The Pentagon is considering how to attract and retain the best and the brightest people in areas like cyber-technology, even if that means easing recruitment standards and hiring older people or offering incentives like student loan repayments.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter began a two-day trip on Monday
during which he will speak to students and soldiers about what
the military will have to do to create the “force of the
future.” The trip involves visits to Carter’s own high
school in Pennsylvania, the Fort Drum military base in New York
to meet soldiers and their families, and Syracuse University,
also in New York.
“We now have the finest fighting force the world has ever
known,” Carter told an audience of Abington High School
students on Monday, according to Defense Department press
release. “And they are not just defending our country against
terrorists in such places as Afghanistan and Syria and Iraq –
they’re helping defend cyberspace, too.”
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, in recruitment speech at his
alma mater Abington High, plays down combat roles to emphasize
science, tech
— Jessica S. Parks (@JS_Parks) March
30, 2015
The military, Carter said, “could ease age requirements to
bring in older people who are mid-career” or help pay off
student loans “to attract student who have finished
college,” reported The Associated Press. Carter said
military personnel are increasingly working with cutting-edge
technologies such as robotics and biomedical engineering.
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“Movies like ‘American Sniper,’ video games like Call of
Duty’ and TV commercials with troops coming home are most likely
where you see our military in your everyday lives, unless you
have a family member or friend who is serving, ” said Carter in the statement.
“Those images are somewhat true” but “only part of
what the 2.3 million men and women in uniform do every day in
their jobs and in their lives.”
Soldiers, he said, are not just being deployed to war zones, but
also where disaster strikes to provide assistance and aid, from
the 2011 nuclear reactor meltdown in Japan to Hurricane Sandy to
helping stop the spread of Ebola in Africa.
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The AP reported this is not the first time the military has had
to think about how to ease recruitment standards. During 2006-07,
the military struggled to meet deployment demands in Iraq and
Afghanistan. They allowed more recruits with criminal records,
some with felony convictions, to meet quotas. The unfortunate
consequence of those policies led to escalating sexual assaults
and suicides.
“Our country’s military missions continue to evolve rapidly
as our world changes and technology continues to revolutionize
everything we do,” Carter said. “And … the institution I
lead, the Department of Defense, must keep pace with that change
as well to keep our national secure.”
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Military leaders have complained that it is hard to keep
cyber-professionals in the services because they can make far
more money in private industries. The military is also starting
to look at whether it can improve retirement benefits, promotion
and evaluation systems, and offer more sabbatical for service
members.
“I don’t want to lose our best people. I don’t want to lose
our best skills, and I know that I can’t take that for granted
because you have lots of choices,” said Carter, speaking to
soldiers and their families at Fort Drum.
“You are so good that you have other places in society to
apply your skills. And if we want to keep you we need to think
carefully we need to be innovated about what we do.”