November 2026
Mission-Critical, Hiring Late
Defense, energy and AI employers and the 500,000 service members they miss
By Brittany Belt, co-founder and COO, Redeployable. Based on Redeployable platform data from 3,200 US service members and veterans, a review of 60 large US employers, and public research.
Imagine you're an active duty service member
It's a Tuesday night. In a few months you'll start your separation paperwork, and about a year after that you'll be out. The kids are asleep and you're at the kitchen table, trying to work out what comes next.
You click around on the career sites of a few companies you've heard are veteran-friendly. One has a military skills translator, so you type in your job code. 91B. Wheeled vehicle mechanic.
It hands you back your own job. Automotive service technician. Bus and truck mechanic. You already know how to fix trucks. You were hoping to find out what else you could do.
Another company has a data center technician role that looks interesting, but the button says "Apply now" and you can't start a new job for a year. At the bottom of the page there's a box: Not ready to apply? Join our talent community. You upload your resume and close the laptop.
Fig. 1 An illustration of skills translator results for 91B. The job count and locations are not real.
Nobody at that company will read it.
The next morning
The next morning, across the state, a hiring lead at that same company is in a quarterly planning meeting. The data center build-out needs hundreds of technicians by 2028. Someone asks where they'll come from. The hiring lead pauses. "Military, hopefully. Our veterans do really well in these roles." Someone else asks how they'd get more of them. "Well, we do SkillBridge."
The service member at the kitchen table and the hiring lead in that meeting should be talking. This report is about why they aren't, what it's costing both of them, and what a few employers are already doing about it.
Summary
America is spending on its physical economy at three to four times the 2020 rate, and it is short of the people to run it. The largest pool of people with the right trades leaves the military every year. Employers wait until the last moment to engage them. That gap is the missing middle.
The money is already committed. Factory construction hit $220 billion in 2025, nearly triple 2020. Data center construction reached $41 billion, four times 2020 (Census Bureau). Five technology companies plan $700 billion of capital spending in 2026. Every project needs ops managers, electricians, mechanics, technicians and logisticians, and 69% of US employers say they can't find them.
About 200,000 service members leave each year, many from those trades. The military pays for their credentials while they serve. Still, 43% of post-9/11 veterans say they are underemployed.
Washington has noticed. In 2026 the Defense Department steered training dollars toward skills like manufacturing and cyber, and an executive order told the Transition Assistance Program to connect leavers "to specific, open jobs".
The supply exists and the demand exists. What is missing is the one to three years in between, when a service member is deciding what comes next. Instead, most employers meet them with "Apply now". This report sets out five findings.
- The window opens early, and they are open-minded.More than half of service members on Redeployable arrive six months or more before they leave, and a quarter arrive a year or more out. 29% of simulations outside a person's military lane rated a good fit or better.
- Employers show up at the end of transition with a job ad.All 60 large employers Redeployable reviewed offer an option to "apply now." Only six offer anything structured before the final six months. Skills translators are popular, but often point people to the obvious civilian "twin" of their current role. SkillBridge starts in the last few months, but the program is shrinking.
- The training budget is funded and unguided.Service members have the time and the money to upskill while serving. Almost none hear from an employer which credentials it values.
- The employers who need talent most already recruit for 2028.They plan years out, can't fill roles from the open market, and will talk to people who aren't ready to apply.
- The fix is a one-to-three-year relationship.Show people the work early, point them to training their benefits pay for, and track progress until they apply.
The capital is spent, the talent is paid for, and the window is open. Nobody has connected them.
