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I am Jim Fausone.
I'm the officer of the deck today.
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This is a conversation that we had with Vice Admiral Kevin P. Green.
He was 30 years in the Navy.
We've spoken to him before regarding issues such as the size of the fleet and the relevance
of NATO, but we wanted to talk to him about the conversations that are going on on recruiting,
recruiting into the military in general.
But the Navy in particular, you can't have national security unless you can actually
man all of the necessary equipment.
So in that regard, I think he's got some insights.
He's going to be talking on this issue at the war college soon.
So we thought it would be good to get his ideas.
He's been thinking about this for over 20 years.
So I think he'll enjoy this conversation with Vice Admiral Green.
Admiral, I'd like to move, if I can, to another topic that you and I have discussed in the
past and want to flesh out some more.
And then you can't have all this great gear in the Navy and all these new ships and all
this integration with unmanned vehicles on the water and under the water and cyber things
in the space that help project the Navy's intelligence gathering without people.
And you've talked and thought about the need for retaining and getting the right total
force for a long time.
I actually found a 20-year-old document you wrote when you were the deputy chief of naval
operations for plans, policy, and operations.
And I know you've written on this topic for a number of different organizations.
And may I actually have a speech coming up on this?
So Admiral Green, give us some thoughts about how today the country makes sure we have the
folks in the Navy, both enlisted in officers, to make sure we can meet those four pillars
that you outlined earlier as the core missions of the Navy.
Jim, I'd be happy to do that.
And let me just begin with a very simple statement.
These military recruiting shortfall endangers our national security.
Period and a sentence and a paragraph.
It endangers national security.
In this past year, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force all missed their recruiting
goals.
That's despite the fact that many of them went into their delayed entry program pools.
That is, people who signed up to join the service and they said, well, you know, when
it gets to be September, that will be a good time for me to go into boot camp or to begin
my officer training program.
Well, in some cases, the services had to say, well, we can't wait till September now.
We've got to get you on board.
So the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force all missed their goals.
The Marine Corps made theirs.
They recruited about 5,000 fewer than they did the previous year, but they did make their
goals and they should get credit for that.
The Space Force is still very small and they made their limited goal.
They are growing, however, and they are in the same environment where finding the right
kind of people to come in and get them on board, get them trained, and get them deployed
is going to be a challenge.
Over on the reserve side, the National Guard generally did okay.
The reserve component did worse than the services.
Really, really tough environment for them.
So why does this matter?
We don't quite have enough people out there.
Well, the services and strength has gone down somewhat because of the fact that despite
the service's best efforts, they have fewer people available and deployable.
The result of that is that the current operating tempo, that is the operating schedule, the
deployment schedule, if you will, of trained, equipped, and ready forces to go out and do
the work that the military services do is unsustainable today at the same rates that
has been before, at the same time as certain threats around the world seem to be increasing.
A year ago, we did not expect to be shooting down anti-ship ballistic missiles and drones
in the Red Sea.
We didn't expect to be having to put as much focus on the situation in the Western Pacific
or in the Eastern Mediterranean.
So the missions are increasing while the services are experiencing manning shortfalls.
It's placing unfair hardships on military families.
I'll get back to that in a minute.
I want to talk about the heavy burdens on our reservists and the National Guardsmen.
Their families and their employers, they are deploying at a higher rate, a higher rate
than anticipated and planned for.
The stress that this situation of decreased manning is placing on the force, among other
things, among other impacts, is making military parents less likely to encourage their own
kids to serve.
Those are their deployment schedule.
When you have fewer people and you have increasing missions, people are away from home more than
usual.
Services are downsizing.
Billets can't be filled.
Shipboard manning across the fleet today is less than 90 percent averaged out.
Some ships, because of their mission and their specific situations, are fully manned, but
across the fleet, the average is under 90 percent.
There's more reliance on retention among the services.
Keeping folks in service once they're there, a big part of that is financial bonuses.
Sometimes it's connected with additional training or career opportunities.
There's increased use of civilian contractors to do work that previously had been done by
military service members.
That's expensive.
The retention bonuses are expensive.
Some of these problems any business has.
You had a big role at IBM for a long time.
