Army and Navy Prep Courses May Be a Recruiting Crisis Silver Bullet. But Other Services Aren't Interested.

The Army and Navy had early recruiting successes with new pre-basic training programs aimed at helping subpar applicants qualify for enlistment, but so far other service branches are reluctant to follow their lead.

"I would offer the answer is 'no,'" Brig. Gen. Christopher Amrhein, who oversees recruiting for the Air Force and Space Force, told reporters at a press conference on military recruiting Wednesday at the Pentagon. "There's not the overarching, compelling requirement that we've seen."

Maj. Gen. William Bowers, who heads Marine Corps Recruiting Command, didn't mince words: "We are not looking at starting a special program for future Marines."

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The Pentagon is facing an unprecedented recruiting crisis that saw services struggling to hit enlistment targets this year after falling short since the COVID-19 pandemic. One reason: the nation's worsening obesity epidemic, in which nearly one in four high school students are obese, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC.

Another cause is a decline in academic performance over the past two decades, which is hampering potential recruits' ability to pass the military's entrance exam that also determines qualifications for particular jobs.

Since 2022, the Army and Navy have seen promising results from the pre-boot camp training programs that help otherwise ineligible applicants meet enlistment standards. Those programs focus on getting applicants to either shed enough body fat to meet fitness standards, or tutoring for the SAT-style entrance exam.

The Army, for example, saw nearly one-quarter of its 2024 recruits go through at least one of those programs, while in previous years they would have otherwise been turned away and not allowed to enlist.

Officials who spoke to reporters Wednesday also noted that the departure of recruiters from the nation's high schools -- another pandemic change -- and a declining veteran population have created a low inclination among young people to consider the military as an option.

Rear Adm. James Waters, the Navy's recruiting boss, noted that "it's important in this to not equate low propensity with high anti-military sentiment -- it's really an expression of lack of knowledge, lack of familiarity."

Americans may be just as open to service, despite not being fully aware of the option, officials said.

"About 10% of young adults are motivated to serve," said Dr. Katie Helland, the Pentagon's director of military accession policy. That statistic, Helland said, "has not changed over the past few years."

The Army recruited 55,300 new active-duty soldiers this year, 300 ahead of its goal, but nearly 13,000 of those came through prep courses -- meaning without those courses the service would have come nowhere near hitting its quota. The Navy also relied heavily on its prep courses to make its recruiting total of 40,978 recruits this past year.

Cmdr. Stephanie Turo, the spokeswoman for the Navy's recruiting command, told Military.com earlier this month that more than 5,000 recruits attended both of the service's prep courses in 2024, with most -- 3,451 recruits -- going to the academic version.

The sea service also helped some recruits who struggled with the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB, by creating a policy that allowed those who scored in the lowest score bracket of the test but met the standard for "line scores" -- for subjects that relate to occupation-specific topics such as general science, math or mechanical comprehension -- to still join.

The Navy said 5,982 recruits joined in the past year on that policy and, in total, the two programs netted the service 11,354 recruits, or just over one-quarter of its annual goal.

Waters also noted that the Navy is tracking the recruits who were let in with the low overall ASVAB scores "closely."

"We've seen no increase in attrition, no increase in disciplinary actions" among that population, Waters told reporters Wednesday. "I attribute that mainly to the fact that every recruit that comes into the Navy meets the standard for the rating to which they are assigned."

Meanwhile, the smaller services are weathering the recruiting drought thanks to their lower enlistment targets.

The Marine Corps, for example, recruited 36,286 Marines this year, surpassing its target by a slim margin of 29. Meanwhile, the Space Force, still in its infancy, brought in 716 new Guardians, comfortably exceeding its goal of 659 new enlistments.

The Air Force, however, continues to struggle, but also has fewer boots to fill.

Last year, it missed its recruitment target of 26,877 airmen by about 10%, marking the first time it missed its recruiting quota since 1999. This year, the branch managed a narrow turnaround, enlisting 27,100 new recruits and surpassing its goal by a razor thin margin of just 39 people, an effort that has been attributed to lowering its body fat standards and relaxing tattoo policies.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct Air Force recruiting statistics for 2023.

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