In 2022 and 2023, the Army missed its recruitment goal by nearly twenty-five per cent\u2014about fifteen thousand troops a year. It hit the mark last year, but only by reducing the target by more than ten thousand. The Navy has also fared badly: it failed to reach its goals in 2023, then met them in 2024 by filling out the ranks with recruits of a lower standard; nearly half measured below average on an aptitude exam. The Army Reserve hasn\u2019t met its benchmark since 2016, and the ranks are so depleted that active-duty officers have been put in charge of reserve units. Some experts worry that, if the country went to war, many reserve units might be unable to deploy. A U.S. official who works on these issues put it simply: \u201cWe can\u2019t get enough people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the end of the Second World War, the American military had twelve million active-duty members. It now has 1.3 million\u2014even though the population has more than doubled, and women are now eligible for armed service. \u201cThe U.S. military has been shrinking for thirty years,\u201d Lawrence Wilkerson, a former senior State Department official who leads a task force on the challenges facing the armed services, said. \u201cBut its global commitments haven\u2019t changed.\u201d The military operates out of bases in more than fifty countries, and routinely deploys Special Operations forces to about eighty. Now, Wilkerson said, \u201cit\u2019s not clear that the military is large enough anymore for America to uphold its promises.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For decades, the armed forces based their requirements on a defensive doctrine called \u201cwin and hold\u201d: the capacity to win one war while fighting a second to a standstill. Today, with the U.S. confronting perhaps its starkest global-security challenges since the Cold War, many analysts fear that even one war would be too taxing. A conflict with China over the disputed island of Taiwan could leave thousands of Americans dead in a matter of weeks\u2014amounting to nearly half the losses the country sustained in twenty years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read it all<\/a>.<\/p> Dexter Filkins reports on the U.S. military\u2019s struggle to recruit from a population that\u2019s not just unenthusiastic but unable to serve as it also reckons with political turbulence at home and mounting security threats abroad. https:\/\/t.co\/bw6y3RY3zT<\/a><\/p>— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) February 3, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote>