Don’t look now, but things are SO FABULOUSLY PEACHY in this woke, DEI-driven, white rage hunting, craptastic, anti-American military the current rainbow warrior leadership has given us, that even the miserable failure of Bidenomics can’t drive people to join.

No, sir. Contrary to Progressive expectations, the promises of protected pronouns, penises in the powder room, and parades on the poop-deck have not produced the rush to raised right hands this new all-inclusive military was meant to inspire. Even as they actively discouraged the nastiest of patriotic types – prospective members from the dreaded “traditional military family“…

[CUE: COLLECTIVE HORRIFIED PROG SHUDDER]

…from joining, while allowing certified mentally challenged individuals and fat bodies to come on in.

Well, dang. Wokism, pandering, white extremist hunting, and purges have gotten them bupkiss after all that.

The Air Force – cushiest job in the service, bar none – is going to miss every last recruitment goal for the first time since Bill Clinton was president. And, as you would expect…it’s mostly COVID’s fault.

I Schlitz you not. That’s the official line.

The Air Force will, as expected, miss its active-duty recruiting goals for the first time since 1999, Secretary Frank Kendall said during a conference here Monday.

“We’re almost to the end of the fiscal year, and the expectation is we’re going to come in short about 10%,” Kendall told Military.com during a media round table, adding that the service plans to address long-standing recruiting issues in an effort to improve next year. “I’m overall encouraged by where we are in recruiting, but we still have a lot of work.”

The last time the Air Force did not reach 100% of its recruitment goal was 1999, according to the Air Force Recruiting Service. That was when Millenials — who were born between 1981 and 1996 — first began to reach the age of service. In 1979, the Air Force also missed its goals when Generation X began to become of age to serve, according to a 2002 research paper from Air University.

The current shortfall is the result of lingering effects from the COVID-19 pandemic, strong employment numbers, and cultural headwinds making it more difficult to convince Generation Z to join the ranks.

BWAHAhahaha! Are you kidding me?

How are you going to address “long standing issues” in recruitment when you putzes won’t even admit what they are?

Good luck with the upgrades so far, dude.

…These include offering medals and promotions for recruiting; streamlining the naturalization process so recruits can become citizens during basic military training; offering reserve bonuses for prior-service airmen; reinstating the Enlisted College Loan Repayment Program; allowing certain tattoos on the hands and neck; and unveiling a new smartphone feature that allows airmen to send info on almost anyone to a recruiter.

Whoop-dee-frickin-doo. Allowing more tattoos will be the cookie that cracks this nut. I can tell they have their best people on the issue – the ones who have their own offices with rainbow welcome mats, pronoun posters on the walls, and half a psychology or philosophy degree from Oberlin they need the government to pay off.

The Air Force is even having a tough time getting actual fly-boys to sign up. I mean, the Air Force is nothing if it isn’t all about their pilots, and they can’t fill those slots (might be paywalled – S&S is funky).

The Air Force will miss its fiscal 2023 training goal by about 120 pilots, the service said.

The service will pin new wings on 1,350 airmen instead of its goal of 1,470. The Air Force’s goal for fiscal 2024 is 1,500, Air Force spokesman Benjamin Faske wrote in an email.

He said the Air Force in the last decade has produced on average about 1,300 pilots yearly, but various factors contribute to pilot training numbers.

“FY22 pilot training production was 1,276, down from 1,381 in FY21 due to continued challenges with civilian simulator instructor manning levels, T-6 supply shortfalls and T-38 engine overhaul delays,” Faske said.

They also have spare parts problems and contractor shortages for instructor/sim pilots, so one thing feeds on another. What a Schlitz show.

…In July, a thunderstorm further setback pilot training when it damaged nearly 20 T-6 Texan II turboprop aircraft at Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma.

“Those spare parts are just not sitting on a shelf where you can pull them out and fix it the next day,” Quinn said.

The service also is still struggling to fill civilian instructor jobs to teach the academics and run the simulators, with openings at some locations as high as 60% to 70%. Quinn said the Air Force is testing the possibility of hiring teachers to control a simulator or run a class remotely.

When you’re an outfit whose primary mission is flight and the support thereof, this is pretty gruesome (As Marine, I would add “especially when they’re such elitist, spoiled snots about it,” but I won’t.).

The Army came up short again, too (and was blaming COVID AGAIN, TOO), but not as badly as last year.

U.S. Army recruiting is adding about 20 percent more new soldiers than last year, the commander of the Army’s Recruiting Command said Friday, although it is still likely to fall short of its goal for the fiscal year.

The Army is “doing a lot better,” said Maj. Gen. Johnny Davis at the DSEI arms trade show here.

