Months after the Pentagon rolled out a policy aimed at wooing back service members booted from the military over the COVID-19 vaccine, the Pentagon has confirmed that only 13 people — all Army soldiers — have rejoined.
Shortly after coming back to office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that, while short on details, mandated the military reinstate troops who refused the vaccine with “full back pay, benefits, bonus payments, or compensation.”
The Pentagon then spent months articulating that order into a policy that was rolled out in April and, while making good on the promise of back pay, it came with some major administrative hurdles and the caveat of yearslong military commitments.
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In late April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth trumpeted the policy, telling a group of troops at the Army War College that those who refused the vaccine were “warriors of conscience” and that “we hope they come back quickly.”
Several days later, the Pentagon’s “Rapid Response” account said that “we have reinstated these vital members with BACKPAY” before proclaiming that “this is the Golden Age for our service members.”
From 2023 until April, service members had always been able to return to military service — though without any incentives or back pay. Only 113 of the more than 8,000 discharged service members had chosen to do so.
Yet according to a Defense Department official, after the new policy rolled out, they received interest from around 700 people across the five military services. The biggest interest came from 418 discharged Marines, while the lowest was from the Air Force, which had 56 people come forward.
Of those 700, only 97 took the necessary second step of moving forward with having their military records reviewed and corrected.
According to Navy documents released in April, a discharged sailor interested in reinstatement would be entitled to back pay but minus anything they earned while out of the military — and that offer was also contingent on a four-year commitment.
The document explained that what leaders like Trump have called “full back pay” was actually a “financial benefit.”
Navy officials would take all the basic pay, food and housing allowances, and bonuses that a sailor would have earned had they stayed in but then deduct any wages that were earned while they were a civilian, as well as any VA disability payments, among other payouts.
Service members would be presented with that figure ahead of their decision to return or not.
According to data shown to Military.com, of those 97 people, only 13 Army soldiers had been reinstated between the beginning of April and the end of May.
The figure stands in sharp contrast to the enthusiasm with which most of the services pushed out news of the updated policy on social media in the spring. The Army even bragged that “about 150 soldiers” had taken some step toward rejoining in early April.
However, the Pentagon’s data from the end of May showed that the Army seemed to make little progress on that figure, reporting that the service had 141 interested people and 43 more going through records review.
Meanwhile, Tim Dill, a senior official with the Pentagon’s Office of Personnel and Readiness, told reporters in April that an initial group of just over 100 service members — those who chose to return ahead of the back pay policy — would not benefit from the new plan.
“The department is also grateful for their decision to return,” he said but added that “there is not currently a mechanism that we have provided for them to put in for the same calculations that we’re doing for those that would return today.”
Anyone still interested in returning under the new policy has until April 1, 2026, to seek reinstatement.
Related: Troops Booted over COVID-19 Vaccine Are Being Offered Back Pay But Not Huge Payouts
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