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.

Incoming female students for the class of 2030 will have to chop their hair so that it does not exceed their chin, a standard the the academy abided by until 2019 when it only required students to follow Navy-wide grooming standards for female recruits.

“Returning to a short haircut for women on I‑Day aligns them once again to a common standard plebes have maintained for generations,” a U.S. Naval Academy spokesperson told Military Times.

They further clarified that the return to old norms was to ensure that “male and female plebes share the same visible symbol of their commitment to naval service and to the team.”

I-Day stands for induction day, which marks the beginning of the summer training program known as “Plebe Summer” for all incoming freshmen.

Currently, the new grooming standard only applies to the incoming class of 2030.

Beginning in 1976, when women were first allowed into the U.S. Naval Academy, they were required to cut their hair at the chin or shorter to mark the transformation from civilian life to military life.

But in 2018, the school announced that incoming students for the class of 2022 would no longer have to comply with the decades-old requirement.

This continued for several years until the recent reinstatement reverting back to old rules.

Current Navy policy stipulates that female service members must present their hair in a professional military appearance that does “not interfere with the proper wearing of headgear,” among several other standards.

When the headgear is worn, the female service member’s hair is not to be seen in the front and must be maintained in a bun or ponytail.

In a roundtable discussion with reporters Monday prior to the end of the fiscal year, Rear Adm. James Waters, head of Navy recruiting command, revealed that the service had achieved surpluses in every recruiting category, including officers, enlisted and Reserve — with enough in the Delayed Entry Program to make up about one-fourth of the recruiting mission for fiscal 2026.

The numbers were the best the service had seen since the early 2000s, Waters said.

He credited efforts to plus-up recruiters and cut back administrative frustrations as a major component for success, specifically citing work to streamline the tattoo approval process for recruits.

In total, the Navy brought in 44,096 future sailors in fiscal 2025, the service announced on Wednesday — nearly 3,500 more than its target of 40,600. That’s more than any year since 2002.

“We maintained high standards and met all Department of Defense quality metrics,” Waters said. ” … And we’ve built a strong pipeline. We built momentum.”

Last year, the Navy narrowly made its mission, exceeding its goal of 40,600 sailors by a few hundred. But it received scrutiny for how it achieved that end.

Recruiting officials acknowledged last year that about 17% of new accessions had scored 30% or below on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, using waiver authority to bring in a greater proportion of these low-scoring applicants. In addition, the Department of Defense Inspector General faulted the Navy earlier this year for improperly documenting changes that streamlined medical waiver approval for recruits, resulting in another 5,845 accessions, or 13.5% of last year’s recruit pool.

While Waters said streamlining administrative processes and tripling the staff tasked with receiving medical waivers played a significant role in this year’s success, he also revealed that the service was no longer looking to low-scoring recruits to build out numbers.

The Navy, he said, was now only bringing in recruits with AFQT scores of 26 and above, at levels below the non-waivered limit of 4% of the total enlistment pool.

The “small numbers” of those scoring 26-30%, also known as Category 4s, are being brought in, he indicated, as part of the Navy’s vision for itself, rather than due to a need for numbers. Before boot camp, they head to the Navy’s three-week Future Sailor Preparatory Course, which last year saw 66% of low-scoring enlistees leave the course with a score of 31% or higher, Waters said.

“Many times, these young people that are scoring [lower] were disadvantaged in how they were educated and developed and come from difficult personal situations,” Waters said. “It’s important to me and it’s important to the recruiters, more importantly, that we continue to provide this opportunity for young people.”

Waters attributed this year’s recruiting successes to increasing recruiter manning and removing obstacles that limited their effectiveness in the past.

“We’ve listened to those line recruiters and done the things that they indicated were the most important to them, and that has changed the game,” Waters said. ” … We would not be where we are without every line recruiter doing that hard work, day in and day out, the thousands of things that they do that I will never know to go the extra mile — that has been the difference.”

The Navy, Waters, said, had “listened and made changes” in response to frustrations voiced by recruiters about the difficulty of closing the deal on recruits. In particular, he cited red tape around approving prospective enlistees’ tattoos.

“Young people today are much more inked than they were even a few years ago,” he said.

While last year it took an average of 30 days to get approval for tattoos, today it takes 2.7, Waters said. Other improvements that supported recruiters’ work, he said, included increasing their input in local advertising and looking to reduce complexity for recruiters in new recruit paperwork.

