'Fat troops' fallout continues as some Texas Guardsmen sent home over fitness concerns

[dutch777]

4. Between gardening duty in DC and this sort of thing not a big boost for recruitment to the NG and Reserves

If you want to really improve morale and recruitment, pretty much do the opposite of what Trump/Hegseth are doing. (Of course recruitment gets easier as the economy worsens and AI eliminates entry level jobs, which they are amply facilitating). Many NG and Reserves are ex active duty that want to get the retirement benefits after 20 years given how few pension with health care benefit programs are available in the private sector especially in more rural areas and red states. Has been the case for decades that NG/Reserve unit commanders were a bit lackadaisical on fitness and other standards for fear that they would have few or no troops to lead if they pushed too hard. Hope is if the s**t really hits the fan they will have a month or so getting ready to deploy to whip people back into shape. Never has been a perfect system and even more so as these units are usually equipped with old tech and have way too little training time to stay crisp on what they have.