In a Tuesday press conference, Reps. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., and Gil Cisneros, D-Calif., announced their joint amendment’s introduction, calling it pertinent to military readiness and the well-being of American troops.

“That is almost 300 future airmen and women who would not be finishing their training at their expected date,” Cisneros, a former under secretary of defense for personnel readiness, said in the briefing. “This has completely set back the Air Force’s expected recruitment class from entering the future squadrons on time.”

This move comes after a flu outbreak sickened hundreds of trainees at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, and killed one. Castro, whose district houses Lackland, confirmed that 284 trainees contracted the flu, four have been hospitalized and one has died.

Over a week ago, the Air Force announced that the training wing at Lackland suffered a localized outbreak over the three weeks prior but did not mention how many trainees contracted the flu.

Keon McDaniel, a basic military trainee from the 737th Training Support Squadron at Lackland, died on June 16 at Brooke Army Medical Center due to a medical emergency. Lackland officials said an investigation into the cause of his death is currently underway. Air Force officials declined at the time to comment on if his passing was related to the flu outbreak.

But Castro, who requested an investigation into McDaniel’s death in relation to the flu, revealed Tuesday that the Air Force confirmed that the trainee did die from the outbreak on base, according to a release.

“This is a tragedy that could have been prevented were it not for the reckless actions of Secretary [of Defense Pete] Hegseth,” Castro said in the statement.

The outbreak caused lawmakers to express concern over the current optional flu vaccine policy for service members and Pentagon civilian personnel that went into effect in April, two months before the outbreak.

Hegseth announced that service members would no longer be required to get the annual flu vaccine, citing the prior policy as “overly broad and not rational.”

Last week, the Pentagon granted exceptions to policy requests, or ETPs, to military services and some federal agencies, allowing for the slight reversal to be included into Hegseth’s guidance.

The services with ETPs granted by Under Secretary of Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata include the Department of the Army, Department of the Navy and Department of the Air Force.

Given that the Marine Corps and Space Force are under the Department of the Navy and Department of the Air Force, respectively, the services are also included in the exceptions.

The Pentagon declined to comment on if all trainees would be required to get the flu vaccine or when the exceptions were requested and granted. The Associated Press reported that all trainees for basic military training would now be required to receive the vaccine, citing a Pentagon official.

Castro confirmed in the Tuesday briefing that the Air Force’s exception to vaccinate all trainees was not approved until after the outbreak occurred even though it was requested about a month prior.

Houlahan said that there has been no indication of flu outbreaks at bases other than Lackland, but it is considered an “ongoing concern.”

“Now, nothing’s ever perfect. You could get the vaccine, and you still may get the flu or any other disease that may come forth, but it does make a difference,” Cisneros, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said in the press conference.

The representatives that brought forth the amendment last week criticized their Republican counterparts for previously rejecting the measure’s inclusion in the final NDAA rules package, prompting another push to revert the policy to again require all service members to receive a flu vaccine.

The NDAA is currently moving through both chambers of Congress, with the House and Senate versions awaiting full consideration on their respective floors.

The Army signed contracts with 62,050 recruits, or 101.72% of its goal, while the Navy brought in 44,096 recruits, exceeding its target by more than 8%. The Air Force recruited 30,166 airmen; the Space Force brought in 819 Guardians; and the Marine Corps met its goal of 26,600 recruits.

Collectively, the five services achieved 103% of their active-duty recruiting mission, according to Pentagon officials.

After several years of recruiting shortfalls, military leaders have highlighted recruiting gains in congressional testimony, public remarks and service announcements.

For new recruits and the units waiting to receive them, however, signing a contract is only the first step. Recruits must still complete initial training, occupational schooling, technical certifications and, in many cases, security clearance requirements before joining the operational force.

As recruiting numbers improve, questions remain about how long it takes recruits to become mission qualified and contribute to military readiness.

How quickly recruits move from accession to operational qualification can affect force generation, unit staffing and long-term readiness planning.

Military leaders routinely report recruiting totals and accession goals, but the time required to transform recruits into fully qualified service members can vary significantly by specialty, training requirements and follow-on certifications. Those timelines help illustrate how quickly recruiting gains translate into trained personnel available to operational units.

Little public info on path to readiness

There is no single timeline for becoming fully mission capable. Training requirements vary significantly by specialty, with some support and administrative fields producing qualified service members in a matter of months, while highly technical and special operations pipelines can take more than a year and, in some cases, several years.

To determine what information is publicly available about how recruits become operationally ready, Military Times reviewed readiness documents, service training materials, congressional reporting requirements and Government Accountability Office reports.

The services routinely publish recruiting totals, accession targets and shipping figures. Army, Navy and Air Force leaders regularly testify before Congress about recruiting performance and often release updates throughout the year.

As of publication, Military Times was unable to identify a publicly available, department-wide metric measuring how long it takes recruits to become fully mission capable.

The absence of publicly available reports does not indicate whether the department tracks those timelines internally. Among the systems DoD uses to assess readiness are the Defense Readiness Reporting System and the Chairman’s Readiness System. Those systems primarily focus on unit personnel, equipment, supplies, training and mission capability.

GAO reviews of military readiness describe DoD readiness assessments that include personnel, maintenance, training and mission-capability measures. In a 2023 review, GAO reported that resource readiness ratings measure the status of personnel, equipment, supplies and training, while mission capability ratings assess whether units can accomplish their designed missions.

Military Times asked the Department of Defense whether it maintains a department-wide metric measuring the average amount of time required to move recruits from accession to operational qualification and, if so, whether that information is reported to Congress or made publicly available. In response, Pentagon Press Operations referred Military Times to the military services for information on accession-to-readiness timelines.

Requests for additional information were also sent to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Space Force regarding whether they track the amount of time required for recruits to become fully mission qualified and whether those data are reported outside the services.

Federal law requires the Defense Department to maintain a comprehensive readiness reporting system.

