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I spent five years in the Air Force. Posts like this are really helpful, a lot of Americans are disconnected from members of the military, especially in the upp

I spent five years in the Air Force. Posts like this are really helpful, a lot of Americans are disconnected from members of the military, especially in the upper classes where people do not need to serve, or in fields (like tech) where people can often find less intrusive ways to pay for college. My favorite part of the article is dispelling the myth that in the military senior people bark orders, and don't ask for feedback, and subordinates dutifully carry out those orders. None of those is true. There is a time to "shut up and color" but that is by far the exception. For the young people on here, I can't tell you what to do, but I can tell you serving in the military was a positive experience for me.

umvi 5y ago
Some reserve units in the US are highly technical too. I did a cyber education course at AFIT when I was in Air Force ROTC and there was a particular reserve unit somewhere in Maryland I want to say nearish NSA that had a lot of super smart security researchers that came to guest lecture us including Raphael Smudge (creator of https://github.com/rsmudge/armitage https://github.com/rsmudge/armitage)
- tomcam 5y ago
  I refuse to look up the name Raphael Smudge. I choose to believe it is the name of a villain in the third Sonic movie.
- theturingnerd 5y ago
  Mudge is great. Super smart guy. He, too, left, rather tired of the mess. People like him are exceedingly rare and never appreciated.
oaxacaoaxaca 5y ago
>None of that is true. All of that is true about my Army experience lol. If I could go back and do it again, I'd definitely choose Air Force. I agree that the military can be a positive experience and it's a good idea for some people, but the caveat with my endorsement is that you gotta carefully choose the branch and the job. I almost chose linguistics, but for some silly reason chose mechanic and paratrooper, and wouldn't you know it I ended up with injuries causing me to walk with a cane in my 20s.
- freedomben 5y ago
  > you gotta carefully choose the branch and the job yes absolutely. I'd even say "the job" is the most important part. There are Army jobs that are pretty good, and there are Air Force jobs that are pretty bad.
  - iostream24 5y ago
    Yes, MOS is key…
  - causasui 5y ago
    There's a saying in the Navy I was told from day 1 at the recruiter's office: Choose your rate, choose your fate. Your choice can be the difference between getting out after 4-6 years and easily making six figures, or struggling to find employment at $35k. Not to mention your lifestyle while in and other side effects of your service like PTSD.
    - germinalphrase 5y ago
      Are there known “good” paths that lead to the former result?
      - causasui 5y ago
        For sure, speaking for the Navy (though I'm sure the same applies for the other services as well). Cryptologic/electronic/nuclear fields are all known to be cash cows after getting out. Granted, you need to score well on your ASVAB, especially for nuclear fields. But the ASVAB can be studied for and is probably the easiest of all the standardized tests someone that age may face in my experience.
        germinalphrase 5y ago
        Thank you. Can anyone comment with regard to the Air Force? Not asking for myself. I am a high school English teacher, and I am currently helping a young man with his application to the academy. He is committed to the Air Force either way, but I try to pass along any information that I come across (with the caveat, of course, that I don’t know what I’m talking about).
scruple 5y ago
I spent 4 years in the USAF and echo the same sentiment. Military service isn't for everyone but I had a positive experience and my decision to join remains one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.
giantg2 5y ago
"My favorite part of the article is dispelling the myth that in the military senior people bark orders, and don't ask for feedback, and subordinates dutifully carry out those orders. None of those is true. There is a time to "shut up and color" but that is by far the exception." Based on my limited knowledge, I think it's highly dependent on the leaders in the unit. I have a friend who always dreamed of being an naval aviator, went to the academy, and served for several years as a pilot. They are leaving due to the political BS of the organization and poor leadership by those in command. My relatives' experience back up similar experiences - up to and including the extreme example that an XO overrode a maintenance officer in order to bark orders that work needed to be done in a way that was contrary to documented procedures and resulted in loss of life (in training no less). Basically 9/10 leaders range from decent to excellent. That other 1 is the one that can make your life hell or get you killed with little to nothing you can do about it.
- baud147258 5y ago
  > an XO overrode a maintenance officer in order to bark orders that work needed to be done in a way that was contrary to documented procedures and resulted in loss of life (in training no less) did the XO suffer any consequences from this?
