Separating troops needlessly while spending historic amounts to bring in new ones makes no sense
RealClearDefense
Foreign and Defense PolicyDefense
February 3, 2022
As thousands of logistics, medical, aviation, intelligence, transportation, and additional troops go on alert for possible deployment to eastern Europe, military readiness is again important for deterrence. In that same vein, President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered every member of the military be vaccinated against COVID-19 or else be counseled or forcibly discharged. In guidance, Sec. Austin said, “Vaccination is essential to the health and readiness of the Force.” He’s right to focus on preserving readiness, but the impacts of the vaccine mandate are more complex and may undermine this very goal.
The military’s implementation of the vaccine mandate is reaching an inflection point. The mandate is poised to potentially harm further gains in readiness and risks undermining it instead without more differentiated policies that account for how the mandate affects different aspects of readiness.
To the Pentagon’s great credit, as of January 19, 1.6 million service members—including active duty, reserve, and National Guard—are fully vaccinated, with another 340, 224 partially vaccinated. By late December 2021, more than 97 percent of the active duty force had been vaccinated and that record is likely in part to thank for why “DoD has roughly half (47 percent) of the cases per capita compared to the nation overall,” despite the spread of the highly infectious omicron variant.
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/separating-troops-needlessly-while-spending-historic-amounts-to-bring-in-new-ones-makes-no-sense/
