On Jan. 27, 1973, nearly 4,000 miles away from the signing of the Paris Peace Accords that withdrew U.S. troops from Vietnam, Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird stood in front of the whirring film cameras and crackling pop flashes of the Washington, D.C., press and announced: The draft was over.
“I wish to inform you that the armed forces henceforth will depend exclusively on volunteer soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines,” he said.
The decision to formally end troop conscription and transition into an all-volunteer military had been a long time coming. In 1969, on the heels of campaign-trail promises made for reelection, President Richard Nixon established the Gates Commission, a group of officials and researchers, to make a case and a plan for a full-time all-volunteer military. A year later, they published their findings.
“We unanimously believe that the nation’s interests will be better served by an all-volunteer force. … We have satisfied ourselves that a volunteer force will not jeopardize national security, and we believe it will have a beneficial effect on the military as well as the rest of our society.”
If you zoom out, despite small peaks, military membership has been steadily declining for decades, dropping 36 percent from 1980 to 2024.
It was determined that an all-volunteer force was not just desirable, but achievable.
The reasoning was patriotic at an almost cellular level — a volunteer force promotes the American values of personal liberty and freedom by allowing citizens to enlist themselves.
The logic worked, until it didn’t: The military has again been facing a recruitment crisis, one of its worst since the Vietnam War. And while the numbers could be on the upswing, the shortfalls are still being felt at a time of global instability.
While there have been ebbs and flows in recruitment levels since the formal institution of the all-volunteer force, if you zoom out, active-duty membership has been steadily declining the entire time, dropping 36 percent from 1980 to 2024. In 2022, military enlistment hit an all-time low — just 128,000 new recruits total across all branches. While young people still comprise the majority of new recruits, those 25 and younger now represent the biggest membership drop in the past five years.
The recruitment crisis may say something about the health of our military, but it also points at something bigger: Gen Z is the least likely generation to enlist, meaning fewer people than ever before feel an obligation to serve their country.
What is next for America?
The reasons are complicated and multifaceted, but they reflect deepening anxieties about politics, polarization, inequality, trust in institutions and even physical fitness.
They also raise an uncomfortable question: If generations coming into the age of service don’t feel compelled to serve, what is next for America?
This year marks the 250th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Army, Marines and Navy (the Coast Guard and Air Force came later). To kick off celebrations, a military parade was held in Washington, D.C., and Arlington, Virginia, in June — more specifically, on Flag Day and President Donald Trump’s birthday. Over 6,000 soldiers from at least 11 corps and divisions nationwide, 150 military vehicles, 50 helicopters, warplanes, horses, mules and parachutists marched, flew and floated overhead, while millions of Americans across the country protested the event.
“This parade is comprised of our sons, daughters, mothers and fathers — the very best of us,” wrote Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman. “Regardless of your politics, it’s appropriate to celebrate the 250 years of sacrifice, dedication and service.”
Considering the widespread protests, it was a large-scale study of the disconnect between those who serve and those they’re serving. The chasm is wide enough that during a time of job market instability and economic uncertainty, the military — as an employer — is still having to double down on incentives and byways for young Americans. For the first time, the Army introduced a $35,000 bonus to soldiers who agree to “quick ship” within 45 days. Other branches offered their own incentives, like the Air Force’s revived college loan repayment program. Within a month of the parade, the Army met its fiscal year goal of 61,000 new troops months ahead of the deadline.
Kelly (who asked that only her first name be used out of fear of retribution for speaking out) is emblematic in many ways of recruits who have found their way to a uniform over the last 30-40 years. She joined the military not so much out of a sense of patriotic duty, but because she “wanted a way out.” Growing up in a middle-class household with two Mexican immigrant parents, she struggled to stay motivated in high school and didn’t have any plans past graduation. Joining the military seemed like the “easiest way out” — a steady paycheck, and access to the military’s tuition assistance program that allowed her to take online classes.
The historian in me says there are always going to be ebbs and flows in recruitment. On the other hand, I do think something is different right now.
“I really wanted a quick fix to my situation,” she says. “(And) at first, I did feel patriotic, wanting to serve my country. But as the years went on and I experienced some things in the military, that has definitely not been the case anymore. … I feel like people are just trying to get numbers up and they don’t really tell you what you’re signing up for.”
When Kelly, who is now 21, got a guardian to sign her enlistment papers (she was 17 at the time), she only knew her ship-out date for basic training, unaware of how often she’d be deployed, how the ranking system worked or what field events were. Currently deployed in South Korea, the specifics of her position are classified, but her day-to-day life is somewhat monotonous. Physical training before dawn, breakfast and then a full day at the office, while some of her fellow soldiers are out in the jungle training with little cell service.
