WHY THE USA MISSED ITS MILITARY RECRUITING GOALS

12 main reasons the US Military will fail in the long run

1.?????Absolutely incompetent officers tolerated and promoted up the system

2.?????Same toxic officers destroy careers for the sole purpose of furthering their own careers

3.?????Destruction of the pension system for servicemen

4.?????Student loans?and grants are abundant in the civilian sector

5.?????Mc Donald’s paying new hires at 15 or more an hour

6.?????Woke ideology

7.?????Affirmative action

8.?????No support for current servicemen by JAG (AT ALL)

9.?????Low pay

10. ?Officer culture has become toxic, and abuses power with no checks nor balances

11. ?Treating a voluntary force like guinea pigs

12. ?No support for soldiers by the military, its leadership, or government

First I would like to introduce myself. My name is Terrence Popp, and I am a retired United States Army First Sergeant.?I served from 1986 to 2018, and I have seen three wars come and go. I was almost killed in two of them. I served as an Infantry soldier, an Airborne Ranger, a Paratrooper, a Green Beret, an intelligence analyst, and a Civil Affairs NCO. ?I have two combat infantry badges and two purple hearts as well as many other awards, that I refer to as my “fruit salad”.

I have trained nine companies to deploy forward to war. I have led men in battle. I know what war is, and what it takes to win and survive. ?I have seen the US Army as it was coming into its own after the end of the Vietnam era military in 1986. I also saw its slow downward spiral to the shell it has become today. I did all I could to leave the military a better place than when I found it, but senior leadership still managed to run it into the ground.

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1) Absolutely incompetent officers are tolerated and promoted up the system under the “Peter Principle”. In my 33 years of service, I have served under many officers.?In fact, so many it’s hard to put a number on it, but across the board my experience was that most of those officers were either mediocre or incompetent at best.?

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The officer quality never improved. It only got worse as I progressed in my career.?There is an unofficial maxim in the Army: “f*ck up, and move up”. This is an absolute truth.?I saw many officers promoted up the chain despite lackluster, or even outright incompetent performance.?

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Most officers will cover for each other even when an officer commits flagrant violations of policies or procedures or blatant violations of UCMJ.?This was painfully apparent in Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (CAPOC). This was the last command I served in.?While there, I saw soldiers dishonorably discharged, or given other than honorable discharges over problems that were beyond the soldier’s control.?I had dozens of NCOs leave service because their commander did not like them, and simply put a bar or reenlistment in the soldier files. Absolutely none of the procedures prescribed in Army Regulations were followed, and when reported to the inspector general, no action was taken.?Several of these service members were impossible to replace.

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One soldier spoke six?languages fluently and had been a SIGINT/Electronic Warfare Sergeant for 10 years. He had a TS/SCI clearance and ran signals intelligence in Korea and other overseas locations for a decade.?He was going through a divorce. His own BDE HHD command made allegations against him, with no proof. There was a CID investigation that found no wrong doing. The soldier was still stripped of his clearances, given a Chapter 5-8 discharge (“Reasons of Parenthood”), and this was after the BDE HHD 1SG helped his ex-wife kidnap his daughter. Then he was barred from reenlisting.?

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The commander removed a priceless skill set out of the service for no valid reason. This is a common occurrence across all branches of the military.?

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The cost of equipping and training that Sergeant’s replacement is close to three million dollars.?All the schools on SIGINT equipment, the four trips to the Defense Language Institute for his language proficiency rating, and a host of other requirements rack up fast. It takes a Special Forces soldier a year of DLI School just to get to a manageable use of a foreign language.?

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I have helped with, or been advised on, many other similar stories. This same thing plays out across the military all the time.?This is fraud waste and abuse at the highest levels. It is consistently condoned all the way up the chain of command.?How long can this go one before the word gets out to the general public about this treatment?

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An officer’s image is quite literally more important than the careers and lives of the soldiers under their command. ?I have also been told about former high ranking officers who got their men killed just so they could get the next ribbon or award. Bottom line, in my 33 years of service across SOCOM, JASOC and CAPOC I encountered a mere twelve Officers who were good. Four of those officers are now dead, and all but one are retired now. That is not a good look for the US military.