Under 10 U.S.C. § 117, the secretary of defense must ensure the system objectively measures the capability of the armed forces to carry out national defense missions and includes assessments of unit readiness, training establishments and defense infrastructure. The statute also requires readiness policies to be applied uniformly across the department through a single authoritative reporting system.

The law does not explicitly require reporting on the amount of time needed to move individual recruits from accession to full mission qualification. Military Times was unable to identify publicly available documentation showing that accession-to-readiness timelines are included as a standardized department-wide measure.

Timing differs by service and specialty

Military officials do not generally define readiness solely by branch. Training pipelines are largely determined by occupational specialty.

Training timelines vary widely. Some support specialties may require only a few months of initial training, while combat arms, technical and specialized career fields often require substantially longer pipelines. Highly technical career fields, including cyber, intelligence and nuclear specialties, can require 12 months or more of schooling and follow-on qualifications, depending on specialty and qualification requirements. Special operations pipelines frequently extend well beyond a year.

Army recruits complete Basic Combat Training, followed by Advanced Individual Training in most specialties, while some combat arms occupations use One Station Unit Training, which combines both phases.

Depending on military occupational specialty, follow-on schooling can last from four weeks to more than a year. Infantry recruits complete One Station Unit Training, which typically lasts about 22 weeks.

Marine recruits spend approximately 13 weeks at boot camp before moving to Marine Combat Training or the Infantry Training Battalion, and then occupational specialty schools. Depending on specialty, Marine training pipelines can extend for several additional months.

Navy recruits complete approximately nine weeks at Recruit Training Command before reporting to “A” schools. Job training ranges from several weeks to more than a year, particularly in highly technical communities such as nuclear propulsion.

Air Force recruits complete 52 days, or roughly seven and a half weeks, of Basic Military Training at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland before entering technical training. Depending on specialty, technical training can last from several weeks to many months, particularly in cyber and special warfare career fields.

Space Force Guardians attend Air Force Basic Military Training before entering specialized technical pipelines focused on cyber, intelligence and space operations.

Completing occupational training does not necessarily mean a service member is immediately considered fully mission capable. Newly assigned personnel often complete additional local certifications, field exercises and collective training requirements after arriving at operational units.

Navy officials said readiness is generally measured through demonstrated proficiency rather than time spent in training. Capt. Candice Tresch, public affairs director for the Chief of Naval Personnel, said sailors first complete initial training, and then continue qualifying at their commands through warfare qualifications, emergency drills and unit-level training.

“There’s really no specific [timeline], in six months you go from the street to proficient sailor,” Tresch told Military Times. “It’s a continuous progression.”

Tresch said qualification timelines vary by specialty, command and operational requirements. Operational demands can also accelerate or extend training schedules.

“It’s not really time-based. [It’s] can you do the mission?” she said.

Constraints to military training, readiness

Government Accountability Office reports, congressional testimony and publicly available military documents describe factors affecting military readiness and training, including schoolhouse capacity, instructor availability, maintenance requirements, security clearance processing and equipment availability.

Recent GAO reviews identified training limitations, personnel shortages, maintenance delays, sustainment challenges and infrastructure constraints affecting readiness across the force.

One GAO review examining sailor-led ship maintenance found that the Navy did not track and report certain personnel data, including the number of sailors assigned to ships but unavailable for duty. GAO recommended that the Navy collect and report additional personnel information to improve oversight and the quality of information provided to Congress.

The services already report numerous readiness measures, including personnel levels, training status and mission-capability rates. Military Times did not identify publicly available documentation showing that those readiness measures include standardized timelines for moving recruits from accession to full mission qualification.

Congress receives regular updates on recruiting performance and unit readiness. Military Times did not identify publicly available documentation showing whether Congress receives standardized, department-wide data on how long recruits take to become fully mission capable.

The services routinely publish detailed recruiting data, including accession totals, shipping figures and boot camp graduations. Whether DoD also maintains or publicly reports a standardized measure tracking how long recruits take to become fully mission capable remains unclear.

Navy officials told Military Times that readiness is generally measured through demonstrated proficiency rather than a fixed timeline and said qualification timelines vary by specialty, command and operational requirements.

At publication, the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps and Space Force had not responded to Military Times’ requests for comment.

Former Sgt. 1st Class Jane Crosby, 35, pleaded guilty to bank fraud and aggravated identity theft in federal court, according to a press release, after using the victims’ personal information to apply for $266,000 in loans and credit card accounts and to withdraw money and deposit fraudulent checks. Task & Purpose first reported on the case Wednesday.

Court documents and statements say that between around September and December 2023, Crosby used the prospective recruits’ personal information to apply for special credit union accounts intended for future service members, the office said. After creating the accounts without the victims’ knowledge, Crosby used their identities for loan and credit card applications and used the accounts for illegal banking transactions.

One document said that multiple calls from Crosby’s office phone number were made to a credit union, which was not named, where the caller impersonated two of the victims while trying to access their accounts.

At the time of the scheme, Crosby was assigned to a recruiting station in East Orange, New Jersey, and used would-be recruits’ personal documents that included passports, driver’s licenses and Social Security cards.

The recruiter faces up to 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine for bank fraud as well as an additional two years with a maximum fine of $250,000 for the aggravated identity theft.

Military Times reached out to the Army to confirm Crosby’s current status.

Having been medically rejected three times before ultimately receiving a medical waiver to join the Air National Guard in 2018, I know firsthand how illogical and infuriating this process can be. But, it was through my efforts advising over 400 similarly rejected applicants that I realized that larger-scale change is needed. By my calculations, over 15,000 applicants are medically rejected each year without applying for a waiver, with even more denied at the recruiter’s door or self-selecting out from applying at all. At a time when the military is facing a recruiting crisis, shouldn’t it be doing everything it can to bring in applicants who are ready and willing but currently unable to serve?

