August 17, 2020
Whoops: Over 300 Soldiers Were Recruited Despite Not Meeting Fitness Standards
How is this even possible?
by Haley Britzky
Key Point: Unfortunately, the military has a hard time filling its quotas. The result is that sometimes standards are relaxed or even ignored during recruitment.
Over 300 soldiers were found to have enlisted after either failing a required fitness test, or never taking it at all, according to documents obtained by Army Times several years back.
In 2017, the Army was straining to meet its goal of 476,000 active-duty soldiers, meaning the service had to bring in 68,000 recruits. The Occupational Physical Assessment Test was new, and Army Times reports that recruiters implicated in the investigation — 297 of them — "figured the recruits would sort out their fitness levels at basic."
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/whoops-over-300-soldiers-were-recruited-despite-not-meeting-fitness-standards-166931
