17? Many schools have recruiters walking the halls long before that. Plenty of these kids were getting talked up in the hallway at 15 and had recruiters calling their cellphones unprovoked or stalking them to their homes using personal information they got from the schools.
Also, Transformers and COD games are hitting eyeballs as soon as kids are old enough to watch TV unsupervised. Beer commercials, certain coffee establishments, etc etc. The wrong unsupervised media environment readily delivers poor kids to the armed forces as an aspirational goal.
17? Many schools have recruiters walking the halls long before that. Plenty of these kids were getting talked up in the hallway at 15 and had recruiters calling their cellphones unprovoked or stalking them to their homes using personal information they got from the schools.
Also, Transformers and COD games are hitting eyeballs as soon as kids are old enough to watch TV unsupervised. Beer commercials, certain coffee establishments, etc etc. The wrong unsupervised media environment readily delivers poor kids to the armed forces as an aspirational goal.