Steve Doocy Says It’s ‘Cool to Join the Military Again’

Steve Doocy thought he had a pretty good idea of what life inside one of America’s military service academies looked like.

Then he went to see it for himself.

Doocy, the longtime co-host of Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” spent the week visiting the U.S. Air Force Academy, U.S. Naval Academy and U.S. Military Academy at West Point for a series examining a different kind of back-to-school experience.

What he found challenged some of his assumptions about the institutions and left him optimistic about the young men and women preparing to lead the nation’s military.

“I think it’s cool to join the military again,” Doocy said in an exclusive interview with Military.com. “Once upon a time it was, and it is again.”

Doocy’s visits come after the military services spent years wrestling with recruiting challenges and questions about how to attract a new generation of Americans to serve.

They also come just weeks before the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a defining event for a generation of service members but one that occurred before today’s traditional-age service academy cadets and midshipmen were born.

For Doocy, who has spent decades in television journalism traveling the country and talking with Americans from virtually every walk of life, the academy visits offered a close look at a generation choosing military service in a very different environment from the one in which he came of age.

And what he saw made him hopeful.

It made me very hopeful about the future of America, Doocy told Military.com. We are in good hands.

More Than Marching and Military Training

Doocy said the idea for the series grew from a familiar television tradition: back-to-school coverage.

Rather than visit traditional college campuses, he and his team decided to look at what going back to school means at institutions that are simultaneously universities and military training grounds.

“We were just curious how it all worked, what it was like compared to a regular college experience,” Doocy said. “It’s been a real eye-opener because I think a lot of people have preconceptions about what goes on at military academies, and it’s not necessarily what you think.”

Doocy acknowledged that he shared some of those preconceptions.

People may picture cadets spending much of their time in camouflage, marching, drilling and learning how to fight, he said. Military training is certainly part of the experience, but his visit to the Air Force Academy showed him how much more goes into preparing future officers.

He pointed to the combination of academics, athletics and military training, and particularly the academic demands required to prepare officers for a rapidly changing battlefield.

Modern warfare increasingly involves relatively inexpensive drones, cyber capabilities and other emerging technologies, Doocy noted. Future officers will need more than tactical skills. They’ll have to understand the technologies themselves, how to improve them and the ethical questions that accompany their use.

You really need well-educated, well-rounded individuals to have these jobs for the future, he said.

He saw a similar dynamic at the Naval Academy, where midshipmen balance academics, athletics and military requirements while preparing for careers in the Navy or Marine Corps. His week of academy coverage will also take him to West Point, completing visits to three of the nation’s major federal service academies.

But it was the pace of daily life that particularly caught his attention. At the Air Force Academy, Doocy said some cadets were starting their days around 4:30 a.m., eating, training, attending classes, participating in athletics and completing military requirements before finally finishing their day.

Watching that schedule, and the young people willingly choosing it, helped shape his optimism about the future.

Choosing ‘Something Bigger Than Herself’

One encounter at the Air Force Academy particularly stuck with Doocy.

He spoke with a top-performing female cadet and asked a simple question: With her background and accomplishments, she could have attended almost any university. Why choose the Air Force Academy?

Her answer, as Doocy recalled it, was that she wanted to serve and wanted to be part of “something bigger than herself.” That choice stood out to him.

Doocy contrasted the experience with his own decision to attend college in the 1970s, when college for many young Americans represented independence, social opportunities and the chance to leave home.

A service academy offers something fundamentally different. Cadets and midshipmen receive an education, but they are simultaneously joining an institution that demands teamwork, discipline and a commitment to years of military service after graduation.

Doocy also pointed to another statistic that caught his attention during his Air Force Academy visit: The incoming Class of 2030, he said, had been described to him as the academy’s most physically fit incoming class in a decade.

For Doocy, it offered another counterpoint to years of concern about whether enough young Americans are physically and otherwise qualified to serve.

‘It’s Cool to Join the Military Again’

Doocy has been watching Americans’ attitudes toward the military change for much longer than the current recruiting cycle. He was in high school during the Vietnam War and recalled a dramatically different environment surrounding military service.

“The military just didn’t have a lot of the appeal to a lot of kids my age back then,” Doocy said.

He sees the country’s relationship with military service as cyclical.

The Sept. 11 attacks changed that relationship again, he said, inspiring Americans, including some who walked away from lucrative civilian careers, to enlist or pursue other forms of public service.

Nearly 25 years later, Doocy believes the pendulum may be swinging again.

I think it’s cool to join the military again, he said. Once upon a time it was, and it is again.

The academies offer one pathway into that service. Graduates leave with an education, leadership experience and a commission as a military officer, along with a service commitment after graduation.

For Doocy, the young people he encountered at the academies provided evidence that talented Americans are still willing to choose that path.

A Military Generation Born After 9/11

The timing of Doocy’s academy visits also brought another generational shift into focus.

The United States will mark the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks next month. Yet the young people currently preparing to lead America’s military have no personal memory of the event that defined military service for the generation before them. Standing at the Air Force Academy among thousands of cadets, that realization struck Doocy. “Not one of them was born before 9/11,” he said. “Nobody knows the story.”

For Doocy, that generational distance underscores why telling stories about the military and the people who choose to serve remains important.

Today’s media environment makes capturing people’s attention increasingly difficult, he said. Stories about West Point, the Naval Academy or the Air Force Academy compete with an endless stream of social media posts and other content.

Doocy sees the academy series as an opportunity to put those institutions, and the people inside them, in front of Americans who might otherwise know little about them.

“America has changed,” he said. “This is just our opportunity to shine a light on a couple of wonderful institutions, their mission, and this great country of ours.”

Preparing Leaders for a Different Military

The academy visits also gave Doocy a glimpse of how dramatically the military that today’s cadets and midshipmen will inherit is changing.

He pointed to drones, cyber operations, robotics and other technologies that are reshaping warfare.

The officers emerging from the academies will be expected not only to lead people, but also to understand increasingly complex technologies and wrestle with questions surrounding how those capabilities should be used.

But Doocy said the value of an academy education extends beyond technical expertise.

Cadets and midshipmen learn leadership and how to function as members of a team, he said, skills that can follow them throughout their military careers and into civilian life afterward.

You learn leadership, and you learn how to be a team member, Doocy said, adding that employers often seek people with military backgrounds because of those experiences.

Despite the seriousness of that mission, Doocy discovered another defining characteristic of academy life: competition.

At the Naval Academy, he said, the superintendent gave him a football while emphasizing the importance of beating Army again this year. At the Air Force Academy, Doocy heard about the institution’s athletic accomplishments and national championships. At West Point, the message is likely the same.

“They’re so competitive,” Doocy said of the academies.

For him, the combination of academics, athletics, military training and leadership development was ultimately what distinguished the institutions from the image he had before visiting them.

‘We Are in Good Hands’

Doocy went into the project wanting to show viewers what makes a military academy different from a traditional college.

He came away with something broader: a glimpse of the generation that will inherit responsibility for leading America’s military.

They are a generation born after 9/11, preparing for forms of warfare that barely existed when the attacks occurred. They are choosing military service despite having no personal memory of the event that motivated many of their predecessors to enlist.

And they are doing so, in at least one case that stuck with Doocy, because they want to be part of something larger than themselves.

For a journalist who remembers coming of age when the Vietnam War profoundly shaped how many young Americans viewed military service, seeing that choice firsthand left an impression.

“The future leaders of the American military are at these places,” Doocy said. “We are in good hands.”

To learn more about the military service academies, click here.