U.S. Navy Again Lowers Recruitment Standards as Numbers Dwindle

According to the U.S. Military, recruitment issues are not caused by white supremacy problems, discharging soldiers for objecting to the COVID-19 shot mandate, or even woke promotional campaigns. It is the high school diploma requirement that has caused recruitment problems in the tens of thousands.

The U.S. Navy has announced that they will begin enlisting individuals who do not have a high school diploma or GED, so long as they score 50 or above on the qualification test, which is out of 99. The last time the service took individuals without education credentials was in 2000.

“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 Vice Adm. Rick Cheeseman, the Navy’s chief of personnel, in an interview Friday with The Associated Press.

Cheeseman said that of the more than 2,400 who were turned away last year, as many as 500 of them could score high enough to get in. Admiral Cheeseman said he has already sent an order to his recruiters to start the new expanded effort, adding, “I’m hoping all my recruiters have called all 2,442 of them in the last 72 hours, and we’ll see how it goes … We’ll try to get some test takers this weekend.”

The move comes as the United States military finds itself engaged either directly or via proxy in multiple conflicts on multiple fronts in eastern Europe and the Middle East. The U.S. Military has collectively acknowledged 2023 concluded with a shortfall of about 41,000 recruits across all branches.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., wrote in the Washington Examiner on Friday that much of the recruitment shortfall is due to politics. “For close to a decade, the far Left has proclaimed that the United States is an evil country, steeped in racism and financing oppression across the globe,” he said. “The consequence is a generation of people who feel alienated from their own nation — and far less willing to serve.”

“I need these sailors. So, it’s a stretch goal. We’re telling our recruiters to go get 40,600 people to join the Navy,” Cheeseman concluded. “We don’t fully expect to get that many. But we’re going for it.”

Adm. Cheeseman’s interview came a day before 3 U.S. service members were killed in a drone strike by Iran-backed in Jordan.