  - giantg2 5y ago
    It seemed like a sore point so I didn't ask questions about it (form things I pieced together it sounded like they were injuried and their copilot, maybe others, died; in sounded like the XO probably didn't have any serious consequence or I think they would have mentioned it). Generally, I would only ask questions about the good stories they shared but let them just share what they wanted when they were not happy stories.
- tekknik 5y ago
  > They are leaving due to the political BS of the organization and poor leadership by those in command. I have a brother-in-law (a chief) leaving 3 years prior to retirement for the same reason. Except it’s exactly the opposite. They’re not allowed to yell anymore, have a lot of limitations on punishment, and have to accept things like enlisted being late to work. They’re leaving because they think the military is on a downtrend and can’t control the high schoolers under their command.
YATA1 5y ago
>especially in the upper classes where people do not need to serve This is a often repeated myth. The upper class serves more per capita than the lower class.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  The man who did my job back in the 80s was a literal billionaire, putting on the same uniform as me for the same pay.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    Are you claiming that billionaires serve at the same rate as others? Or that there are many billionaires in the military?
    - chiph 5y ago
      They're even more rare in the military than in the general population. Firstly for the obvious reason - they don't need any of the benefits so they don't join. Secondly - someone that becomes that wealthy while serving (via a trust-fund, large inheritance, or winning the lottery) would no longer be a good fit for the military. They usually get offered an Honorable Discharge. However, if they still desire to serve the remainder of their term, they can place the money into a blind trust.
      - wolverine876 5y ago
        > someone that becomes that wealthy while serving (via a trust-fund, large inheritance, or winning the lottery) would no longer be a good fit for the military. They usually get offered an Honorable Discharge. That's shocking. Where is this rule? Have you seen it happen? I didn't know wealth defined fitness for service.
        analognoise 5y ago
        Of course wealth defines fitness for service (in America, anyway). Isn't "money for college and healthcare" kinda obvious about it? Like there's almost a wink and a nudge at the end of it. It's super blatant that having very few economic options and no healthcare chooses fitness for service for you.
tempnow987 5y ago
One issue with reserves, especially army. Through the iraq/afghanistan deployments BOG time was way up (ie, your service commit is not just that weekend a month). BOG = Boots on ground time. In afghanistan Army deployments (both active and reserve) were far higher than other service branches. My quick understanding is that normally they would like to target 1/4 BOG/Dwell time. So if you are thinking of reserves, particularly army, be asking, could I be gone 12 months out of 48, with potential for more?
- blobbers 5y ago
  Is there data on how much real service one might be doing? As in incoming mortars, bullets flying over your head, in a place with IEDs or mines etc. I feel like if I wanted to be put in that specific situation, I'd want a whole lot more training than a reservist.
  - fredophile 5y ago
    I can't speak for other people's experiences but I did deploy to Afghanistan as a combat arms reservist in the Canadian army. Typically, you're expected to be overseas for 6 months but anything from 5-8 isn't that uncommon. Other roles had other expected deployment lengths. To prep for a 6 month tour involved full time training for about 8 months. This is the same training time the regular forces got and was done with them. I think you may also underestimate the amount of training reservists do. To get fully qualified in my trade took over 3 months of full time training split up over a couple years. During my time in the reserves you'd do 1-2 evenings a week from September to May/June. You'd also have 1 weekend a month training for most of those months and 1 week long training exercise per year. During the summer, people who had the time could do full time work taking or teaching on courses.
  - UncleEntity 5y ago
    > Is there data on how much real service one might be doing? Not really ‘data’ but the last time I was in a combat zone there were mortars/rockets flying in on a daily basis, usually around chow time. Also ‘safe’ jobs weren’t a guarantee. We were going out on a convoy mission and the reservists unit escorting us was short handed so just found a warm body to ride in the gun truck in the form of an office girl in the Air Force who had been in country three weeks and probably hadn’t touched a weapon since basic training. Mission takes priority and if you need a body you find a body. Also my last ‘real’ deployment was in a reserve unit and I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone. Zero discipline and we were a transportation unit so mobile enough to get into all sorts of trouble. We got out of there before things got really bad (our mission was over so they just sent us home) so there’s that.