More than 15,000 applicants per year rejected without a waiver appeal

How many potential recruits is the military missing out on? According to a 2022 Accession Medical Standards Analysis and Research Activity report, 1.35 million applicants received a physical at MEPS from 2016-2020. Of that population, 13-16% were medically disqualified, yet only 47-66% of disqualified applicants applied for a medical waiver. By my calculations, from 2016-2020, as many as 85,000 applicants were rejected and did not apply for a medical waiver.

Why would an applicant not request a waiver? The answer comes down to incentives — and who actually does the paperwork. For most applicants, recruiters determine whether or not to submit for a waiver review. However, recruiters are evaluated by the total number of recruits they bring in, often based on monthly or yearly quotas. This disincentivizes them from prioritizing applicants who require waivers, which require more work, take more time, and may ultimately result in rejection. Additionally, recruiters are neither medical professionals nor empowered to evaluate an applicant holistically, which, in fact, is the intent of the waiver process. So, recruiters are unfortunately being put in the position of effectively making waiver decisions when they decide not to submit an applicant at all.

Let’s take 2020 as a case study, when the military services saw the following numbers of applicants, disqualifications, and waivers based on AMSARA’s 2022 Annual Report:

• Army: 120,500 applicants, 14% disqualified (16,750), 8,500 did not apply for waiver.
• Navy: 46,300 applicants, 16% disqualified (7,400), 3,100 did not apply for waiver.
• Air Force: 39,500 applicants, 16% disqualified (6,200), 2,500 did not apply for waiver.
• Marine Corps: 42,500 applicants, 14% disqualified (5,700), 1,800 did not apply for waiver.

So, in 2020 alone, 36,000 potential service members were rejected and 16,000 did not apply for a waiver. When you consider the previous four years as well, 192,000 applicants were medically rejected and 85,000 did not apply for a waiver.

It is important to note that these numbers are an underestimation of total applicants, since recruiters often exercise a “pocket veto” that prevents applicants from processing at MEPS or appealing for a waiver. Additionally, these disqualification statistics do not include the increased rate of disqualifications under MHS Genesis, an electronic health records system launched in 2023, which automatically flags civilian medical and prescription records. This forced disclosure of any and all potentially relevant medical records — which may be outdated, inaccurate, and irrelevant to an applicant’s ability to serve — will now cause only more hurdles.

The question remains: how many of these rejected applicants might be able to serve if given the opportunity to apply for a waiver?

Automatically push all applicants for a waiver

In the near term, a simple fix to this problem would be to automatically push all disqualified applicants for a waiver review. This would immediately double the number of applicants receiving waiver reviews and consequently increase the number of waivers approved. It would end the pocket veto of recruiters, who can slow roll or prevent applicants from applying for waivers. And it would give all applicants a chance to be evaluated holistically as to whether the potential risks they pose are outweighed by the value they bring to the military despite their medical conditions.

Waiver approval rates are currently 60-70%. How many of the 85,000 applicants currently rejected without a waiver might receive one if given the opportunity? There is no way to know for sure. But if we assume, for example, that 25% might be waived, the military could have received 21,000 additional recruits in the past five years. While this would not solve the entire military recruitment crisis, this improvement would result in a significant step towards improving the military recruitment crisis and is wholly within the military’s control.

Tailor medical requirements to job requirements

Requiring all applicants to apply for waivers is only a band-aid solution. Given current qualification standards prevent 77% of American youth from being eligible to serve, changing these standards would increase the supply of potential applicants to much more than just 23% of American youth. The long term solution, therefore, is to tailor military medical standards to military roles (i.e. MOS/AFSC). The military already exercises more waiver flexibility for jobs which are not physically demanding, such as chaplains, lawyers, and doctors, and has increased medical requirements for physically demanding jobs, such as fighter pilots and special forces. Why not expand this practice to all career fields?

Today, many military roles such as intelligence, logistics, or cyber, while critically important, are no more physically taxing than their civilian equivalents. Shouldn’t these roles have lower medical barriers to entry? Each Service could grade each MOS/AFSC as high, medium, or low risk from a physical and medical perspective and update standards and waiver recommendations accordingly. Just like applicants are currently waived for a specific branch, in the future they could be waived for specific jobs. If they wanted to switch, their medical status would need to be taken into consideration.

The needs of the military

Some will argue that tailoring medical standards and waiver guidelines is tantamount to “lowering standards.” I agree that not all conditions should be eligible for a waiver and that neither fitness standards nor job requirements be lowered. Deployability should be considered as well, yet deployability for support functions often means working on an established base or even deployment in place. Overall, the point is that medical standards should match the job, not be needlessly strict and standardized.

At the end of the day, the needs of the military come before any individual applicant. But what, exactly, are the needs of the military? Right now, the military needs to recruit thousands more qualified, competent, and fit individuals per year. The military can make simple changes to eligibility right now to open the floodgates of applicants who are already ready and willing to serve. The question remains whether the Department of Defense will choose to do so.

Joe Schuman is an Air National Guard officer and has published multiple articles on military recruitment issues as well as advised over 400 applicants on navigating the military medical waiver process. The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of Defense. He can be reached at joeschuman1234@gmail.com.

But efforts to spruce up lackluster recruiting across the armed forces have yielded mixed results so far.

The Air Force has so far managed to reverse its misfortunes, exceeding its goal of 6,249 new active duty airmen by 130 people as of the end of December 2023, according to recently released Pentagon statistics.

That’s due in part to a slew of policy tweaks aimed at growing the pool of eligible prospects, a growing staff focused on battling a backlog of medical paperwork, and a fourth-quarter push to get as large of a head start on fiscal 2024 recruitment as possible.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air Warfare Symposium in Colorado, Air Force recruiting boss Brig. Gen. Christopher Amrhein said he is “cautiously optimistic” about staying on track for the rest of the year.

“Instead of booking weeks in advance, we’re booking multiple months in advance,” he said of shipping newcomers to boot camp. “We’re not seeing this edge of the cliff.”