The service brought on fewer than 45,000 new soldiers in fiscal 2022, missing its goal of 60,000 by more than one-quarter. In fiscal 2023, which wraps up at month’s end, the Army is on track to add about 54,000 recruits, Davis said. He hailed strong recruitment in a number of states, including California and Texas.

But the Army will fall short of its 2023 goal of 65,000 troops. That’s no surprise; Army leaders have said since May that they anticipated improvement but not to reach the mark. In July, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth described the target as a “stretch goal,” and said the Army expects it to take years to more consistently hit recruiting goals.

Bidenomics may be playing a part, as well as reduced standards for enlistment versus basic entry requirements for the Air Force. Apples and oranges – the Army has a lot more latitude with who they can accept and slots to plug them into. But both services are in a hurt locker that doesn’t seem to have an end date.

And the Navy?

All that inclusion, equity, pronouns, and diversity buy-in only to find drag queens are more of a drag than a draw.

The U.S. Navy confirmed on Tuesday it has discontinued an online recruiting initiative featuring an enlisted drag queen that was aimed at bringing new sailors into the service.

In May, The Daily Caller revealed that the Navy brought on Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley — an active-duty drag queen who goes by the stage name Harpy Daniels and identifies as non-binary — to be a “Navy Digital Ambassador.” The Digital Ambassador Pilot Program, which ran from October 2022 to March 2023, was reportedly “designed to explore the digital environment to reach a wide range of potential candidates” for military recruitment.

In a letter sent to Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., on Tuesday, Erik Raven, the under secretary of the Navy, confirmed that the branch’s Digital Ambassador Pilot Program “will not be continued.”

“The Navy learned lessons from the pilot program that will inform our digital engagement and outreach going forward,” Raven wrote. “Our digital outreach efforts will maintain the important distinction between Sailors’ official activities and their personal lives.”

[CUE: sad trombone]

How are we Marines holding out so far?

Sometimes it pays being known as the baling wire and duct-tape poor, crayon chewing Neanderthals in the bunch. Every last person knows exactly – or almost exactly – what they’re dealing with when they walk into that Marine Corps recruiting office, as the advertising isn’t about college money or whether you had two mothers. Those motivated young folks sometimes even make it to bootcamp.

While the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force have all said they will fall short of their recruiting goals this year, the Marines expect to meet theirs and even meet 30% of their 2024 goal by the start of the new fiscal year on October 1.

“I’m bearish for not only concluding FY23 on a strong footing, but also how we set the conditions for FY24,” Brig. Gen. Walker Field, who heads the Marines’ Eastern recruiting region, told the Associated Press this week.

While the Marines have a much smaller recruiting goal than the Army – 33,000 compared to 65,000 – they also have notoriously high standards, refusing to take recruits who get low score on their Armed Services Voluntary Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test.

The Army and Navy have both set up programs to help recruits who score below 30 on the test move into a job.

We are also very aware it can change in a heartbeat as determined progressive forces move to change us, and they have made some inroads. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit it after cracking on everyone else. We are not immune to social climbing sycophants in the officer ranks, suck-up generals, or CYA Staff NCOs. But there are still backbones of tradition, integrity, and steel throughout the ranks to help defeat that and to mentor the next generation of leaders.

The problem is when they are gone. I don’t believe so much a problem in the Marine Corps, I hope, because we do have such a tradition of family service (even if it’s not as a Marine – witness our Air Force son and Army nephew) which carries those values to whatever service the next generation finds themselves in. That’s the “warrior caste,” as Army Secretary Wormuth so scathingly described it, and we so proudly wear it.

But the big services – Air Force, Army and Navy – where will those traditions of taking care of your troops come hell or high water come from if they’ve been so watered down or discouraged by the actions of social pressure or the senior officers and NCO’s above them? If there are few warrior caste kids coming in – and, again, they are being actively discouraged both officially from people like Sec Army as well as veterans themselves – who teaches these new sub-par recruits values…and what values? What sort of leader are they going to be if they last long enough to climb through the rank structure?

That’s a snek that bites its own tail, because it’s yet another reason to tell your kid not to sign up until they get this straightened out. Before the entire system is utterly poisoned and collapses in on itself.

Or, God forbid, an external force collapses it on us.

Food for thought and enough gloom.

From us to our sister service, the United States Air Force – a very HAPPY 76th birthday!

Happy 76th Birthday, @usairforce!

Since 1947, the U.S. Air Force has flown, fought, won – anytime, anywhere. pic.twitter.com/6aJKk9GMYX

— U.S. Marines (@USMC) September 18, 2023