FORT JACKSON, SC – Every Tuesday before dawn,hundreds of hopefuls line upwith exposed midriffs to be weighed and measured at thisSouth Carolina Army base, which takes in more recruits than any other. For course trainees, a drop in body fat could mean shipping out to begin a career in the Army within days. Otherwise, these future soldiers are consigned to another week working off the pounds. Anticipation and anxiety pervade as they file one by one past a desk where a drill sergeant informs each one of their fate. Some cheer for joy. Others wipe away tears. Trainees like these, who wouldn't have made the cut due to poor test scores or struggles with pushups a decade ago, now make up nearly one quarter of the U.S. Army's new recruits. For Briana Flowers, 21, a 2-inch decrease in her waistline meant she would be en route to Army basic training within days. Leaving the line, she gushed about plans to indulge in the dining hall's French toast at breakfast and to break the good news to her mother. "It's exhilarating," she said. "It's all I've wanted." USA TODAY spent three days with prospective soldiers and drill sergeants to get a firsthand look at a key weapon in the Army's effort to defeat a recruiting crisis. TheFuture Soldier Preparatory Courseaims to bring young people with academic and fitness challenges up to military standards. While the program has helped the Army meet its recruiting goals, it has raised questions about the quality of soldiers it is producing. More:Report: UFC event at White House to feature weigh-ins at Lincoln Memorial In 2022, as years of shortfall in recruiting numbers compounded into a crisis, the Army test-launched the Future Soldier prep course, a boot camp-style program to quickly pull up recruits who don't meet academic or physical standards. That year, the Army's recruiting class had been 25% shy of its goal of 60,000 new soldiers. Three years later, with the Army's recruitment crisis in the rearview mirror, Defense SecretaryPete Hegsethand others say young people are clamoring to serve under PresidentDonald Trump. The fledgling Future Soldier prep course started during Joe Biden's presidency and has played a central role in reversing the recruiting slump. More than 46,000 soldiers have joined the Army through the Future Soldier prep course. It has produced between 20% and 24% of the Army's newly minted soldiers since the course's launch in 2023. Would-be soldiers in the program sleep in large, open bays on bunk beds. At meals, they stock up on grilled chicken, cottage cheese and vegetables as drill sergeants monitor their trays. Program leaders underscored that trainees are never ordered to put food back. They aim to avoid disordered eating behaviors. The Army barelyclinchedits recruiting goal of 55,000 in the last fiscal year. This year, itannounced in June–four months early – that it had met its annual goal of 61,000 signed contracts. Hegseth has accused the military of lowering standards in the past and vowed to raise fighting standards. The Future Soldier prep course has not fallen afoul of the administration's anti-DEI agenda thus far. "You need to be fit, not fat. Sharp, not shabby," Hegseth told the Army War Collegein an April speech. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said in an interview this summer that the course helps the Army maintain standards, not lower them. "Every one of those soldiers that has come out of the Future Soldier prep course has met that standard without us lowering it," he said. The course accepts recruits whose body fat is up to 8% higher or whose scores on the Army's aptitude test are as much as seven points lower than the requirement to become a soldier. In the span of 90 days, they work intensively to bring down their body fat or bring up their academic scores, testing every week until they succeed. If they fail, they can try again after six months. Getting recruits up to standard isn't cheap. The Army will spend about $120 million this year and about $99 million in 2026 in this effort to fill its ranks. Not all recruitment is equal, and the "quality" of recruits, or how high they score on the Army's aptitude test, can have implications for the military's level of readiness, according to Beth Asch, a military recruitment and personnel expert at the RAND Corporation. Trainees who need academic help make up around 70% of the Future Soldier prep course. Trainees on the academic track attend high school-like classes in math and word comprehension from around 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily. At a session in August, a teacher methodically jotted down equations with complex fractions on a whiteboard as trainees rhythmically recited aloud the steps of the process: convert to an improper fraction, add across the top, divide by the denominator. More:Breathing, yoga, and healthy boundaries: Why the Army is taking a new training approach Pentagon policy refers to "benchmarks" for quality that require at least 90% of recruits to have a high school diploma. Recruits with the lowest scores on the military's aptitude test are assigned to what is known as Category 4. Recruits with test scores in the middle 61% fall into Categories 2 and 3, while the top 6% fall into Category 1. Category 4 recruits can make up no more than 4% of new troops. Each is required to attend the prep course, according to the Army, and about 90% of them become soldiers. The