http://www.military.com/NewsContent/...l?ESRC=army.nl

basically the article says that in the 17-24 y/o range (prime recruiting ages) about 75% of americans are unfit, either because of being overweight/lazy, unedcated, or medically unable to fill the job requirements.

[ 03-15-2006, 09:55 AM: Message edited by: Morgeruat ]

Interesting link Morge.

I had no idea they were turning people away for tatoos (see the bottom of the article - not all tatoos) and Ritalin. A soldier on Ritalin is an alert soldier :D

It's interesting how they treat the dissenting voice of a sociologist who studies the military by asking "Well, do you have any numbers?" Absurd. Several of those numbers are questionable, and few egg heads are as good at questioning stats than the sociologists and Azreds of the world ;) For one, people can get into and out of shape pretty quick as far as strength and endurance go. Weight is another matter. I would also question the validity of tossing out so many people the military service aptitude test, as they have historically suffered all of the flaws of all IQ testing [read: not trivial].

As for whether recruiters are trying to blame the pool, and the pool being far from ideal...these aren't mutually exclusive prospects and are quite believable imo. Recruiters are under a lot of pressure and well, we're a rather unhealthy population of neck-tatoo sporting punks.

One of the problems when you're dealing with obesity is the amount of time it takes to accomplish weight loss. I think that maximum healthy loss is a pound a day, and that's on a regimen specifically tailored to that end. With that, there is no muscle development, etc. While certainly the obese people mentioned could be cut into shape, the effort and time invested would be quite high, and would require changes to the training regimen, I would imagine.

What I found interesting was the part where those convicted of crimes were ineligible for service. I'm not going to get into the debate here, but suffice it to say, that about 200 years ago, the vast majority of armies were entirely convicts. Just goes to show... [img]smile.gif[/img]

And the tall, fit, muscular ones are gay.

re tattoos, I know when got in close to ten years ago, tattoos were on the way out as well, The regulations then were that it could not be visible in the dress uniform (as well as no offensive tattoos), that may have been restricted moreso since then. Essentially the army being an all volunteer force is making more and more of an effort to look like a highly professional work force.

I have a friend who went through about a year and a half of trying to get the proper waivers and such to get into the military (first hurdle was that he had been diagnosed with ADD) and eventually he discovered that his test scores weren't high enough to get into any branch (IIRC the marines had the most stringent requirements), although they weren't low enough to disqualify him from service if they needed to draft him. (he's currently a nurse working on his degree) (whereas I was 1 point from maxing the test)

more on the tattoo policy: link