More citizens must qualify to be warriors

The most critical path to our future is the Warrior, who is more important than everything else in our readiness to fight and win…Yet, it is becoming increasingly difficult to recruit the numbers needed.

This is not because young people lack the desire to serve. The challenge is that too few of our young citizens are qualified to serve.

In 1991, when I retired from active duty, only 50 percent of our nation’s young people—ages 17 to 24—were considered eligible for military service as officers or enlisted.

This was based on enlistment standards set by the military to ensure recruits would be competent to serve in our increasingly sophisticated military environment. Reasons for this lack of eligibility ranged from academic achievement to physical ability, to medical problems, drug use, and criminal records.

Today, eligibility to enlist has dropped to 25 percent, mostly because of an emergent condition among young people called obesity! So, 75 percent of our nation’s youth are not able to serve in the all-volunteer force, even if they want to…