The United States' largest military service group could be on the brink of a landmark downsizing.
According to Bloomberg News, the U.S. Army's total count of active soldiers would fall below 1 million in 2023, as part of a new budget proposal covering that service's fiscal year.
The active-duty Army participation incurred a 2.5% decline last year, according to Bloomberg, dropping from 485,000 in 2020 to 473,000 soldiers in 2021. When factoring in the projected counts of National Guard and Reserve forces, the cumulative tally comes to approximately 998,500 soldiers.
Bloomberg reports the Army projects 476,000 active soldiers in 2022.
Even with the reduction, the Army still owns a decisive participation advantage over the Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard units. According to Statista.com, the U.S. Navy's count of active sailors fell short of 342,000 in 2020, slightly ahead of Air Force active duty (329,614) and considerably more than Marine Corps active duty (180,958) and the Coast Guard (40,558).
During a recent Pentagon roundtable discussion with reporters, Gabe Camarillo, undersecretary to the Army, downplayed the significance of the Army's active-duty decline, characterizing the change as temporary.
"All employers, to include the Army, are facing significant challenges just as a result of a tight labor market that we see across our economy," said Camarillo. "That creates a lot of the conditions that we are responding to."
With the uncertainty of the Russia-Ukraine war, global issues with China and North Korea, along with various counterterrorism missions in the Middle East, including Afghanistan, U.S. officials are apparently making a concerted effort to boost the recruitment of physically capable soldiers, without lowering admission standards.
"We did not want, as we looked ahead at recruiting projections, to take any decrease in our quality," said Camarillo.
According to MacroTrends.net, the U.S. Army participation enjoyed a surge of more than 2 million active-duty soldiers during the mid-to-late 1980s, before enduring substantial drops throughout the 1990s, and then early last decade. Recruitment efforts surged once again from 2016-20, perhaps coinciding with Donald J. Trump becoming America's 45th president.
Bloomberg reports the Army's procurement budget will drop from $22.8 billion in 2022 to $21.3 billion next year — a 6.4% reduction. Research and development funding will also decrease over the next two years, dipping from $14.5 billion in 2022 to $13.7 billion in 2023.
Active-duty Army personnel are slated to receive a 4.6% pay raise this year, according to Bloomberg, which includes bonuses and special-pay incentives for recruiting, procuring, and retaining talent — covering the realms of military combat, cyberintelligence, artificial intelligence, and hypersonic weapons, among others.
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