America’s two largest armed forces, however, are still struggling to woo prospective troops. The Army brought in almost 6,100 new soldiers between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, 2023, falling short at 74% of its first-quarter goal, according to DOD. The Navy fared worse at about 5,400 new sailors, or 65% of its own target.

Still, Army recruiters are outpacing their performance from the same time last year, when they had reached just 68% of their active duty goal. The Navy’s intake rate mirrors where it stood at the end of the first quarter of fiscal 2023.

The Space Force and Marine Corps, the Pentagon’s smallest branches and the only two services that reached their active duty accession goals last year, have continued that success in 2024. About 2,200 new Marines had signed up as of the end of December, exceeding the Corps’ first-quarter goal, and the Space Force gained 110 guardians to meet its own objective, DOD statistics show.

The Air Force, Space Force and Marine Corps were the only services to meet or exceed the Pentagon’s quality benchmarks for active duty recruits. For instance, the military wants at least 90% of recruits to have a high school diploma, and at least 60% of recruits must score above average on the Armed Forces Qualification Test.

Five of the military’s six reserve components also missed their recruiting goals for the first three months of fiscal 2024. The Marine Corps Reserve was the lone success: It signed up more than 1,800 new troops, around 700 more than the service had sought.

“The recruiting market remains challenging,” the Pentagon said in its undated press release. “The department continues to work collaboratively with the services to develop new strategies to address recruiting challenges.”

The U.S. military fell more than 41,000 people short of its fiscal 2023 enlisted recruiting goal as it faced a complex web of challenges ranging from dwindling interest in military service among America’s youth and the country’s obesity epidemic, to the introduction of an electronic health records system that has slowed in-processing to a crawl.

The services have addressed the problem through policy changes that have gradually broadened the pool of eligible applicants, expanding the recruiting corps and adding staffers to tackle the backlog of medical paperwork spurred by the new Genesis electronic health records system.

While Genesis aims to paint a more holistic picture of a person’s health history by pulling together medical records dating back to childhood, it can also flag old prescriptions and incidents that wouldn’t hinder a recruit’s ability to do their job. But weeding out the truly problematic cases takes time.

Nearly 9,000 prospective Air Force and Space Force recruits dropped out of consideration because of the time it took to process their medical records, Amrhein said. He added that about 70% of recruits who seek waivers for disqualifying medical conditions — like diabetes, endometriosis or depression — receive them.

“If you do the math … you’re somewhere in the ballpark of 5,600 folks that we could have likely brought in if we had a little bit more accelerated medical processing,” he said.

A total of about 400 new recruits have qualified for service under less-stringent rules around THC and tattoos, Amrhein said. Around 225 more have qualified for a college loan repayment program implemented last summer; the service estimates 500 people may be eligible for the initiative each year. And almost 200 have enlisted through a new family-and-friends referral program.

More than 2,000 additional airmen have enlisted after the service tweaked its body composition requirements last year to allow recruits with a higher percentage of body fat.

“With each of these policy changes, we have changed the lives of individuals who would have otherwise been prevented from service in the Air Force or Space Force,” Amrhein said, adding, “The caliber of our recruits remains uncompromised.”

He added that the Department of the Air Force has changed its policy on recruiting non-citizens to allow lawful permanent residents with two-year conditional Green Cards or visas to apply for service.

“This change now allows more lawful permanent residents to join our ranks and become eligible for accelerated naturalization by the virtue of their military service,” Amrhein said. “We urge our recruiters to apprise all of the legal permanent residents of this pathway to U.S. citizenship through military enlistment, and to furnish them with the necessary information.”

The Air Force argues that filling its ranks with new recruits and returning retirees, whom it invited back to staff a select list of jobs earlier this month, is crucial to maintaining military readiness as it looks to outpace China’s military ambitions.

But all of its progress is undermined by Congress’s failure to approve a new budget for fiscal 2024, Amrhein said.

“The threats of our near competitors are no longer in the faint distance,” he said. “They’re here now. … We need every resource available to ensure we’re reaching those willing to join.”

Months later, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth tapped that same officer, Lt. Gen. Doug Stitt, to lead a months-long “clean slate” study — if nothing were assumed, how would the Army structure its recruiting and marketing apparatus? Stitt’s team, armed with a reform mandate fueled by an “existential” recruiting crisis, came back with a sweeping array of recommended changes that service leaders largely adopted.

One aspect stood out: a series of organizational moves will likely refashion Recruiting Command into an entity that strongly resembles Accessions Command, a three-star headquarters dismantled in 2012 in order to balance the books amid budget cuts and economic woes.

After Accessions Command shut down, its components were scattered to the winds. Marketing was reorganized and fell under Army Manpower & Reserve Affairs, a Pentagon-based policy organization; Recruiting Command and Cadet Command reported to Training and Doctrine Command. The Army’s reforms will reunite the three functions — enlisted recruiting, officer recruiting and development, and marketing — under a more powerful Recruiting Command to be led by a three-star general who will report directly to the Army secretary.

Why are some hallmarks of Accessions Command’s structure returning? Army leaders have dodged the question. So, Army Times reviewed historical documents and spoke with former Accessions Command figures and Army marketing officials in order to explore why Accessions Command got the axe and why the Army seemingly found value in reincarnating a once-abandoned structure.

The answers may be obvious: the budget-focused demise of Accessions Command was shortly followed by recruiting’s terminal decline. The Army’s recruiters have not met their contract quotas since 2014, instead meeting basic training enrollment goals by gradually sucking dry the deep pool of delayed entry contracts they inherited from Accessions Command.

“This is ‘back to the future’ and that’s a good thing,” said Bruce Jasurda, the defunct command’s chief marketing officer from 2009 to 2012. “The Army is returning to a proven model.”