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2) Some toxic officers destroy soldiers’ careers for the sole purpose of furthering their career.

In my 33 year career I myself was targeted by a female battalion commander.?I was sent to four fit for duty investigations at Ft. Bragg by this rogue incompetent commander.?She had never even read the regulations on why and how a fit for duty investigation is conducted. ?Then when I was returned with no findings, she punished me because she believed I lied to medical personnel at Ft Bragg.?My NCOER was torpedoed, with no supporting documentation or counselings.?She decimated the ranks of her own battalion by driving 40% of the senior NCOs away and out of the service. She was eventually found to have conducted reprisals against me, and several other NCOs in the unit, by Army IG.?She kept appealing the findings and after she was transferred away she got promoted to O-6/full Colonel.?This was a prime example of toxic leadership that was coddled and promoted up the chain despite complete incompetence. This incompetent officer made an entire unit non-deployable because of the huge hemorrhaging of soldiers caused by her personal attacks and harassment.?

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I also have seen soldiers get removed from high-level/critical skill schools so officers could take the slots. ?This happened for HALO, airborne, jumpmaster, air assault, SERE, SOTIC and many other schools.?To make this even worse many of these school slots were given to the service member because it was part of a reenlistment bonus, thereby violating that soldier’s enlistment contract.?The soldiers were not offered cash for a reenlistment bonus but school slots.?After the service member reenlisted his school slot was taken. So with that happening, are we surprised that service members don’t trust their officers, and don’t wish to reenlist??I have also seen several NCOs get their careers ruined or driven out of the service because they fought for their soldiers when this happened. ??

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3) Destruction of the pension system for Servicemen

The 20 year retirement system has been hamstrung by making it into a401k system.?Saving for your retirement as a serviceman is almost impossible. Servicemen don’t get paid overtime they are on call 24/7- 365. In most jobs within the military it will take you 5 years just to get promoted to SGT/ E-5.?The realistic rank point where a service member can make meaningful contributions into the 401k is the rank of E-7 and many service members never make this rank.?Some get to that rank in 10 years but they are few and far between. ?So this has effectively removed any incentive for service members to stay in the service. ?The only way the 401k system will replace the old retirement system is to remove all income taxes and force the service members to put a large percentage of their pay in the 401k.

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Also, unlike traditional military retirement, that 401K can be taken in a lawsuit and in today’s sue-happy culture. One misstep and kiss your retirement goodbye. ?This was put in place because our government has no problem marching servicemembers into harm’s way, but now refuses to take care of these soldiers when they retire, because it’s too expensive. News flash you Pentagon idiots, war requires blood and treasure.?If we as a nation can’t afford this then we need to stop the endless wars and shrink our military.

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4) Student loans?and grants are abundant in the civilian sector

I enlisted in the US Army because I came from a broken home and grew up poor. The only way I could afford to go to college was to use the GI Bill. Now we have Pell grants, student loans and many scholarships available in over abundance.?The youth of today can simply use these options instead of going in the military.?If these options were available when I was 17 my life could have been completely different.?The GI bill is the last incentive for enlistment, and compared to the other options it comes with a significantly higher cost.

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5) McDonald’s paying new hires 15 dollars or more an hour

Any fast food restaurant will start a high school graduate at 15 dollars or more an hour now.?This comes down to simple math. 15 dollars times 40 hours equals 600 dollars a week. That’s 2400 dollars a month. Now compare that to a newer soldier with the paygrade of E-3. An E-3 with one year of service makes $2,161 as of 2022..?The civilian at McDonalds working an 8 hour shift slinging fries out-earns a soldier who is facing death, maiming, and toxic commanders. This is simple economics, and nothing more than that. One would think with how educated the US Government supposedly is, they can figure it out, but this further proves my point regarding rampant incompetence at the top.

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6) Woke ideology

When I first enlisted the “woke” mentality was nonexistent. In fact, politics in the Enlisted ranks was unknown.?I spent 22 years out of 33 in units on jump status, and we all were focused upon preparing and executing war. “Woke” has no place in this equation and will get service members killed. The youth of today know this and are extremely hesitant to put their lives at risk in this new environment. “Transgender” soldiers are nothing but a gimmick to appeases an extremely small segment of this country’s population.?These “transgender” soldiers require constant medications to maintain their illusion. If they do get full “transitional” surgery, they will have an open wound for the rest of their lives that will get infected and take them out of the fight. This effectively has no upside at all. In fact they are nothing but a liability in this regard.

