Military Hardware: Tanks, Bombers, Submarines and MoreDEI Is Sinking the U.S. Navy
Brent Sadler
ByBrent SadlerPublished1 day ago
Fewer Ships, Recruiting Shortfalls: DEI Has Left Our Navy Less Prepared: In the past several weeks, the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy have announced that a shortage of manpower will force them to sideline ships. Given the growing threats globally, from China to the Mideast, the timing couldn’t be worse.
But what makes this truly unacceptable is that thanks to misguided diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, it’s largely self-inflicted.
The U.S. Navy’s DEI Challenge
Direct evidence linking DEI to declining recruitment is hard to come by, though whistleblower complaints and polling make a connection hard to dismiss. DEI was quietly introduced government-wide by executive order in 2011, but only after the military explicitly embraced DEI in the wake of the BLM riots and presidential elections of 2020 did recruitment collapse—at least for the services that most visibly embraced it. The Marine Corps, which did not aggressively push DEI, has not suffered the same steep drop in recruitment as the other services.
The results? After persistent recruiting challenges since 2020, the Coast Guard—which is facing a 10% shortage in crews—last year took the remarkable step of sidelining 10 cutters and shuttering 29 boat stations. The Navy, meanwhile, missed its recruiting goals last year by 7,000 and has shrunk by 21,000 sailors since 2021. Then there’s the Army, which reduced its goals rather than acknowledge even larger recruitment gaps.
At least the Navy has (so far) avoided mothballing warships. However, the Navy’s Military Sealift Command recently announced plans to sideline 17 logistic ships critical to the naval mission due to a lack of qualified merchant mariners.
https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/dei-is-sinking-the-u-s-navy/
