Air and Space Force recruits take the oath of enlistment during The Great Texas Airshow at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph on April 6, 2024. (Gabriel Jones/U.S. Air Force)
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — The Air Force should hit its recruiting targets this year after falling short in fiscal 2023, according to the general charged with filling the ranks.
“We’re on track to bring in 2,000 more recruits than we did last year,” Brig. Gen. Christopher Amrhein, who took over as the top recruiter for the Air Force and Space Force last summer, told Stars and Stripes during a recent visit to the home of U.S. Forces Japan in western Tokyo.
The Space Force, with only 9,400 guardians, met its recruiting goals last year, but the Air Force fell 11% shy, said Amrhein, commander of the Air Force Recruiting Service at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas.
The Air Force will likely meet this year’s target of 26,900 new airmen, Amrhein said at Yokota, one of his stops during his tour of recruiting offices across the Pacific.
“Since August last year, we’ve been meeting our monthly goal for the Air Force,” he said. “I’m optimistic that we can make the goal in 2024.”
The turnaround is due to a recruiting surge last year and changes to requirements for prospective recruits, Amrhein said.
“We haven’t lowered the standards of quality of who we bring in,” he said. “We have removed barriers to make the Air Force a little more attractive and make sure we can garner the quality of individual who are out there.”
Changes include allowing small tattoos on the hands and back of the neck and adjusting body mass requirements to meet the Department of Defense standard.
“We’ve brought in over 2,000 recruits with the adjusted policy, and we only had one person fail the physical fitness test,” he said.
Master Sgt. Zackery Nuvy, a Japan-based Air and Space Force recruiter, speaks with Stars and Stripes alongside recruit Takao Elliot at Yokota Air Base, Japan, on April 15, 2024. (Juan King/Stars and Stripes)
In May 2023, the Air Force started a recruiting surge to get airmen into the public eye, said Amrhein, who was vice commander of the 18th Wing at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, from 2015 to 2017.
Recruiters visited more schools and wing commanders opened bases to the public and told their stories to communities, he said.
The Air Force is engaging with people through professional sports with sponsorships in auto racing, soccer, combat sports, baseball and football, Amrhein said.
The service is also sponsoring computer games and robotics competitions that inspire kids to hone science, technology, engineering and math skills, he said.
Amrhein, a former KC-135 Stratotanker pilot and instructor pilot on the T-6 Texan and T-37 Tweet, visited recruiting offices in Japan, including Okinawa, Guam and South Korea during his Pacific tour.
Air Force recruiters are also posted at bases in England, Germany and Italy.
“It’s important for us to get out and see the recruiters to make sure we see their challenges and work to meet their needs,” Amrhein said.
The limited pool of qualified young people is a challenge for recruiters, he said.
At any given time, only 3.8 million Americans of about 22 million aged 18-24 are qualified to serve in the Air Force; of those, only about one in 10 are interested in serving, Amrhein said.
“The No. 1 issue is lack of familiarity with the mission,” he said. “In the late 1980s, if you asked 100 people how many had a parent who served, almost half of them had one. Now it’s just over one in 10.”
Takao Elliot, 26, is scheduled to enlist in the Air Force at Yokota next week and immediately fly to San Antonio for basic training.
The son of a former Department of Defense Education Activity teacher, Elliot grew up on bases in Japan, South Korea and Italy and has been interested in military service since childhood, he told Stars and Stripes on Tuesday.
After high school, Elliot studied at a Japanese university and worked in the electronics industry before deciding to enlist as an airborne linguist.
“The benefits outweigh patriotism if I’m being honest, but I have always wanted to serve in some capacity,” he said. “A lot of people talk bad about the military, but I’ve always loved it.”