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The cost of training and equipping a service member is alarmingly expensive. This cost is justified by the use the military will get out of each soldier.?If the soldier is non-deployable then where is the value there? This is basic economics. It is not that hard. Oh wait - now we are planning force strength based upon emotions? What could possibly wrong there? ?General Millie should know this, and his comments on the subject prove he was and is nothing but one of the countless incompetent ?sycophantic Yes Men in the officer ranks. Integrity was required, and he came up short.

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7) Affirmative action

I did not have to interact with female officers or soldiers at all until I went to Civil Affairs. While in CAPOC, I had the displeasure of having to train several dozen female soldiers.?Most of these solders passed their PT tests once, in Basic Training, and then never passed another PT test again. Army Regulations are very specific on this. After a soldier fails a certain number of PT tests in a row, a separation packet is put together to get that useless soldier out of the service. In 12 years not one female soldier was discharged for failure to meet PT, height, and weight standards.?Almost all separation packets submitted for the male PT failures were completed and the soldier was given a general discharge. So, this understandably crushed moral in the ranks. The soldiers saw the female soldiers get a pass, while the male soldiers got the boot. ?

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I also had more male soldiers get out of the military because they were passed up for promotion simply because they were male.?I had many lower NCOs who had years of combat experience, who were passed up for promotion in favor of ?females who barely passed their PT test. These male soldiers proved themselves as leaders in combat, had max PT tests, max weapons qualification scores, max ?awards, and were graduates of the proper required NCO schools.?I know this because I assisted them in putting together those promotion packets. The female packets got unexplainable ghost points added, to the point women who did the bare minimum got promoted as soon as they had time in grade and time in service. ?I can say in complete honesty these female NCOs were being set up for failure from the beginning. It was later communicated to me that CAPOC implemented this policy solely for affirmative action proposes only.

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It just blew my mind. Here I was, trying to train and prepare soldiers for war, and my best NCOs were driven out the door.?Again, can you blame people for not wanting to participate in this insanity?

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8) No support for current servicemen by Judge Advocate General (JAG) - AT ALL

In my career I had some exposure to the Army JAG, and you can tell where the military’s priorities are by looking at how many JAG officers represent the command, and how many represent service members. It is easily a ratio of four to one. So for every JAG officer that assists the Enlisted ranks, you have four who support the command.?Actions speak louder than words, and the ratio within JAG screams “To hell with the Enlisted”.

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I was caught up in the recruiting assistance scandal. It was referred to as the AR-RAP, G-RAP programs. ?I had to deal with CID, and I approached JAG many times for assistance. My calls were not returned and all of my appointments were canceled.?Later when I did speak with a JAG officer I was told he was swamped because he was the only JAG officer that represented Enlisted for Ft Drum.?One JAG officer for all the Enlisted for an entire active duty post is outrageous.?

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Next, I have to say this: Divorce is the leading cause of poor retention and suicide in the military. We as a nation pay insane amounts of tax dollars to train our service members. This cost magnifies when we factor in elite units and jobs, like fighter pilot or Green Beret. These men get married then quickly get divorced and some several times. There is no JAG support for them they have to pay for the lawyers out of pocket, and soldiers don’t exactly have a lot of money.?So because of the gynocentric, one-sided family courts, the service member looses custody of his children and, as a result, the service member leaves the service. One would think that the military would protect its investment and give them some JAG representation in divorce court. ?Again this is basic economics and we should be able to make important decisions based upon this.

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9) Low pay

It’s just this simple: If a high school graduate can get a job flipping burgers and make more money than a service member then something is wrong. ?If you are not going to pay service members at a level to make them want to stay, then just go back to the draft.

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10) Officer culture has become disgusting, and officers abuse power with no checks or balances.

