Number of soldiers unchanged at 475,000

When President Donald Trump was running for office, the U.S. Army had 475,000 active duty personnel. He said he would build that to 540,000.

The Defense Department's latest report for April 2020 puts the Army count at 475,000 soldiers.

Trump was able to stop the cuts the Obama administration had in mind. That budget map aimed to reduce the Army to 460,000 in 2017 and 450,000 in 2018. However, before Trump took office, Congress rejected that plan and approved enough money for 476,000 troops.

Counting soldiers is one way to gauge the Army's strength, but there are others, said Thomas Mahnken, president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington defense strategy think tank.

"The size of the Army matters, but even more crucial is its overall effectiveness," Mahnken said. 

He said the Army has become stronger through buying new aircraft, ground vehicles and long-range precision missiles and artillery.

Dakota Wood, a top defense fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that while reaching 540,000 soldiers is a good goal, combat readiness has improved "tremendously" under Trump.

"Broken equipment has been fixed, depleted inventories of munitions have been restocked, and various modernization programs have been started," Wood said.

In short, both experts say the Army is stronger than it was before, even if Trump didn't meet his goal of 540,000 troops.

But that's what he promised. The number today is the same as when he took office. We rate this a Promise Broken.