Army hits its annual recruiting goal in eight months
'Yesterday, the United States Army met its fiscal year 2025 recruiting goal four months early, welcoming more than 61,000 new recruits,' Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll testified before Congress on Wednesday. The fiscal year runs through Sept. 30.
Driscoll credited the 'focus on a return to warfighting and lethality' for the Army's recruiting success, though several practical changes to how the Army finds new soldiers have played a key role in the surge of newcomers, lawmakers said. Driscoll noted that the Future Soldier Preparatory Course, which prepares potential soldiers for basic training, has helped recruits who were 'right on the edge' of meeting the service's physical and academic standards enlist.
'It seems when I was at the Future Soldier Prep Course that the ones who wanted to join were at the very front edge of their careers, were excited to join in a time where they thought they could contribute to the safety of their community by being on the front lines of keeping Americans safe.'
As of May 30, a total of 10,465 soldiers have moved from the Future Soldier Preparatory Course to Initial Entry Training this fiscal year, said Maj. Christopher Robinson, a spokesman for Training and Doctrine Command.
The Army expects to have 25,000 soldiers in the Delayed Entry Program when the 2026 fiscal year begins, Driscoll said.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George noted that the 'most productive' recruiting months of the fiscal year are still ahead. He added that the Army is trying to make improvements to technology for recruiters and reducing how many forms recruits have to fill out while in-processing.
'It was something like 670 forms that had to be filled out and we've reduced that to below 10, and it's now going to be in a database,' George said.
The last time the Army hit its annual recruiting goal in the first week of June was back in 2014, Lt. Col. Jeff Tolbert, a spokesman for Driscoll, said in a news release.
The Defense Department's 'Rapid Response' X account posted a Fox News story about the Army's recent recruiting success along with a quote: 'They call it the TRUMP-BUMP.'
However, the rebound in Army recruiting began before President Donald Trump was elected in November. The service met its fiscal year 2024 goal of 55,000 new soldiers a month before the election after missing its recruiting target for the previous two years. The Army also announced in October that it would increase this fiscal year's recruiting target by 6,000 soldiers.
Currently, there is not enough data to either prove or disprove that more Americans are joining the Army as a result of Trump's reelection, said Katherine Kuzminski, director of the Military, Veterans, and Society Program at the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington, D.C.
'We began to see the turnaround in Army recruiting beginning last August as a result of efforts put into place in 2022-2023,' Kuzminski told Task & Purpose on Wednesday. 'The Future Soldier Prep Course played (and continues to play) a large role in that success — yielding 25% of last year's recruits and keeping up the momentum into this administration.'
A major factor that is driving the Army's recent recruiting success is the Future Soldier Preparatory Course, Kuzminski said. About 13,200 recruits joined the Army through the course in fiscal year 2024.
The Army has also taken steps to professionalize its recruiters, and the service's 'Be All You Can Be' recruiting campaign may have appealed to parents and other adults who can influence whether young Americans join the military, she said.
Unemployment rates, however, are not contributing to the Army's recruiting success, Kuzmiksi said. The rates have remained fairly consistent at around 4.2% from 2024 to 2025.
Driscoll acknowledged that the Army still faces some challenges to recruiting, noting that the service's MHS Genesis System, which has been criticized for disqualifying potential recruits for minor health issues, is 'inadequate.'
Project 2025, the policy blueprint produced by the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C., recommended that the Army suspend using the system because it causes 'unnecessary delays and unwarranted rejections.'
'The Genesis program in and of itself is a classic example, I think, of the Army being part of a solution that is siloed and ineffective and inefficient,' Driscoll said. 'And it's probably going to be a better solution to go out and grab a tool that is used in areas in the commercial sector.'
Driscoll said that the Army has started using the commercially available Salesforce platform and has seen 'incredible results.'
He added that 'in a perfect world,' the Army would be able to use a system like Salesforce along with a generative artificial intelligence model to determine, 'Hey, is this a kid who got an inhaler when they were 12-and-two months and never used it, vs. someone when they were 17-and-a-half actively was using an inhaler.'
UPDATE: 06/04/2025; this story was updated with figures about the Army's Future Soldier Preparatory Course for fiscal year 2025.
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