So it's Vegas. The lights got to be bright. Lights are bright and Vegas. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Woods Ready podcast. That's right. I am recording from Vegas. So we got the sphere. If you haven't seen the MSG sphere, it's freaking amazing.

Legitimately, it's incredible. So come out of Vegas. Visit see everything that Vegas has the offer. I heard that thing is like just surrounded with cameras, you know, so it's watching everyone.

Well, probably. I mean, where are we not being watched everywhere and monitored everywhere right now? It's 1984 all over again. So anyway,

there are some hot topics out there that is in the forefront of a lot of things. You see it in news. You see it a lot on social media. You see it a lot in in our kind of, you know, community. And that is recruitment numbers. The DOD Department of Defense is not making its recruitment numbers in terms of all of the from what I've seen so far all the numbers that I've gotten into and there's no way that I could I could possibly go through all of these numbers.

Because one, some of them are kind of mismatching. I don't have the exact data straight from the DOD Air Force Recruiting Service or anything like that. But

it is kind of telling right now it looks like the Marines are the only ones that are not struggling with their numbers or they are at least meeting just at they're not crushing their numbers. But even that that is probably not great. So I did her rumor that all they did was change their goals.

That is a way to do it. Right? Yeah. If I say this year, I need 100,000 and I only got 80,000. Then next year, maybe I just say, okay, well, maybe all I need really need is 80,000. And then when you know I'm meeting my goal.

It's just a rumor I heard. So I didn't actually look into it.

You could do that. And hey, it wouldn't surprise me if the Marine Corps did that. And any service is not just a spirit of Marine Corps, but that is just kind of the reality of it.

So I did want to say one thing, like right off the bat.

And if you are considering joining, whether it's Air Force Special Warfare, the Air Force Marines, Navy Army, Space Force, whatever, in reality, you joined us. We didn't join you.

So if you want us to change to you, we shouldn't we shouldn't be held accountable to try and change to you to get you on there.

You've heard me say it. You've heard all of us say it. Hey, yeah, we need you. Yeah, we need you in terms of we need good people of character with all the Air Force Special Warfare attributes, you know, teamwork, integrity, you know, all of them.

But I'm also not going to adjust what we need and what I need and what what the Force needs to just get you in.

So remember when you're complaining and all that kind of stuff, you joined us. We didn't join you.

Well, and it's not like what you need. It's not what what Jared Petrus needs from you. It's based on your 20 something years of experience and the Air Force standards, like what is going to be required to win every fight that we could get into in the future.

Right? Like this isn't this these aren't made up standards. These are these are standards built on, you know, the backs of all the people that came before us that went through all these challenges and I don't know these, you know, fights.

And so like it came from somewhere. It's not like we just have these arbitrary standards for the most part, right? Well, I'm talking about like mission standards and physical standards and other things.

Now, if you ask me to like justify, you know, no beards or the haircuts or whatever, I don't know, it's that's a totally different thing. That's more like a cultural standard that was adopted, but as far as like mission readiness standards, those those are real.

Yeah. And they and they shouldn't say they shouldn't change. Obviously, things can can adapt and to what the need is, but when the standards aren't very high anyway,

then like why are we making them easier? So, and I know that that is a blanket statement, why are we making them easier? But there's a lot of things going on to it. And I kind of have a list of all the different kind of factors that the DOD is seeing.

And I'm interested to see what you have to say about it. And we can we'll cover it. But one of them that I disagree with right off the bat is a strong labor marketer, a strong economy right now.

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