Every person interviewed by Army Times for this article said that the reorganization could unlock a higher level of synchronization between enlisted recruiting, officer recruiting and marketing. But some identified possible points of risk — without dedicated marketing expertise in the command’s headquarters or the right mix of decision-making power and resources, they argued, the sweeping reforms may fall short of their potential.

Army officials are hesitant thus far to divulge what they learned from Accessions Command throughout the summer-long reform study group that Wormuth chartered, perhaps because it would mean acknowledging its demise was a mistake.

“This is not about revisiting the past,” Stitt said in response to an Army Times question at an Oct. 9 panel discussion. Instead, he argued, the group focused more on what authorities, resources and structure Recruiting Command would need moving forward. Co-panelist Maj. Gen. Johnny Davis, who leads USAREC, echoed Stitt’s sentiment.

Some observers — like retired Lt. Gen. Benjamin Freakley, the top officer of Accessions Command from 2007 until he retired at its January 2012 inactivation ceremony — expressed guarded optimism. Stitt’s study group contacted him and Jasurda over the summer.

“I believe the Army will fix this and will be stronger for it,” Freakley told Army Times, so long as the service has “the gumption” to be truly introspective.

But doing so may be a challenge for an Army whose own experts say that its organizations and leaders are incentivized to feign perfection or create an illusion of never-ending progress, whereby countless corners are turned.

Savings, but at what cost?

When the Defense Department announced in April 2011 that Accessions Command was on the chopping block, the Pentagon press release claimed the move would “streamline the Army’s accessioning process and produce savings by de-layering the command structure without increasing the risk to the Army.” The announcement celebrated the number of jobs the move cut, and an annual management report later said the Army “saved an estimated $764 million by restructuring its recruiting and retention efforts.”

Yet when the axe fell, the headquarters was succeeding in its mission to woo prospects, sign them to contracts and ship them to training. Every fiscal year, Army recruiters receive a contract mission (one larger than the annual “accessions mission” that tracks those who ship to basic training) in order to fill the Delayed Entry Pool with signed troops awaiting training.

That’s where Accessions Command stood out, Jasurda said.

In addition to meeting its accessions mission — the number of new soldiers that the Army wanted to send to training — in its final two fiscal years of existence, Accessions Command also capitalized on flagging economic conditions and had 58% of the fiscal 2012 recruitment goal already signed to delayed entry contracts.

That success quickly dissipated after the command shuttered.

Army leaders knew something was wrong. Then-Maj. Gen. Thomas Seamands, a personnel officer who retired as a three-star, told Congress in 2014 that an ongoing decline in the delayed entry pool was “a canary in the coal mine … warning about a tough environment ahead.”

The Army has failed to achieve the contract mission in every fiscal year since 2014, according to documents reviewed by Army Times, and that forced the service to gradually drain its delayed entry pool to meet annual entry quotas. As new recruits’ average wait time decreased, so did Recruiting Command’s ability to keep relying on the pool, because the service could not refill it quickly enough.

The pool, which had over 30,000 recruits on the eve of fiscal 2012, now numbers around 4,600, or 7.3% of its fiscal 2024 target to access 62,600 enlistees. Even during the War on Terror troop surges that massively increased the Army’s size amid recruiting struggles, the pool never dropped below a pre-fiscal 2008 nadir of 8%, then described as “the smallest ever [delayed entry pool].”

Freakley, the former Accessions Command leader, told Army Times that much of the command’s success stemmed from its unified control of organizations and resources — marketing in particular. The three-star general’s headquarters also served as the executive agent overseeing Military Entrance Processing Command.

“[The Army] basically walked away from a fundamental principle of unity of command and unity of effort,” Freakley said. “They’re trying to bring unity of command and unity of effort back. Will it be effective? It depends.”

Jasurda, the former top marketer, emphasized that marketing was a “huge part” of their recruiting success. He pointed to now-defunct efforts to harness then-cutting-edge technologies such as Army Strong Stories, a blogging platform where troops could diary their experiences in their particular career field for prospective troops, and online live chats with deployed soldiers.

But in the Army’s successor organizations, “marketing was detached from the sales function,” Jasurda observed. “We pulled apart the parts that made Accessions Command successful…and I hope that’s something that the new Recruiting Command structure is addressing.”

More than lines on an org chart

In the years since Accessions Command shut down, the Army’s marketing apparatus struggled. The Pentagon-based Army Marketing and Research Group was abolished in 2019. Its reign ended after a scandalous affair between a senior Army marketer and an executive from their advertising agency partner, as well as a watchdog report that found it couldn’t link its spending to results.

The current Army Enterprise Marketing Office arose from its predecessor’s ashes in 2019, under now-retired Maj. Gen. Alex Fink, an Army Reserve officer with deep civilian marketing experience. Fink spoke with Army Times via phone.

Fink said he inherited a “difficult relationship” between the Army’s marketers and Recruiting Command, and said “one of my [first] priorities was to repair that relationship — and it didn’t happen overnight.” He pointed to the launch of the renewed “Be all you can be” brand as an example of successful collaboration between the two offices that harnessed his team’s new data and analytics capacity.

Two officers from Fink’s former office also spoke with Army Times for this story. They asked their names remain unpublished so they could speak frankly (and without authorization) about the marketing office’s relationship with recruiting and about the potential benefits and risks of subordinating it to Recruiting Command.

The two officers said that such collaboration happens regularly, but sometimes it isn’t smooth.

“USAREC could make requests [to the marketing office] that were pretty in the weeds,” said one marketing officer, who said the conversation sometimes glossed over “the big objectives or goals [of the action] were.” But he also freely confessed that the office “an be accused — maybe rightfully — of some ivory tower marketing.”

The second officer said “organizational friction” between the two offices inevitably occurred because they answered to different bosses. “We’re in two different headquarters, with two different bosses who might have been given two different sets of priorities or even objectives,” the second officer explained, adding that sometimes USAREC’s requests didn’t “seem all that important” to AEMO and vice versa.

