Doesn't Anybody Want to Join Biden's Military? Desperate Air Force Raises Age Limit to 42 for Recruits
The U.S. military has a major recruitment issue under President Joe Biden.
As part of an effort to get more people to join the Air Force, military officials last month quietly raised the maximum age of enrollment from 39 to 42.
The updated age criteria affect both officer and enlisted ranks in the Air Force and the Space Force.
“The Air Force made this change to align with [Department of Defense] policy,” Leslie Brown, the chief of public affairs for the Air Force Recruiting Service, told Military.com on Oct. 26.
“This opens the aperture to allow more Americans the opportunity to serve,” she continued.
“The accession age of 42 allows an Airman or Guardian to serve a full 20 years, since the retirement age is 62,” Brown said.
According to Air Force officials, the change should lead to the enlistment of some 50 additional recruits every year and provide the opportunity to bring back those who were forced to retire.
“AFRS recently discharged 12 members from the delayed entry program who ‘aged out’ due to the processing timeline,” Brown said.
“Recruiters will be contacting them and others who may have left processing due to age,” she said.
The new rules come into effect nearly a month after the Air Force confirmed it had fallen short of its active-duty recruitment targets for the first time in over two decades.
The Army, Air Force and Navy all fell short of their recruitment goals for fiscal 2023.
The Air Force’s new strategy has been used by other military branches, including the Navy, which raised its maximum enlistment age from 39 to 41 in November 2022.
Navy officials admitted the change was made to “widen the pool of potential recruits, creating opportunities for personnel who wish to serve, but were previously unable due to age,” USNI News reported at the time.
The recruitment challenges faced by the U.S. military are linked to waning enthusiasm and suitability for service among the key age group for enlistment.
A 2020 study found that approximately 77 percent of Americans ages 17 to 24 would not qualify for service without special exemptions. Specifically, the report indicated that 11 percent of this age cohort would be disqualified solely based on their weight.
Meanwhile, conservatives maintain that the military’s recruitment difficulties are a result of an institutional push toward progressivism.
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation’s 2022 National Defense Survey found that only 48 percent of participants expressed high trust and confidence in the military, a decrease of 22 percent from 2018.
In June, a Gallup poll similarly found that the American public’s confidence in the U.S. military had reached its lowest levels in more than 25 years.
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