- ~500k
service members are 6 months to 3 years from leaving, at any time
DMDC FY2024 separations
- 6 of 60
large US employers offer anything structured to engage service members before their last six months
Redeployable audit, Oct 2026
- 16%
of active-duty leavers use SkillBridge, the main structured route employers offer
GAO, 2024
- 13%
of US employers have a formal veteran hiring program
SHRM, 2024
Part 1: The early birds
Service members start exploring long before they're ready to apply
On Redeployable, service members a year or two from leaving are already exploring. They check their fit against different career fields, then try the jobs in simulations. We build each one with the hiring team that recruits for that role. A simulation is a short, hands-on slice of a real role, like fixing a fault or planning a shift. The fit rating they receive compares how the person did the work with what the employer says good looks like.
Trying the work is one part of career discovery. They're also working out what a civilian role pays and how that compares with military pay and benefits. They check which credentials it needs and what their benefits will cover. They weigh where the work is and whether they'd move.
About 1,300 US service members who gave a leaving date. 52% arrived six months or more ahead, before SkillBridge can start.
People apply more as their date gets closer, which is expected. But applying is often the only way to tell an employer you're interested, so someone 18 months out has no way to say so. Based on about 700 service members with matched jobs. That gap is why we built a way to express interest without applying. More on that in Part 5.
of simulations for roles outside people's military background rated a good fit or better, compared with 23% for roles that match it. Good fit or better means the top two of four ratings: not a good fit, potential fit, good fit and high fit. Based on about 600 simulations by about 500 people whose military job we could match to a career field.
of the careers outside their military lane that people saw, they liked. For careers close to their background, it was 67%. Based on about 9,700 votes from about 1,200 people.
What outside research shows
Most research on veteran employment asks one question: how fast do veterans find a job after leaving the military? Very little asks how they choose a career, or when they start choosing.
The few outside numbers touch on this. In research from Syracuse University's D'Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF), 55% of transitioning service members pursue careers unrelated to their military roles. Those who start early do better. 82% of those who prepared three or more years ahead felt ready for the move, compared with 21% of those who didn't. (Maury, IVMF, 2025)
Hundreds of thousands of people, in the window, every year
The window is predictable. Most service members know their leaving date well ahead. Contracts end on a fixed date, and people plan when they retire.
service members leave the military each year, counting active duty, Guard, Reserve and Coast Guard. 148,000 of them left active duty in FY2024. DMDC, 2024 Demographics Report1; GAO-25-1072052
of active-duty leavers chose to leave or retired. So they knew the date well ahead. DMDC1
By law, every service member must start transition counseling at least a year before leaving. Retirees can start up to two years out. By then the leave date is firm and the clock is running. 10 U.S.C. § 11423
Estimate: about 200,000 service members leave each year, counting active duty, Guard, Reserve and Coast Guard, assuming a steady flow (DMDC, FY2024; GAO-25-107205). Reaching back from three months to two years makes the pool about eight times bigger. The 500,000 used elsewhere in this report is the group six months to three years out.
Employers are mostly absent from all of this exploring and training. By the time someone is ready to start their job search, these decisions are already made.
Part 2: The missing middle
Employers are going to great lengths to fill critical roles, but almost all efforts reach people only in their last few months of service.
To see what service members find when they start looking, we reviewed 60 large US employers that are short of skilled workers. They work in manufacturing, energy, data centers, logistics, defense and telecoms. Most are Fortune 500 companies. The rest are big private or foreign-owned employers with major US operations. For each one, we read its military careers pages, press releases and program pages, and recorded what a service member can do before applying.
The roles these employers can't fill are the ones service members are built for: electricians, mechanics, logisticians, line workers and technicians. They also sit in what our research calls the veteran "sweet spot": roles with high veteran retention, strong growth and low risk from AI disruption. Read The AI Career Shift4.
openings a year in 11 jobs these employers are short of. These include electricians (72,700), industrial machinery mechanics (44,400, growing 18%), logisticians (26,600) and power-line installers (10,900). BLS Employment Projections 2025–355
of US employers struggle to find talent. In manufacturing, it's 75%. ManpowerGroup, 20266
What we hear from employers
We talk to talent teams every week, and the appetite to reach service members early is there, but the tools haven't kept pace. Hiring systems are built around the application. A job opens, people apply, the team screens them and fills the seat. Almost everything a recruiter is measured on happens inside that window. Someone who is a year away doesn't fit anywhere in it.
