For the first time this fiscal year, the Air Force’s active duty force, the Air National Guard, and the Air Force Reserve all met their year-to-date recruiting goals, according to the Pentagon’s latest recruiting data for Fiscal 2012 through February. The active duty component and AFR have met their fiscal-year-to-date accession goals each month so far in 2013. That trend continued through February, with the active duty force accepting 12,314 new accessions, exactly matching its target, and the Reserve doing the same by bringing in 3,564 new recruits. The Air Guard got off to a slower start in Fiscal 2012, but has been inching its way towards meeting its year-to-date target, which it did reach—and actually surpass—in February by attracting 3,389 accessions, 14 more than its year-to-date goal. Across the other services and their reserve components, only the Army National Guard did not meet or exceed its accessions goal through February, according to the data.
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.