The Army is grappling with a staggering attrition rate among newly enlisted troops, even as recent recruiting figures suggest the service is clawing its way out of a yearslong enlistment crisis.
Nearly one-quarter of soldiers recruited since 2022 have failed to complete their initial contracts, according to internal Army data reviewed by Military.com. While the Army’s recruiting totals look solid on paper, a high dropout rate raises serious doubts about whether those numbers are an accurate portrayal of how well the service is manned.
It remains unclear why the Army is losing so many soldiers, but one explanation could be the declining quality of its recruiting pool. One-quarter of all enlistees last year had to go through at least one of the Future Soldier Preparatory Courses, which were set up as a sort of silver bullet for recruiting woes — getting applicants up to snuff with academic or body fat enlistment standards before they ship out to basic training.
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The military’s recruiting challenges have largely centered around finding young Americans eligible to serve, a pool that the Pentagon has estimated at only about 23% of 17- to 24-year-olds. One senior Army official with direct knowledge of the service’s recruiting efforts said only about 8% are eligible for a so-called “clean enlistment,” meaning the recruit didn’t need any waivers or have to attend a prep course.
“If this is the new normal, we’re taking in a whole quarter of the Army that isn’t hitting the standard,” Gil Barndollar, a senior research fellow at the Center for the Study of Statesmanship, said in an interview with Military.com. “The bigger question, though, is a human capital problem. If we have a crisis and we need a lot of people, what is the state of the nation? We’re looking at a country which by a lot of metrics — physical ability, cognitive ability — all those numbers are going in the wrong direction.”
According to service data, roughly 25% of prep course soldiers do not make it through their first contract and wash out of the Army within the first two years of their enlistment. But even more strikingly, soldiers who do not attend the prep courses aren’t that much different — they have a 20% attrition rate.
The numbers give the first public glance at the prep courses’ success. Some service officials interviewed by Military.com noted the Army is in a difficult position and would come nowhere near meeting manning standards without those courses.
Here are the rates at which soldiers wash out of basic training:
- Soldiers who did not attend any prep course: 11.3%
- Academic track prep course: 15.3%
- Fitness track prep course: 16%
- Soldiers who attended both prep courses: 18.7%
“I don’t know what an acceptable attrition rate is, but we have to meet people where they are,” the senior Army official told Military.com. “The quality of new soldiers is an enormous problem we’re paying for. But that’s just where the country is.”
Moreover, the Army has more than doubled the number of waivers it grants to new recruits, from 8,400 in 2022 to 17,900 last year. Many of those are medical waivers.
That increase is largely attributed to MHS Genesis, a new centralized medical records system that gives the military unprecedented access to applicants’ health histories. Some recruiters say the system is disqualifying applicants over minor injuries or past treatments, while others note a dramatic rise in teenage medication use and diagnoses for conditions like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.
The Army has also loosened restrictions on criminal backgrounds. Last year, the service granted 1,045 waivers for misdemeanor offenses, up from 895 in 2022. More strikingly, it approved 401 felony waivers — quadrupling the 98 granted in 2022. The Army prohibits waivers for crimes related to sexual violence.
“U.S. Army Recruiting Command remains committed to recruiting young men and women into our Army that are ready and qualified to join the most lethal fighting force in the world to ensure our nation’s security,” Madison Bonzo, a service spokesperson, said in a statement when asked about whether the Army is concerned that the quality of recruits is worsening.
On paper, the service started turning around its recruiting woes last year, bringing in 55,300 new active-duty troops against a goal of 55,000.
Additionally, it ended the year with a healthy surplus of 11,000 in the so-called delayed-entry pool, which will be counted in this year’s numbers. The significant pool of delayed enlistees is largely due to the Army having such a healthy recruiting year that it ran out of space in basic training units. The service is set to dramatically expand its capacity for basic trainees this spring.
“We’ve seen record numbers across the country,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox News on Wednesday, touting recent recruitment gains.
But the exodus of new enlistees begs the question: Does the extremely short turnaround make those recruiting wins meaningless?
The active-duty Army counts someone as a new recruit once they ship off to the Future Soldier Preparatory Course or basic training, meaning dropouts may not be reflected in data briefed to senior leadership or Congress.
In February, Military.com reported on Defense Department inspector general findings that the service might be skirting its own rules on recruiting, sending applicants to the prep course designed to help them meet body fat standards even though they were too overweight to even qualify.
The inspector general found about 300 applicants were turned away at the prep course for being too overweight — a figure that would nearly nullify the Army’s recruiting victory last year.
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