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Three years ago, Washington had written off a generation. Too soft, too unfit, too disconnected to serve. In 2023, the Army, Navy and Air Force all missed their recruiting goals. People in this town started asking out loud whether the all-volunteer force could survive. Some started talking about a draft.
They were wrong about the kids.
Under President Trump and Secretary Hegseth, every active-duty service made its recruiting mission in fiscal year 2026, and most of them did it months early. The Army signed 61,500 future soldiers with more than four months to spare. The Navy raised its goal by 10 percent and still hit it in July. It finished the year with 45,112 sailors, three years after coming up 7,450 short of its goal. The Air Force and Space Force had met their goals by April. The Marines said it was the best recruiting environment they’d seen in years, and they already have half of next year’s class under contract.
RENEWED PATRIOTISM AND CAREER OPPORTUNITIES FUEL ARMY’S BIGGEST RECRUITING SURGE IN YEARS
Since November 2024, the military has posted its best rate of recruiting mission achieved in more than 15 years. We did it while American troops were in combat in the Middle East. Across the active-duty force, we saw interest across all demographics, and women’s recruitment is up once again. That strength extended beyond active duty. The Navy Reserve finished at 113 percent of mission, Marine Corps Reserve at 108 percent, the Army National Guard at 102 percent, and the Army Reserve at 103 percent, its first time surpassing its goal in 10 years.
The kids didn’t change. The leadership did. President Trump and Secretary Hegseth told young Americans the truth. The military exists to fight and win. The work is hard. Earning your place in it is something to be proud of. It turns out a generation that had been told nothing was worth sacrificing for was hungry to hear that something is.
I co-chair the Department of War Recruiting Task Force, and our job is to make sure this year’s success is a starting point, not a high-water mark. Records don’t sustain themselves. If we want to keep setting them, I believe we have to do two things. Build propensity, the desire to serve, and create proximity, a military close enough to the American people that the desire turns into a decision.
Propensity
There’s a photo that says this better than I can. A little boy, maybe five years old, stands ankle-deep in the surf in a swim shirt, holding up a small American flag. Two Army Apache helicopters are thundering low over the water in front of him. He’s never going to forget that day.
That’s propensity. It comes from moments of awe. Apaches over the surf. Jets ripping over a stadium on a Friday night. A kid climbing into the hatch of a tank at the county fair. No ad campaign can do what those moments do. They make a kid want to be one of us.
NAVY SAYS NO REPRIMANDS OR FIRINGS AFTER BLUE ANGELS’ LOW PASS OVER BEACHGOERS
That’s why this administration has approved more flyovers than any administration before it. The public does the rest. Every flyover is filmed and shared and passed around online, and that sharing costs the taxpayer nothing. We need to build on that with live demonstrations, special operations showcases, and Fleet Weeks that don’t stop at the coast. There are river towns in the heartland that have never seen a Navy ship. They should.
No one grows up wanting to be something they’ve never seen.
Proximity
I led an infantry platoon in Afghanistan with the 10th Mountain Division. Every grunt learns the same lesson fast: if you don’t hold the ground, you lose it. You can clear a valley in an afternoon. Pull out, and someone else moves in. The only way to hold terrain is to be on it, every day.
TRUMP PENTAGON LAUNCHES COMPETITION FOR AMERICA’S NEXT GREAT MILITARY BASE
Recruiting is no different. The ground is every town in America, and for twenty years we’ve been pulling back from it. We consolidated onto fewer, bigger bases. We left the cities that used to see uniforms every day. Then we acted surprised when young people stopped thinking about serving.
What we’re left with is a force that’s become a family business. We go back to military families again and again because they’re the only Americans we still touch on a regular basis. Those families are the backbone of this country, and we owe them more than we can repay. But a force that only recruits from itself is burning through a reserve it can’t replace. The Pentagon plans to add 44,000 service members next year. We won’t find them unless we reach Americans who have never known anyone in uniform.
Proximity is how we take that ground back. We want a recruiting presence in every town in America. Soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in dress uniform at the county fair, the Friday night game and the Fourth of July parade, doing the work face to face. New recruits sworn in at halftime. Recruiters who are part of the community, not stuck in a strip-mall office. Guard units out where people can see them.
You need both
Neither one works alone. Propensity without proximity fades. That boy on the beach is going to need someone in uniform in his hometown when he turns 17. Proximity without propensity is just a recruiting table nobody stops at.
Showing up again
America’s young people never stopped being willing to serve. We just stopped showing up. Under President Trump and Secretary Hegseth, America is back, and so is military service. Now we have to make sure we never stop, in the stadiums, on the beaches, at the fairs and in every town a base will never reach.
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Propensity makes them want to serve. Proximity puts us there when they’re ready.