Army soldiers with the Wichita Recruiting Company hosted a recruitment booth at Hutchinson, Kan., on Sept. 9, 2023. The soldiers hosted the booth at the Kansas State Fairgrounds to interact with the public and inform about enlistment opportunities and benefits. (Aiden Griffitts/U.S. Army Reserve)

The Army plans to create a new recruiting specialty after missing its enlistment goal for a second straight year as the service aims for a recruiting force styled after talent-acquisition models used by private businesses, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said Tuesday.

The Army will build the new, full-time military operational specialty 42T, or talent acquisition specialist, over the coming years, as the service works to bulk up its recruiting apparatus, Wormuth said.

The service also will elevate U.S. Army Recruiting Command, or USAREC, from a two-star headquarters to a three-star command and bring U.S. Army Cadet Command, which oversees ROTC programs at U.S. colleges, and the Army marketing team under USAREC’s control.

Wormuth labeled the moves “transformational changes” in the way that the Army works to bring in new enlisted soldiers. Change is needed, she said, in a world where fewer young Americans are eligible to join the military and even less have interest in serving.

“Continuing to have the same approach [toward recruiting] but doing it better and harder is not going to get us where we need to be if we’re going to get … to a place where we can reliably bring in, ideally, more than 60,000 young American a year,” Wormuth told reporters at the Pentagon.

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