US Navy recruitment fails: High school diploma no longer needed
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The US Navy lowers its admission standards for the second consecutive year as it yet again fails to reach the targeted recruitment number.
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Recruits perform a warm-up run during a physical training session inside Freedom Hall at Recruit Training Command at the Naval Station Great Lakes, on the shore of Lake Michigan, United States in 2022. (US Navy)
The United States military continues to miss recruitment targets across most of its branches, prompting measures trimming off standards in order to hit the yearly numbers.
In a new decision, the US Navy announced that recruits no longer require a school diploma or GED.
“We get thousands of people into our recruiting stations every year that want to join the Navy but do not have an education credential... And we just turn them away.” said the Navy's chief of personnel Vice Admiral Rick Cheeseman.
This is the second consecutive year that the Navy has lowered its entry requirements, despite being the only branch that accepts personnel who score below 30/100 on a qualification test, after falling 5,866 recruits short of its goal in 2023.
Commenting on the number, Cheeseman estimated that some 500 of the applicants the Navy rejected would have scored enough on the exam to join the branch.
Yet, more policy changes are being considered to encourage more people to join.
'Weak'
According to a Newsweek report in October last year, the United States Army recorded its lowest size since World War II, as the service struggles to attract new recruits.
The report came after the army declared that it had recruited about 55,000 soldiers in the fiscal year 2023, falling short of the publicly declared objective of 65,000.
Also, for the second year in a row, a study assessed the US military as "weak" and warned that the country's armed forces may be incapable of safeguarding critical American interests.
According to the Heritage Foundation's 10th annual Index of Military Strength, the "weak" US military is "at significant risk of being unable to meet the demands of a single major regional conflict while also attending to various presence and engagement activities."
It details how nearly all branches of the US military cannot face a serious major war, with the Air Force rated as "very weak" in 2023, the lowest possible rating.
The Navy also received a "weak" rating for its low levels of capabilities and readiness.
Robert Greenway, the director of the Allison Center for National Security at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital that while China's Navy is growing and modernizing, the US Navy has seen a "slow decline".
"The Navy has had too little shipyard capacity to keep its fleet maintained, too few ships to pace the threats, and misguided leadership that has instigated a recruitment crisis."
Greenway also noted that the active-duty Army numbers have shrunk from 485,000 to a mere 452,000 forces, impacting the "readiness and effectiveness" of the army.
