The War Department announced Tuesday that the military has reached its highest level of recruitment in a decade and a half in a stunning, yet predictable, reversal from just a few years ago.
“Since November 2024, our military has seen its highest recruiting percentage of mission achieved in more than 15 years,” Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement.
Every branch, according to the Department of War, hit over 100% of its recruiting targets, except the Army Reserve. The department was quick to attribute this recruitment explosion to the new leadership at the top.
“In 2025, the department exceeded our annual active-duty recruitment accession goals across all five services. … Why? Because we have a commander in chief and a secretary of war who are focused on our troops and our mission, and on ensuring that we remain the most lethal fighting force on the planet,” Undersecretary of War for Personnel and Readiness Anthony J. Tata said during a speech earlier this month.
Now, it’s true that every administration wants to spin good news as directly attributable to its leadership. However, much like the border issue, it’s impossible to ignore the reality that recruitment shot up virtually the moment it was clear that President Donald Trump would win in 2024 and there would be new management in the White House.
Even though the world was becoming an increasingly hostile place, the Biden administration utterly failed to boost recruitment and, like its endeavors in so many other areas, practically shrugged when year after year the military descended deeper and deeper into a recruiting crisis.
The Biden Response to the Recruiting Crisis
Their only answer? Promoting more DEI programs until morale improved and the military “looked” like America. At a House Armed Services Committee hearing I covered in 2023, a member of the Biden administration defended its DEI practices by saying that this was the only means by which we could boost recruitment numbers.
“Our diversity and inclusion initiatives are focused on talent acquisition and development and informed by science and business best practices, congressional mandates, data-focused policy reviews and assessments and the lived experiences of airmen and guardians working together every single day,” said Alex Wagner, the Air Force’s assistant secretary for manpower and reserve affairs.
These “business best practices” worked about as well as the DEI programs that became all the rage in big business. Not only were many of these programs discriminatory and outright illegal, but it also turns out they didn’t work. The studies supporting them were bunk, ideological claptrap disguised as “science.”
The “diverse” army never signed up, the number of white recruits declined dramatically, and it seemed that nobody in charge was particularly concerned about it.
The fact that the DEI programs were a priority despite the obvious failure made it clear that the military would be treated like a vast social experiment, rather than centering its focus on war fighting. Results were irrelevant to those in charge as long as “equity” improved.
On top of the DEI nonsense, the military was outright purging members through COVID-19 vaccine mandates, making the recruitment and retention crisis even worse.
No wonder our adversaries abroad weren’t taking the United States seriously when President Joe Biden was hollering about democracy and going with his hollow “tough guy” spiel. We weren’t taking ourselves seriously.
A Paradigm Shift
Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth took the government and our military in a new direction. Trump loves to be called the “peace” president but he understands that if you want peace you must prepare for war.
The military’s focus has shifted toward remaining the most lethal fighting force on the planet. Excellence and merit are celebrated once again.
The president has held military parades and touts new weapons systems that will give us an edge if war must come. He promoted a new “battleship” with great enthusiasm, in part because it signals that the administration will take the much-needed naval buildup seriously.
I hope in the future, the “Golden Fleet” of Trump will send a warning to would-be adversaries in a way that Theodore Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet did nearly a century and a half ago. It certainly sends a stronger message than the rusted-out “green fleet” of Biden.
But the military is about more than its weapons systems, as vital as those are. Its strength comes not merely from its technology, and even less from its “diversity,” but from its morale, its unity of purpose, and the mentality of the people who serve in every capacity.
It seems confidence is being restored, and Americans are joining the military once again.
Woe to those abroad who seek to test their strength.