The Pentagon wants to add 44,500 active duty troops and reservists next year.
The Pentagon’s proposed $1.5 trillion budget includes funding to buy weapons, conduct research and develop new capabilities, and even enhance base facilities and barracks for junior troops. It also calls for plans to increase its total force.
The Pentagon wants to add 40,100 active duty troops and 4,400 reservists, according to Defense Department budget documents.
“Military recruiting in FY 2025 hit its highest level in over 15 years. The services continue to capitalize on this wave of positive recruiting momentum and expand our force with motivated and highly qualified individuals,” Defense Department officials wrote in budget documents for the 2027 fiscal year, which runs from Oct. 1, 2026, to Sept. 30, 2027.
The Pentagon’s request for additional forces comes after the services began to experience a recruiting upswing in 2024 after investing in prep courses and adopting strategies from the private sector. In 2023, the Air Force, Navy and Army missed their annual recruiting goals.
The Army, the largest branch, perhaps had seen the worst of it. Between 2021 and 2023, the Army’s end strength dropped by tens of thousands. After overhauling recruiting efforts with new incentives and prep programs, the service exceeded its annual goal and had thousands more in the pipeline in 2024.
Where are the 44,000 going?
Last year, Congress approved a total end strength of 1,302,800 active duty troops, which added 26,000 troops to the force across the five branches. The final breakdown was: 454,000 soldiers; 344,600 sailors; 321,500 airmen; 172,300 Marines; 10,400 guardians.
Next year, the Army is looking to build a force of 469,000 soldiers, which breaks down to an additional 15,000 active soldiers and 3,300 National Guardsmen. The Army Reserve is not planning for any major changes to its total end strength, budget documents show.
The Air Force is looking to add 11,700 airmen and guardians. While they’re planning for 1,100 more Air National Guardsmen, they want to cut 100 reservist billets.
The Air Force, which also hit a recruiting slump in 2023, changed how it trained recruiters and began offering enlistment bonuses of up to $40,000. Just last week, the service announced that they met their annual recruiting goal five months early, along with getting thousands of potential airmen and guardians in their Delayed Entry Program.
The Navy is looking to add 12,000 active duty sailors, 1,400 active duty Marines and 1,100 Marine reservists. The Navy is also cutting 1,000 billets from its reserves, according to budget documents.
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The additional forces also come with a request for a 5 to 7% pay increase across the force.
The end strength numbers were included in the Pentagon’s 2027 budget request, which has to be approved by Congress. Lawmakers have sometimes adjusted those numbers based on national security priorities, budget constraints, and recruitment challenges.
For instance, in the Senate Armed Services Committee’s report for the fiscal year 2024 annual defense bill, lawmakers recommended a lower active duty end-strength than the Pentagon requested because they thought the recruiting troubles were a “multi-year effort” and didn’t want to encourage “quantity over quality.”
