The Department of War (DOW) is receiving well-earned praise for reversing the military’s recruitment crisis. In FY2025, all the branches of the military met or exceeded their recruitment goals.

(The problem) is America’s retention crisis. Given the immensely complex tasks we demand of experienced enlisted service members and officers, the time and money it takes to replace the expertise required to perform these tasks, and how central this expertise is to modern warfighting, we cannot afford to keep hemorrhaging essential talent.

Despite spending nearly six billion dollars on recruiting and retention in recent years, including giving over 70,000 people retention bonuses, people are leaving the military at some of the highest rates of the last decade. For instance, 7% of Air Force officers and 11% of Airmen now leave the service each year, 350% and 550% above the national average, respectively.

Unsurprisingly, the more specialized and in-demand an officer’s skill-set is, the more likely the military is to lose them to the private sector. Four thousand troops left cyber jobs in 2024, despite DOW facing a 16% cyber position vacancy rate. While DOW does not publicly track how many AI experts it employs and loses each year, Georgetown University reports an intense shortage of uniformed personnel who understand both the mission and the emerging technology.