The Air Force will start 2026’s annual recruiting cycle with a record-high number of potential recruits in the service’s delayed entry program. If all of the recruits currently in the pre-service program eventually report for boot camp, the service would be more than halfway toward next year’s goal, service officials told Task & Purpose.
Currently, about 19,000 people are in the Air Force’s delayed entry program, which allows potential trainees to wait up to four months before shipping to basic military training, Air Force officials said. That is the highest number of people in the program since the Air Force began keeping records on it in 2012, said Brig. Gen. Jeffrey W. Nelson, commander of the Air Force Accessions Center and the Air Force Recruiting Service at Joint Base San Antonio in Texas.
The service’s success comes after struggles with recruiting in recent years, which prompted the Air Force to make several changes to standards and . In 2022, the Air Force started offering applicants who test positive for tetrahydrocannabinol or THC — a compound found in the cannabis plant — the chance to test again after 90 days if they get a waiver. After missing its recruiting target the following year, the Air Force raised the maximum age for recruits to 42.
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A number of factors are driving Americans to enlist in the Air Force, Nelson told Task & Purpose during a Sept. 22 interview at the Air & Space Forces Association’s annual conference in National Harbor, Maryland.
“Part of it is just service to the country,” Nelson said. “Based on research and asking, we understand that they appreciate the benefits that are offered, looking for educational opportunities, also the path for growth within the service, kind of basic things for career growth development over time.”
Recruits are asking questions about opportunities for their spouses to get jobs and what schools would be available to their children, he said. The Air Force is also seeing that people are interested in joining the service for more than just a brief stint.
“They’re looking for more career potential as they come in,” Nelson said.
Still, the percentage of women and people of color joining the Air Force has remained roughly steady over the past few years, Nelson said.
The number of would-be recruits in the delayed entry program would represent 58% of the service’s 2026 fiscal year recruiting goal of 32,750 non-prior service enlistments, said Air Force Accessions Center spokesperson Joe Gangemi. Fiscal years, which nearly all government organizations use for planning and budgeting, begin on October 1 and end the following September.
By comparison, the Air Force had 8,400 potential recruits in the delayed entry program in the beginning of fiscal year 2024 and 11,500 to start fiscal year 2023, Gangemi told Task & Purpose.
The Air Force initially set an ambitious goal of 32,500 recruits for fiscal year 2025, but the service later reduced that to 29,950. In June, the service announced that it recruited 30,000 airmen, meeting its yearly goal three months early.
Retention has also proved to be so high this fiscal year that the Air Force abruptly stopped offering retention bonuses in May, more than four months before the end of the fiscal year.
Like the rest of the military branches, the Air Force is rebounding from past recruiting lows. It fell about 2,700 airmen short of its fiscal year 2023 goal of signing up 26,900 new airmen, marking the first time since 1999 that the service had missed its goal. The following year, the Air Force met its recruiting goal of about 27,000 new airmen.
After missing its goal two years ago, the Air Force has made changes to the training recruiters receive at their initial school and at their units so they have all the skills they need, such as recognizing the unique aspects of the areas of the country to where they are assigned, Nelson said.
Recruiting for the military as a whole began to rebound last year. A major factor in the Army’s success has been its Future Soldier Preparatory Course, which helps potential recruits meet the service’s academic and physical standards. For fiscal year 2024, about 13,200 recruits joined the Army through the preparatory course, about 24% of all Army recruits for that year. The Navy has a similar program.
The Air Force has no plans to create its own prep course, Nelson said.
“We’ve met our goal for [fiscal year] 25 early,” Nelson said. “We’re on a good path for 2026. And so we don’t, at this point, feel the need for that sort of program across all recruits.”
