Air Force now accepting older recruits
After one of its worst recruiting years in decades, the Air Force is raising its maximum age for new recruits to 42.
The decision took effect Oct. 24 and applies to new activeduty officers and enlisted personnel in the Air Force and Space Force.
But older applicants will not have a crack at serving as pilots or combat systems officers or in other frontline roles. For those so-called rated positions, only people 33 and younger are eligible to begin training.
The Air Force said the higher maximum for non-pilots would expand the universe of potential recruits while still allowing older entrants the prospect of serving for 20 years before hitting the retirement age of 62. The service last raised its age ceiling for recruits in 2014, when it went from 27 to 39.
At 42, the Air Force and Space Force now have the highest age cutoffs of any of the military services within the Defense Department. The Navy raised its limit to 41 last year.
Brig. Gen. Christopher Amrhein, commander of the San Antonio-based Air Force Recruiting Service, said the change “is about identifying opportunity for talent out there.”
“But make no mistake,” he added, “we are not lowering any of our standards. Someone who is 42 still has to meet the same accession requirements as younger applicants.”
Air Force Recruiting Service spokeswoman Leslie Brown said age isn’t as big a consideration in military service as it used to be.
“People live longer now.
They’re healthier now,” she said. “Forty is the new 30.”
The action comes a month after the Air Force disclosed that it fell 10% short of its goal of signing up 26,877 active-duty recruits in fiscal 2023, which ended on Sept. 30. It was the service’s worst recruiting performance since 1999.
The Air Force Reserve and the Air National Guard stumbled as well. Both missed their recruiting goals — which were 9,300 and 11,745, respectively — by 30%.
The Space Force, a much smaller branch that falls under the Air Force and trains at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, exceeded its goal of enlisting 472 new “guardians,” as Space Force personnel are called.
This fiscal year, the Air Force needs to sign up 25,900 enlistees, while the Space Force will require 749.
The fiscal 2023 recruiting numbers could have been worse if not for changes made in recent years.
To bolster recruiting, the Air Force eased restrictions on tattoos, streamlined the naturalization process so foreign-born recruits can become citizens during basic training, reinstated a program to help airmen repay college loans and adopted a more forgiving policy toward past drug use. Applicants who were rejected after testing positive for THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, now can get a second chance under a pilot program.
Amrhein said the changes allowed more than 1,000 recruits into the Air Force who previously would have been barred.
The Air Force said raising the ceiling to age 42 might lead to as many as 50 additional recruits this year.
The recruiting service, whose headquarters is at Randolph AFB, said it recently discharged 12 members from the Air Force’s delayed entry program who “aged out” during processing. In light of the higher age ceiling, recruiters will contact those people and others who left the program in similar circumstances.
Enlisted airmen must be between the ages of 17 and 42 and must have a high school diploma or GED. All applicants have to pass the Armed Services Aptitude Battery and a physical exam, among other requirements.
The Army and Navy also missed their fiscal 2023 recruiting goals. Recruiters for all the services have faced headwinds in recent years because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a tight job market and waning interest in military careers.
Help is on the way. More than 100 new Air Force recruiters are joining the 1,900 who look for enlistees on the streets and at high schools, shopping malls and career fairs around the country. The Air Force is building up its cadre of “e-recruiters” who track leads online. Their ranks will grow from five to 21.
The service also expects to expand waivers for applicants who otherwise would be disqualified by certain medical issues, including past eye surgeries.
Raising the age limit for new military personnel has been tried before. The Army did it in 2006. The first two over-40 recruits to enter basic training were from San Antonio and Houston.
Pfc. Russell Dilling, 42, of San Antonio, was the oldest recruit in the Army that year. The former factory inspector, a father of four grown children, had to lose 35 pounds to qualify. After shedding the weight, he marched and drilled alongside 19- and 20-year-olds at the Army’s Abderdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.
Margie Collins, a Houstonarea resident, served at Fort Jackson, S.C., and later in Iraq.
Even before the Air Force formally raised its age limit, people in their 40s had a pathway into the service if they had special skills — as scientists, lawyers, doctors or chaplains, for example. But such cases were rare and required a waiver from the office of the secretary of the Air Force.