Tornado Alley (PROG)

[blackhawks]

You really are a credulous f'cking sap.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Sen. Tom Cotton attributed increased Army recruiting numbers to "America First" leadership and "the Trump effect."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/army-recruiting-up-data-show-trend-began-before-election-current-former-army-officials-say

However, August of last year, three months prior to the election, saw a higher number of recruits than in December – 7,415 recruits compared to the 5,877 in December. January 2025 still has not surpassed August 2024 for the highest monthly count of the past year.

In other words, the positive recruiting trend began before the election.

Army recruiting is up, but data show trend began before the election, former Army official says.

"Army's recruiting started getting better much earlier. We really started seeing the numbers, the monthly numbers, go up in February of 2024. We were seeing sort of in the high 5000 contracts per month, and that accelerated, you know, into the spring all the way into August, when the Army really hit a peak."

Starting in October 2023, the Army put 1,200 more recruiters in the field. By September 2024, before the election, the Army announced it had exceeded its recruiting goals.

The groundwork was laid that October when Wormuth and Gen. Randy George, the Army chief, began a sweeping initiative to help those who did not meet academic standards or fitness requirements. The six-week pre-boot camp, called the Future Soldier Prep Course, helps lower-performing recruits meet enlistment standards.

They also moved away from just recruiting in high schools to posting on job message boards. Recruiters got trained by Amazon, Wells Fargo and other industry leaders in talent acquisition. Additionally, the Army brought back the "Be All That You Can Be" branding campaign from the 1980s.

"We've been selecting soldiers who have personalities that are more suited to recruiting. We improved our marketing very dramatically in terms of being very data driven and very targeted. And then, of course, the future Soldier Prep course, which the Army established some time ago, has been a big success and has accounted last year for about 25% of the new recruits that came in," Wormuth said. "If you look at our Army ads, we show young people, you know, jumping out of helicopters. We show kids doing, you know, night patrols in the jungle."