Navy Secretary John Phelan took to social media Wednesday evening to announce that the Navy had reached its enlistment goal for fiscal 2025.

The Navy met its goal three months ahead of schedule, recruiting 40,600 sailors, according to a post on X.

“This is a critical time in history, the world is more complex and more contested than it has been in decades and our ability to respond starts with our greatest asset, our people,” Phelan said in a video accompanying the post.

Phelan touted the milestone as emblematic of the service’s recruiting efforts.

“To achieve recent recruiting success, Navy Recruiting Command established a Recruiting Operations Center to monitor data in real time,” the Navy said in a release Wednesday. “The Navy also implemented the Future Sailor Preparatory Course to improve accession success, streamlined medical waiver reviews, and identified and removed barriers to recruiter productivity.”

The service has implemented other changes in recent years, including raising the enlistment age to 41 and eliminating the high school diploma requirement, in an effort to attract more sailors, as recruiting struggles have plagued the U.S. military.

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After missing its recruiting targets for the first time in fiscal 2023, the Navy bounced back in fiscal 2024, surpassing its accessions target of 40,600 recruits with 40,978 new sailors.

As part of the fiscal 2024 turnaround, the Navy refilled its drained delayed entry program — a program that allows recruits time between signing up to serve and becoming active duty — while deciding to accept more recruits who scored in the bottom 30% in testing. The service at the time also attributed success to “data-driven decision-making,” cutting down the time to process medical waivers and “expanding opportunities.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with details from a Navy release.