United States Army Recruiting Command The United States Army Recruiting Command ( USAREC ) mission is to recruit the enlisted , non - commissioned and officer candidates for service in the United States Army and Army Reserve . This process includes the recruiting , medical and psychological examination , induction , and administrative processing of potential service personnel . The Recruiting Command is a field operating agency administratively responsible to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel . The Command employs more than 7200 Active and Reserve Component recruiters at more than 1 , 600 recruiting centers across the United States and overseas . The Command is guided in its operations by the United States Mobilization Doctrine . The Command is commanded by a Major General , and assisted by a Deputy Commanding General ( Brigadier General ) , with five recruitment brigade s and a number of support brigades in the Command . U . S . Army recruiters generally are DA selected for three year assignments . These “ detailed ” recruiters return to their primary military occupational specialty after obligation as recruiters . Center Commanders and reserve recruiters are all career recruiters who stay within USAREC for the duration of their careers . General Paul Gorman ’ s ( USA , ret . ) in his institutional history of the U . S . Army , " The Secret of Future Victories " , credits George C . Marshall as the architect of the modern version of the current system for personnel allocation . This system has often been criticised as one that encourage careerism in the officer and NCO corps . History . Recruiting for the U . S . Army began in 1775 with the raising and training of the Continentals to fight in the American Revolutionary War under Article I of the U . S . Constitution . The Command traces its organisational history to 1822 , when Major General Jacob Jennings Brown , commanding general of the Army , initiated the General Recruiting Service . For much of the rest of the 19th century recruitment was left to the regimental recruiting parties , usually recruiting in their regional areas as was the practice in Europe . Up to the commencement of the American Civil War two types of forces existed in the United States that performed their own recruiting : those for the regular Federal service , and those for the state Militia service . Due to severe shortage of troops after the first year of the war , conscription was introduced by both the Union and the Confederacy to enable continuing of operations on a thousand - mile front . The conscription was first introduced in the South by President Jefferson Davis on the recommendation by General Robert E . Lee on 16 April 1862 . The U . S . Congress enacted by comfortable majorities the Enrollment Act of 1863 , also known as the Conscription Act , on 3 March after two weeks of debate . As a result approximately 2 , 670 , 000 men were conscripted for federal and militia service by the Northern states . The realisation that volunteers could never again be depended on for service was clear in the post - war analysis , but the dependence on them prevailed until the commencement of the First World War when President Woodrow Wilson , arguing for America ’ s exclusion from the European war , believed that there would be found sufficient volunteers to meet the nation ’ s military needs . However , European experiences with industrial warfare prevailed , and two years later the US Congress passed the Selective Service Act of 1917 . There were two primary reasons for President Wilson approving conscription : he recognized the efficiency and equity of the draft over the difficult - to - manage system of inducting and training volunteers , and that by opting for conscription , he realised the possibility of blocking one of his leading political critics and opponents , former President Theodore Roosevelt from raising a volunteer force to lead in France . The Act was however very selective in that " the draft ‘ selected ’ those men the Army wanted and society could best spare : 90 percent of the draftees were unmarried , and 70 percent were farm hands or manual hands . ” Conscription was again used to create a war - time Army from a small peace - time professional cadre in 1941 , which eventually numbered 8 . 3 million personnel . However , there was a society - wide support for the conscription during the Second World War , in part due to efforts of the National Emergency Committee ( NEC ) of the Military Training Corps Association led by Greenville Clark who became known as the “ Father of Selective Service . ” The Congress , faced with imminent need to mobilize , still took three months of debate until finally passing the Selective Training and Service Act ( STASA ) of 1940 in June . Nearly 50 million men registered and 10 million were inducted into armed forces under the Act . Although the STASA was extended after the war , it ended on 31 March 1947 , and the Army had to turn to recruiting volunteers again , requiring and estimated 30 , 000 volunteers a month , but seeing only 12 , 000 enlisting . With the Cold War looming , the Congress authorised the Selective Service Act of 1948 to enable President Truman to provide for 21 months of active Federal service , with all men from ages 18 to 26 required to register . This Act was extended due to the start of the Korean War , and replaced by the Universal Military Training and Service Act of 1951 by revising the earlier Act . The new Act extended the president ’ s authority to induct citizens for four years , granted him the authority to recall reservists , lowered the draft age to 18 , lengthened the term of service to two years , and cancelled deferments for married men without children . With the end of the Korean War , the draft remained in force , but became increasingly unpopular although it continued to encourage volunteers and selected the bare minimum of annual recruits . Repeatedly renewed by overall majorities in Congress in 1955 , 1959 , and 1963 , its final extension in 1967 was also passed by a majority of Congress , but only after a year of hearings and public debate . The U . S . Army became an all - volunteer force again in 1973 . During the years of the Vietnam War between From 1965 to 1973 , there were 1 , 728 , 254 inductions through selective service . There was however a direct effect on public support for the draft that was high even after the Korean War to its low in early 1970s because Draftees , who constituted only 16 percent of the armed forces , but 88 percent of infantry soldiers in Vietnam , accounted for over 50 percent of combat deaths in 1969 , a peak year for casualties . Little wonder that the draft became the focus of anti - Vietnam activism . With these political consequences in mind in 1969 President Nixon appointed a commission , led by former Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates , “ to develop a comprehensive plan for eliminating conscription and moving toward an All Volunteer Armed Force . ” However , even before this commission submitted its report on 13 May 1969 , President Nixon informed the Congress that he intended to institute a reform that would see the draftees replaced with volunteers in his Special Message to Congress on Reforming the Military Draft . In February 1970 , the Gates Commission released its favorable AVF report , which stated that “ We unanimously believe that the nation ’ s interests will be better served by an all - volunteer force , supported by an effective stand - by draft , than by a mixed force of volunteers and conscripts ; that steps should be taken promptly to move in this direction . ” Facilitating the transition to an all - volunteer force , the Army created District Recruiting Commands ( DRC ) through the continental United States to direct the efforts of its recruiters among the civilian population . The DRC ’ s became “ Battalions ” in 1983 . Recruitment brigades . There are five recruitment , one medical recruitment and one recruitment support brigades in the Command . Each brigade consists of a number of battalions , with each battalion consisting of six to nine companies . A battalion , commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel , employs about 12 officers , 250 enlisted members , of which majority are on - production recruiters working from recruiting stations , and some 20 civilian support staff . The recruitment brigade s and their battalion s , are : Each recruiting battalion consists of recruiting companies in its area , with 243 companies currently providing recruiting facilities as offices and stations throughout United States and its territories . The Command also conducts recruiting operations in Puerto Rico , the Virgin Islands , Guam , American Samoa , and at U . S . facilities in Panama , Europe , and Asia . Command . Current key command personnel of the Command include :