“Attempts to sell (the military) purely as a vocation have not been successful in many cases because the services can’t provide that vocational experience,” says military historian and Texas A&M emeritus professor Brian McAllister Linn. “If you sell the Marines or the Army as jumping out of airplanes and riding around in a tank, and in fact what they’re doing is shining their boots and picking up cigarette butts, after a while that recruitment strategy isn’t going to work.”
Challenges to recruiting
These experiences for new enlistees aren’t new, and the mismatch between what service could be and what it is has plagued recruitment since the ending of the draft. The transition to the all-volunteer force saw an almost immediate drop in the “quality” o f recruits, as measured by high school graduation rates. The percentage of new enlistees who had at least a high school diploma fell from 67% in 1972 to 61% in 1974. According to a 1987 report from the Congressional Budget Office, by 1979, “the active services had fallen 7% below their recruiting goals, and, in 1980, fully half of all Army enlistees scored in category IV on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT), below the 31st percentile among American youth.”
In the face of a stagnating economy in the early 1980s, Congress authorized military pay raises that increased entry-level compensation by over 10 percent, larger cash bonuses (reaching up to $8,000 — equivalent to about $31,400 in today’s world) were offered to attract recruits, the Montgomery GI Bill and other educational benefits were introduced as a pathway to higher education for young Americans, and reenlistment bonuses to encourage experienced personnel to stay were introduced. It was enough to draw people in, and back.
By November 1983, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger declared an end to the “experiment” of the all-volunteer force. “We know now that an All-Volunteer Force can succeed,” he said, “and we know what it takes to make it succeed.”
The military launched a new marketing campaign, anchored by the tagline “Be all you can be.” It was a message that seemed to be just as much for the branches themselves as it was for potential recruits. And, it seemed, for a while, they measured up. Over 2.8 million Americans enlisted in the 10 years following the launch of the campaign.
But that didn’t stick, either. Since its beginnings, the all-volunteer force “experiment” has not proven to have actually reached a solution.
The long-standing problem that always returns, Linn says, is this disconnect between what volunteers think they’re signing up for and what they actually signed up for. Linn adds that complaints from both sides — recruits on broken promises and recruiters on low standards — are as old as the military itself. “The fact that people nowadays are complaining about their recruiting promises, welcome to the club. You and some recruits from 1815 have a lot in common.”
Amy Rutenberg, a professor at Iowa State University and a historian of post-Vietnam military manpower policies, says a disconnect between the perception of the U.S. military and the reality of it is a sign of “a very unhealthy civic-military” relationship.
“It’s really fun to see a flyover at a football game, and then never think about what the military actually has to do or what it means to deploy or function within it,” she says. “It’s easy to assume that whatever our military is doing, it’s doing because it’s the right thing and that all the people who are in it are heroes. Keeping that imagery absolves American people of having to really think about the harder questions.”
Harder questions like: What does it mean to serve? What should the military be used for? What does it mean if the people the military serves can’t see themselves in it? The last one is particularly relevant today. If a draft were ever reinstated on the brink of another world war, millions of Americans — many of whom know the armed forces through catchy slogans, adrenaline-pumping movies or air shows — would be called to serve. By law, the Selective Service Act still requires all men aged 18 to 25 to register, yet so many opt out that it’s become negligible.
“The fact is, traditionally, soldiering and sailoring has been a blue-collar occupation and people go into it like they would go into a trade school,” Linn says. “Within the army, (there’s) the big effort to have warriors … not just skilled labor. That’s an effort in some ways to separate military culture from civilian culture.”
The military has always walked a fine line between appealing to ideals — creating warriors, fighting for freedom — and practical matters like having health care and financial stability.
The military has always walked a fine line between appealing to ideals — being separate from “civilian” life, creating warriors, bringing patriotism to life, fighting for freedom — and practical matters like having a job, health care and financial stability. For many recruits, it’s the latter that resonates during times of economic crisis and recruitment booms. There’s full tuition coverage, free health care, a housing allowance, military spouse support and VA benefits through initiatives like the G.I. Bill. Being in the military can allow one to save up to $25,000 in the first four years and potentially sidestep debt. In 2024, a youth poll study run by the then-Department of Defense’s Joint Advertising Marketing Research and Studies department found that people’s top two reasons when considering joining were pay and receiving money for future education.
“The historian in me says there are always going to be ebbs and flows in recruitment,” says Rutenberg. “On the other hand, I do think something is different right now. … What really concerns me as a citizen and historian is what it means when the military is deployed domestically against American people. It is a symptom of our broken system that it can even happen.”
Future of military recruitment
In March 1987, the Congressional Budget Office published a report on the prospects for military recruitment in the coming decade. It found that quality was just as important as quantity when it came to enlisting volunteers. But it wasn’t as easy a measure to meet. “High-quality males,” defined as “high school graduates of above-average aptitude,” proved the most difficult group to recruit.