You can hear it in how teams talk. An audience marketing lead at a Fortune 100 employer told us: "We don't currently have a talent pool for our military population. Military is on the list. We just aren't there yet." Military hiring matters to them. They just have no place to put someone who isn't ready to apply.
Others are trying to work around their systems. A program lead in cloud infrastructure wants to stay in touch with candidates who are "not ready to jump off the train yet". In their words: "If we can automate it somehow, we'll get the system to drip feed them every now and again, keep the interest going." A data center training lead wants to coach service members with electrical skills who are close: "If they're almost there, we want to make sure that we can tweak them to give them what they need." Both are describing a relationship that runs for months before anyone applies. Most hiring systems only start at the application.
Nearly all of what employers do today lands in the last six months of service. So in our review of 60 employers, we asked one question: what can someone one to three years from leaving do with this company before they apply?
Employers offer a general talent pool and an application, and nothing in between
Months before leaving the military. Arrival shares come from US service members on Redeployable. Employer counts come from our review of 60 employers' military careers pages, checked October 2026.
Each of the 60 employers is counted once, at its furthest stage. We counted translators as job search, since they drop you into a job list.
All 60 employers offer an application. Only six offer anything before it
What employers offer, feature by feature
Talent community
36
employers offer a talent community, job alerts or an inbox for resumes.
Skills translator
12
offer a military skills translator for their own jobs: enter a job code, get a list of jobs. Several more link out to a general tool.
SkillBridge
41
offer SkillBridge, open only in the last 60 to 180 days of service.
Early engagement
6
offer anything structured to engage service members before their last six months, and most of that is self-paced learning with no hiring path attached.
These overlap. One employer can offer a talent pool, a translator and SkillBridge, and count in each.
Employers aren't sitting still. In our conversations, they also describe referral schemes and asking their veteran employee resource groups to help. Almost all of this reaches people in their last six months, or after they leave. The gap is the 18 months before that, from about two years out to six months out, when people are choosing a career.
Talent community
Why "join our talent community" doesn't work
A talent community is a database with a friendly name. Three things go wrong with it.
Nobody searches it.
Recruiters work on open jobs, and each one comes with a clock. When a job opens, the fastest route is the people who just hit apply. Searching a pool of people who signed up a year ago is the step that gets skipped. Nobody knows if they're still free. The tools that hold these pools are barely used. Aptitude Research found only 14% of companies fully use their recruiting CRM.
It's out of date the day after you join.
A service member 18 months out is changing fast. They finish a degree, pass a certification, get a SkillBridge date, change their mind about relocating. Their leaving date moves. One Army warrant officer told our Career Navigator they'd leave in October 2028. A few chats later they said October 2030. The resume in the talent pool is a snapshot of who they were the day they uploaded it.
It only runs one way.
The candidate puts something in and may get job alerts, but hears nothing back about themselves. They can't tell whether they're on track for the role, what they'd need to learn, or whether anyone looked. So the real decision waits until the last few months, when whoever is actively recruiting has the advantage.
| What the talent pool holdsUploaded March 2025 | The same person todaySeptember 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Leaving | "Sometime in 2027" | September 2027, SkillBridge from March |
| Role | Wheeled vehicle mechanic | Now also shop lead for 12 mechanics |
| Education | High school, Army courses | One credential done through Credentialing Assistance. An associate degree started on Tuition Assistance. |
| Interested in | Mechanic jobs, near home | Data center cooling and robotics. Will relocate. |
| Status | Not ready to apply | Ready, and talking to two other employers |
A composite drawn from patterns on our platform.
Skills translators
Why translators point people backward
A military skills translator takes a job code and returns civilian jobs. The trouble is what it returns, and how old the map is. It's a common problem: 39% of transitioning service members had trouble translating their military skills to the civilian job market. (Maury, IVMF, 2025)
It returns the civilian twin.
