“They have grit,” Sgt. Drill said.
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FORT JACKSON, S.C. — Hundreds of hopefuls line up in exposed medium weighted positions at this South Carolina Army Base every Tuesday before dawn, and are measured at any other South Carolina Army Base.
For course trainees, body fat loss could mean shipping out to start an Army career within a few days. Otherwise, these future soldiers will be entrusted to another week of working on the pound.
Predictions and anxiety file one desk at a time when Sergeant Drill file each of their destinies. Some support the joy. Others wipe out their tears.
While these trainees would have had poor test scores 10 years ago and not been cut due to the fight against push-ups, they now make up almost a quarter of new recruits in the US military.
For 21-year-old Briana Flowers, she was on her way to basic Army training within days, as her waistline had dropped by two inches. Leave the line, she spurs out about her plan to indulge in French toast at the dining room at breakfast, breaking the good news for her mother.
“It’s refreshing,” she said. “That’s all I wanted.”
USA Today spent three days with future soldiers and sergeants, seeing first-hand the weapons important in the Army’s efforts to defeat the recruitment crisis. Future Soldier Preparation Course aims to raise young people with academic and fitness challenges to military standards. The program helped the Army achieve recruitment targets, but raised questions about the quality of the soldiers they produced.
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Army Recruitment Crisis Creates “Soldiers of the Future” Course
In 2022, the Army announced its future Soldier Prep Course, as a long-standing shortage of recruits tailored to the crisis. That year, the Army recruiting class was 25% shy of the target of 60,000 new soldiers.
Three years later, the Army Recruitment Crisis is a crisis in the recruitment in the rearview mirror, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegses and others say they are hoping for young people to serve under President Donald Trump. The fledgling future soldier preparation course began during Joe Biden’s presidency and played a central role in reversing the recruitment slump.
Over 46,000 soldiers joined the Army through future soldier preparation courses. Since the launch of the course in 2023, it has produced 20% to 24% of the newly-built soldiers in the Army.
Soldiers who will become soldiers in the program will sleep in large open bays in bunk beds. In the meal, the drill sergeant refills with grilled chicken, cottage cheese and vegetables to monitor the tray. Program leaders emphasized that trainees will not be ordered to retrieve their food. They aim to avoid disturbed eating behaviors.
The Army barely set a recruitment target of 55,000 for last fiscal year. This year, in June (four months), we announced that we had achieved our annual target of 61,000 signing contracts.
Hegseth accused the military of lowering standards in the past and vowed to raise combat standards. The Future Soldier Prep course does not violate the administration’s anti-DEI agenda to date.
“You need to fit, not fat. You need to be sharp and not tattered,” Heggs told the Army War College in an April speech.
In an interview this summer, Secretary of Army Dan Driscoll said the course will help the Army maintain standards.
“Every soldier who came out of the preparation course for future soldiers has met that standard without us lowering it,” he said.
This course accepts recruits with up to 8% higher body fat and 7 points lower in Army Aptitude Test scores than the requirements to become a soldier. Over 90 days, they work intensively to reduce body fat and increase their academic scores and test each week until they are successful. If it fails, you can try again in 6 months.
It’s not cheap to make recruits the norm. The Army will spend around $120 million this year and around $99 million in 2026, making this effort to fill this range.
“Quality” is also important when recruiting the Army
Not all recruitment is equal, and the “quality” of recruits, or how high they score on the Army aptitude test, can affect the level of military preparation, according to Beth Asch, a military recruitment and personnel expert. Trainees who need academic help make up about 70% of future soldier preparation courses.
Academic Track trainees take part in high school-like classes in mathematics and vocabulary comprehension daily from 9am to 4:30pm. During the August session, teachers neatly wrote down the equations in complex fractions on the whiteboard, with trainees rhythmically and aloud the steps of the process.
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The Pentagon policy refers to a quality “benchmark” where at least 90% of recruits need to have a high school diploma. Recruiters with the lowest score on the Army Aptitude Test are assigned to what is called Category 4. Recruiters with a test score of 61% in the middle are categorized into categories 2 and 3, while the top 6% are categorized into category 1. According to the Army, each person must attend a prep course, with about 90% of them becoming soldiers.
