Cat IV Follies
Project 100,000
Remember the recruitment crisis where military enlistment goals fell short by some 41,000 applicants? The excuses fell like autumn leaves-
- A strong economy, which resulted in many more options for young people.
- A smaller eligible population- everything from drugs, tats, gangs and obesity barred entry.
- Generation Z, the generation born from 1997 to 2012, had generally low trust in institutions.
- Generation Z decreasingly followed traditional life and career paths.
- Young people have fewer family members who served, which decreases the propensity to serve.
One of the more ill-advised stopgap measures was lowering enlistment standards for ASVAB Cat Iv recruits. Shades of MacNamara’s Morons! Seems they cooked these numbers too.
Army, Navy underreported low-scoring recruits, DOD watchdog finds
By Eve Sampson
A Pentagon watchdog found that the Army and Navy failed to accurately calculate the number of recruits who scored low on military aptitude tests, a practice that risked circumventing legal limits and rules meant to govern enlistment quality.
The Army and Navy counted scores earned after enlistees attended their respective preparatory programs, the Future Soldier Preparatory Course and Future Sailor Preparatory Course, instead of the marks recruits received when they first signed up, a Dec. 11 report by the Department of Defense Inspector General said.
The report specifically discusses Category IV enlistments, which are recruits scoring in the 10th to 30th percentile on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, a battery of metrics used by the services to assess eligibility and recruit quality. Congress capped the number of enlistees who can join the service with scores in that range at 4% of the total incoming population.
Using original test scores, the Navy’s Category IV enlistments would have totaled 11.3% of fiscal year 2025 accessions as of March 31, compared to 7.2% under the recalculated rate. The report said the Army also exceeded 10%, although it did not specify the exact figure.
The branches can exceed that limit with approval from the secretary of defense, who must notify the House and Senate armed services committees within 30 days. Category IV enlistments exceeding 10% trigger additional statutory requirements, including formal notification to Congress and the use of mandatory preparatory programs.
The real reason for such low enlistments was never addressed- the surge of DEI and the White Supremacy witch hunt had repulsed the largest pool of normally reliable recruits- white males from middle America.
This has recently changed with entirely predictable results but are there still remnants of the prior admin that need to be purged.
Category: Big Pentagon, Blue Falcons, DEI
You can have a seat over there…..on the Group W Bench…
with the Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father
rapers…and the litterers.
(I was really like a kid when this came out but I remember…slightly, from when I was older.)
‘and creating a public nuisance
…and they all came back, shook my hand
I remember hearing that for the 1st time on some late-night/early-morning rock station in Houston.
On my transistor radio, with the ear-plug in so I didn’t wake my brother.
And grinning like the Cheshire cat.
Yeah, it was anti-war tripe, but it was clever anti-war tripe.
There were other issues with recruitment.
There was a lot of concern that Biden would commit US troops to half measures in the Ukraine War, causing casualties without achieving anything. Trump is all out against the war and people have noticed. While bad things are still happening, nobody is checking their watch either.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTPXVEX2GWg
Youth (18-24) unemployment among males was 7.5% in 24Q2 and was 9.8% 25Q4, showing a steady rise. While that number is not hugely significant, there are about 300K additional men in that age bracket looking for work.
I was a recruiter from 08-11 (USMC) for the push to 202K and then the drawdown. I remember if the kid wasn’t an Alpha (over 50 AFQT) and a HS grad/senior you tended to keep them in your back pocket and always got screamed at to “stop trying to qualify the disqualified!!”
My my how the turn tables
I enlisted back when we had a draft. It was job opportunity.
We need to bring back the draft but today’s liberals will
riot in the streets because Trump.
I don’t like the odds against sifting a winner out of the large pile of losers you’ll get when you compel people to enlist.
“compel people to enlist”
Compel is too nice a word. A draft would be under threat
of criminal justice and loss of freedom, as it should be.
Back in the day when Beans and myself enlisted, we had draftees and enlistees from a different era way before computers, basement video games etc. I went in at 17 right after High School in 1963. I mentioned awhile ago on this site that United States Naval Institute magazine had an article about how Nato Navies in europe tell how they deal with the gen Z enlistees which was an interesting read….
