https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/25/army-max-enlistment-marijuana-restrictions
After missing its recruitment target by 25% in 2022, the US army has changed its approach to attracting more people into the forces, including targeting more gen Z applicants.
However, the average age of recruits has been increasing, with analysts at the Rand Corp in 2023 recommending an increase in the maximum enlisted age as older recruits are “of higher quality, more focused, and more motivated, as well as being ready to ship to basic training more quickly”.
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Wow y’all are really doing this shit again, eh? Surely this will all be over very quickly. Any day now. The wars already won anyways, right?!
Anyways, have fun!
so how long until they just trash selective service and have ICE pressganging random dudes a la ukraine?
September
not enough, any honorable army would be rewarding our geeked out supersoldiers
What is this some sorta soviet push in the kush?
That was a super fun rabbit hole to go through. I found a Russian ebay-esque site with a bunch of varieties on this here
This one was my favorite design
I have one of those I bought off eBay a few years ago lol
stolenpurchased valor
older recruits are “of higher quality, more focused, and more motivated, as well as being ready to ship to basic training more quickly”.
Bullshit. Older recruits can’t move as well as younger ones. Older recruits are more likely to sprain an ankle and actually be laid up and immobile. Older recruits need more recuperation between fights/battles/whatever.
Older recruits are statistically likely to just be cannon fodder. Not everyone can be an officer, or intelligence. The mill must have its grist.
I believe it, as far as it goes.
I doubt they stay leaps and bounds ahead of the kids once they reach basic, to say nothing of how many would wash out from a minor injury that a young guy would just ignore and power through.
Older recruits are statistically likely to just be cannon fodder. Not everyone can be an officer, or intelligence. The mill must have its grist.
100% this though. They can probably push them through the system faster because they’ll never be expected to do anything sophisticated and it’d be a waste of resources pouring a full career-starter’s training into a guy who’s not gonna make it (or has at most like 10 service years left in them compared to the potential of a 19 year old.)
Also, we have highly advanced technology an infinite number of random with guns will not help you win a war anymore. It actually didn’t even really help last time we tried. In that most stuff is gonna be like wearing high vis and driving trucks full of equipment to CIA contractors an adult is just as good as the 18 year old children we normally use
truly the tsunami of grey bearded dudes being held back by the floodgates of age requirements and undeferred/unexpunged weed charges will make up that 25% shortfall.
jesus christ, just raise it 100, allow violent felons to join in lieu of sentencing, and stop playing like its some professional institution made of people who make good choices.
Ordinarily, I would be opposed to Penal Battalions, but I just saw The Dirty Dozen and now I think it’s a good idea
i support Penile Buttalions and have been promoted myself to Rear Admiral of the Army.
What if instead of Penal Battalions they were Penile Battalions and they were… still just for the fellas I guess
I love how called out the guy on the far left looks.
I mean, he is wearing the gay little sailor hat
Men will be split between Penile Battalions and Anal Battalions.
The smegma crazies and the gayboy bezerkers
Cool, gonna pre-emptively apply and get drug tested coked up just to get blacklisted early
Gets admitted
😮
Just act really confused at the firing range and when the drill sergeant comes over to yell at you, just unload into him at close range
I hear killing your CO in the US gets you into the special heaven, the one with John Brown and the heroin clouds.
NOBODY TOLD ME ABOUT THE HEROIN CLOUDS
It doesn’t get you out of any armed services, unless your CO doesn’t like you, from what I’m hearing.
Yeah they put me in something called “The Marines”, so maybe I’ll get to hang out at the beach?
I think thats the worst one because you do homoerotic stuff all day but aren’t allowed to kiss at night.
Shit, what about handholding?
I always wondered how I’d end up in jail, looks like it’s gonna be draft dodging
if you can dodge a draft you can dodge a ball
bail*
Can we do a study on what enlistment by income bracket looks like? I’m sure we won’t discover anything dodgy
TBH, it is interesting, which quintile provides desk jockeys and which quintile provides cannon fodder.
Any study by a group other than these guys? The heritage foundation are a hugely Trump supporting Republican think tank.
Yeah I’m hip, just pulled the first chart I saw but there was a lot of discourse here because of this statistic after Graham Platnerification and how libs like to handwash committing warcrimes because they “had to pay for college” or some other BS
I tried to get them to increase it to 420 for Epic Fury but they didn’t get my epic humornoooo that’s like the upper half of my dating pool!
Lol, now’s my chance.
The eligible bachelor shortage crises in NYC is already it’s own dystopian nightmare, this will cause a massive semen famine the likes of which have never historically been seen before.
i am single and ready to mingle but only if you don’t touch me and we read biodiversity collapse statistics together without eye contact
how u doin
Not enough Midwestern oafs moving to NYC to strengthen its holds with their opes and “let me just scootch right past you here”
i did that for a year. that was all i could handle. i require more space and alone time than is available in nyc
The city women yearn for the scootch.
Sounds dirty
Too used to people being like “Ey, i’m walking over heah!”
The Samine, if you will
Seems like things are going well
They are raising the enlistment cap to 42? Are you kidding me?
