77% of youth cannot qualify for military service, non-profit “Mission: Readiness” aims to help

COLUMBIA, SC (WOLO) — The military reports that only the Marine Corps and Space Force met its recruitment and enlistment goals in 2022, while the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard did not.

According to an organization called Mission: Readiness, 77% of American youth between the ages of 17 and 24 cannot qualify for any branch of military service, but through their physical and cognitive programs, the non-profit is hoping to change that across the country, and here in South Carolina.

Former South Carolina Secretary of Veterans Affairs Will Grimsley addressed the lack of eligible youth, saying, “It’s a challenge today and if this trend continues, what we’re going to have in the future generations of an all volunteer force — is no force. And so when you think about the national security implications to the United States of America, and the inability of young men and women to serve the nation in this way, we think we’ve reached a point where it’s time to stand up and do something about it.”

That’s where Mission: Readiness comes in.

The group’s National Director Jake Ferriera says they partner with schools and lawmakers to encourage and create early childhood programs that tackle the issues behind ineligibility.

He says the non-profit is made up of over 800 retired admirals, generals, and other military leaders who believe in setting children on a healthier path as a child before they ever reach the enlistment age.

“The organization thought about how can we bring together thought leaders, who have experience, who can talk about this issue with state and federal policy makers of the general public and make it resonate. And so they were successful in bringing retired admirals and generals together to be the voice, to take the research and the evidence and through their research and perspective, to break through in ways that others in the past perhaps couldn’t do so,” Ferriera says.

To measure success, Ferriera believes in looking at available resources within a state and recruitment numbers.

“So more resources going to those programs, more children taking advantage of those programs, that allow them to then be successful, that’s a definition of success. If they are eligible for us, to be able to serve, so they are fit. They’re educated. They don’t have a serious criminal issue, then they can do anything. But at least the minimum for us, from a perspective of military readiness and national security, we know they can serve. So that’s a measurement of success too,” Ferriera says.

Mission: Readiness reports the three leading reasons young people are found to be ineligible for military service are not being academically prepared, having a record of crime or drug abuse, or being too overweight to meet a branch’s physical requirements.

Officials say while programs like the Army’s Future Soldier Preparatory Course certainly help, they take a more retroactive approach.

Mission: Readiness’s childhood programs are more proactive.

“So apart of this exercise is to call this to the attention of the people, that there’s a great world out there waiting for us. For the people of South Carolina. But we’ve got to be in shape, we’ve got to be educated, we’ve got to be trained, and we have to be healthy,” says Governor Henry McMaster.