Lt. Gen. Johnny Davis (left), the commander of U.S. Army Recruiting Command, and Gen. David Hodne, the commander of U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command, participate in a formal ceremony to mark the transition of the recruiting command at Fort Knox, Ky., on Dec. 3, 2025. (Jerry Merideth/U.S. Army Recruiting Command)

The Army’s Recruiting Command formally absorbed the service’s initial training for soldiers and officers, giving leaders a closer look at the path an enlistee takes before arriving at their first duty station.

“We’ve opened up a line of communication between the training base and back to the recruiters,” Lt. Gen. Johnny Davis, who leads the command, said Wednesday following a formal ceremony to mark the transition at Fort Knox, Ky.

The reorganization stemmed from the Army’s merger of the former Training and Doctrine Command and Army Futures Command to become the Training and Transformation Command. Recruiting moved under this new command, known as T2COM, and took on the Center for Initial Military Training.

The Army Recruiting Division, Cadet Command and the Enterprise and Marketing Office also fall under Recruiting Command.

“This is enormously impactful,” Gen. David Hodne, commander of T2COM, said during the ceremony. “As we look ahead, one truth becomes clear: transforming the Army begins with transforming how we build it. Capability is more than equipment, it’s the training, doctrine, sustainment, and most importantly, the people.”

Over the past several years, the Pentagon and the military services have made changes to who is eligible to enlist — mostly to open access to a shrinking pool of eligible candidates and to alleviate a gap in some services meeting recruiting goals after the coronavirus pandemic.

Among those changes, the Army created a prep course to help those meet the fitness goals and test scores required of new recruits, and the Defense Department adjusted the medical conditions that are allowed for enlistees.

With this stronger oversight over the entire entry process, the Army now can better track how successful a recruit is who may have needed some of these changes to enlist. This can reduce attrition in the pipeline, said Command Sgt. Maj. Shade Munday, senior enlisted leader of Army Recruiting Command.

“The superstars that we recruit and train should be the right superstars. It should be precision enlistments that meet the Army’s needs, instead of volume, so that we can say we’ve met end strength,” Davis said.