New Army recruits going into two of the service’s most critical fields will no longer be able to choose which specific jobs they enlist into, according to an internal service email reviewed by Military.com.
Both the field artillery and air defense fields, which each have several jobs within them that center around different weapons and maintenance, as well as surveillance and communications systems, will no longer allow soldiers to enlist directly into those specific roles.
It’s a similar move to what the service did with infantry years ago by not allowing new applicants in some situations to pick between typical ground infantry and mortarmen. It is unclear whether other job fields will be reducing choice for new applicants, and the Army did not respond to a request for comment ahead of publication.
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The move comes as both air defense and artillery will likely play a key role in future conflicts, as those two fields have been critical on the battlefield in Ukraine — where some 12,000 artillery shells are estimated to be fired each day and air defenses have been key to stopping Russian airpower from advancing the front lines.
Air defense has been particularly affected as the Pentagon has spread its units thin in recent years, with the Army amassing troops in Europe and the Pacific while juggling combat missions in the Middle East and Africa. CNN reported that there are more missions than that field has the capabilities for.
The constant string of deployments and training missions has also been linked to suicides in the service, along with other mental health issues. Troops in the artillery field are especially vulnerable to traumatic brain injuries. A report from the Marine Corps found that service members in those roles are about twice as likely to suffer from a TBI or other sensory injuries when they aren’t deployed — meaning standard day-to-day training is inherently dangerous.
The reduction of immediate choice could hamper a key selling point in Army recruiting, which has been that applicants broadly get to pick the roles they will serve in. The reduction in choice for new applicants comes as the service has seen dwindling recruiting numbers in the past decade, mostly fueled by young Americans being unable to meet its academic or body fat standards for enlistment.
Meanwhile, the service has struggled to adapt to modern marketing to reach Gen Z because much of its efforts still center around advertisements built for cable television and sporting events, both of which have increasingly lost relevance with each generation.
The service is projected to meet its lowered recruiting goal this year of bringing in 55,000 active-duty recruits — a sharp drop from its goal of 65,000 last year, when it came up 10,000 new soldiers short. The little headway the service has made on recruiting has been attributable to the Future Soldier Preparatory Course, a pre-basic training program that helps applicants just outside of the Army standards to come into compliance.
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