting season hits around May-July when the high school grads and college drop outs hit the market. They have to be really off of projections if they know now they aren’t going to make it.
I hear ABInBev has some top notch marketing guys who just became available….
Check out todays unemployment numbers just released.
I don’t believe them but if true, there’s a large number of
did not join the military.
Anything less than 5% is considered full employment. We do have a large number of indigent homeless people in the US who aren’t included in those numbers (about 600K, possibly more). If just 10% were eligible to and wanted to join than the Army recruiting problem would be over. Most are so fried on drugs they don’t even know where they are most days.
And don’t forget of the Navy confused poles to holes social media campaign.
That should help recruitment.
The military is missing recruiting goals for various reasons, not least of which is the alienation of what has long formed the core of the enlisted ranks: straight males. I’d throw in that a majority are white, but don’t want to sound racist. Besides, while my once-beloved Infantry was overwhelmingly light-skinned, Soldiers of every race are well represented in other MOS’. With that said, a lot of us joined out of a sense of duty, wanting to be part of something bigger, and wanting to do cool things and see different places (aka, travel abroad and blow things up). This administration has proven time and again that the Service Member, unless they are 4-star Generals or Admirals playing politics like the CJCS, means little to them.
The ones the military seems hellbent on enlisting are the ones least likely to make it through training, much less a first enlistment or career. “I Want YOU for the US Army.” So long as YOU are gender-fluid, spent your formative years staring at a screen instead of going outside and doing anything productive, are willing to stand up for [inset victim class here] rights, and will blindly follow the lead of our out-of-touch senior military leaders, never-were senior bureaucrats like Wormuth, and corrupt political masters.
As for AB, I’m glad to have a reason not to buy another one of their products again. It’s not about “one can” in the hands of a trans “influencer”, but rather about their complete lack of oversight and mishandling this issue from the get-go. I’ve stated before, if I really enjoyed an ice-cold Bud Light after work, I’d buy one regardless. As someone who rarely drinks beer, though, I’ll put those occasional few dollars towards a Miller or Coors product instead or go with a regional or local brew.
Glad my time in uniform is behind me. I’m sure Bud Light is now being served at all the mandatory socials my commander has.
I used to be a Budweiser guy back in the day, especially on tap. Michelob (the real one, not that Ultra shit) when I could find it on tap. However, I did notice that the flavor of Bud had changed over the years and I found out that they changed their incoming quality inspections on the rice that the used for the beer. Bottom line, the rice is the component responsible for the light color and the crisp finish that was once the hallmark of that brand. They were approving rice that would have been dumped back in the day and not vetting the farmers that were growing for them. So, even before this latest brew-haha, I was no longer drinking the AB beer that was once my go-to. Fortunately, Yuengling came on the scene in my home state in 2017.
Maybe they should start serving Bud Light and Smirnoff in the DFACs
Smirnoff is cheap garbage for alkies. They seem to have hit their target market.
Charbay is the good stuff. Goose if you hate flavor.
Whether the Navy has 3 or 333 amphibious ships, Khartoum is still 500 miles from the sea. Even a 100% readiness rate won’t get the Navy’s ships any closer.
It is hard for me to take seriously any army that thinks completing training deserves a medal. Perhaps today’s ‘yoots’ feel the same.