Recruiting for the Navy is at its highest level since the early 2000s, just two years after the service missed its active-duty goal.
“We’ve listened to those line recruiters and done the things that they indicated were the most important to them, and that has changed the game on the inspiration, the drive and the willingness to go the extra mile to get the job done,” Rear Adm. James Waters III, head of Navy Recruiting Command, told reporters Monday, according to Stars and Stripes.
The Navy, Army, and Air Force missed their recruiting goals in 2023, and they took steps to bring in new prospects.
Changes included modernizing marketing campaigns, streamlining administrative processes, tripling medical waiver review staff, expanding age eligibility, and opening a preparatory course to improve test scores for entry, Stars and Stripes reported.
The Navy said in June that it had met its recruiting goal for fiscal 2025, which ended Tuesday, with 40,600 sailors enlisted. By the close of the fiscal year, the number rose to 44,096, Stars and Stripes reported.
Waters said the figure hadn’t been this high since the early 2000s.
Last year, the Navy narrowly reached its goal, exceeding 40,600 sailors by a few hundred, Military Times reported.
But recruiting officials acknowledged that about 17% of recruits scored 30% or below on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, using waiver authority to bring in a greater proportion of low-scoring applicants.
In addition, the Department of War’s Office of Inspector General faulted the Navy in June for improperly documenting changes that streamlined medical waiver approval for recruits, resulting in 5,845 more accessions — or 13.5% of last year’s pool.
Waters attributed this year’s success to an increase in recruiters and removing obstacles that limited their effectiveness.
“We’ve listened to those line recruiters and done the things that they indicated were the most important to them, and that has changed the game. … We would not be where we are without every line recruiter doing that hard work, day in and day out, the thousands of things that they do that I will never know to go the extra mile — that has been the difference,” Waters said.
The Navy, he said, “listened and made changes” in response to frustrations voiced by recruiters about the difficulty of closing the deal on recruits. In particular, he cited red tape around approving prospective enlistees’ tattoos.
“Young people today are much more inked than they were even a few years ago,” he said.
Last year, it took an average of 30 days to get tattoo approval, but Waters said it now takes an average of 2.7 days. He said other improvements included giving recruiters more input into local advertising and reducing paperwork complexity.
“When we make changes, we are thinking about it from the perspective of the recruiter receiving it in that recruiting station of two or three recruiters, out in the middle of America, and thinking, ‘How are they going to take that? How are they going to use that?'” Waters said.
Waters did not address the impact of the current political climate. President Donald Trump has made it a priority to revitalize the military since he began his second term.
Reporters were told Waters would not respond to questions on that subject nor on the recent reinstatement of troops discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine because of the Navy’s nonpartisan status, according to Military Times.
All the services reported meeting or exceeding their goals this year, and the Pentagon confirmed a recruiting upswing dating to November 2024, after Trump had won the election.
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