Many of these moves have historical precedents dating to when the Army expanded for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But 2022 is different, experts say \u2014 will these efforts be enough for the Army to meet its end strength target for fiscal 2022 and beyond? Likely not, argued retired Army Lt. Gen. Tom Spoehr, who works for the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation think tank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is the year we miss [end strength] by tens of thousands,\u201d said Spoehr in a phone interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To meet its end strength goals, the Army, which has accessed only about 22,000 recruits over the past nine months, will need to recruit somewhere between 27,000 and 33,000 new soldiers in less than 11 weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spoehr is skeptical they can do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c[Fiscal] 2022, they\u2019re not going to make their goals. [Fiscal] 2023, everybody says it\u2019s going to be worse,\u201d Spoehr said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to turn the corner into 2023 with nobody in the delayed entry program.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to a 2019 RAND report<\/a>, the service prefers to enter new fiscal years with a healthy delayed entry pool of 15,000 to 20,000 signees awaiting basic training. That number was less than 6,500 in October 2021, according to budget documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr. Beth Asch, a senior economist and manpower analyst at Rand Corp., said in an interview that she \u201cdoesn\u2019t know how much they\u2019re going to miss\u201d end strength by, though she hopes the service can make it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think there\u2019s some soul-searching that has to go on about how to maintain the quality of the force [and] the effectiveness of the force in this [recruiting] environment,\u201d said Asch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Army Secretary Christine Wormuth recognized the enormity of the \u201cchallenging recruiting environment\u201d in a statement sent to Army Times for this story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is not a one-year challenge,\u201d said the service\u2019s top civilian. \u201cAnd because it\u2019s not a one-year problem we will solve overnight, we are examining a wide range of additional steps we could take in the short and longer term to recruit more soldiers into the Army without lowering standards or sacrificing quality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The service\u2019s recruiting woes likely come from the intersection of several long-term trends and recent policy and medical screening changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Part of the problem is that fewer Americans today meet the medical or moral standards to enlist. Only about 23% of young Americans qualify, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville told Congress in May. DoD market research<\/a> from summer 2021 indicates that the percentage who are willing to serve is slipping as well, reaching lows not seen since the grinding surge years of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asch cautioned that the qualification numbers also include those who may be able to receive waivers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The DoD market survey also pointed towards another factor: the economy, while beset by inflation, has historically-low unemployment. Survey respondents reported record-high confidence in their ability to secure full-time civilian employment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Economists, including Asch, have studied the link between unemployment and recruiting. When jobs are scarce, more high quality recruits join; when jobs are plenty, talent is difficult to find.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And when real military compensation goes down \u2014 such as when inflation outpaces pay raises and increases to housing or subsistence allowances \u2014 recruiting becomes more difficult as well, Asch said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Several conservative commentators have also pointed towards DoD\u2019s COVID-19 vaccine mandate as a potential factor harming recruiting, and data shows they may have a point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Center for Disease Control data, 36% of Americans aged 18-24 and 32.7% of those aged 25-39 are not fully vaccinated, meaning that they are ineligible to join.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spoehr pointed at the vaccine mandate as \u201canother subtraction from the qualified pool of people\u201d and as one of several policy decisions that he argues \u201cdragged [the military] into the political sphere.\u201d That has potentially alienated some conservative Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asch noted that it\u2019s not yet clear what proportion of unvaccinated young Americans would otherwise be willing to join the military \u2014 or are even eligible to do so \u2014 and suggested that the issue requires further study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Army\u2019s top civilian, Wormuth, concurred with much of Spoehr and Asch\u2019s analysis of the recruiting environment in her statement to Army Times, though she didn\u2019t directly mention the vaccine mandate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLow unemployment rates, intense competition with the private sector, smaller numbers of Americans who are fit enough to serve, and challenges resulting from the pandemic have all made recruiting more difficult,\u201d admitted Wormuth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Army officials also believe that the COVID-19 pandemic may have impacted the recruiting pool in other ways, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe