When Dave Yeager Stumbled upon a shiny, casino-style slot machine and he immediately felt harsh. This was his first night in Seoul, South Korea, where U.S. Army officers were in poor headspace. On September 11, 2001, the attack just happened and he had a wife and two children under the age of 5 at home and he missed them so much. He felt lost.
Yeager had never seen a slot machine on a military base before – in the United States, nothing – but he didn’t think his luck would make the situation worse. “The first thing I noticed when I was sitting there was that my shoulders were relaxing,” Yeager recalls. “And then, I won. In that moment, all the stress, anxiety, pain, hurt, fear was washed away.”
Pulling the leverage of the slot machine feels like salty-until they don’t. Yeager found another room full of slot machines at his next base. For about three months, he talked to himself about a “destructive obsession” with military-run casino games. Eventually, he exhausted his savings, sold his stuff, and even stole it from his unit. He didn’t tell anyone what happened. “I don’t think anyone can help me,” he said.
Shane W. Kraus, an associate professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, said not everyone who plays Yeager struggles like Yeager, but there is growing evidence that veterans and service workers are more likely to struggle with gambling barriers than civilians. He added that service members are also often hesitant to seek help because of concerns about losing rankings, security permits or dishonest dismissals.
Not much has changed since the Yeager service – in fact, military-run slot machine programs have been increasing the amount of cash over the past five years. And, some advocates say, everything they do is not enough for education on problem gambling.
Drafting debt
Neil Gumbs, general manager of the Army Entertainment Machine Program (ARMP) Installation Management Command (IMCOM), said the Army Entertainment Machine Program (ARMP) currently operates 1,889 slot machines at 79 locations abroad, including South Korea, Japan and Germany. According to documents obtained by Wired, the ARMP received $700.9 million from its slot machine operations in the fiscal year 2024. That year, ARMP made $53 million in net income. (The ARMP program covers slot machines at military, naval and marine bases, and the Air Force has its own plans.)
These numbers have been increasing. In fiscal year 2023, ARMP received $64.8 million in revenue and net income of $48.9 million. The previous year, it earned $63.1 million and net income of $47.3 million, according to documents obtained by the reporter through a public record request made by the Data Liberation Project.
From October 2024 to May 2025, ARMP’s “House” achieved a good victory. During that period, they created about $47.7 million from players, a record obtained by the Wired Show. By comparison, from October 2024 to May 2025, the total return of players is about $37 million, with more than $1,200 in reporting jackpots.
According to the 2017 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), at its peak, ARMP brought in more than $100 million in revenue, but between 2010 and 2020, the amount of money was greatly reduced, attributed to “effective movement and reduction and device movement and reduction”. Gumbs said things started to grow again after 2020. This part is the boredom of Covid-19-19, and “new investments in new equipment and reduced costs/fee investments help increase the entertainment offered,” Gumbs said.