They had the same problems.
It is both a combination of how do you get people to join your organization, and that's
what they've been missing.
That's the enlistment miss that's been so significant over the last few years.
Once you get them, you've got to keep them, and that's the retention problem.
As I understand it, Admiral, this is happening both within listed for the seaman, as well
as officers in the Navy.
They all have different causes and different probable solutions.
Are we doing enough to discern these different issues and find appropriate solutions?
Yes, there's a tremendous amount of work that's been going on in your spot on target, Jim.
Let's start with demographics.
We don't normally think about something like demographics when we're talking about recruiting,
but we must.
The national birth rate is declining.
People are having fewer children.
At the same time, our population is aging.
Notwithstanding all of the concerns and the controversy over our borders, immigration,
in fact, has slowed into the United States in the past year, actually the last couple
of years.
There is a lowered propensity to serve.
What that means is military age potential recruits are less familiar with the military.
Whenever I'm in business, whenever I meet somebody new and they find out I am a veteran,
without exception, we'll say, well, thank you for your service.
I'm not sure that they all really understand what that means, but I appreciate it, and I
thank them, and then we get on with our conversation.
But there is less of a connection between the American people and its military force
and veterans.
Let me bring that for the veteran radio listeners to more of a practical focus.
If you never expose your kid to what electrician does or what a welder does, the odds of your
kid ever going into either of those trades and making a good living is nil, because he
doesn't know what they do.
Similarly, as fewer and fewer people are involved in the military and that sort of public service
to the country, that bigger issue, it seems to me it becomes harder for those kids to
think, well, maybe this is something I want to do for a while.
There's a lot of advantages to it, but if they're not exposed to it, how would they
know?
I couldn't say it any better than that.
When the military is distant and unfamiliar, isolated, insulated from the people, why would
it occur to somebody that that would be a potential career or life experience opportunity
for them?
At the same time, there is an awful lot that goes into qualifying for service.
The factors of health and experience in our youth today are precluding service for many
of them.
About 20% of military age young people in the United States today would be qualified
for service, and that's because of obesity issues.
We don't like to talk about it much.
We have a national obesity crisis in the United States.
We have drug usage, which is disqualifying for military service, arrest records, test
scores, disqualifying medical conditions, history of medical health treatment, or perceptions
of hazards.
Even those who might otherwise be qualified, watch the news or listen to the news or catch
it online, and what is underlined so often is the hazards and the difficulties and things
like post trauma stress and perceptions of other kinds of that.
This is a continuing problem I've got with a lot of the radio ad spots that run.
They're supposed to be good PSAs for VA.
All they do is use veterans with, I lost my eye, I lost my leg, I've got PTSD, I have
a TBI, but VA has helped me.
That's not a very good message for trying to recruit kids into the military about the
power of military service.
I don't think Snappy adds that the Super Bowl either gets the message across right.
How do we move this in a positive direction?
Is it just a whole lot of people doing a whole lot of stuff as compared to some unified,
everybody get on the same page?
Well, it's a matter of providing the information that people need to make a well-reasoned decision
with regard to their futures.
I wouldn't discourage anybody from following their ambition, whether it has to do with
college or going into the workforce.
The opportunities, if you talk to the folks in the National Guard who are really focused
sharply on the issue of veterans finding work in the private sector, they blow away the
competition because they've lived in a disciplined, orderly, well-managed environment for years.
They have learned the habits of adults.
They have learned how to live their lives responsibly and well and contribute and understand
that leadership isn't just a matter of standing on a box and yelling at people, but the experience
that they had in uniform carries over beautifully into the private sector as well.
In other words, what a military tour of duty or career provides to people is extraordinary
confidence in themselves, extraordinary capabilities, extraordinary knowledge and expertise that
they would have a very difficult time finding otherwise.
I say that with full understanding that by all projections with regard to our economy,
the next 10 years or so it's going to be a job seekers market.
Being prepared for that market, having the qualifications that military experience provides,
really puts somebody in a cat bird seat, so to speak.
There are lots of other ways that we can deal with this issue, but I think just looking
at the numbers and the facts are important.
I wanted to mention one of the things, because you brought up obesity and health conditions.