Yeah. We need all the Bradley Mannings and Bowe Bergdahls we can get.
People will riot in the street because of the draft alone. At least they did last time we had a draft.
I recall a local guy that was incarcerated at Devens for
failure to report.
Induction at Boston Army Base was a pretty good sorting.
And Basic at Dix straightened a lot of guys out.
If I remember correctly, the protesting was against the Viet of the Nam war and not the draft. A lot went on across from NYC City hall back in the day.
The majority of protests that became violent in that era were civil rights related. Next were anti-war protests and then there were anti-draft protests. Vietnam was certainly a concern but the 1967 March on the Pentagon was specifically about the draft.
The last draft protests we had were in 1980 when Carter reinstituted draft registration and tied it to federal college aid. This was well after the Vietnam War.
Probably. Which is a good reason to institute it now instead of waiting until we are busy with more important things like actually fighting a war.
I say let’s have a draft; but first, reinstitute the Civilian Conservation Corps. No 4-F’s, if you have a pulse, you’re in. If you have two XX chromosomes just like those with XY chromosomes, you’re in. If you’re a conscientious objector, you get to build fire lines for 2 years. Don’t like to follow orders, you will, oh yeah, you will follow orders. You have 10 children with 5 baby momma’s, you will live at home and report each day to the nearest Government facility for 8 hours of grunt work.
The CCC’ers get the same lousy pay and benefits as the GI’s.
Now before something unmentionable calls me a fascist, I would have him remember that not everyone was drafted. Some folks waited on the call that never came. I am not watering down my idea; I am saying add the CCC to the draft and give those who get called a choice.
The terrible idea of forced labor aside, someone with 10 babies from five baby mommas is probably already reporting for forced labor at the local county jail.
This would turn into some kind dystopian nightmare fast. Under Biden they would have your child staffing an abortion free clinic at gun point somewhere. Don’t want to put dead babies in the incinerator? Off to jail then.
In the immortal words of Howard J. Turkstra
White males have been the backbone of our military for over 250 years.
Wha?? There weren’t trannys and they/thems in the Continental Army?
There is no way Netflix lied to me 🙄
Not as badly as “Hamilton” did.
😛😛🤪😂😅😎🎃
So what was the US Military supposed to do with these individuals who score on the lower end of the ASVAB? The US Military needs service members who can program data networks, analyze intelligence reports, fix aircraft, and now how to succeed under austere conditions. They don’t need deck apes and speed bumps who end up knocking up their 14 year old girlfriends and crank out 8 kids and can’t deploy.
They could break rocks or hack stone. Between confinement periods anyway.
They needed numbers and were perfectly happy to sign up room temperature IQ recruits to get them.
The only other option for folks like that is McDonalds or Congress..
Hey, without them we wouldn’t have any 14Ts! /sarc
” They don’t need deck apes and speed bumps”
Things must have changed quite a bit since I was in the Army.
Okay, how about “They don’t need any more deck apes and speed bumps”?
I can hear that photo from Forrest Gump…
“Goddamnit, Gump!”
The weird thing about that is being dumb doesn’t mean you can’t make it in the Army at least. You can be an idiot half the way to the top of the flag pole so long as you follow all the rules of right:
Right place, right time, right uniform with the right attitude and training will get you all the way to E7.
Starting at E7, where most start leading more veteran leaders and soldiers is where people start running into problems. Stress fractures will develop and the dumb ones either sink or swim with some other talent.
They first have to be smart enough to follow the rules of right. If they can’t do that, then they will never make it.
OH! I remember Project 100,000. Then a 1LT, I was the OIC of the Mortar Committee at the Infantry Training Center at Fort Lewis. The week before I had gotten word we had a whole platoon of Project 100,000 to be trained as IIC. The cycle they were in meant that they would be arriving on Mortar Square 2 Monday morning. I briefed SFC Camancho, Square 2’s NCOIC on what was coming. Monday 8am was normally a meeting for all Committee OICs, so immediately afterwards I headed for Mortar Square 2. By the time I arrived the classroom instruction was over, and the Practical Exercise had begun. As I approached, I expected to hear SSG Leggett giving commands over the PA system. (Leggett was the primary instructor for Day One and as the PI he got to work from the Tower. High and dry and warm on cold rainy days so common in the Pacific Northwest.