“When we make changes, we are thinking about it from the perspective of the recruiter receiving it in that recruiting station of two or three recruiters, you know, out in the middle of America, and thinking, ‘How are they going to take that? How are they going to use that?’” Waters said.

Waters did not address the impact of the current political climate on recruiting. Reporters were told he would not respond to any questions on that subject nor the recent reinstatement of troops processed out for declining the COVID-19 vaccine, due to the Navy’s nonpartisan status.

All the services reported meeting or exceeding their recruiting goals this year, and the Pentagon has confirmed a recruiting upswing dating to November 2024.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has stressed a macho, lethality-focused vision for the military, has credited the surge to President Donald Trump. Hegseth also stood up a 12-month recruiting task force in June to clear the waiver backlog and remove administrative obstacles.

Waters also acknowledged that the economy and a declining civilian hiring rate played a role in driving interest toward the military, but also said that ads and marketing appeared successful, increasing the conversion rate of leads to contracts in all districts. In particular, he said, ads focused on Naval special operations appeared to resonate.

“Those ads really approach Gen Z in a way that is more relatable and has generated a lot of those leads,” he said.

Looking forward, Waters said the Navy needs to fine-tune the recruiting of skilled medical professionals, including doctors, dentists and psychologists.

The service, he said, has already partnered with a commercial medical recruiting organization to leverage its medical talent network and identify best practices. One, he said, is centralizing a Navy medical talent acquisition group, which has already proven effective at helping the service meet its goals.

“We’re going to grow that centralized group, because of how successful it was, to drive further into the medical recruiting market, which you can imagine, is just extremely competitive,” Waters said.

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.”

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.

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.

Consider President John F. Kennedy. As a young man, he suffered a host of painful, disqualifying physical ailments, such as back pain and ulcers, but leaned on his father’s connections to get around the required Navy medical exams.

Lt. Kennedy went on to command a patrol torpedo boat that a Japanese warship sheared in half during World War II, and he later received a Purple Heart and Navy and Marine Corps Medal.

In recent decades, the lies told to enlist haven’t approached those extremes.

Nonetheless, fudging medical histories has been a key step on many troops’ path from applicant to recruit, according to a group of active-duty military recruiters who spoke with Military Times for this story.

“What it takes to get in the Army is, quite frankly, a lot of fraud and perjury,” one recruiter said.

But this tacit tradition — technically a crime — largely stopped in 2022, the same year the military’s recruiting numbers fell precipitously and today’s recruiting crisis came to the fore.

That year, the Defense Department brought a new medical records platform, known as Military Health System Genesis, online at Military Entrance Processing Stations, where applicants are medically examined before they can sign up.

Now, a year after Genesis was first used by MEPS, some military leaders acknowledge the new system has hindered recruiting.

Multiple recruiters on the ground, from different services and locations, are more blunt in their assessments. They say Genesis has ended an applicant’s ability to gloss over or knowingly ignore minor medical issues, such as past use of ADHD meds or inhalers, before signing up.

In the process, those recruiters say, it has turned the military’s stream of applicants into a trickle and made a recruiter’s already-difficult job even harder.

“Nobody says it out loud in the wrong company, but the whole DoD knows that before Genesis we were able to put people through with a lot of different things, within reason, because whatever that applicant decides to disclose is whatever that applicant decides to disclose,” Joe Brown, a Marine Corps recruiter and staff noncommissioned officer in the South, told Military Times. “Now that Genesis exists, we can no longer hide things.”

Five recruiters who spoke with Military Times were given pseudonyms in this report and granted anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Broad concern

The recruiting crisis has evoked concern among leadership and on Capitol Hill. The Army missed its fiscal 2022 goal by 15,000 soldiers, and the other branches, except for the smaller Space Force, barely made quota or had to pull extensively from their pools of delayed-entry applicants.

Officials told lawmakers this month that they expect the shortfalls to worsen this fiscal year.

Political leaders and partisan pundits blame today’s recruiting crisis on everything from so-called “woke” diversity training to kids these days being too fat and lazy to cut it.

Military brass have blamed an under-educated public, a roaring civilian jobs market and bad perceptions of service fueled by negative headlines.

But multiple recruiters who spoke with Military Times blame Genesis above all else.

“When Genesis hit the scene, it was a night-and-day difference,” Navy recruiter Peter Harris, a petty officer, noted.