know the COVID-19 pandemic has had negative impacts on many young Americans\u2019 academic and physical fitness opportunities, exacerbating an existing problem that less than 25% of the nation\u2019s youth meet Army standards,\u201d said Army spokesperson Col. Cathy Wilkinson in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But neither Wormuth nor Wilkinson\u2019s statements addressed another cause of the recruiting squeeze. In March, the DoD launched MHS Genesis, an electronic medical records system that can access applicants\u2019 medical history from most U.S. civilian medical providers and the entire military medical system. A similar program, the Medical Review of Authoritative Data, launched in late 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before these new screenings, applicants were required to self-report their medical history and recruiters were expected to help gather records validating those histories. But recruiters had an informal practice of coaching recruits to selectively omit parts of their medical history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The new screenings have eliminated that practice \u2014 so applicants have to tell the truth and be prepared to request medical waivers for anything that appears in their records, such as once-filled antidepressant prescriptions, never-used inhalers or other potentially-disqualifying conditions or medicines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A June 1 memo sent by Army Training and Doctrine Command\u2019s leader, Gen. Paul Funk, to Army Secretary Wormuth requesting more resources for recruiting, explains how the new screenings overwhelmed the waiver processing system. One of the requests was for money to activate Army Reserve doctors to assist with the waiver backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe under-resourced roll out of [MHS Genesis] generated significant processing backlogs. [Army Recruiting Command] does not have sufficient physician waiver assistants on staff to mitigate the shortfall,\u201d said Funk. \u201cTRADOC internally tasked medical providers to assist in the short term, but cannot sustain without structure change.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n These factors didn\u2019t appear overnight. The service had some challenges in fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2021 recruiting amid the pandemic, but managed to meet end strength in both years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This year, the warning signs appeared early.<\/p>\n\n\n\n TRADOC\u2019s senior enlisted leader, Command Sgt. Maj. Daniel Hendrex, told Army Times in a phone interview that \u201cabout six months ago\u2026we started seeing a shift in [recruiting] numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Officials in the service\u2019s recruiting command, USAREC, may have been worried even earlier due to how shallow their delayed entry pool \u2014 applicants who have signed contracts but are waiting to ship to training \u2014 was at the beginning of this latest fiscal year. According to a 2019 RAND report<\/a>, the service usually wants to maintain a delayed entry pool totaling 35% of its accessions goal for the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to budget documents<\/a>, though, the Army only had 6,462 in its delayed entry pool in October 2021, or only around 9.1% of its original goal of 70,500 accessions<\/a>. That\u2019s a lower percentage than nearly any other point in the post-9\/11 era, according to the RAND report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A rebalancing of mid-career NCOs meant to ensure that line units have enough staff sergeants to serve as squad leaders left USAREC with 1,000 fewer Army-selected recruiters<\/a>, as well. At the time, USAREC leaders were confident that their \u201cmission modernization\u201d initiative could transform Army recruiting to do more with fewer people and resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then the increased prescription medicine screenings \u2014 the Medical Review of Authoritative Data, or MROAD \u2014 came online in December, giving entry processing station doctors the ability to see applicants\u2019 civilian prescription histories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A senior recruiter speaking with Army Times in February called the prescription history reviews a \u201cdisaster.\u201d The reviews flagged recruits, forcing hopeful soldiers to seek time-consuming medical waivers. Waiting for those waivers can lead an applicant \u201cto get cold feet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEverything that comes up in MROAD SHOULD be disclosed…anyway,\u201d said the recruiter in a text message. But he, and many other long-time recruiters, were frustrated that the system was catching \u201call the insignificant shit\u201d and some doctors at MEPS require documentation or a waiver for every medication the reviews found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By January, senior leaders realized that the recruiting mission was facing difficult headwinds, TRADOC\u2019s Hendrix said. That\u2019s when the service started increasing recruitment bonuses across the board, up to $50,000<\/a> for some careers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next month, the service\u2019s recruiting command announced it was expanding short-term<\/a> and flexible contract options, moves that it takes periodically when the recruiting pool is lean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then MHS Genesis came online in March, giving medical screeners access to pull applicants\u2019 medical histories from most of the nation\u2019s civilian electronic medical systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hendrex, the TRADOC CSM, explained that the command wasn\u2019t prepared for the amount of additional administrative work that MHS Genesis would require.