But it wasn’t Leggett I heard. Sounded more like SSG Hernandez or maybe SSG Rodriguez. SFC Camacho greeted me as I approached. Where is SSG Leggett? Camacho told me he had Hernandez teach today instead of Leggett and that Hernandez and Rodriguez would be the PI for the rest of this cycle. He then explained that when he had his normal discussion with the Drill Sergeant of the incoming platoon last week, he was told that these kids scored low on their GT test was that English was their second language and some spoke only Spanish. They had been recruited from South Texas and New Mexico. It was then that I realized Hernandez was giving the commands in both English and Spanish. Camancho then said he taught the whole class in Spanish earlier. As the week went on the trainees would respond to the English before they were repeated in Spanish. Turned out that most of that platoon passed the Gunners exam at Master Gunner level.
(Continued)
In 2016, I added an ‘ez to my last name. That year, the Army must have only wanted bilingual SFCs, because every eligible Hispanic SSG in my 2-54 IN got picked up, with virtually no Whites making the selection list. I spoke to a fellow Drill at 2-47, the BCT battalion we shared a DFAC with, and it was the same story. He was a fellow 11B, with a Ranger Tab to boot, but had been passed over.
The following year, a lot of us finally made E-7. It seemed like a virtual guarantee that we career SSGs would make the list after completing a year on the Trail. The previous year, when it was mostly Hispanics who got promoted, many of us were in our first year. So, it wasn’t entirely based on ethnicity, but it was fun to point out. I still pronounce my name with an ‘ez (“fm2176ez”) on occasion. 😄
Not too related to your story, I know, but we’d had a real language barrier earlier in my career. At BNCOC (professional school for Squad Leaders), less than six years into my career and 11 years before I’d attend SLC (for Platoon Sergeants), my Instructor was a member of the Puerto Rican National Guard. He was about 55, a SFC with “only” the Badge that matters–the CIB–in a schoolhouse full of Instructors rocking tabs and badges of every variety. He’d recently graduated from the course himself and was offered the chance tk stay on as an Instructor. Let’s just say that we had to listen very closely to understand him, and that some of my classmates got away with a lot of stuff because he was clueless about a lot of things. No one in my half of the class received honors, and the Commandant (a 75th Ranger type) personally addressed the quality of the Instructors and curriculum with us before we graduated.
My first platoon leader when I was enlisted was a warrant officer who had gone active from the Puerto Rico National Guard.
.
For the first six months months I have no idea what he said in English. When he would get agitated he would break into Spanish, which was actually better as I had a couple of years of high school Spanish and I could pick up the gist of it. He said in PR they do everything in Spanish (this was mid 80s).
At some point, someone told him that I actually spoke Spanish, which again with just a couple of years of high school Spanish, so no, not really. But because of that he decided to make me his driver and also his RTO. He would yell at me in Spanish and I would do my best to translate it on the radio. This led to a comedy of errors on more than one occasion, where I would typically get thrown under the bus.
The guy was a great technician and knew how things worked but he was a disaster in leadership skills.
Continuing
Two weeks later another Project 100,000 platoon arrived at Mortar Square 2. None spoke Spanish. After giving the Gunner’s Exam seven time still only about half had passed. Those that had not passed were recycled as 11B.
SSG Williams, late 80s, one of McNamara’s Morons. The Marine Corps kept him around because they knew he wouldn’t survive in the real world (I know you’re as shocked as I am that the Marine Corps had a heart). They couldn’t stick him somewhere safe and harmless though. That wouldn’t be the Marine Corps way. No, they made that stupid SoB an infantry platoon sergeant. Thank God the squad leaders managed him to limit the damage he could have down. I swear if you look up “ASVAB Waiver” in Wikipedia, it’s just his picture