Type 91B into the O*NET lookup and the top matches are automotive service technician and bus and truck mechanic. Army vehicle mechanics on our platform liked other roles: data center cooling, hydrogen fuel cell and robotics technician. Those roles are where the demand is. The top match, automotive service technician, should grow 4% in the next ten years. That's about average (BLS7). Industrial machinery mechanics, the closest federal job to what they liked, should grow 18%. And nearly two-thirds of data center operators struggle to hire or keep staff. Junior technicians are the hardest to find (Uptime Institute, 20258).
Most translators read the code, and codes can mislead.
A job code says what someone was trained for. It often doesn't say what they ended up doing, or what they did before, between or alongside it. One Army sergeant told our Navigator: "MOS is licensed practical nurse, but my role was operations manager, HR manager, public relations representative and photographer."
It matches words, and the newest jobs have no words yet.
Mechanically, a translator is a lookup. It links fixed codes: military job to civilian job to job posts. Or it counts shared keywords. "Mechanic" in, "mechanic" out. Those codes come from lists built to count jobs for the government. The federal list is updated about once every ten years. New roles spend years filed under an older code, or a catch-all "all other" code. Data center technician is one of the roles these employers need most yet it has no code of its own. A lookup can only point at a job that's already on the list. So the newest roles are the ones it's least likely to find. The jobs themselves move too: Lightcast found that 32% of the skills the average US job asks for changed from 2021 to 2024.
SkillBridge
Why SkillBridge comes too late
SkillBridge is the best thing most employers offer. Service members spend their last months working and training with an employer, on military pay. It works well for the people who get it. In a Hiring Our Heroes survey, SkillBridge participants were more likely to call the move easy or very easy (40% against 25%), and more likely to report a good job outcome within three months (79% against 58%). (Hiring Our Heroes, House testimony, 2023. Hiring Our Heroes runs SkillBridge fellowships.)
41 of the 60 employers in our review offer it, and for 35 of them it's the earliest structured contact they have. Two problems: it starts late, and few people get it.
It starts after the big decisions are made.
SkillBridge can begin no more than 180 days before someone leaves. By then, most people have picked a career, decided where to live and spent their training money. More than half the service members on Redeployable start exploring before that window opens. By then it can only confirm a choice someone has already made.
The window is shrinking.
In April 2025, the Army capped SkillBridge by rank: up to 120 days for junior enlisted, 90 for mid-grade ranks and 60 for senior NCOs and officers from major up (Army Times, 2025). The Air Force set similar caps in March 2026 and moved approval up to squadron commanders (Stars and Stripes, 2026).
Few people get it.
Almost 12,000 service members took part in the first half of FY2024, about 16% of those leaving active duty (GAO-24-107352). Each fellowship needs a commander willing to release someone from their unit, and an employer with a host role open at the right time.
What the status quo costs
of post-9/11 veterans say they're underemployed three years after leaving. Those also unhappy with pay earn $11,000 to $24,000 less, and are 3.9 times more likely to leave their job. Penn State, Journal of Veterans Studies, 20249
a year goes to 45 federal transition programs, almost all on school and retraining. RAND found "virtually no evidence" that any of them directly help people get jobs. RAND, 202410
Why employers miss people this early
of employers have a formal veteran hiring program and 23% an informal one. The other 64% have none. SHRM, 202411
of US HR leaders plan their workforce three or more years ahead. McKinsey HR Monitor, 202512
median time to fill a role. Recruiting runs on open requisitions, and the people who'll be ready in 18 months don't have one. SHRM, 202513
Reach just 1% of the people who enter the window each year, and that's about 2,000 people a year who've tried your work, know their gaps and have a year to close them.
Part 3: The training window
Service members have the time, the appetite and the money to upskill. Few employers tell them which skills they need.
