From Draft NOtices, January-March 2026
— Rick Jahnkow
In the last two years, most of the military's numerical goals for first-time enlistments were reached by lowering acceptance standards and using special pre-boot camp preparation programs to boost the acceptance rate of applicants who would ordinarily have been rejected under past standards. While these measures made recent recruiting goals reachable, Pentagon leaders are now expressing concern about a new possible recruiting crisis driven by societal trends, including a sharp drop in births that began in 2007. The impact of this downward population trend will be to further shrink the pool of eligible recruits despite the lowering of enlistment standards.
