As the government struggles to recruit more military personnel, it is likely that US applicants will soon be allowed to use calculators during entrance exams.

Fox News reported that the Pentagon of President Joe Biden (D) is considering a policy involving the devices which would “change the way applicants take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery or ASVAB”, according to the report.

Many Americans who are eligible for military service have had difficulty achieving the required scores in the tests.

In a report published in June 2022, the Pentagon reported that it was not meeting its recruitment targets and officials were considering removing some of its disqualifiers from military service.

Breitbart News reports:

The Army, the largest branch of the military, is experiencing historic challenges. The Army has only met about 40% of the enlisted recruitment mission for fiscal 2022. This year’s fiscal year ends on September 30, three months from now.

According to Military.com, in an effort to meet its goal, last week the Army announced that it will no longer require recruits to hold high school diplomas and GED certificates as long as they are able to ship to basic training before October 1.

In a Fox statement on Monday, an official from the Department of Defense said, “The Department is carefully considering the usage of calculators for ASVAB.”

The official explained, “We will take a systematic approach to assess the impact calculators have on test results. We are also developing a plan for the future of calculator inclusion, based upon best practices in the development of tests and psychometric theory.”

In an interview with Breitbart News, Jim Banks, the chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee for Military Personnel (R-IN), criticized a report by Army about wokeness in recruiting.

He explained that the Army was hiding behind a report and that they wouldn’t release the methodology. The report claimed that wokeness doesn’t affect recruitment, but that it couldn’t be proven. “They don’t want to release it, because they know that the methodology is flawed.”

In June, Army Sec. Christine Wormuth said, “We are not a woke Army.”

She added, “I do believe that the constant drumbeat we hear sometimes about a weak, a woke, military is a bit of a negative drip-drip-drip that undermines our recruiting in a time when we can’t really afford that.”