The months before leaving are the best training window most people will ever get. Service members still have a paycheck, healthcare and housing, and the military will pay for credentials and coursework while they serve. Then the GI Bill picks up after they leave.
The money is already there
spent on the Post-9/11 GI Bill in FY2025, used by about 607,000 people. VA, 202514
a year in Tuition Assistance for college courses while serving. About 320,000 service members use it each year. Army, 202415; American Legion, 202416
a year in Army Credentialing Assistance for industry certifications. That's enough for one a year. The Air Force gives $4,500 over a career. The Navy and Marine Corps pay for exams tied to a person's job. AF COOL17
And they're using it
soldiers used Credentialing Assistance in 2024. Its cost more than doubled in three years, from $31 million to $70 million. Military.com, 202418
Only 6 of the 60 employers in our review offer anything structured to engage people this early. So few service members ever hear from an employer which credentials it wants.
That's where an employer can start the relationship, a year or more before anyone applies.
The government is pushing in the same direction. In June, the Defense Department's Project Patriot Pipeline told the services to steer their training money to key skills. These include manufacturing, cyber and aircraft maintenance.
In September, an executive order told TAP to connect people leaving "to specific, open jobs" or career training. Both work at the level of skills and open jobs. A soldier 18 months out still needs an employer to say which credential leads to which of its roles.
Part 4: What leading employers are doing
The best employers are already recruiting for 2028
A small group of employers working with Redeployable now recruit service members a year or more before they can start. They share three things. They plan their workforce years ahead. They have roles they can't fill from the open market. And they're willing to talk to people who aren't ready to apply.
| Employer | The problem | Size of the opportunity | How early | Their plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fortune 100 employer, logistics and cloud | Maintenance and engineering roles it needs filled for 2028 | "Hire ahead" jobs opening for 2028, piloted with Redeployable simulations. | Jobs start in 2028 | Keep people warm with short online lessons, site visits and veterans already in the role |
| Global technology company, data center operations | Technicians are needed before roles open, and the open market can't supply them | An ongoing data center build-out | 12 to 18 months | Test service members early, name their skill gaps, then point them to free training that closes them |
| Defense technology manufacturer | Technician roles at a new factory site | Thousands of new roles | 6 to 48 months | Simulations for technician roles, plus a training track for strong people who miss one requirement. Recruiters hear when they close the gap. |
| Global energy management company | New field service engineers take six months to two years to get up to speed, so hiring late is costly | Getting each new hire productive two to three months sooner | 12 months | An always-open path that reaches people a year before they could start |
“We are looking into hire ahead reqs for 2028, which is PERFECT for military candidates.”
“Let's get together and get you ready and fit for this position when you come out. That's what's missing.”
The five shifts they're making
Set against how most hiring runs today, these four employers are making the same five shifts. None of them needs new legislation, and most of the money is already being spent by the military. It needs employers to recruit for the workforce they'll need in one to three years.
- Fill today's vacancies
Recruiting starts when a job opens and ends when the seat is filled.
Recruit for the workforce in one to three yearsPick the roles you'll need in volume, and start building the pipeline while those people are still serving.
- Match on job codes
A translator turns a military job into its civilian twin. The data is already old.
Let people discover and prove fitShow people the work and let them test themselves against it. Our data shows background is a weak predictor of fit.
- A talent pool as a holding pen
"Not ready to apply? Join our talent community." Then silence, while the resume goes stale.
An early-bird pipeline that rewards progressPeople see how close they are and what's next, and each step earns them more from you. You always know who's ready, and when.
- Screen out on credentials
Missing a certificate means rejection, with no guidance.
Close the gap while they servePoint strong people to vetted training their benefits cover. Track it. Promise something real when they finish.
- Measure applications and hires
Success is counted at the point of hire.
Measure the pipelineTrack how many months each person is from starting, which training goals they've met, and who stays a year.
