Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is reportedly considering severing ties with Scouting America, which could mean a consequential break with an organization that has long been closely associated with military service and leadership development.
Public data from two prominent military schools, West Point and the Naval Academy, shows that Scouting is common among future officers — more than one in ten cadets and about 10% of midshipmen in recent years have a Scouting background.
A memo obtained by NPR in November highlighted Hegseth’s desire to halt military support for the Scouts’ National Jamboree and group activities on military bases.
The Pentagon declined to provide a copy of the memo to Business Insider and did not comment on details surrounding any potential separation.
“The Department will not comment on leaked documents that we cannot authenticate and that may be pre-decisional,” Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said in an email when asked whether the Pentagon still plans to move forward with severing ties.
Scouting America did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
The Scouts’ Jamboree has long been a highly visible point of contact between the military and American youth. In 2017, the event featured a significant military presence — simulated helicopter rescues, displays of tanks and aircraft, flyovers, drill team performances, a special operations challenge, and other opportunities for Scouts to interact directly with service members.
1st Sgt. Andrew Kosterman/US Army
Whether the 2026 Jamboree events will feature similar military involvement remains to be seen (the Jamboree is usually held once every four years.) The reported memo on the Pentagon’s intended split with the Scouts decried the organization as “woke.”
The Boy Scouts of America began admitting girls in 2018, while the Girl Scouts remains a separate organization. The group had earlier opened its programs to transgender boys in 2017 and to gay boys in 2013.
In 2024, before Hegseth became the defense secretary, he remarked that Scouts had been “cratering” for some time during a Fox News show. He accused the political left of trying to “destroy it or dilute it into something that stood for nothing.”
Early exposure to service
This new uncertainty comes at a time of relative stability for military recruiting, after a yearslong crisis that peaked during the COVID-19 pandemic. Enlistment numbers have rebounded in large part because of a shaky job market and the Army and Navy’s preparatory courses, which help otherwise unqualified applicants improve their fitness and test scores enough to qualify for boot camp.
Those pre-boot camp programs have drawn scrutiny though. A government watchdog report last year found they allowed in too many low-scoring recruits, raising concerns about long-term readiness and standards.
Even with recruiting off to a strong start in the new fiscal year, looming challenges remain. A declining national birthrate — expected to become more pronounced over the coming decade — means the military will face a smaller pool of eligible young people in the years ahead. That makes early exposure to service-oriented institutions especially important, said Kate Kuszminski, the director of studies at the Center for a New American Security and author of a recent report on recruiting.
Scouting, she told Business Insider, can give young people two things the military has long valued: moral grounding and early exposure to skills that translate to service.
“The scouting system provides quite a few tangible things well before youth are of recruiting age that could pay dividends in the long run,” Kuszminski said.
Sgt. Penni Harris/US Army
Data from West Point highlights that overlap. About 14% of the Academy’s graduating class of 2027 reported a background in Scouting, according to the publicly available data. More than half of those former Scouts had earned the Eagle Scout or Girl Scouts’ Gold Award.
The data does not distinguish between male and female Scouts.
That pattern has held steady in recent years. For the graduating classes of 2022 through 2026, between 13% and 16% of students reported having a Scouting background. In the classes of 2025, 2026, and 2027, the number of former Scouts was nearly equal to the number of cadets who entered West Point from Junior ROTC programs.
Comparable data for the Naval Academy is harder to find, but a class profile for the class of 2028 lists roughly 10% of students as former Scouts.
For some veterans, those numbers are unsurprising. The Scouts have long had some overlap with military service, said David Chetlain, a Navy veteran and former Boy Scout. His own experience in Scouting reinforced a sense of service that he says is increasingly hard for students to find elsewhere.
“You want to teach young people that they’re part of a community and that they should be involved in it,” Chetlain said. Children learn a lot from team-building activities like school sports, he said, “but you don’t learn citizenship, you don’t learn service, and you don’t necessarily learn leadership in the same way.”
“They’re trying to prepare people for life, and those same attributes that make you successful in life will make you successful in the military,” he added. “That’s why I think the relationship is important.”
The reported rift with the Scouts comes as the Pentagon searches for new and innovative ways to sustain recruiting momentum with its new Recruitment Task Force. Few details about its scope or recommendations have been made public.