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said that to address the medical waiver backlog it rapidly generated, TRADOC had to shuffle nearly 90 personnel \u2014 medical providers, administrative assistants and medics \u2014 over to USAREC just to keep up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hendrex emphasized that the Army \u201cabsolutely wanted\u201d Genesis in place, but \u201cthat was just poor timing coming out of COVID into the [recruiting environment that we were in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n By April, when the Army submitted its fiscal 2023 budget request to Congress, the alarm bells were ringing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The service requested to cut its current year end strength target by 12,000 \u2014 previously 485,000 \u2014 down to 473,000. The Army also slashed its accessions target by 15,000 new soldiers, from 70,500 to 55,400.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018We did not want to have to lower our recruiting standards\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n When senior Army leaders testified to Congress about the request, they were clear: they could not recruit enough qualified people to fill the ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are modestly reducing our end strength, and we\u2019re doing this because we want to preserve a high quality force,\u201d explained Army Secretary Wormuth to lawmakers in May. \u201cWe did not want to have to lower our recruiting standards as we face a challenging recruiting environment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wormuth assured Congress that the Army was \u201clooking at what we can do immediately this summer to help ourselves and the kinds of changes to our recruiting enterprise that we may need to make to help ourselves over the next couple of years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two weeks later, on June 1, TRADOC\u2019s commanding general, Funk, had a memo on Wormuth\u2019s desk with a series of immediate initiatives for her approval. Army Times obtained a copy of the decision memo, which also circulated on social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Funk wanted involuntary assignment extensions (and extra pay) for top-performing recruiters who were scheduled to leave before the end of the year. Funk also sought an influx of 100 former recruiters on temporary duty, nearly 250 new lieutenants who hadn\u2019t started active duty yet to help recruit and money to activate Army Reserve medical providers for the waiver backlog. He also asked for an additional $25 million in marketing funds for advertising, claiming that the funds would lead to \u201c2,500 contracts\u201d this fiscal year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wormuth granted those wishes. In her statement to Army Times, she said \u201cwe started taking steps months ago to adjust to these headwinds, such as letting new recruits choose their first duty station and offering financial incentives to go to basic training earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Army also quickly started taking other steps that could ease accessions or bolster retention \u2014 without \u201clowering standards.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston made a series of tweets<\/a> June 8 telling leaders across the force that 6,000 troops were scheduled to leave the Army between then and Oct. 1, and said he \u201cexpect[s] more leader engagement on this topic across the force.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Grinston\u2019s tweet is notable because the Army has already exceeded its retention goal for fiscal 2022. As of July 7, according to Army spokesperson Wilkinson, the service has secured 57,738 active duty reenlistments against a goal of 55,900. But if fewer soldiers are entering the Army, more need to stay to meet end strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The service also eased its tattoo policies<\/a>, telling reporters the move was related to reducing waivers for recruits enlisting with tattoos. It also temporarily extended retention control points<\/a> across all ranks, which are time limits that require involuntary discharges for enlisted troops who don\u2019t get promoted quickly enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Army Times obtained an email from Cadet Command\u2019s top general, Maj. Gen. Johnny Davis, informing his command that more than 600 new lieutenants who were scheduled to come onto active duty in fiscal 2023 will instead report for duty on Sept. 1 of this year. They don\u2019t yet have an assigned mission, either, according to Davis\u2019 email \u2014 but they will be counted in the fiscal 2022 end strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But at least one policy was implemented and quickly rescinded \u2014 partially due to the perception that it lowered recruiting standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last month, the Army temporarily waived its requirement that new troops have a high school diploma or GED. But there was a catch. Those who signed up under the option had to score better than half of other Americans on their aptitude tests, not require other enlistment waivers and were ineligible for any of the service\u2019s bonuses. They\u2019d also have to finish a GED in order to reenlist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many conservative commentators slammed the move, pointing at the vaccine mandate. They argued that the military\u2019s insistence on requiring the vaccine for new recruits had forced it to lower other standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/7274782.jpg_ce0552.jpg\")
Why the Army can\u2019t recruit \u2014 a perfect storm<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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First signs of trouble<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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