Combat Power, Conflict Resolution, and US Economy

[Fuchs]

That's no Western monopoly.





http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/20...-world-is-fat/

[AmericanPride]

Thanks for the graphs. Obesity has been a subject of concern for some time now. I don't know about the other services, but Army Recruiting Command estimates about a quarter (25%) of 17-29 year-olds are eligible or otherwise fit for military service. Given the large population of the US and the relatively small number of service members, at what point does public health become a priority national security concern?

[Fuchs]

It used to be normal that military bureaucracies took recruits and trained them, instead of expecting them to be fit in the first place. Only those without the potential for enough training progress were rejected, or simply sent into non-combat jobs.

There's no way how 75% of male young adults could be incapable of military service in any country, not even in Nauru.
Besides, we can nowadays add the female cohorts for the support jobs - and support is something around 80% of an army.



It's also important what "overweight" means in such statistics. According to BMI, I'm on the upper limit of normal and I know nobody who would call me overweight.
At least nobody dared it so far.

[Bill Moore]

It used to be normal that military bureaucracies took recruits and trained them, instead of expecting them to be fit in the first place. Only those without the potential for enough training progress were rejected, or simply sent into non-combat jobs.

There's no way how 75% of male young adults could be incapable of military service in any country, not even in Nauru.
Besides, we can nowadays add the female cohorts for the support jobs - and support is something around 80% of an army.



It's also important what "overweight" means in such statistics. According to BMI, I'm on the upper limit of normal and I know nobody who would call me overweight.
At least nobody dared it so far.

I hear you, I'm above the BMI and no one would refer to me as fat. The BMI doesn't account for muscle mass, nor is it is a measure of fitness by any stretch of the imagination. It is an outdated system that should be done away with, and fitness should be measured by capability, and if fat is concern measure the percentage of bodyweight that is fat.

As for training kids to get into combat shape I agree to a point, but for whatever reason they are unable to get these kids in enough shape to pass their service fitness tests at the minimum level during basic training. I suspect that is due to these kids being close to completely deconditioned from leading a very inactive life style for most, if not all their lives. If you knew how low the standards were to pass these tests at the minimal level I suspect you would be shocked that 8-9 weeks is insufficient time to get the kids to that level.

I agree with AmericanPride it should be considered a national security issue, and it is an issue that transcends national security to include the economic risk of overwhelming our healthcare system.

[Ulenspiegel]

Obesity is not a security issue but an economic issue: the treatment of wide spread diabetes is very expensive and can wreck each health care system with ease.

OTOH, the preventive traetment, i.e. teaching people how to cook, eat and exercise is much much cheaper and has as byprodcut the larger man power pool for military recruitment.

[AmericanPride]

Fuchs,

It's not that people are inherently "incapable" of military service, it's that given present standards, they are considered unfit. It's not just obesity; it's also legal and moral problems, education disqualification, immigration status, etc. It would be my expectation that in the event of a national emergency that required a surge in manpower, these standards (which in my view are relatively low anyway) would be loosened further. I don't know the extent of the problem of soldiers completing basic training unable to pass the physical fitness test but I know it exists. That said, as an aside, I was surprised at hearing the cost of what it takes to prospect, enlist, and train an individual soldier.

Anyway, in the news a couple weeks ago, a prototype exoskeleten was revealed for testing. What kind of impact will this have on military standards and expectations?

[Fuchs]

Exoskeletons have been disclosed for years, usually with a lag of 2-3 years.

If patterns hold, they're not going to be important, but the LS3 approach may.
related


Warfare is always relative; it's no one-party game.
The EU does even on its own vastly outnumber the combined Russian + Belorussian + Russians_in_Ukraine mobilization potential.
Even all of NATO couldn't compete with the 18-35 y.o. cohorts of India, much less China.

The influence of obesity rates on this picture is negligible.

[AmericanPride]

Last week it made the news (again) about the extent of prospects in the general population ineligible for military service. None of the maintsream news I read actually discussed the structural problems in the U.S. education and health systems that lead to such poor outcomes in the first place. Eligibility for military service is a by-product (as opposed to a deliberate outcome) for both the education and health systems because of the decentralized structure of both. I think this has bearing on the professionalism in the military conversation going on in the other thread - as the eligible population continues to shrink (with clear demographic patterns), how does that affect the military as a warfighting institution, its values and beliefs, and behavior?