As recently as 2022, the United States Army shipped off to basic training only two-thirds of the new recruits it had hoped to enlist. The Army fell short again in 2023, and the Navy and Coast Guard struggled to make mission. That year, only the Marine Corps and Space Force met their top-line recruiting goals — but even those achievements included some fuzzy math and creative accounting.

The recruiting shortfall — which by 2023 had become a critical national security crisis — had many fathers. How did things get to that point?

It begins with the fact that the Defense Department’s own research revealed that only a quarter of young Americans were even eligible to serve in the military without a waiver because of fitness, medical, educational, or criminal shortcomings. Perhaps even more alarming, fewer than one in ten young Americans said they were even willing to consider putting on their nation’s uniform.

The Covid pandemic chaos played its part — recruiters in many states were unable to make in-person contacts at schools because of burdensome restrictions, and many young Americans who would have found a career after graduation disappeared from the school system entirely.

But the cultural changes around the Great Awokening undoubtedly played a large role too. Many young Americans, who might well have considered a military enlistment, couldn’t help but notice that the Biden-era Defense Department was eager to highlight its campaigns to combat sexual harassment and assault in the ranks, alongside very visible suicide-prevention and anti-racism efforts. Recruiting advertisements played up diversity, education incentives, and personal fulfillment — instead of patriotism and opportunities for excitement and adventure. For too many, it seems that the military has become a dystopian laboratory for social engineering or, worse, an arena for hectoring and abuse.

And then there was the creeping culture of safety-ism, in which many American parents discouraged the military as too dangerous for their kids, who should obviously prioritize going to college.

The situation had begun to reach crisis levels. The Army — which was already half the active-duty size that it was at the end of the Cold War — began studying ways to cut personnel out of its Brigade Combat Team organizational charts. Struggling to man its ships, the Navy planned to reduce its ship complements. The Air Force was short more than a thousand pilots.

Today, however, we find ourselves in a dramatically better position. In fiscal year 2025, which ended on September 30, the Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Space Force all reached their recruiting goals. Incredibly, in June, the Army announced that it surpassed its goal of 61,000 new soldiers four months before the deadline.

This achievement is the result of fresh thinking, an influx of financial resources, and untold amounts of work and effort on the part of the nation’s military recruiters — the noncommissioned officers tasked with a very difficult and often thankless task.

Donald Trump, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and other administration officials say that their efforts to create a post-woke spirit in the military since Trump’s victory in 2024 is the reason behind the recruiting surge.

There is no doubt that Hegseth’s telegenic public-relations focus on lethality, fitness, and “the warrior ethos” has been an important factor in motivating at least some of the 18- and 19-year-olds who are joining the ranks. Abandoning advertising campaigns that many Americans considered woke, the U.S. Army is once again asking young Americans to “be all you can be” — and thousands of them are answering the call, spurred on by marketing that is visibly attempting to make the military seem cool and exciting.

But this is not the whole story. The 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law by President Biden in December 2024, surely also had an impact: It raised the base pay of junior enlisted personnel by 14.5 percent, making the early years of a career in the military more financially competitive with big box stores and other entry-level jobs. And the liberal offering of bonuses and other financial incentives has helped turn the tide.

Finally, the services began experimenting with programs such as the Army’s “Future Soldier Preparatory Course” at Fort Jackson, S.C. — colloquially known as “Army Fat Camp” — which is designed to get recruits to the starting line before boot camp even begins. This pre-boot-camp prep course has successfully allowed recruits who don’t meet the minimum physical or academic standards to even ship out for boot camp to get ready and take the very first step of the ladder to a military career. At Fort Jackson, tens of thousands of trainees have worked their way into the Army’s basic training pipeline through the course, in which they work out multiple times a day and their meals are supervised. Those requiring academic remediation attend daily high-school-level math or reading comprehension classes in a no-nonsense environment.

Americans rightly expect that their military remain the preeminent fighting force on earth. They expect that young Americans will stand ready to defend their country and the Constitution, whenever called upon to do so. For a few years this decade, the all-volunteer military construct was failing. It is a tribute to the efforts and successes of so many that, as America’s veterans are honored this week, we can give thanks that young Americans are once again answering their nation’s call.