Army Set To Expand Basic Training Amid Flood Of New Recruits

The U.S. Army is expanding the number of recruits it can send to basic training by opening a slew of new training camps in Missouri and Oklahoma.

Recruitment into the Army has surged this fiscal year, which started in October. By January, the Army had already hit the halfway point toward its recruiting goal for the year. After years of struggling to hit its goals, the branch has seen a recruiting surge in the past few months.

Many of those recruits could end up at new basic training camps being set up across Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The ten additional training units expected to be built can train up to 9,600 recruits at a time, according to Military.com.

“Expanding basic training capacity is a result of successful recruiting efforts and the Future Soldier Preparatory Course,” Lt. Gen. David Francis, commander for the U.S. Army Center for Initial Military Training, said in a statement. “This is a great problem to have as we continue to train the most capable and lethal soldiers for our Army.”

The Future Soldier Preparatory Course is a program recently launched by the Army to help potential recruits meet the branch’s body weight and academic standards. The program has helped bolster recruiting in recent years.

Recruitment has boomed in the first quarter of the 2025 fiscal year, however.

Former Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said in mid-January, just before President Donald Trump took office, that the Army is on track to bring in 81,000 new recruits: 61,000 for 2025 and another 20,000 in a delayed entry program for 2026.

“What’s really remarkable is the first quarter contracts that we have signed are the highest rate in the last 10 years,” Wormuth said. “We are going like gangbusters, which is terrific.”

Wormuth, who served as former President Joe Biden’s Army Secretary, denied that poor recruiting and missed goals in recent years were caused by military leadership and culture becoming “woke.”

Trump campaigned on getting “woke” out of the military by scrapping programs connected with DEI and other controversial agendas. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has prioritized refocusing the U.S. military on lethality and mission success. He said in his confirmation hearing in the Senate that the military’s focus on other issues has deterred men, especially white men, from signing up.

During his confirmation, Hegseth credited Trump’s election with the surge in recruiting for the military.

“We’ve already seen it in recruiting numbers,” Hegseth said. “There’s already been a surge since President Trump won the election.”