The Army has violated Category 4 restrictions since the recruitment crisis began.
Data show that the percentage of Category 4 recruits jumped from 2% in 2020 to 3.7% in 2021, peaking at 3.9% in 2022, when the future soldier pilot program debuted. In 2023, the figure was 3.56%. In 2024, it fell to 3.46%. And by July 2025, the percentage reached 3.72%.
Soldiers with a high aptitude score “have better performance on practical military missions” and “have fewer behavior and disciplinary issues,” Ash said.
However, the data shows that graduates of the course are equally or equally superior to those who have participated in the service through the traditional route, according to Lt. Gen. Brian Eifler, the top officer on staff. He attributed the difference to the fact that prep course soldiers get a head start with what constitutes “basic training.”
According to the Army, the rate of submission of preparatory course candidates is similar to the rate of fellow peers joining the Army through traditional routes. Over 90% of people signing up for the course end up in the Army. Soldiers on academic improvement trucks perform slightly better than soldiers on body fat reduction trucks.
“The way they hold themselves in comparison to other trainees… you can fully convey the differences between them,” Sgt. Drill said. Before his work on the course at Fort Jackson, Jennet Pashke had previously worked with soldiers at the beginning of military training. “They were struggling more… but they were still trying to get better.”
“They have grit and I think that’s what the Army needs.”
Graduates struggle and succeed
Eifler said the course offers “nudges” to young people who want to serve.
“If I don’t have the opportunity, I don’t know where I am now,” said Curry Wainwright, a 23-year-old expert stationed in Fort Hood, who joined the Army through the program.
Growing up on a small family farm in New York, Wainwright was used to physical work and lifting heavy weights, but her endurance is “poor.” She lost a small amount of body fat over the course of intensive training for a week before testing to begin basic training.
Nathaneal Aubin, 26, said after falling from 265 to 240 pounds. Aubin, a private first class currently stationed at Camp Belling in Kuwait, remains in the Army body fat requirements and suffers from weight.
Orbin entered the 101st Airborne division as a helicopter maintainer with the dream of becoming a pilot less than two years ago. As his contract approaches, Orbin, a rural Connecticut native, said he is pondering whether he will still remain in the Army or pursue his goals outside of it as an aviator.
“I’ve lost my way a little,” he said.
Wainwright said there are still some social stigmas among the army ranks that accompany the Army course.
“It’s a bit humiliating,” she said.
A few months ago, the Army was forced to respond to reports from an internal but independent watchdog, an inspector at the Department of Defense. It was found that the watchdog body authorized trainees with a body fat percentage that is 19% higher than the requirements for starting basic Army training, and far exceeding the specified limit. The data showed that 14% of trainees above the weight threshold accounted for the program’s “limited health resources” and remained in increased health risks, including the risk of death, according to the report.
The program’s academic components slide down the listed criteria, and Watchdog discovered that a “slight” of Fort Jackson trainees “had been “difficult to speak or understand English.”
According to course commander Captain Matthew Lgowski, it is not a “significant” part of the academic trainee. Some of the courses still couldn’t speak English “lick,” he said.
The Army has largely challenged these criticisms, saying there is already a rigorous process in place to eliminate trainees who have not met the requirements.
“Why the wall”
One wall is covered in scrawled sticky notebooks as trainees tense through a sweaty workout in a Fort Jackson room next to a paved outdoor area. Its official name – why the wall.
Trainees’ messages about these notes include “free college,” “pushing me and my kids out of bad situations,” “I’m proud of my family,” and “I needed money and couldn’t find a job.”
“I’m not a failure,” another note read.
For many Fort Jackson hopefuls, “why” is rooted in the struggles they left behind in their homes, poverty, homelessness, sexual assault and the loss of their loved ones.
“My mother did three jobs and I still send back money to pay the bill,” said 18-year-old Diego Gutierrez Serrano, who grew up in a small town outside Worcester, Massachusetts. He saw the program as a way to avoid going from poverty and becoming “another statistic like all other children.”
Lea Creech, 22, of Milford, Ohio, said she was the victim of sexual assault. “I wanted to get my body, not just to get my history back,” she said.
“Make sure I’m proud of myself every day,” she said. “That’s why I’m here.”
