Only 30% of today's young adults are "'qualified" to serve in the military?

I’m a veteran of the AF. My time in the military was probably the best experience of my life. People from all over the country, we all got along, worked together, lived together, partied together.

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  1. Not sure if it was lowered again since I retired.

I was just off two :slight_smile:

As a Career Counselor, I had to conduct a counseling session with every new Soldier to the unit. My office was on their inprocessing checklist When i was with the 1st ID CAB, right before we deployed to Iraq, I had a new Private in my office who was 41 years old. I was a 42 year old Master Sergeant. It was definitely weird.

I bet that was. It might be a silly question but if someone enlists at that age are they usually put in the fight or somewhere out of the conflict zone. How well did they perform?

Is it really. There hasn’t been any references on historical ‘‘qualified’’ numbers. Say, over the last 40-50 years.

If you want to look at the glass as half full:

70% of American youth likely will get the coveted 4F if a major war broke out and a draft was imposed. :smile:

Lots of schools PE classes are just finish homework or walk or play basketball. Of course sometimes they would bring in something more interesting but its rare at least at my school back in my days. I wonder how many were disqualified because of mental health/ ritalin. Im not able to serve except in a civillian capacity because of mental health issues.

My dad wasnt able to get his pilot’s license because of medicine he was prescribed decades ago due to a misdiagnosis.

I suggest a first lady concentrates on the problem of childhood obesity and a ton of people on this board don’t whine about it.

Like others have pointed out, if the military will REALLY need people, they’ll get them.

Someone can join the military at 42? When I was in I recall the cutoff being 27 or 28.

Exactly.

“Can you hold a rifle?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good enough for me.”

The Soldier in question was a helicopter mechanic who deployed with us for 15 months. No idea if he was a good Soldier, but he didn’t get in any trouble, as I recall.

When I enlisted back in 1993, 28 was the cut off for the Air Force and Marines and 35 for Army and Navy. During the surge the raised the retirement age from 55 to 62 and thus raised the maximum enlistment age to 42. It was like that when I retired in 2013. I don’t know if anything has changed since then.

I believe MO’s childhood obesity campaign could have had greater success had she pushed for restrictions on junk food purchases using EBT instead of a school lunch program reform that resulted in the discard of millions of dollars in wasted and uneaten food.
There is a bypartisian inability to tell people NO tax dollars for soda, candy and other junk food. Obesity is a great health crisis for both adults and children.
We gripe about the fat kids yet pay for them to feast off some very unhealthy food using tax dollars to fatten them up. We follow up with demands for tax dollars to manage serious obesity related health issues. Another example of government lunacy and mismanagement.

I heard plenty of liberals applaud MO’s school lunch program while protesting the limiting EBT purchases to healthy food calling it “unfair”.
This very serious obesity epidemic, is used as a divider. I heard plenty of “fat Donald” after the SOTU from the same people oohing and awing over the Abram’s rebuttal while ignoring the fact her BMI was much greater. Complete denial and hypocrisy. We need to come together about an issue that is a real threat to this nation, Obesity.
I support legislation to ban junk food purchase with SNAP benefits.

https://www.google.com/amp/www.governing.com/topics/health-human-services/tns-lepage-food-stamps-usda-candy-soda.html%3fAMP

SGM (Ret) Billy Waugh went to Afghanistan at age 72 and did just fine.

Dang. I thought if you were enlisted they sort of “pressured” you to retire after you were in your 50s.

There was a guy in my friend’s dad’s unit in Iraq in 06 that was about 58.

I was in the AF back in 1987. I guess I assumed that 28 was across the board with all the branches. Learned something new! Hey thanks for your service!

teach history? no way… stem stem stem