Part 5: The playbook
How to recruit the workforce you need in one to three years
Four stages, mapped to the service member's timeline. Most employers today start at stage three.
Discover, 36 to 12 months out
They need
- To see what the work is really like
- To find careers a job code wouldn't suggest
You do
- Publish simulations of your hardest-to-fill roles
- Show up where they explore, as well as where they apply
- Let them express interest without applying
Measure
- People engaged, by months to availability
- People who expressed interest, by months to availability
- Simulation fit
Prepare, 12 to 6 months out
They need
- A clear plan to close specific gaps
- Training their benefits will pay for
- A conversation with someone who's made the same move
You do
- Name the gaps for each role and the vetted training that closes them
- Track completion, and tie a guaranteed interview to it
- Invite them to a virtual Q&A with a veteran in the role
- Invite them to a site
Measure
- Training milestones hit
- Pipeline retention month to month
Commit, 6 to 0 months out
They need
- A firm offer that fits their date
You do
- Move ready candidates to recruiters with their history attached
- Use SkillBridge where available
- Make conditional offers early
Measure
- Offers from the pipeline
- Time to hire
Retain, First year
They need
- A role that matches what they chose
- A veteran in the role they can learn from
You do
- Pair them with a veteran in the role
- Track performance against simulation fit
Measure
- First-year retention
- Time to full productivity
A better way to recommend careers
Modern AI matches on the work itself. "Troubleshot hydraulic faults on a deadline" and "diagnose cooling failures to restore uptime" share no keywords, yet they describe the same skill, and AI can see that. A good model breaks a military job and a civilian job into the same parts: the setting, like shift work or small teams, the main tasks, the tools and what's at stake. It reads what someone actually did, beyond their job code. Because it works from the job description itself, it can match roles that don't have a government code yet. And it can explain the match: which skills carry over, and which gap to close. That's how a vehicle mechanic lands on data center cooling. The overlap is in the work: fixing mechanical and electrical systems, keeping things running and sticking to a maintenance plan.
AI still needs checking, or it just guesses with more confidence. So the AI suggests the match, and the person proves fit on the real work, in a simulation. This is how the people in this report found careers their job code would never have shown them.
A way to say "not yet" without saying no
We started with simulations and fit ratings. Then we saw who was using them. A quarter of people arrived a year or more before leaving, and they fit as well as anyone. Their only next step was "apply now", for a job they couldn't start. So we built a way for them to express interest in a role without applying, and tell the employer when they'll be available.
The employer sees who's interested, how they did in the simulation and how many months they are from starting. As they get closer, the employer can see their progress and reach out at the right time.
This early-bird pipeline fixes what goes wrong with a talent pool. It runs both ways: the person sees how they compare and what's next, and the employer sees real interest. And it stays current, because their date, training and fit update as they go.
Getting started: the first 90 days
Pick two or three roles you'll need in volume in one to three years and can't fill from the open market.
Define what good looks like for each: the tasks, the must-have skills, and which requirements can be trained.
Build a simulation of each role so people can try the work and you can see fit before anyone applies.
Choose the training that closes the common gaps. Have the hiring team sign off on it. Check that Tuition Assistance, credentialing money or the GI Bill can pay for it.
Write down the promise. Finish these credentials, and you get an interview. Keep it simple and keep it.
Recruit veterans from your own staff in those roles to host Q&As. Your veterans are a recruiting asset.
Open an early-bird pipeline. Let people say they're interested without applying. Share updates until each person is ready.
Set pipeline metrics alongside hiring metrics, and report them by months to availability.
The service members are already there. They're exploring and training now. The only question is whose roles they're training for. Yours, ideally.
Back to table of contentsMethodology
Platform data: Redeployable, analysis through October 2026 of 3,200 US candidates.
Service member quotes come from US users of the Redeployable Career Navigator, a guided conversation on the platform about their service, timing and goals. Names are removed and spelling is lightly fixed. Employer quotes are lightly edited for grammar. The translator results in the opening are an illustration based on the top O*NET matches for Army 91B.
