AURORA, Colo. — The Air Force is seeing a historic surge in recruits in its delayed entry program, as the service works to further boost recruitment of new airmen and guardians, officials said this week.
More potential recruits are making appointments with recruiters to discuss the possibility of joining the Air Force or Space Force, Air Force Recruiting Service commander Brig. Gen. Christopher Amrhein told reporters at the AFA Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado, on Tuesday.
What’s more, the Air Force is shipping more new recruits off to basic military training at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas on a weekly basis than it did even two years ago, Amrhein said. And the service is more than filling its delayed entry program — essentially a waiting list of recruits who have signed up and been approved to join the military, but who have to wait for room at basic training to ship out — which typically doesn’t happen in winter, he said.
“We had 3,000 appointments last week alone,” Amrhein said. “We normally have 1,600.”
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin announced Sunday on social media platform X that the Air Force had accumulated 13,000 recruits in the delayed entry program, the most in nearly 10 years.
With more recruits joining, the Air Force was sending 750 to 800 airmen to basic military training each week, according to the Amrhein. When he first took over Air Force recruiting in 2023, that number was around 500 to 600 a week.
Amrhein said that the rise in airmen did not appear to be an anomaly either and that he would not be surprised if the trend continued.
“Since my time in the recruiting business ... I haven’t seen numbers that high, at least consistently that high,” Amrhein said.
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Typically, Amrhein said, the Air Force expects the flow of recruits joining the ranks of the delayed entry program to dip in the winter months of December, January and February, but that hasn’t been the trend these past few months.
Amrhein credited outreach as an instrumental factor in bringing in a surge of airmen enrolled in the program, the most he’d seen in 15 years. The week before Amrhein spoke, he said the Air Force brought in 921 airmen to the delayed entry program and shipped 709 airmen to basic military training.
The rise in delayed entry numbers comes as the Air Force has seen an increase in recruitment. In September 2024, Amrhein announced the Air Force would meet its fiscal 2024 goal of 27,100 non-prior service enlisted recruits, a rebound after falling short the previous year for the first time in decades.
The service aims to bring in 32,500 new airmen for 2025, marking a 20% increase.
Military recruitment overall is trending upward, according to an October 2024 release from the Defense Department.
The armed services saw a 12.5% increase in fiscal 2024, including a 35% rise in written contracts and a 10% increase in the each service’s delayed entry program to start fiscal 2025.
Riley Ceder is a reporter at Military Times, where he covers breaking news, criminal justice, investigations, and cyber. He previously worked as an investigative practicum student at The Washington Post, where he contributed to the Abused by the Badge investigation.
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.