The first officer said one such instance came when Recruiting Command requested a website made specifically for recruiting women just “because the Navy had one.”

Yet both officers — and the former accessions and marketing leaders — all professed optimism for the reorganization.

“If the commanding general of USAREC and the commanding general of Cadet Command have the responsibility to build the Army, they need the authorities to help shape the messaging to meet their mission,” Freakley said. He likened the divorce of recruiting and marketing to launching infantry assaults without artillery support.

Jasurda, the Accessions Command-era top marketer, used a similar metaphor. “Rolling the Army Enterprise Marketing Office under Recruiting Command now affords the command the ability to shift and lift the assets…within the marketing arm to where the Army’s greatest needs are in recruiting,” he said.

Former marketing office chief Fink argued the realignment would cement the improved relationship and pay long-term planning dividends. He also noted that making USAREC “own” marketing “is also going to force them to become much more engaged” with it on a regular basis, and it could provide an opportunity to streamline career development for marketing officers through recruiting leadership assignments.

Words of warning

But the two marketing officers who spoke with Army Times also voiced concern over the new direction, with one arguing that the realignment will ensure “both organizations are on the same page,” before noting that its success ultimately depends on “if it’s the right page.” The second officer stressed that Recruiting Command’s future leaders will only be as good as their teams, and the feedback they’re given. He said the Army urgently needs to determine where its data-driven marketing analytics and strategic planning firepower belongs on the new Recruiting Command organizational chart, or else the realignment could flop.

The former Accessions Command head, Freakley, encouraged the service to consider adding a civilian chief marketing officer to Recruiting Command headquarters to oversee the marketing office and provide counsel to the commander.

Freakley also argued that the reforms’ ultimate success will depend on how much autonomy the new-look Recruiting Command will receive to execute its transformation.

The retired three-star cited “confusion in the past” between Pentagon policy organizations and operational organizations about the matter. When policy-first organizations oversee operational efforts like recruiting, he explained, policy organizations’ bureaucratic inclination to overanalyze decisions risks hamstringing the command when decisive action is needed.

“The recruiting community in general has responsibility and authority to recruit the force,” Freakley said. “[But] does [the commander] control the resources? Does he control the marketing and advertising? Does he control the number of recruiters in the field? Does he control the authorities over the funding from marketing and advertising to bonuses for potential recruits?” Those questions aren’t answered yet.

Sometimes, he concluded, “they need to let the operational forces do their job.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., sent Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin a letter Wednesday seeking answers about whether Military Health System Genesis — a medical records platform that the military first used for screening recruits last year — has slowed the recruitment process by forcing qualified applicants to secure medical waivers.

“While some of these flags merit review, the system is also delaying enlistees with manageable or long-healed injuries,” the letter states. “This may delay recruits’ enlistment processes if medical conditions require applicants to obtain medical waivers, which can take weeks or even months to be completed.”

The letter cites a Military Times report this spring in which recruiters from across the services alleged Genesis was making it harder to fill the ranks as the military struggles to meet its recruiting targets.

These shortfalls are expected to leave the Army, Navy and Air Force well short of their recruiting goals when the fiscal year ends Sept. 30.

“It is essential that recruits are healthy enough to enlist in the military,” the Senate Armed Services Committee members wrote. “However, DoD needs to examine the steps it is taking to ensure that the process of enlisting and obtaining waivers does not impede the recruitment process.”

Genesis has complicated recruiting because, when applicants try to join, the system pulls all their health records, often unearthing medical conditions that require them to seek waivers or that disqualify them entirely, recruiters said.

Some of these conditions may have healed long ago and have no bearing on applicants’ potential to serve, according to recruiters.

As the enlistment process stretches out, some young people lose interest in serving, recruiters said.

“It comes to the point where they’re like, ‘This is too much work, I’m just gonna go apply at Starbucks,’” a Navy recruiter told Military Times earlier this year.

A Pentagon watchdog report from May confirmed that medical waiver processing times had grown across the services.

Warren and Blumenthal’s letter cites the chief of naval personnel, Vice Adm. Rick Cheeseman, reporting that the time between first interview and contract for Navy applicants rose from 33.8 days to 63.4 days after Genesis was put in place.

Even after making some fixes, the processing time for prospective sailors was still at 59.9 days, according to the letter. The Navy is working with the Center for Naval Analyses “to better understand the root cause of these delays,” according to the senators’ letter.

“We urge the other services to also evaluate these delays and implement policy changes as soon as possible to address these inefficiencies,” the senators wrote.

Maj. Gen. Edward Thomas, the head of Air Force Recruiting Service, said in February that the congressionally mandated Genesis system “wasn’t ready for deployment in recruiting.”

Warren and Blumenthal’s letter also cites Military Times reporting showing that the number of applicants seeking waivers has soared, though the Pentagon’s data was inconsistent with that of the services and the Army refused to provide data. Army Times reporting revealed the branch mobilized Reserve doctors to get through a medical waiver backlog.

The senators requested data on processing delays and waivers, and asked what steps the military is taking to evaluate changes to what disqualifies applicants from service.

Defense Department officials said this spring that Genesis does not reduce the population of qualified applicants — it just confirms their physical and mental readiness to serve. Officials did not answer questions regarding whether they believed Genesis had played a role in the current recruiting crisis.

In Wednesday’s letter, the senators also sought answers regarding how DoD protects the private patient records in Genesis.

The Genesis system is based on a product by Cerner, which Oracle acquired in June 2022. In its role as a broker of online data, Oracle has come under scrutiny for alleged violations of people’s privacy, the senators wrote.

Warren and Blumenthal also raised concerns that service members and their families may need to provide a credit card number to log on to the system, potentially creating a barrier to access.

Recruiters previously told Military Times that one way Genesis hampered recruiting is by making it harder for applicants to downplay medical conditions. It used to be that applicants could get into the military by fudging aspects of their self-reported medical histories, recruiters said.