Army has been brushing up against the Category 4 limit since the recruiting crisis began. Data shows that the percentage of Category 4 recruits jumped from 2% in 2020 to 3.7% in 2021 and peaked at 3.9% in 2022, the year the pilot program for future soldiers debuted. In 2023, the figure was 3.56%; it dropped to 3.46% in 2024; and by July 2025, it stood at 3.72%. Research suggests that soldiers with higher aptitude scores "perform better on hands-on military tasks," and have "fewer behavioral and disciplinary issues," Asch said. However, data also shows that course graduates have performed equally or better early in their Army careers than those who joined the service through the traditional route, according to Lt. Gen. Brian Eifler, the Army's top officer for personnel. He attributed that difference to the fact that soldiers in the prep course get a head start in what amounted to "pre-basic training." Attrition rates for preparatory course candidates are similar to the rates of their peers who join the Army through the traditional route, according to the Army. More than 90% of those who sign up for the courses end up in the Army. Soldiers on the academic improvement track have performed slightly better than soldiers in the body fat reduction track. "The way they would hold themselves compared to the other trainees... you can totally tell the difference between them," said Drill Sgt. Jenette Paschke, who previously worked with soldiers at the beginning of their Army training, before her work with the course at Fort Jackson. "They had struggled more... but they still strived to be better." "They have grit, and I think that's what the Army needs." The courses, Eifler said, have provided a "nudge" for young people who want to serve. "If I didn't have the opportunity, I don't know where I would be right now," said Kyleigh Wainwright, a 23-year-old specialist stationed at Fort Hood who entered the Army through the program. Growing up on a small family farm in New York, Wainwright was accustomed to physical work and lifting heavy weights, but her endurance was "poor," she said. She lost a small amount of body fat over a week doing the course's intensive workouts before testing out to begin basic training. Nathaneal Aubin, 26, said after he dropped from 265 to 240 pounds. Now a private first class stationed at Camp Buehring in Kuwait, Aubin still struggles with his weight and staying within the Army's body fat requirements. Aubin entered the 101st Airborne Division as a helicopter maintainer less than two years ago with dreams of becoming a pilot. As the end of his contract approaches, Aubin, who is from rural Connecticut, said he's still mulling whether to stay in the Army or pursue his goals outside it as an aviator. "I lost my path a bit," he said. Wainwright said there's still some social stigma within the Army's ranks attached to the course, which she said is colloquially called Army "fat camp" – sometimes by the trainees themselves. "It's a little bit humiliating," she said. Months ago, the Army was forced to answer to a report from the Defense Department Inspector General, an internal but independent watchdog, which found that the program was admitting trainees with a body fat percentage far above its stated cap, as much as 19% higher than the requirement to begin Army basic training. Data showed that 14% of trainees above the body mass threshold were taking up the program's "limited medical resources," leaving the rest at increased health risk, "including the risk of death," according to the report. The program's academic component had also let its stated standards slide, and "a significant portion" of its Fort Jackson trainees "had difficulty speaking or understanding English," the watchdog found. A "sizable" but "not significant" portion of academic trainees didn't speak English as their first language, according to Capt. Matthew Lugowski, the course commander. Some in the course still couldn't speak "a lick" of English, he said. The Army largely disputed those critiques, saying it already had a stringent process in place to weed out trainees who don't meet requirements. In a room at Fort Jackson next to the paved outdoor area where trainees strain through sweaty workouts, one wall is covered in scribbled-on sticky notes. Its official name – the Why Wall. Trainees' messages on those notes say "free college", "get me and my kids out of a bad situation", "to make my family proud" and "I needed money and couldn't find a job." "I'm not a failure," another note read. For many hopefuls at Fort Jackson, the "why" is rooted in the struggles they left behind at home – poverty, homelessness, sexual assault and the loss of loved ones. "My mom worked three jobs, and I still send money back to help pay bills," said Diego Gutierrez Serrano, 18, who grew up in a small town outside Worcester, Massachusetts. He saw the program as a path out of poverty and a way to avoid becoming "another statistic like all the other kids." Lea Creech, 22, of Milford, Ohio, said she was the victim of sexual assault, a traumatic experience that led her to sign up for the course. "I wanted to not only get my history back, but get my body," she said. "Making sure I'm proud of myself every day," she said, tearing up. "That's why I'm here." This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:How the Army intensified recruiting, through math drills and push-ups
