The Army will have a challenge to meet its expanded enlistment goal this year, though the service is recruiting better in 2023 than last year when it fell thousands of soldiers short of its goal, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said Wednesday.

“Sixty-five thousand [recruits for fiscal year 2023] is a very ambitious goal,” she said while testifying before the House Armed Services Committee in defense of the service’s $185.5 billion budget request for fiscal 2024. The service set such a lofty target for 2023 after only taking in 45,000 recruits in 2022 “because [Gen. James McConville, the Army chief of staff,] and I felt it was important to send a signal to our recruiter force that they shouldn't take their pedal off the metal.”

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