JD Vance Reaffirms Full Confidence in Hegseth: Military Recruiting Slump Has Ended

Vice President JD Vance reaffirmed the Trump administration’s full confidence in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday, underscoring the positive recruiting trends in the armed forces.

Vance’s comments came during a gaggle outside Air Force II in Agra, India, when a reporter asked if he still has confidence in Hegseth:

Look, I have 100 percent confidence in the secretary. I know the president does, and really the entire team does. It’s one of the most bizarre things about the Hegseth nomination — from the very beginning the media seemed to want to tank it, and when they failed and he got confirmed, they decided they wanted to keep on that effort to destroy Pete Hegseth as a man, as a Secretary of Defense. I think he’s doing a great job. I think that he’s brought a certain spirit back to the Department of Defense.

Vance then pointed to recruiting numbers under the Defense secretary as evidence of his strong performance.

“If you look at our military recruitment numbers — that’s in my view, the best testament to his leadership of the military — is that for the first time in a very long time, we don’t have terrible recruitment problems in the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force,” he said.

“And I wish frankly the press talked more about that and not about anonymous sourcing from random staffers,” he added.

The Army notably had 51,837 recruitments as of last week and is tracking to easily hit its recruitment goal for Fiscal Year 2025, which began on October 1, Military.com reports:

As of last week, the Army had enlisted 51,837 recruits, or 85% of its 61,000 target for fiscal 2025, according service data provided to Military.com. A significant portion of that total — roughly 14,000 — comes from the service’s delayed-entry program, or DEP, which is composed of recruits who signed up last year but are only now shipping out to basic training. The Army has the rest of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, to hit its recruiting quota.

Despite the DEP, the numbers still represent an upswing compared to last year. At this point in 2024, the Army had reached just 63% of its goal, pulling in 34,512 recruits — including only 5,000 from the DEP. The surge in delayed entries this year is largely attributed to the Army’s aggressive recruiting pace in 2024, which outstripped available training capacity.

Moreover, recruitments to the Air Force’s delayed-entry program in December, January, and February were at the highest rate in more than 15 years, per the outlet, while U.S. Naval Institute News reported the Navy was on pace in February to hit its recruitment goals for the fiscal year.