Employer review: 60 large US employers in industries short of skilled workers, picked before we checked. "Large" means a Fortune 500 company, or a private or foreign-owned employer with major US operations, such as a data center operator or defense contractor.
We read each one's military careers pages, press releases and program pages on 12 October 2026. A feature counts as "structured earlier" only if two things are true. A service member can use it more than six months before leaving. And the employer runs or pays for it.
Employer audit by feature. Talent pool, talent community, job alerts or recruiter inbox: 36 employers. Military skills translator for the employer's own jobs: 12. A few more link out to general tools or rely on a search engine feature; we didn't count those. Job search and apply: all 60. Anything structured to engage service members before their last six months: 6, one of them partly. Of the other 24 employers, six clearly had no talent pool and 18 couldn't be confirmed either way.
"Outside their lane" means slightly different things for votes and simulations. For career votes, it means careers our recommender labels exploration or wildcard. For simulations, it means a career field outside the person's military job family.
References
Sources cited in the text, in order of first appearance. Platform figures are Redeployable data, analysis through October 2026.
- DMDC, 2024 Demographics Report. https://download.militaryonesource.mil/12038/MOS/Reports/2024-demographics-report.pdf
- GAO-25-107205. https://files.gao.gov/reports/GAO-25-107205/index.html
- 10 U.S.C. § 1142. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/1142
- Redeployable, The AI Career Shift, 2026. https://redeployable.io/blog/the-ai-career-shift-where-veterans-should-focus-in-2026
- BLS Employment Projections 2025–35. https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/occupational-projections-and-characteristics.htm
- ManpowerGroup, 2026. https://www.manpowergroupusa.com/hubfs/2026%20Talent%20Shortage/ManpowerGroup%202026%20U.S.%20Talent%20Shortage%20Survey.pdf
- BLS. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/installation-maintenance-and-repair/automotive-service-technicians-and-mechanics.htm
- Uptime Institute, 2025. https://intelligence.uptimeinstitute.com/resource/staffing-crisis-persists-colos-struggle-retain-junior-operators
- Penn State, Journal of Veterans Studies, 2024. https://journal-veterans-studies.org/articles/10.21061/jvs.v10i3.542
- RAND, 2024. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1363-12.html
- SHRM, 2024. https://shrm-res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/v1728927785/Foundation/Research_SHRM_Research_Report_on_Recruiting_and_Hiring_Veterans.pdf
- McKinsey HR Monitor, 2025. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/hr-monitor-2025
- SHRM, 2025. https://www.shrm.org/content/dam/en/shrm/research/2025-recruiting-benchmarking-report.pdf
- VA, 2025. https://www.benefits.va.gov/REPORTS/abr/docs/2025-education.pdf
- Army, 2024. https://www.army.mil/article/281853/army_approves_tuition_assistance_increase_adjusts_credentialing_program
- American Legion, 2024. https://www.legion.org/information-center/news/washington-conference/2024/february/tuition-assistance-program-for-servicemembers-needs-more-funding-more-awareness-as-recruiting-tool
- AF COOL. https://myairforcebenefits.us.af.mil/Benefit-Library/Federal-Benefits/Air-Force-Credentialing-Opportunities-On-Line-(AF-COOL)?serv=26
- Military.com, 2024. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/12/10/army-cuts-popular-education-benefit-half-bars-officers-costs-soar.html
- DoD memo, June 2026. https://media.defense.gov/2026/Jun/03/2003943800/-1/-1/1/ENHANCING-WORKFORCE-DEVELOPMENT-THROUGH-THE-DEPARTMENT-OF-WAR-PROJECT-PATRIOT-PIPELINE.PDF
- Executive order, September 2026. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/09/accelerating-access-to-veterans-benefits-and-employment-opportunities/
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