The Air Force says it has met its active-duty, Guard and reserve recruiting goals this year following a historic slump -- and is aiming to get even more people to join up in 2025.
Recruiters had a goal of hitting 27,100 non-prior military enlisted active-duty airmen. The service said it officially squeaked by with 27,139 as of Tuesday.
Brig. Gen. Christopher Amrhein, commander of the Air Force Recruiting Service, said there wasn't one specific policy change that helped the service reach the recruiting goals. But data provided to Military.com by the service showed that 2023 changes to body composition were a major contributing factor.
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Additionally, the service had a goal of 7,200 new Air Force reservists and 9,359 new Air National Guardsmen, and surpassed it with 7,351 and 9,729, respectively. Similarly, the Space Force -- the smallest of all the services whose recruitment is handled by the Department of the Air Force -- surpassed its goal of 659 new Guardians and ultimately netted 716 recruits.
Of all the major policy updates in recent years, the 2023 change that allows applicants to have a greater percentage of body fat -- up to 26% for men and 36%for women -- contributed to the most new recruits: 5,196 across the Air Force, Space Force, Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard.
Past Pentagon studies, reported on by Military.com, showed that only 23% of American youth were eligible to serve either due to being overweight and physically unfit, using drugs, or having mental and physical health problems.
"We've had one fitness failure out of all of those [recruits]," Amrhein told Military.com in an exclusive interview at the Air and Space Forces Association conference on Tuesday in Maryland. "I think that kind of reinforces, when you remove a barrier, but you're still upholding a standard."
Last year, the Air Force announced it had missed its recruiting goals for the first time since 1999, coming up about 10% short of its goal. The shortfall triggered modified policies, new bonuses, college programs and more staffing aimed at turning the tide.
Officials attributed that historic slump in 2023 to issues that lingered from the COVID-19 pandemic, surprisingly high employment numbers, increased salaries in the private sector, and issues convincing Gen Z to join the military.
Outside of changing body mass index standards, another policy that contributed to more recruits signing up was altering the Air Force's existing hand and neck tattoo policy -- leading to 660 new recruits -- and the service's 2023 policy reinstating the enlisted college loan repayment policy, which brought in 540 new troops.
After hitting this year's goal, the service now wants to bring in more recruits in fiscal 2025, which starts at the end of this month.
The enlisted active-duty goal will expand to 32,500, and the Space Force will also increase its goal to 800 Guardians in 2025. Air Force Reserve goals will expand to 7,600.
To help accomplish that, Amrhein said "we're in the process right now of onboarding the additional recruiting footprint" necessary to hit those ambitious goals.
The Air Force Recruiting Service will be bringing on 370 more people -- roughly 150 of those being recruiters, and another 55 specializing in scouting out future special operations talent -- to meet those needs.
The Air Force also has about 11,000 airmen in its delayed-entry program, or DEP -- the waiting area where recruits get ready to ship out to boot camp -- as a head start for 2025. It's a significant uptick from the little more than 8,000 last year.
"It's impressive the team made goal this year, and they were able to increase the DEP even from where it was starting last year," Amrhein told Military.com. "I believe that the recruiting force has operationally postured itself as best as possible to start [fiscal] 2025."
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