JOHN YANG: Today's U.S. armed forces faced a number of challenges how to support Ukrainian forces in the war against Russia, how to fend off sophisticated cyberattacks and counter China's growing military might.

As Ali Rogin reports just as important as these global challenges are the issues the military faces at home.

ALI ROGIN: The all volunteer military has reached crisis levels of low recruitment, while at the same time the American public's perception of the Armed Forces is increasingly divided.

A recent Gallup poll found confidence in the U.S. military is at its lowest level in over two decades, only 60 percent of people told Gallup they had confidence in the U.S. military.

At the same time, some military branches are falling short of their yearly recruiting goals by the 1000s.

The army is set to fall 15,000 recruits short this year.

Matthew Gault is a writer for VICE and has covered the military and its relationship with the public for the last decade.

Matthew, thank you so much for joining me first, why are we seeing this record low confidence in the military?

MATTHEW GAULT, Staff Writer, VICE Motherboard: I think there's a lot of different reasons.

I think the probably the biggest one right now this immediate drop is the end of the war in Afghanistan, the American withdrawal from it and how quickly the Taliban was able to retake it, there was a lot of really bad optics, there's a lot of terrible footage, a lot of horrifying stories that happened in the immediate wake of that.

And when America loses a war, confidence in the military goes down.

There's also a lot of culture war issues that are brewing around the military.

And only 1 percent of the American population serves, and they all volunteer force.

And that creates a disconnect, especially over the last 20 years.

ALI ROGIN: And so that's a good segue to my next question, which is what about these low recruitment levels.

What is leading to them?

MATTHEW GAULT: A lot of different things.

One is that the recruitment standards are pretty high.

Pentagon estimates that only around 23 percent of youths aged 17 to 24 can meet the standards for the military.

The reasons why are kind of all over the place, there's fitness standards that people can't meet.

There's weird things like visible tattoos on, you know, the head or the neck or the hands can often kick people out.

Criminal -- past criminal records, no matter how minor, and also a big one now is drug use.

I'm not talking about just marijuana, which is, you know, legal in many, many states, but will prevent you from joining if you pop on a test, but also things that people take for their mental health, big one being ADHD medication.

If you've been on a stimulant in the past 24 months, you have to get a waiver, or they don't want you to join.

ALI ROGIN: And is it the case that more and more people are using these medications who might have otherwise been good recruits for the military?

Is that what's happening here?

MATTHEW GAULT: Yeah, absolutely.

There's a lot of people that smoke marijuana casually don't have a problem with it and are able to like would be fine, active, you know, active service members.

If they change to the recruitment standards, I think they would get a lot more recruits.

You've already seen slackening in some places.

Waivers are being easier to get the Air Force recently lifted the ban on visible tattoos so people can have tattoos on their hands, or their necks and be able to join just fine.

So things are changing, but it's slow.

ALI ROGIN: And in terms of confidence in the institution.

How much does your reporting show military leaders are paying attention to this?

And are looking at ways to address it?

Is it something that they are actively thinking about on a routine basis?

MATTHEW GAULT: So military leadership is incredibly aware of this?

I would say that readiness around recruitment and the lack of confidence in the American military, like feedback into each other and has become like a big culture war issue in the country.

They are constantly talking on Capitol Hill about what they need to do, what they need to change, what they need to address to get people more involved in the military to get the recruits that they need and to prove to the American public, its military is ready and is ready for the fight is ready for the new great power competition that is taking over the planet.

ALI ROGIN: And as you mentioned, the military is trying different strategies to reach out to new cohorts of people.

They're reaching out to the LGBTQ plus community.

They're reaching out to women.

They're trying to access people who are gamers.

And yet some of these efforts have landed them in the hot seat with conservatives who accused them of engaging in the culture wars and then being to quote woke.

So how is the military addressing this paradox?

MATTHEW GAULT: You're already seeing kind of how the military addresses this paradox.

They are betting on the American public is not on legislators.

And in some cases, I would say even attempting to punish legislators in some interesting ways.

The most clear example of this is Tommy Tuberville, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

And he's from Alabama.

They have Space Force was supposed to build to base there.

Space Force this new -- this new force it's very technically advanced.

Tuberville is preventing over 200 military promotions and has been why is he doing this?

He's doing this because he says that he is worried that the DoD has conveyed a verbal and written commitment to its service members to allow them access to abortion care.

And because of that, he is stalling these promotions.

Well, Space Force recently said, you know what, we're not going to build that base in Alabama.

We're going to go ahead and we're going to stay in Colorado.

There's a bunch of different reasons why this happened.

One of the biggest is that Space Force requires like a highly educated, highly technical class of recruit.

It's also doing a lot of outreach to women.

And access to reproductive health care is a number one issue with that demographic.

In they're not going to move to Alabama, where, you know, their access to reproductive freedom is curtailed.

ALI ROGIN: What sort of impact is this not only having on the day to day work that the military does, you mentioned readiness earlier, but certainly as it looks towards the future, we're moving out of a war against terrorism posture into this great power competition era.

And certainly there's a lot happening in terms of the military's overarching mission.

How is -- how are these twin issues affecting those endeavors?

MATTHEW GAULT: There's simply not enough people joining the military right now.

There's not enough young Americans, especially young Americans that can work computer that no the cyber field back to front, joining the military and preparing that military for the threats that are coming from Russia and China.

These are two countries that have pretty advanced.

They've kind of figured out the cyberspace.

And I would say that America is still playing catch up.

And part of the reason why is that it has these shortfalls, and it can't recruit the kind of people it needs to get in there and, you know, change the game around cyber.

ALI ROGIN: Matthew Gault with VICE News.

Thank you so much for joining us.

MATTHEW GAULT: Thank you so much for having me.