> The Coast Guard has struggled to bring in recruits, failing to meet its enlisted goals for the past four years. In mid-2023, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan told Congress that the service was short 3,500 members, while the service's fiscal 2024 budget request reported a shortfall of 4,800, or nearly 10% of its force.
I don't cross paths with a lot of Coast Guard folks, but I was talking to one a few months ago who painted an ugly picture of what this looks like at the ground level. People from his station are getting pulled as individual augmentees for operational deployments in other places while everybody else works a number of double shifts to cover the duties at their own station.
With that said, I'm not shocked by webworker's story. Part of the recruiting crisis is due to the recruiting apparatus being pretty dysfunctional. Hence the article about the Coast Guard announcing reforms to who does recruiting and how they'll be trained. The Army also announced similar reforms last year.
> The Coast Guard has struggled to bring in recruits, failing to meet its enlisted goals for the past four years. In mid-2023, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan told Congress that the service was short 3,500 members, while the service's fiscal 2024 budget request reported a shortfall of 4,800, or nearly 10% of its force.
I don't cross paths with a lot of Coast Guard folks, but I was talking to one a few months ago who painted an ugly picture of what this looks like at the ground level. People from his station are getting pulled as individual augmentees for operational deployments in other places while everybody else works a number of double shifts to cover the duties at their own station.
With that said, I'm not shocked by webworker's story. Part of the recruiting crisis is due to the recruiting apparatus being pretty dysfunctional. Hence the article about the Coast Guard announcing reforms to who does recruiting and how they'll be trained. The Army also announced similar reforms last year.