The U.S. Air Force will fall short of its active-duty recruiting goals this year, something that has not happened in more than two decades, Secretary Frank Kendall said.
"We're almost to the end of the fiscal year, and the expectation is we're going to come in short about 10%," Kendall told Military.com on Monday, adding that the service plans to address long-standing recruiting problems so it doesn't happen again in 2024.
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The last time the Air Force failed to reach 100% of its recruitment goal was 1999, right around the time millennials, people born between 1981 and 1996, first reached the age of active service, according to the Air Force Recruiting Service. The Air Force also missed its recruiting goals when Generation X, people born between 1965 and 1980, came of age to serve.
Despite posting dismal numbers this year, the Air Force believes it can turn its recruitment efforts around.
"Currently, the active duty is projected to miss [its] goal by about 10%," Leslie Brown, a spokeswoman for the Air Force Recruiting Service, said. "We are cautiously optimistic though as we head into FY24. We've seen some positive trends such as the positive growth of our DEP [delayed-entry program], which is double what it was this time last year. It's still lower than we want it to be, but we are continuing to see increases."
Like the Air Force, the Army and Navy will also likely miss their recruitment goals for 2023, with the Army expected to post the largest deficit at a time when the armed services have been trying to beef up their numbers. Last year, the Army was 15,000 soldiers shy of its 60,000 enlistment goal. This year, it's only reached 40% of its target.
Some Republican lawmakers, such as Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO), have blamed the falling numbers on the Biden administration's push for diversity, equity, and inclusion in the armed services and claimed it has harmed recruitment challenges. Acting Undersecretary of the Air Force Kristyn Jones said in a March congressional hearing that the military was focused on trying to retain its forces, not reach a quota.
“We’re not looking at any quotas,” Jones said. “But we are looking for where there are barriers that are impacting certain parts of our population in different ways. … For example, barriers we had with women who were choosing to leave our service because of some of the policies we had.”
News of the recruitment crisis the U.S. is facing comes just weeks after China announced it enrolled a record 17,000 high school graduates. China's announcement comes as tensions mount between the U.S. and China over its presence in the South China Sea and dominance in the Indo-Pacific region. China's total recruitment intake for 2023 is 2,000 more new recruits than it saw last year.
The Chinese Defense Ministry said in June new sign-ups would be offered a greater variety of subjects to "focus on the development of future wars." It also released a revamped set of rules for military recruitment in wartime, giving priority to veterans and optimizing conscription procedures, which an analyst described to the Economic Times as "combat readiness for a war over Taiwan."
Foreign policy expert Gordon Chang told the Washington Examiner that the sign-ups can be traced back to high youth unemployment data and that joining the military is "an attractive alternative" to being unemployed and homeless. China has struggled with a post-pandemic landscape that has devastated its economy.
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Regardless of why, the country's enrollment bump could pose a significant concern for the United States and its allies.
"China is mobilizing its citizens for war," Chang, a Gatestone Institute senior fellow, added. "[President Xi Jinping] can't stop talking about war. I believe China is not ready to go to war, but that doesn't mean China won't go to war."