When Dave Yeager stumbled upon the chamber of shiny, casino-style slot machines, he felt an instantaneous pull. It was his first evening of deployment in Seoul, South Korea, and the US Military officer was in a foul headspace. The September 11, 2001, assaults had simply occurred, and he had a spouse and two youngsters underneath the age of 5 at residence whom he missed fiercely. He felt misplaced.
Yeager had by no means seen a slot machine on a navy base earlier than—there weren’t any within the US—however he figured attempting his luck couldn’t make issues worse. “As I’m sitting there, the very first thing I’m noticing is that my shoulders are enjoyable,” Yeager remembers. “Then, I received. In that second, all of the stress, the anxiousness, the ache, the harm, the concern—it washed away.”
Pulling the slot machine’s levers felt like a salve—till they didn’t. Yeager discovered one other room full of slot machines at his subsequent base. Over a interval of about three months, he spiraled into what he says was a “devastating obsession” with taking part in the military-run on line casino video games. He ultimately drained his financial savings, bought his stuff, even stole from his unit. He didn’t inform anybody what was occurring. “I believed nobody might assist me,” he says.
Whereas not everybody who performs the slots struggles like Yeager did, a rising physique of proof signifies that veterans and repair members usually tend to wrestle with playing issues than civilians, says Shane W. Kraus, an affiliate professor on the College of Nevada, Las Vegas, who research playing issues. Service members additionally are usually extra hesitant to hunt assist, out of concern of shedding rank, safety clearance, or being dishonorably discharged, he provides.
Not a lot has modified since Yeager served—actually, throughout the final 5 years, the slot machine packages the navy runs have been making growing quantities of money. And, some advocates say, they’re not funneling sufficient of what they make into schooling on downside playing.
Drafted Into Debt
The Military Recreation Machine Program (ARMP) at present operates 1,889 slot machines in 79 places overseas, together with Korea, Japan, and Germany, in accordance with Neil Gumbs, basic supervisor, Military Recreation Machine Program (ARMP) Set up Administration Command (IMCOM). The ARMP introduced in $70.9 million from its slot machine operations throughout the 2024 fiscal yr, in accordance with a doc obtained by WIRED. That yr, the ARMP made $53 million in web proceeds. (The ARMP program covers slots on Military, Navy, and Marine Corps bases, whereas the Air Power additionally has their very own model of this system.)
These figures have been growing. Within the fiscal yr 2023, the ARMP introduced in $64.8 million in income, with $48.9 million in web proceeds. The yr earlier than, it made $63.1 million in income with web proceeds of $47.3 million, in accordance with paperwork obtained by a public information request made by this reporter by the Information Liberation Undertaking.
From October 2024 to Could 2025, the ARMP’s “home” has had some strong wins. They generated about $47.7 million from gamers in that interval, information obtained by WIRED present. Comparatively, the full return to gamers from October 2024 to Could 2025 was about $37 million in reportable jackpots over $1,200.
In its heyday, the ARMP introduced in over $100 million in income, per a 2017 report from the Authorities Accountability Workplace (GAO), however money-in dwindled considerably between 2010 to 2020, which Gumbs attributed to “motion and reductions in pressure and installations.” Issues started to develop once more after 2020. This was partly a lift from Covid-19 boredom, together with “renewed funding in new tools and value/expense reductions aided in growing leisure on supply,” Gumbs says.