Once an applicant signs their consent, Genesis vacuums up the entirety of their medical history, flagging past and present health issues.

That makes it harder, some recruiters say, to squeeze applicants through despite past maladies they did not disclose — such as ADHD, depression or a years-old broken bone. Recruiting numbers suffer as a result. Previously, such applicants could enlist if they concealed, or genuinely had forgotten about, these issues.

Genesis is, broadly, 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. The contract for Genesis, awarded to Leidos, is worth $5.5 billion, according to the Government Accountability Office.

In the context of recruiting, the system allows processing stations to look at applicants’ civilian medical records, including hospital visits and prescriptions.

Genesis came to the military’s 67 MEPS locations in March 2022, when the head of U.S. Military Entrance Processing Command heralded it as “a leap in medical modernization.”

“The new electronic health record will follow applicants from the moment they walk through ‘Freedom’s Front Door’ into active duty, and eventually into the VA system,” Col. Megan Stallings, the command’s leader, said in a release at the time.

While multiple recruiters told Military Times that the system is flagging more applicants, Pentagon spokeswoman Lisa Lawrence said in an email that Genesis “does not reduce the population of qualified applicants.”

“Prior to screening at (MEPS), an individual has, or does not have, disqualifying medical conditions,” she said. Genesis “merely confirms the physical and mental readiness of applicants by enabling authoritative review of their health history.”

Lawrence said Genesis “is not the root cause behind the Services failing to meet their recruiting mission,” but she did not respond by Military Times’ deadline to emailed follow-up questions directly asking if the Pentagon believes Genesis was playing a role in the recruiting crisis.

Lawrence blamed, in part, low willingness of young people to serve, as well as “the residual effects” of the COVID pandemic that prevented recruiters “from meeting with youth and their influencers in our high schools.”

But data provided by the Pentagon shows each service exceeded its recruiting goals in fiscal 2020 and 2021, when pandemic-related lockdowns and disruptions to everyday life were far more prevalent.

In a nod to the current recruiting reality, the Pentagon in November began a pilot program that updated regulations for 38 medical conditions that would allow some recruits to join as long as they met certain timelines for previous treatment and diagnosis. The pilot will be in effect through June, Lawrence said, and then the DoD will analyze whether it would make sense to extend the program.

To ease the ongoing recruiting crisis, senators have urged the DoD to allow applicants who had sought treatment for some mental health issues.

“We disqualify young men and women if they’ve seen a psychiatrist or if they’ve been on medicine for mental health, and yet we want them to try to improve themselves,” Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in March.

“There are still people who are eager to join — it’s just really, really hard to actually get them in,” said Harris, the Navy recruiter. “Because, you know, they can see their medical history. I think that would be the biggest issue as to why recruiting numbers are so terrible.”

New hurdles

Smith, a soldier who has spent the last few years recruiting, admitted he helped applicants massage their medical history to get them in before Genesis — up to a point. He wouldn’t, for example, allow someone with asthma to get through.

But of the 30 applicants he recruited, he said, “only one was clean as a whistle.” In some cases, the problem wasn’t medical; a history of marijuana use was also something he would “grease wheels for.”

The recruiter also lied about his own medical history to enlist.

As Smith went through the applicant pipeline, officials requested medical paperwork for a procedure he underwent years ago, but he had no way to get those records.

“My recruiter, for me to get in, just made up medical paperwork, made up a doctor and submitted it,” Smith said. “And that’s how I joined. That’s what it takes, or else I would never be in.”

He’s not the first Army recruiter to speak out about Genesis’ impact on the mission. Three other Army recruiters voiced similar concerns to Task and Purpose in September.

Some young people whom Genesis flags acquire waivers and go on to enlist.

At least one in six military recruits received waivers to enter service in fiscal year 2022, the highest proportion in at least 10 years, according to service data.

But some, dispirited by delays caused by Genesis, back out entirely, while others end up unable to join, recruiters say.

Meanwhile, recruiters say they still face the pre-Genesis pressures to make their quotas, despite the new hurdles.

“I’ll walk around Walmart at 11 o’clock at night just begging someone to sit down in my chair so I can go home,” said Jon Johnson, a Marine recruiter. “I’ve got a wife and two kids. This sh-t’s not it.”

Yes means ‘your enlistment stops’

Recruiters have a tongue-in-cheek saying about how an applicant’s answers to yes-or-no questions on the military’s medical history questionnaire decides their fate.

