Quote:Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, we've seen military recruiting numbers returning to what we think of as customary levels. That's almost certainly because President Trump and SecDef Hegseth have shown determination to purge DEI and other woke horse squeeze from the military and return it to being an organization built and trained for warfighting.

And, despite what some on the left may have us believe, that increase has included women, who are joining up in increasing numbers.

Female military recruits have sharply increased across all service branches so far in fiscal year 2025.

Around 7,260 more women have enlisted so far this fiscal year than at this point last fiscal year: from 16,725 to 23,985, according to Pentagon figures seen by Fox News Digital.

"The media’s narrative that the female recruitment numbers have either fallen or stayed the same under Secretary Hegseth and President Trump is 100% Fake News," a defense official said. "Leadership matters and women are excited to serve under the strong leadership of Secretary Hegseth and President Trump."

The Army surpassed its overall recruitment goals in June, four months before the end of the fiscal year: the service branch announced that month it had signed contracts with more than 61,000 future soldiers, which is more than 10% higher than the 55,000 recruits targeted in fiscal 2024.

Those are great numbers. Yes, leadership matters, but most of all, mission matters. Service members should be mission-driven, and we can hope the people who are brought in now are focused on mission, and not on mission-degrading priorities, like having Uncle Sam pay for "gender-affirming" care.

Secretary Hegseth gets it:

"They see leadership ... that says, ‘We want you to be warriors. We’re not doing this politically correct garbage anymore. We’re doing war fighting,'" Hegseth said during a visit to Normandy in June.

What's more, women in the services are being put in positions where their own skills and abilities are best suited, and no, that doesn't include the combat arms.

Hegseth has come under media scrutiny for his comments about women in combat and the removal of a number of women who served in top Pentagon roles under the Biden administration. His leadership claims they don’t discriminate: they’ve removed men from top roles too.

This stance has been all too often described as controversial in recent years. It isn't. There are many reasons why women should not be in direct combat roles; if you want to spend about 30 minutes hearing what those reasons are, talk to my wife, an Army veteran with a Bronze Star from Operation Desert Storm, where she set up and ran an Army medical clearing station that worked with the Air Force to stabilize Army patients and hand them off to be flown to Germany. Several officers, both Army and Air Force, in three locations, were unable to make that operation work until she, at the time a 1LT, stepped in, told them, "Get out of my way," and got the job done. Her setup became the theater standard for those operations, and she was awarded the Bronze Star for her work.

There are reasons, physical and psychological, why women should not be in direct combat roles. It's bad enough that men have to be.

The Trump administration and Secretary Hegseth have made no bones about this, and yet women are joining our military forces in increasing numbers. Our military forces are once more focusing on the mission, on building a force of warfighters, with the mission being to close with and destroy the enemy with fire, maneuver, and shock effect. Young people, no doubt seeing this, are joining up in increasing numbers, which, in itself, tells you a lot about the value of the administration's military priorities.