While deployed to Iraq in 2004 I witnesses 85% of our higher command get awarded bronze stars for never leaving the wire or conducting one combat operation. ?I was a 1SG and personally wrote over a dozen awards for my soldiers. These soldiers patrolled around Baghdad at night in 6 man LRS teams. Some of my men had a dozen fire fights under their belts and almost all of their citations were downgraded to ARCOM’s . The regulations are simple on this, awards can be written in black ink and legible. But awards submitted to higher from my unit were kicked back over 6 times for so called grammar mistakes. ?It was a joke from our higher command they purposely did this to destroy the units moral, in my opinion.

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I also had to demand verbal orders in writing from my battalion commander, ?because his orders were so dangerous I knew that some of my men would die. I was later negatively counseled by my commander for “unprofessional behavior”. My actions were 100% supported by Army Regulations and I was forced to take such actions, because my commander would not. ?

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Next I have to address the general letter of reprimand “GOMAR”. This is a left-over from the militaries of the 1700s and 1800s. This type of power has no place in an all-volunteer military of professionals. One officer should not have the power to single handedly destroy another serviceman’s carrier, especially over minor or arbitrary matters. A general can do almost whatever he wishes and wields arbitrary power of life and death over his men. This needs to be watered down or taken away from the general officers altogether. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It was true in the past and it still holds true today.

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For anyone who has paid attention during the vaccine mandates, the officers have severely abused their power and very harshly punished?the servicemen who refused to be test subjects. The new MRNA Vax has not been tested properly. The after effects are known to be deadly. The actually approved VAX is not in stock. ?Substitutes are being used. The medical records of the entire military are being doctored. They are recording the VAX given to soldiers as the approved one. This will have untold future ramifications for any soldiers who get sick or are maimed by this experimental filth. The numbers are coming out and across the board and if you look on the internet you can find 10 minute montages of young people dropping dead. This is unheard of. The whole country has watched this unfold and witnessed the harsh toxic treatment from the department of defense. Who in their right mind will willingly sign up for that level of abuse?

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11) Treating a voluntary force like guinea pigs

This is nothing new. Let’s be honest; our government has been using servicemen as test subjects going back a hundred years.?While on active duty and a member of the second Ranger Battalion I refused to participate in the tests for a sleep medication I assume was Ambien, counter nerve agent pills, and several others. I fought my way up to the Ranger Rattalion command and I refused to be a test subject at all. ?Historically this unethical testing has been done and no one is ever held accountable, and no steps have been taken to protect the troops from this abuse. WWII saw racially motivated tests conducted on the colored soldiers. They conducted mustard gas tests and even exposed them to syphilis without their knowledge. After WWII thousands of soldiers were used as test subjects as atomic bombs, which ?were detonated at close proximity. ?Agent Orange was not tested properly for use in Vietnam.?It was an experimental agent used in a very irresponsible way and thousands upon thousands of men later brutally died from cancer because of this. Many veterans were denied coverage by the VA for decades, as a result many men died alone and miserable in the street and their only crime was to be drafted into the Army by their own country. This is a huge problem that has been ignored by the government and the DOD. ?Today anyone with a smart phone can do a simple search and verify everything covered in this section as absolute truth.

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12) No support for soldiers by the military, its leadership, the DOD and our government.

While I was a member of the armed forces I was surrounded by soldiers who had legitimate life problems. Divorce, death in the family, injuries and illness happened all the time.?The military sets aside huge budgets for such things but on the ground the soldiers are left to their own devices. ?The toxic leadership rapidly moved to remove such soldiers from their ranks. The military is plagued with suicides for a specific, single reason, and here it is. The government and the department of defense does not give a shit about the servicemen, at all. When you speak to higher-ups, they are all about lip service and that’s about it. I have seen legitimate situations were soldiers were separated from the service because of injuries not treated correctly. ?I have had soldiers barred from reenlistment based upon allegations and no investigation. When this was reported to the IG no action was taken or their delay was so egregious the soldier was already discharged from the service, never to return.?If the DOD actually cared about the strength of the force they should have taken action and they did not.?Again actions speak louder than words. I retired from the US Army in 2018, and the military culture was already becoming unbearable back then. I can only imagine the nightmare our soldiers are enduring now. ?I have been keeping track of my friends I left behind when I retired. There is a huge drain going on within our military as you read this. The amount of troops dropping their retirement packets en mass is staggering. The numbers are far beyond what happened after Vietnam. We as a country spent two decades at war. The soldiers who participated have a staggering amount of institutional knowledge on how to conduct warfare.?This knowledge is priceless, and it was paid for in blood. We are watching all of this hard-won knowledge just walk out the door. ?The Air force is critically low on pilots and has been for several decades. Word of the street is many pilots have also dropped there retirement packets or are getting out of the service due to the VAX mandates. The Air Force missed its recruiting goals, along with the entire military. What are we going to do when our military becomes mission incapable due to personnel shortages? The short answer is to draft the youth of this country and force them to serve. This will go over like a lead balloon and cause a huge amount of social turmoil. Also, conscripted soldiers are not motivated and will do the bare minimum to get by, and who can blame them. Draftees are in effect slaves, and usually are treated as expendables. This statement can be confirmed by researching the numbers of casualties sustained by the shake-and-bake drafted infantry units used during WWI and WWII. ?This point is further proven by the huge cemeteries on foreign soil that contain our drafted soldiers. It was too expensive and time consuming to ship the dead back home, let that sink in and you get an image of what the government thinks of its draftees.