Reforms in recruitment were actioned. “Recruiters are deemed successful only if they achieve all their separate quotas for high-aptitude graduates, high-aptitude nongraduates, and so forth,” the report stated. So began a new era of in-school recruitment.
Scott Harding, associate dean for academic affairs at the University of Connecticut’s School of Social Work, and UMass Ph.D. candidate Seth Kershner have been researching the long history of recruitment in schools, both through informal tabling and ROTC/JROTC programs, documenting how recruiters focus on visiting public schools more frequently in lower-income areas, knowing military service can be more enticing when college feels unfeasible.
“It’s not recognized as a substitute for the military draft, but it raises real questions about the appropriateness of having military values and structures in a school setting with a vulnerable youth population,” says Harding. “There has been this continuing problem that the military has had to contend with — that only a tiny slice of American young people are interested in serving.”
But in 2023, most young Americans didn’t even qualify for military service. In fact, 77% of young adults didn’t qualify due to factors like obesity or preexisting medical issues. The waiver process, standardized among all branches in 2008, exists to allow exceptions for certain conditions — ranging from childhood asthma to ADHD — that might otherwise disqualify someone when they apply at a Military Entrance Processing Station.
Right now, the picture of what serving in the military looks like in the American imagination doesn’t match up with the reality of service. Whether serving was ever really aligned with that vision or not is up for debate.
Before 2008, exceptions were granted across all military branches for reasons like medical conditions and past offenses. Beyond that, a culture of discretion has long existed between recruits and recruiters — like “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” the 1993 policy. The concept of nondisclosures isn’t novel, and neither is the use of waivers. But the number of waivers being used is. In 2022, at least 1 in 6 recruits received waivers for their enlistment process.
One explanation for the recent influx of waivers is the military’s gradual transition, starting in 2017, to MHS Genesis, an electronic medical record system that accesses a recruit’s entire medical history. Diagnoses that once may have flown under the radar — a past medication, a childhood ADHD diagnosis — are now automatically flagged, overwhelming short-staffed recruiters dealing with too many waivers, and impacting aspiring recruits.
Bre — a 22-year-old from Virginia Beach — has been trying to join the Marine Corps for over a year, driven to continue her family’s long tradition of military service on both her birth and adopted sides. Despite being physically qualified as a weightlifter and scoring high on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test, she was disqualified in January due to medications she took in high school for PTSD following a sexual assault, as well as a false flag for bipolar disorder, all found on the Genesis system. She pivoted to the waiver process, completing a psych evaluation, which confirmed she did not have bipolar disorder and found her mentally fit to serve. Still, she was rejected. Now, Bre is aiming to join the Army, which has a more lenient waiver policy.
Growing up half an hour from Norfolk (home to the world’s largest naval base), military life is all she’s ever known. For her, the military is a path to escape what she calls “a dead-end town.”
“I’m just trying to get out of here,” she says.
That’s the allure that brings many recruits into service, according to experts and the Pentagon’s own research. But, often, it can’t keep them there.
During times of economic security, recruitment numbers historically dip. According to researchers like Linn, there has to be more than money during an economic slump that brings people into a uniform. If it’s not personal liberty and freedom, then what is it?
It could be redrawing the picture of what serving in the military looks like, so the collective vision matches up with the reality of service, Rutenberg adds. Sure, the sacrifice, dedication and service that Fetterman wrote of have always existed. But when the points of pride that come with being a member of the U.S. military feel just askew of where they ought to be, it’s hard not to focus on the hollow space in between.
Perhaps the physical and intellectual ideal of the American soldier that the military itself came to embrace — the warrior-philosopher type with “Saving Private Ryan” courage, “The Hurt Locker” prowess and “Top Gun” swagger — is simply too enticing and too fictitious.
“(The ideal of the American soldier) has survived because it’s useful,” says Rutenberg. “There are people who join up because they see the military as the best of us.”
At a recent military summit, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called for returning to a “warrior ethos” after what he described as “decades of decay.” That revival appears to be underway — all branches met their recruiting goals last fiscal year, and the Navy recorded its highest recruiting numbers in nearly 25 years.
So, after nearly 45 years and in the midst of another era of trouble for recruitment, the “Be all you can be” campaign is back.
The call to young Americans to be able to see themselves in uniform is reimagined in HD resolution, with high-energy montages and visual effects. But, ultimately, it still looks the same. Will the next 10 — or 50, or 250 — years for the military look the same, too?
“The idea of military personnel as heroes and their need to be thanked for their service comes from specific historical rationale. … If service personnel do put their lives in danger for the nation, then that is something admirable that most of us statistically are totally unwilling to do,” Rutenberg adds. “But, our system doesn’t work if we stop there.”
This story appears in the November 2025 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.