ENLISTMENT DOWN TO A TRICKLE, BASIC TRAINING SCHEDULES CANCELED
At the US Army recruitment office on Northwest Expressway in Oklahoma City, Staff Sergeant Tyler Reeves stares at empty chairs where high school seniors once sat, there for myriad reasons—inability to find employment or afford college, lack of direction, or an inherent sense of patriotism. Oklahoma is a solidly red state that, until recently, accounted for 15% of Army recruitment nationwide, and per Sergeant Reeves, his office seldom had to send recruiters to local high schools because potential enlistees visited the office in droves. Before March, he had 40 walk-ins a week and had a 35% conversion rate, meaning one out of three young men or women signed enlistment contracts and went to Military Entrance Processing Stations (MEPS) to complete the enlistment process. Today, the chairs are vacant, and Staff Sergeant Reeves’ sole subordinate at the office, Sergeant Michael Kilbane, is cold-calling high schoolers who will graduate in May 2026. On April 13, he made 37 calls. Twenty-nine answerers hung up after Sgt. Kilbane said he was a US Army recruiter, while five respondents uttered phrases like “Fuck you,” “Yeah, right, I’m not dying for oil,” or “I bet you haven’t called Barron Trump to enlist.”
Staff Sergeant Reeves told Real Raw News plainly, “We’ve lost Gen-Z. The Gen-Z male demographic that helped Trump in 2024 has jumped ship and wants nothing to do with the military. Our quotas have taken a catastrophic hit.”
Prior to March, the Army recruited ~7,000 individuals/month nationwide and saw a significant surge (350+ daily) following Trump’s 2024 victory and “no more wars” pledge. In 2025, the Army netted 61,000 new recruits.
Now, those numbers are drying up. Like all branches of the United States Armed Forces, the Army has a quota: 60,000 annually or 5,000/month. In March, only 250 people completed the enlistment process, and as of this writing, the Army has successfully recruited only 100 people in April.
“I’ve done three, three-year recruitment assignments, and I’ve never seen anything like this. Young men and women aren’t just saying no, they’re not even walking in the door,” Staff Sergeant Reeves said.
The drop-off isn’t limited to Oklahoma, home to Fort Sill, one of the Army’s four primary basic training facilities; the fallout has become visible where civilians become soldiers. At Fort Sill, Oklahoma, Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and Fort Jackson, South Carolina—the three pillars of Army Basic Combat Training—entire training cycles have been quietly scrubbed from the calendar. Internal Army documents obtained by this news outlet show that nine Basic Training classes scheduled between June and December 2026 have been canceled outright, with another 14 reduced to “skeleton” status of fewer than 14 trainees each. That is a 72 percent drop in throughput from pre-war averages.
A recruiter in St. Louis, Missouri, told us, “Young gals and fells between 18 and 21 years old were signing up left and right when war wasn’t on the table, but, boom, it all stopped when the US and Israel attacked Iran. No one, and I mean no one, wants to sign up as an Eleven Bravo (the military MOS for a combat infantryman), and we can’t pull anyone in for non-combat MOSs.”
Fort Jackson, the Army’s largest basic-training base and the one that produces roughly 40 percent of all new soldiers, has taken the most visible hit, canceling 50 percent of BCT classes.
At all recruiting stations, things are grim. In Columbia, South Carolina—only 12 miles from Fort Jackson—Staff Sgt. Maria Gonzalez keeps the lights on until 7 p.m. every night, even though her last appointment was a no-show. “I called 47 high-school seniors this week,” she said. “Two picked up. One hung up when I said the word ‘Army.’ The other asked if we had a ‘no Iran’ clause in the contract. When I told him there wasn’t one, he laughed and hung up too.”
The reason the Department of War recently raised recruitment age from 35 to 42, recruiters tell us, is that younger people are simply not enlisting due to opposition to the Iran War.
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