We could see it coming months ago, and the reality hit home last Friday: The U.S. Army, by far the largest of the service branches, has missed its recruiting number by about 15,000 soldiers.

“In the Army’s most challenging recruiting year since the start of the all-volunteer force, we will only achieve 75% of our fiscal year 22 recruiting goal,” said Army Secretary Christine Wormuth. “The Army will maintain its readiness and meet all our national security requirements. If recruiting challenges persist, we will draw on the Guard and Reserve to augment active-duty forces, and may need to trim our force structure.”

The Army’s recruiting goal was 60,000, but it could only find 45,000 young people who were both willing and fit to enlist.

How desperate was the Army to hit its numbers? The AP reports: “Military leaders used increased enlistment bonuses and other programs to try and build their numbers this year, but they say it’s getting more and more difficult to compete with private industry in the tight labor market. And as they look to the future, they worry that if the declining enlistment trends continue, the Pentagon may have to reassess its force requirements and find ways to make the military a more attractive profession to the eroding number of young Americans who can meet mental and physical requirements for service.”

And this is after having adjusted downward the expected size of its total force this year from 476,000 to about 466,000.

Interestingly, the other branches made their numbers, but just barely. Just barely, that is, except for the Space Force, which was formed during the Trump administration. Lieutenant General Bradley Saltzman said this newest service branch, which has just 8,400 guardians, has “more volunteers than we have spots to fill.”

Good for the Space Force, but what gives with the Army? The Associated Press blames “a tight jobs market,” but no one in the military actually believes that. Otherwise, why did the Space Force have it so easy?

The truth, we believe, is more accurately explained by a prior-service YouTube personality named John Lovell (Warrior Poet), who gives four reasons for the military’s recruiting troubles: America-bashing, which makes young people less willing to fight for their country; vax mandates, which are unnecessary, ineffective, and antithetical to liberty; woke games instead of war games, a radical leftward lurch that we’ve covered extensively; and the general condition of today’s young people, who are less physically and mentally equipped than ever before for military service.

“We live in strange times,” writes Guy McArdle at SOFREP. “Looking at Army recruiting videos on YouTube, I noticed that some were weeks old and had only a few hundred views. I’m talking between four and six hundred. And this was the official US Army Recruiting channel, not some weird knockoff. … A quick search revealed that a cat playing the piano garnered more than 1.2 views in only a bit more time.”

We wonder: Could the lack of interest in the Army’s recruiting videos have anything to do with their content?

Here’s how our military analyst Lee Miller, a West Point graduate, Army Ranger and SF combat veteran, summed up the awful predicament of the American military under Joe Biden:

Americans are quickly losing faith in the military as a nonpartisan institution. More specifically, they have lost faith in the Biden administration’s senior political and military leadership. Whether it’s the disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan, weak leadership in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine, or the Chinese aggression in the Pacific, an illegal mandate of experimental COVID-19 pandemic vaccines on U.S. troops, prioritizing transgenderism outreach over training commitments, lowering fitness standards, or perpetuating an “extremism” hoax among the ranks, the Biden administration’s military policy has destroyed public faith and uniformed morale. Unfortunately, Team Biden’s Pentagon policy is no different from any other aspect of this administration — a complete catastrophe.

To get a sense of the leftist rot that’s now infecting our service branches, Lieutenant General Thomas Spoehr’s July address on wokeness in the military, which we summarized here, is well worth the read.

Or, if you’re pressed for time, consider this more concise assessment from national security expert Dave Reaboi: “Maybe it’s better having a country that inspires patriots to defend it, rather than one that makes them want to throw up.”