Locations set up across the country to give military entrance exams to potential recruits have been forced to close or reduce hours due to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth halting the use of government travel for civilians, according to a notice and email reviewed by Military.com.
The Military Entrance Processing Command, which is part of the Army, has managed the Military Entrance Testing program, which is designed to aid recruiting and make it easier to administer the entrance exam, known as the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB, to potential recruits for all the military branches. The service did not immediately provide information on closed locations and curtailed operating hours, but the changes were recently announced by the U.S. Military Entrance Processing Command.
“The suspension of civilian employee travel has impacted Military Entrance Testing (MET) Site operations,” a post to Facebook by the Military Entrance Processing Command announced Friday. The command said it was “conducting analysis to determine which MET sites can remain operational using alternative means.”
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As a result of Hegseth’s halt on civilian travel, potential recruits now have to travel to a Military Entrance Processing Station to take the test, which is a critical prerequisite for enlistment. In some parts of the country, that could mean driving for many hours.
At the same time, Hegseth has cheered the military’s recent successes in recruiting on social media despite many of the gains having occurred before he took office.
The test itself consists of more than 100 questions that cover a host of topics from math and language to mechanics and takes around two and a half hours to administer.
While recruiters are able to offer practice or abbreviated versions of the test at recruiting stations, the official exam has to be conducted in a formal test-taking environment.
When asked about the halt, officials for Hegeseth referred Military.com to a memo written by Darin Selnick, who is performing the duties of under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, that was issued March 5 and restricted almost all civilian travel.
It was not immediately clear what effect closures and reduced hours would have on military recruiting. Neither Army nor Navy officials were able to answer questions about how the loss of the programs would impact recruiting efforts.
While there are more than 60 MEPS locations across the country, they are mostly located in major cities or at large military installations, leaving some portions of the country without one within easy driving distance.
Neither Kansas nor Wyoming has a MEPS location. Meanwhile, other large states like Montana and Minnesota have just one location, which means a recruit from Billings, Montana, for example, might need to drive for more than three hours to Butte just to take an exam that is one of the first steps in determining whether they are qualified for service and what careers they are eligible for.
The problem isn’t confined to sparsely populated areas. Florida has three MEPS stations — in Jacksonville, Tampa and Miami. However, this still means the closest test location for a potential recruit from Pensacola, the seat of a major Navy base, is two and a half hours away in Montgomery, Alabama. A potential recruit in Daytona Beach, Florida, could be required to drive up to three hours to Tampa.
Would-be recruits in U.S. territories like Guam or American Samoa would have to fly for hours to a MEPS location to take the test.
In all of those scenarios, it’s also not clear whether recruits would be expected to make the drive themselves or if the military will turn to recruiters in uniform to take up these tasks.
The halt in the programs also comes at a crucial time for military recruiting. All the services finally managed to overcome serious shortfalls in recruiting just last year, but with significant help from programs that were aimed at taking applicants who wouldn’t have otherwise qualified in prior years.
In the past, military officials regularly laid blame on COVID-19 pandemic-era policies that forced them to retreat from places like high schools, thus denying them an opportunity to speak with a key recruiting pool.
Meanwhile, the recruiting figures from 2024 also show that, while programs like Army and Navy prep courses that take academically or physically struggling recruits enable the services to make their recruiting goals, they also signal a growing inability to connect with the current generation of young people.
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