In high school I met my very good friend, a young man obsessed with the military. He ended up at the Naval academy, and then an officer in the navy.
To put it bluntly. The sort of young man who does this is not at all into the various social programs the military has now been implementing. Moreover, they started scrutinizing the basic, popular political beliefs of many of the recruits. Those interested in the Navy tend to be of a particular political persuasion, and even those who do not share that tend to have similar underlying belief structures.
What my friend wanted to be a career ended up being the minimum required years of service. It's unfortunate. They lost a loyal, educated officer. For what? What was gained by their novel program?
At the end of the day, the military is a thing that many young men are attracted to. We can debate the reasons why until the cows come home, but the military can choose to either build upon that innate attraction or pursue a different direction, and they've frankly chosen the latter. At every step of the way, they trample upon the factors that led these young men to join, and then they wonder why no one wants it anymore.
From my perspective, they've achieved something that few civilizations in history have managed, which is to make the armed forces actively unattractive to vast swaths of young males.
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