Steps needed to stop the woke rot that is happening within our military:

Remove the Transgender soldiers from the force. They are undeployable because of the constant medical needs required to maintain their illusion.

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Immediately do a major PR campaign to undo the disasterous image the military has had for the past two years at least.

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Set a combat standard and keep it. Do not lower it based upon sex, color or creed.?In war, second place is a hospital bed and third place is a trip to the graveyard.?There is no room for hurt or offended feelings in war, because Death does not care.

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Create a new system for selecting officers. The days of large lines of soldiers in colorful uniforms firing at each other are long gone.?In the past, new officers got large amounts of their troops killed during war because of inexperience. We can ill afford this waste of life today. War today is conducted in short terrible episodes of surgical swift carnage that can literally come from anywhere. ?A new officer who was once the captain of his football team is as useful as tits on a bull in combat. Why can’t we select officers from the Enlisted ranks who have proven themselves in the job, and forgo the systems of the past we still use today. This was actually done right on the battlefield in WWII, several times. I have known a few officers who were former Enlisted (mustangs) and they were solid performers, respected by their men.

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Some of the worst officers I have ever had the displeasure of encountering came from the venerated West Point Military Academy. Their arrogance and prideful attitude did nothing for them but distance themselves from their own men. West point expends a huge amount of effort and tax dollars to train many of our officers. A phrase I was taught in school that applies to this situation is “garbage in, garbage out”. The officers being accepted into West Point are garbage, and this has been proven by what I have seen in my time in the service.

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When I was Senior Enlisted I despised dealing with West Pointers, nicknamed “Ring Knockers”, and so did most of my peers. When this is a common occurrence, there is something wrong with the system.

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If we as a nation want to keep our military as a volunteer force, we seriously require a Servicemen’s Bill of Rights. The past 40 years of officers destroying the force by a multitude of methods is now know to the general public.

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The public learned of DOD’s perfidy, because the former servicemen who had negative experiences are extremely numerous and have nothing good to say about our military at all.

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The bar to reenlistments and GOMARs with no oversight needs to stop immediately. The pay issue needs to be addressed as well. A ragbag at McDonalds should not be out-earning a soldier facing death, dismemberment and a toxic command climate.

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Finally the toxic commanders, officers and NCOs need to be identified and disposed of. This can be done by looking at retention numbers. The Army should do a command climate surveys once a year at random to prevent preparation for such a survey. The military can do a review of the unit’s leave and pass policies as well. Nothing spells toxic command like lost leave days. Every service member is given 30 days of leave a year. If the leave days go unused and they build up to the point they drop off this is almost always a huge problem with the command, and it is easy to see. The past several years thousands of service members across the world were denied leave for years. The USMC is the biggest perpetrator of this offense. It is a well known fact the USMC treats their Enlisted like garbage.

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I have spoken with quite a few Marines who complained about the no leave policy to me. I am not a fan of the USMC at all but I have converted many former Marines into US Army soldiers. I am not going to go into detail about this but it is my opinion the USMC should be moved into the US Army.

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1SG Terrence Popp

US Army, retired