I think I'm reading that all military services, Navy included, is becoming more attuned to
giving waivers on health issues because of both the recruiting needs, but also maybe
a recognition that today versus 20 or 30 years ago, we go to the doctor for everything.
There's a record of somewhere of you sneezed once, oh, you might not be qualified now.
If you're out there thinking, I'd like to do this, but maybe I don't have the greatest
wealth, there is this concept of waivers that as I say, I'm reading that are being used
more and there's plenty of evidence that those who get into service with a waiver do just
as well as everybody else.
Maybe we've overplayed some of those issues.
Yeah, I spent three years commanding up at Great Lakes where the Navy's boot camp is
located.
I'm very, very familiar with these issues, but there are a number of things that are
really encouraging.
What we found up there, and this was 25 years ago, was that the more focused the leadership
is on improving people and strengthening people, the better the retention, the better they
do in boot camp and beyond.
The services have just in the past year or so developed courses that address issues
having to do with obesity, physical fitness, being able to run and all of that prior to
people ship off to boot camp.
They also have new programs for academic remediation to get people up to pass the ASVAB, the entry
exam requirement as well.
They're taking advantage of the fact that why did somebody not graduate from high school?
Was it because they didn't have the intellectual potential or they were undisciplined?
Not at all.
In many cases, they had to help bring food and money into the house.
They've been working since they were 16 years old or so.
This is an unfortunate but often unacknowledged fact.
These are people who in many cases have already learned a pretty good group of lessons about
leadership and about discipline.
These are people who could have a superb future in the service.
I served for a long time and started a long time ago.
When the draft was still upon us, a good number of those folks were not high school graduates
but they were good sailors.
They performed well.
They were disciplined and they were learning all the time.
They got an education during their enlistments.
It wasn't forced under their throats.
I think you're hitting on a point that I want to get across to folks if they're out there
listening and think, I'm not the ideal candidate.
I'm not the muscle balance so-and-so, 0% body fat.
The military will want you and will meet you where you're at.
If that means they have to help you with a health waiver or bring you in and help you
on getting some educational goal before everything qualifies or get you, as you say, running,
obesity issues.
Today's military is really interested in recruiting and helping folks, meeting them
where they're at and helping them get into shape to be a good service member.
That includes, and I've talked to a lot of single mothers who say, I got in because I
needed this and that and the other thing.
They worked with me knowing I was a young single mother.
It's kind of a different, I think there's a different culture going on in recruiting
that really meets the person where they're at.
Am I over-reading that?
I don't think you are at all.
I think, again, you've hit the target right in the center.
In my view, if you're otherwise qualified and you've got ambition and heart, there's
a place for you in uniform.
The services appreciate that and there's an open door.
In some cases, it may not work out.
That's always the case.
It has always been true in the military that there are some folks who, as much as they
want to, can come in and it doesn't work out for them.
That number is shrinking because of better leadership, better systems, better programs,
and a determination to put the real treasure of our country, that is, it's young people,
into situations where they can succeed, they can do well, they can become proud of themselves,
and they can go on and serve the country in uniform and beyond.
Well, I really do appreciate Admiral Green spending some time with us again to talk about
this important issue, which is recruiting into the Navy and military service in general.
I think you hit it on the head when you just said, if you have the right ambition and heart,
military service is going to be available to you and it's going to be a wonderful experience.
That's really it.
I think you bring those characteristics to the table.
Today's military is interested in working with you and getting you into military service.
So Vice Admiral Kevin P. Green retired from the United States Navy after 30-plus years.
We really appreciate your thinking and these issues in spending some time with Veterans
Radio today.
Thank you, Jim.
It's been a pleasure.
And I want to thank everybody for listening to Veterans Radio today.
I am Jim Fausone.
It's been a pleasure to be your host.
I'm a Veterans Disability lawyer at Legal Help for Veterans and you can reach us at
800-693-4800 or LegalHelpforVeterans.com on the web.
You can follow Veterans Radio on Facebook and listen to its podcasts and internet radio
shows by visiting us at veteransradio.org.
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And until next time, you are dismissed.
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And until next time, you are dismissed.