“Now that Genesis exists, we can no longer hide things,” one Marine recruiter told Military Times.

The letter from Warren and Blumenthal didn’t address that aspect of Genesis’ reported effect on recruiting.

The senators requested answers from Austin’s office by Oct. 11.

The Office of the Secretary for Defense didn’t immediately respond to Military Times’ request for comment on the letter.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth previously said the service will miss its fiscal 2023 recruiting goals, and she said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado on July 20 that the service will beat its fiscal 2022 active duty totals “by several thousand.” The service previously refused to release detailed in-progress recruiting numbers, though Wormuth said she believes the service will bring in between 50,000 and 55,000 new active duty soldiers out of a goal of 65,000, according to Stars and Stripes.

Army Times obtained internal Army Recruiting Command figures that indicate the service has reached approximately two-thirds of its combined active duty and Army Reserve enlisted contract goals as of Sept. 1. The command issues internal contract goals that differ from the Army’s official accessions goals, explained Army spokesperson Lt. Col. Ruth Castro, who authenticated the numbers.

According to the internal document obtained by Army Times, the command intended to sign nearly 94,000 active and reserve applicants before Sept. 30. But as of Sept. 1, with one month to go in the fiscal year, only around 62,500 recruits (or two-thirds of the contract target) had signed up. Pre-training losses winnowed that number to just under 60,000, or approximately 63.7% of the signing goal.

The contract mission goes beyond the Army’s annual goals and “takes into consideration multiple factors,” Castro said, including “the following year’s accessions mission, along with required entry pool.” She also highlighted leaders’ “dedicated efforts to transform Army recruiting.”

The document does not separate active duty and Army Reserve totals. Personnel from the recruiting command find troops for both components, and the internal report is intended to compare recruiting brigades’ performance rather than analyze which recruits are heading where.

But according to the Defense Department’s most recent public totals, which tracked fiscal 2023 accessions through May, the active duty Army has fared better than the Army Reserve but much worse than the Army National Guard.

As of June 1, the active duty Army had more than 25,000 new soldiers and was on track to attain 68.15% of its accessions goal, the Army Reserve was on pace for 61.59% of its recruiting mission, and the Army Guard was on pace to reach 96.75% of its target.

It’s not clear whether the respective components have maintained those paces — and even that may not be enough to meet the projected totals shared by Wormuth. If the active duty Army were to finish around 68% of its 65,000-soldier goal, its annual total would land slightly lower than fiscal 2022′s 45,000 new recruits.

But the service is relatively optimistic. Castro, the Army spokesperson, argued that “momentum continues to build” with the service’s recruiting push, and celebrated “an increased number of applicants” seen so far in the final quarter of fiscal 2023.

Although Army leaders insist the service has not lowered standards in order to make its recruiting quotas, its Future Soldier Prep Course has accepted recruits who didn’t meet fitness or testing standards and helped them improve in order to enter the Army. Since its inception, the largely successful course has graduated 95% of its attendees, netting 10,000 recruits who moved on to basic training. Officials recently announced it will be a permanent part of the service’s entry training apparatus.

The course is one of many efforts the Army launched in response to the crisis. Other programs include recruiting referral awards, increased bonuses and contract options, and a nine-figure marketing rebrand.

It’s also unclear if or when the service will be forced to make major force structure cuts in response to flagging recruiting. During summer budget hearings, lawmakers appeared skeptical of the Army’s ability to maintain its current posture, and Wormuth discussed how that process might occur in an exclusive June interview with Army Times. But leaders have projected confidence in their ability to maintain 31 active duty brigade combat teams.

Expert Michael Linnick of the RAND think tank suggested the time for cuts may be at hand unless the Army changes how it handles unit readiness.

“At some point the Army must choose between lowering requirements for soldiers – reducing force structure – or accepting the readiness challenges of having more requirements than it can fill, given the shortages in recruits,” Linnick said via email. “If the Army assesses that the current recruiting environment is the new normal, force structure may almost have to come down or the Army will have to adopt a fundamentally different approach to manning units and maintaining unit readiness.”

The Air National Guard still needs roughly 3,500 troops to fulfill its 108,400 authorized end-strength by Sept. 30. Data provided to Military Times indicates that the Army National Guard has actually surpassed its 2023 personnel goal (by 699), though it has inducted 1,298 fewer recruits than it planned to.

This year’s enlistment numbers mark an improvement from 2022 when the Guard ended the fiscal year with 9,000 fewer soldiers in its ranks. Still, a confluence of factors — a competitive labor market, strict eligibility requirements, and disinterest in military service among eligible recruits — continue to hamper the service’s recruitment efforts.

“This is the most challenging recruiting environment the Department of Defense has probably ever faced, and that reaches across all the components,” Col. Anthony Pasquale, chief of the Air National Guard’s Recruiting and Retention Division, told reporters at a press conference Wednesday.

Most other branches of the military have been afflicted by similar woes. The Navy, Air Force, and Army are also beset by enlistment shortages. Leaders from the three branches laid bare their struggles during a House Armed Services Committee hearing in April. The Army and the Air Force disclosed to members of Congress that both expected to miss their enlistment targets by 10,000; the Navy predicted a personnel deficit of 6,000. The Marines and Space Force, meanwhile, bucked the trend, forecasting a healthy influx of enlistees.

The Guard has spent tens of millions on marketing and advertising efforts to boost its allure, according to officials. Lifted pandemic restrictions have given Guard recruiters greater access to schools, traditionally fertile recruiting grounds.

It has also eased some enlistment requirements. As of this March, for instance, prospective recruits can now sport up to three tattoos instead of one ring-shaped design on their finger. The goal of these adjustments, Pasquale said, is to “open up the aperture to as many candidates that are willing to join the Air National Guard as possible.”

Guard officials say recruitment numbers have ticked up as a result; retainment numbers, they add, remain strong. The Army National Guard claims 3,048 more enlistees have signed up for service than at this time last year. Pasquale told reporters that Air National Guard recruitment has climbed 15% since 2022.