The form requires yes or no answers. Hay fever? A change of menstrual pattern? Broken bones?

“Yes” stands for “your enlistment stops.” “No” stands for “numerous opportunities.”

“You never had asthma. You never had ADHD,” the Navy recruiter said. “You broke your leg when you were six? “Don’t talk about it.”

In the Air Force, Genesis’ arrival is disqualifying more applicants during the medical process, while making medical screenings longer, Maj. Gen. Edward Thomas, head of Air Force Recruiting Service, told Military Times in February.

Applicants don’t formally sign up until they’re cleared, and that longer process gives them more time to back out.

“Genesis is the right thing to do — it’s mandated by Congress,” Thomas said. “But it wasn’t ready for deployment in recruiting.”

“If MHS Genesis had not been implemented in recruiting at the same time that the recruiting market had a sharp downturn, it would have been far more manageable,” he added.

The Army did not directly answer questions about whether Genesis is driving recruitment challenges, but Army Recruiting Command spokesman Maj. Tom Piernicky acknowledged that sorting through the medical records Genesis flags “is time consuming and labor intensive, and has added an element of complexity to the accessions process for initial entry applicants.”

“The Army is committed to maintaining high enlistment standards, and MHS Genesis has helped the Army to better determine an applicant’s suitability for Service from a health and safety standpoint,” Piernicky said. “With regard to current challenges, the Army, along with the other services, continue to face unprecedented recruiting conditions due to a combination of factors.”

Navy Recruiting Command spokesman Cmdr. Dave Benham said the access to additional information that Genesis provides increases “average processing time,” but that the system allows the Navy to make more informed decisions regarding an applicant’s medical history.

“It also means fewer cases of Sailors entering the Navy that later go through medical review boards for pre-existing conditions that were not disclosed at accession,” he said. “Our recruiters are working hard to consider the entire person and to reduce barriers to enlistment where possible, while still ensuring we deliver on that mission.”

Marine Corps spokesman Jim Edwards blamed the same societal factors as the Pentagon and other services, as well as “media inflation,” for the struggle.

Genesis, Edwards said in an email, “has extended the contracting timeline for some applicants, but it is not the sole or main factor driving recruitment difficulties.”

“Our hard-working Marine recruiters continue to accomplish the assigned recruiting mission and we remain on track to accomplish the FY23 accession mission,” he said.

Delayed gratification

Recruiters said common holdups for applicants include ADHD medication, antidepressants and counseling. Mental health was also a common reason that applicants sought medical waivers in FY22, according to data provided by DoD.

Diagnoses of mental health conditions are higher for Gen-Z than for older generations. The American Psychological Association reported in 2019 that Gen-Z and millennials are more likely to report their mental health as fair or poor, and more report receiving treatment or therapy, compared to Gen-Xers or baby boomers.

Recruiters were quick to add that Genesis creates hurdles even for applicants who do what’s legally required of them: honestly report what they remember of past medical conditions. Some applicants have forgotten about issues that left no long-term effects but require additional documentation once they pop up in Genesis.

Don Wilson, a Marine staff NCO recruiter, said he thinks a screening system like Genesis has benefits in ensuring that only applicants ready for the rigors of the military can join.

But he wishes applicants didn’t get flagged for having attended counseling after a difficult life event or being prescribed an EpiPen years ago.

Recruiters say the increased disqualification of applicants caused by Genesis makes it that much harder for them to hit their monthly quotas, exacerbating the long hours and grueling sales pitches that have long defined military recruiting.

Such applicants can still make it into the military if they provide additional medical documentation or secure waivers for certain conditions, but recruiters say that is often easier said than done.

Marine recruiter Johnson and others said Genesis increases the time between a potential enlistee walking into his office and shipping to boot camp, even if they are fully qualified.

And when dealing with impatient teenagers, time isn’t a resource recruiters can afford to waste.

Johnson recalled a 17-year-old girl who came into his office and who was clearly in outstanding shape and healthy enough to ship off to Marine basic training.

Yet health records pulled by Genesis showed that she had sprained her wrist as a child, an injury that hadn’t required surgery, stitches or painkillers, Johnson said.

He had to chase down documentation proving she was good to go, and it took two months to get her processed, Johnson said.

Recruiters for other services echoed the Marine’s take: that Genesis makes processing too long, allowing kids to back out or change their mind before they have signed their contract.

