MONTGOMERY — The Alabama National Guard has already met its recruiting goals halfway through the 2025 fiscal year.
The federal government and military fiscal years run from October 1 to September 30.
Adjutant General of the Alabama National Guard Maj. Gen. David Pritchett told 1819 News on Wednesday that the Alabama National Guard never struggled as much as other states and services to recruit but 2025 has brought an added bump in recruiting.
“What I would say is our recruiters have been doing a phenomenal job because we’ve been very successful over the past several years even when other services and states weren’t. We put our best people in recruiting. If you put your best people in recruiting, you get results. We’ve also hired additional recruiters, but it’s very unusual halfway through the year to have already met your recruiting goals. We’re not stopping. We’re continuing to recruit with the hopes of growing our force structure and getting additional units to Alabama,” Pritchett said.
He continued, “What I heard a couple weeks ago when I was in D.C. being briefed by some of the four stars in some of the various services is everybody has seen the results, the bump in recruiting with the change in administration regardless of whether you’re for or against or whatever.”
“So, that’s the facts. Certainly, that change and some of the executive orders that have immediately flown out, we think that has (caused) everybody to have better results in recruiting. We continue to see success but by far and away we’re seeing more this year than any last year, year-over-year, and we had a very successful year last year,” Pritchett added.
President Donald Trump signed several executive orders upon taking office for a second term in January. The executive orders include reinstating service members who were discharged for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine and repealing previous transgender and DEI and divisive concepts policies.
"The Alabama Army National Guard met its recruiting end strength objective in 2024 with 10,192 Soldiers assigned and has already met its end strength objective for 2025 with 10,331 Soldiers assigned. 105% of our force structure allowance which is 9,859 positions. In other words, we have more soldiers than actual positions which should help us compete for future force structure," Pritchett said.
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