Last year, Gen. Dan Hokanson, the National Guard Bureau’s top general, floated the possibility of offering troops free healthcare and reintroducing bonuses for guard enlistees who refer others to become part-time soldiers to further boost recruitment.

“Expanding access to healthcare for all members of the National Guard continues to be one of the Chief of the National Guard’s top legislative priorities,” a Guard spokesperson told Military Times. “It’s still working its way through the legislative process.”

Last November, Sens. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, introduced a bill that would eliminate fees for guardsmen enrolled in TRICARE Reserve Select, an insurance plan for Guard members. Rep. Andy Kim, D-N.J., sponsored a bill on Tuesday that proposed a similar change. Both have yet to make it past the introduction phase.

It’s also unclear if this recruitment rebound is evenly distributed across states. Guard officials did not provide state-by-state recruitment and retention data, though they acknowledged that some states and territories encounter unique enlistment obstacles.

Competition from the private sector, however, continues to be the most difficult hurdle to jump.

“It’s Wendy’s. It’s Carl’s Jr,” Sgt. Maj. Marco Irenze, a recruiter for Nevada’s Army National Guard, responded when asked about the companies poaching potential Guard recruits. “It’s every single job that you saw a young person go up against because now they are offering the same incentives that we are offering.”

Additionally, National Guard troops trained in IT are often lured away from the military to the tech industry by the prospect of better pay. A Guard official from Washington state lamented that companies like Amazon and Microsoft are nabbing some of its most promising personnel. Recruiters hope training programs and flexible service commitments will make reluctant Guardsmen reconsider.

“Now we can have some flexibility to work with the employers, to allow these individuals to still have opportunities to make the money on the civilian side, and still serve in the Guard in that capacity in different perspectives,” Tech. Sgt. Stephen Graves, a recruiter for the Illinois National Guard, remarked. “That is the way we try to circumvent the competition, but in the end, we also need these individuals and the employers to be on board and understand that their employees are serving commendably.”

The Defense Department Inspector General assessment, released Friday, found that the branches all review and approve medical waivers in the same way.

However, “the Services’ processes did not include tracking whether active-duty enlisted applicants who were permanently disqualified requested a waiver, or were encouraged to pursue one,” the report states. “Nor did the Services track the reason a waiver was not requested.

“By tracking the reasons for not processing a medical waiver, the Services could better understand barriers to entering military service, inform change to recruiting processes, and improve outcome for active-duty enlisted applicants,” the IG states.

Recent data suggests that recruits requiring waivers have become a significant part of the future force.

At least 1 in every 6 military recruits were given waivers to enter service in fiscal 2022, the highest percentage in at least 10 years, according to a Military Times investigation earlier this year.

Leaders of the Army, Navy and Air Force told lawmakers last month that they expect their services to fall short of recruiting goals this fiscal year.

The Army is expected to be short about 10,000 active-duty soldiers, while the Navy will miss its active duty enlisted goal by 6,000 sailors, and the Air Force will fall short of its active duty enlisted recruiting goal by about 3,400 airmen.

The Marine Corps is expected to meet its recruiting goals for fiscal 2023.

The IG looked at all active duty enlisted applicants that were permanently disqualified from service in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps due to a medical condition in fiscal 2021 and 2022.

All told, the services processed 54,206 medical waiver requests in that time frame and approved 77 percent of them from active duty enlisted applicants, according to the report.

Their survey did not include the Space Force, National Guard, reserve components or officer applicants.

When officials at 65 U.S. Military Entrance Processing Command locations nationwide medically disqualify an applicant, the applicant can request a waiver through the branch they are trying to join.

But the services “could not readily provide all of the requested data for active-duty enlisted applicants” that were disqualified by the processing command.

The services are not required to track if an applicant waiver was recommended or requested, the report noted, but added that the services should track and analyze the barriers applicants face when it comes to the medical waiver process “to maximize opportunities for enlistment across the Services.”

The IG also found that recruiting commands faced “delays in medical waiver processing” due to the Military Health System Genesis, which was brought online in March 2022 at Military Entrance Processing Stations, where applicants are medically examined before they can sign up.

Genesis is a medical records system for service members, families and veterans that aims to make it easier for doctors to share medical information. It came about as part of a congressional mandate that the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments digitize health records. In the context of recruiting, the system allows processing stations to look at applicants’ civilian medical records, including hospital visits and prescriptions.

Some recruiters told Military Times earlier this year that Genesis makes it harder for applicants to omit portions of their medical history, a development some believed was contributing to the current recruiting crisis.

As a result, many more applicants are getting flagged, and the time to process applications and waivers is getting longer. Applicants don’t formally sign up until they’re cleared, and that longer process gives them more time to back out.

The IG report recommended that the services stand up tracking to better capture data on whether rejected applicants are offered a medical waiver request, while documenting the reasons such a waiver might not be requested.

The services all concurred with the recommendation but varied in plans to implement such reforms.

U.S. Army Recruiting Command aims to provide a “corrective action plan” by November and also requested a Defense Department-level review of the entire medical waiver process because the command’s own analysis of the complete medical waiver processing time found that it could take 70 days or longer for a waiver determination to be made.

Navy Recruiting Command officials told the IG they would determine by later this year whether the existing applicant tracking system could start capturing such data.

The Air Force Recruiting Service will work to create a field in the recruiting information system that would document if a disqualified applicant chooses not to proceed with a waiver and the reason why they did not, a process that will take four to six months.

Marine Corps Recruiting Command leadership told the IG that “establishing a tracking mechanism for applicants cannot be implemented in the current recruiting information system,” but said such functions could be a part of future systems.

“The Marine Corps Recruiting Command will continue to encourage the DoD medical standard working groups to evaluate medical disqualification standards and remove barriers so that more applicants are medically eligible for military service,” the report states.