“I had to battle the disinterest” of the teen, Johnson said. “For most people, they’re looking for instant gratification. That’s also a common trend we’ve seen out here: If I can’t get them something now, they generally leave.”

“It comes to the point where they’re like, ‘This is too much work, I’m just gonna go apply at Starbucks,’” Navy recruiter Harris said.

Adapting and overcoming

Factors besides Genesis make it challenging to recruit.

In addition to poor fitness and low desire to serve in the military among teenagers, recruiters said many schools do not welcome them onto their grounds, a challenge exacerbated by the pandemic. Some parents don’t want their babies to take on the military’s risks.

But these problems existed long before today’s recruiting crisis, the Marine recruiter Brown noted.

“Since the Marine Corps existed, there’s been obese people,” he said. “There [have] been low test scores. That’s something we’ve always dealt with.”

What’s new is Genesis.

Before 2022, Brown said, he had never missed a monthly target during his four years as a recruiter.

Then came Genesis. He started missing his goals, and it took him a few months to get back on track.

Meanwhile, the services are working to adjust to the longer recruiting timelines associated with Genesis.

The Army last year activated some of its Reserve doctors to deal with a backlog in waivers.

In addition, the Army and Air Force have instituted a Genesis “prescreen” so that applicants and recruiters can better understand what parts of a medical history will be relevant and require documentation at MEPS before they arrive at the processing station, according to service officials.

Navy and Marine Corps officials said that, as was the case before Genesis, recruiters review an applicant’s medical history with them to determine if they have any medical conditions that will need to be addressed at MEPS.

Still, several recruiters told Military Times that their leaders’ response to recent shortfalls has been to tell them to work harder. Make more calls. Improvise, adapt, overcome.

Brown said he used to work about nine hours a day as a recruiter. Now it’s up to 12, plus weekends. He said that’s less than most of his peers.

These days, Harris, who has been a Navy recruiter since before Genesis, said many recruiters he knows are on antidepressants — one of the very things for which Genesis screens applicants.

Military Times reporters Rachel Cohen, Davis Winkie and Meghann Myers contributed to this report.

“We continue to receive analysis of cherry-picked data that is not giving us the full picture of why the Army is seeing historically low recruitment and retention rates,” said Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s panel on readiness, in a statement.

“Right now, it should be the shared goal of Congress, our military leaders, and the [President Joe] Biden administration to get to the bottom of this crisis so we can ensure our military is ready for any threat our nation faces.”

Earlier this month, Army officials released partial results from surveys of potential recruits which indicated young adults were turning away from the service because of the demands and dangers of military life.

Officials spoke to the Associated Press about the general parameters of the survey (conducted in spring and summer of 2022) but declined to provide any detailed methodology or results. But they indicated to the news service that issues of diversity or inclusion policies represented only a minor factor in individuals’ reluctance to consider a career in the Army.

The Army was about 15,000 soldiers shy of its recruitment goal last year. Other military branches reported significant difficulty reaching their recruiting goals as well.

While military officials have pointed to the strengthening economy and robust job market as reasons for the shortfalls, conservative lawmakers have blamed the problem on “wokeness” in the ranks, a catch-all term to describe policies connected to race, gender and sexual orientation.

In a letter to Army leaders on Thursday, Waltz and Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s military personnel panel, asked for the release of the entire survey results, saying the findings are “of great importance to the American people.”

They cited a pair of polls by conservative groups that showed declining trust in the military because of over politicization of the force, saying the results directly contradict the Army’s findings.

Banks has vowed to make the Defense Department’s diversity and inclusion policies a focal point of his subcommittee’s work this spring.

“Wokeness at the Defense Department has harmed recruitment, retention and morale, wasted service members’ time and taxpayer’s dollars, and undermined the apolitical character of the military which is a major threat to democracy and the American way of life,” he said in a statement.

He also promised that upcoming hearings will be devoted to “rooting out wokeness” in the military ranks.

Army officials told the Associated Press that they could not release the full data sets connected to the surveys because the work was done by a private research contractor, whose licensing agreements limit the public release of some portions.

Service leaders have already warned that recruiting for the current fiscal year may be even worse than fiscal 2022, with a potential shortfall of 20,000 soldiers.

Hearings on the topic before the House Armed Services Committee are expected to begin in March, but no specific timeline has been announced yet.