routeerror40 5y ago
I signed up for 4 years for the US Army in order to finish college. Ended up doing 5 years for being stop lossed due to a deployment that got extended. When I joined I had 72 hours college under my belt, went in as a PFC. The reality of service is it is both the good as portrayed here and the shit experiences I know we have all had in the service. Would I change anything, no. Was it all cake, hell no. But I wouldn't change anything. The single best thing about service, that I think most people actually need in life, is the forced mega dose of reality, and how the military deals with it, especially when as a person you've refused to, and made it the militaries problem. Everything about my time in has helped me in my civilian life, except how to explain to people that they are denying reality.
- vlod 5y ago
  >is the forced mega dose of reality >except how to explain to people that they are denying reality. It would be great if you could expand on this.
  - routeerror40 5y ago
    The Military forces you to strip yourself of your preconceptions. To see things as they are. No lying to yourself, no lying to others, that is a great way to get called out, its expected and encouraged, but you better be right. The concept of this if foreign to civilians. Most civilians would be down right offended at the idea if questioning someone's beliefs, its expected in the military. INTJ's that I have met seem to do this naturally as Civilians but they are the exception. Academic debate, papers, also does this but the acts are again frowned on outside of that environment. After years of this Military members have a core belief system that has been striped and rebuilt, with all the fluffy civy nonsense discarded. All this happens during those in-between times in the Military, the times we spent waiting for the next event, training, location to be at, bullshitting to each other. Someone inevitably say's something so naïve or untrue, they get called out on it. This happens enough and you start examining yourself. You want to fit in, belong, your subconscious starts to reorient its self and realign your thinking.
- wolverine876 5y ago
gadders 5y ago
>> My favorite part of the article is dispelling the myth that in the military senior people bark orders I heard Petraeus (I think) on a podcast and he said the biggest misconception by civilians about the military is you can just order people to do things, and the biggest misconception by the military about the private sector is you can just sack people.
snerbles 5y ago
> None of that is true. Really depends on your AFSC (job code), unit and era. I was in one of the more infamous career fields (Security Forces), and the running joke was that we were "real military" compared to the rest of the "Corporate Air Force". A lot of maintainers I knew had similar sentiments towards other office-based career fields. And that was only at a stateside base - the dynamic got really weird when we deployed on in-lieu-of taskings to relieve understaffed Army units in Iraq. Their Military Police had a similar level of intensity as us, but most of their rank-and-file in the role were augmentees pulled from other career fields without a law enforcement background.
jcurbo 5y ago
High five. 6 yrs in the USAF here.
VictorPath 5y ago
wolverine876 5y ago
> a lot of Americans are disconnected from members of the military, especially in the upper classes where people do not need to serve, or in fields (like tech) where people can often find less intrusive ways to pay for college. I think that's a serious problem. Americans have little idea how the US military works and tend to form extreme opinions, either glorifying it or villifying it - the former especially in the last 20 years or so but neither is at all healthy. When people understood the military - when we had a draft and a wide spectrum was personally familiar with it - we had popular entertainment like Gomer Pyle and MASH, and expressions like FUBAR and SNAFU. The military was seen as an enormous, absurd, powerful bureaucracy; people understood its limits and capabilities, and could make decisions about using it. Warfare was not glorified so much, but seen as the scourge it is, the last option, because many actually had experience of it. They also had skin in the game during a war, risking being drafted and knowing people who were. Now we fight the 20 year GWOT, send people on one tour after another, and many outside don't even realize there's a war on or wonder how it's going - but they do say 'thank you for your service' endlessly (a young relative in ROTC (US undergrad trainee program) was thanked several times wearing their uniform around town!). Part of the problem is the narrow population from which the military recruits. In the US Army, 79% of recruits come from families which already have service members. [0] Consider that only a few percent of the population is in the military. Also, I read that the military does not recruit in - or puts very little effort into - major cities (though I can't find the cite now, and it was a few years ago). [EDIT: cite found: 1] [0] https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2022/03/about-face-army-expects-shrink-next-year/363878/ https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2022/03/about-face-army-ex... [1] From 2019: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/us/army-recruiting-tech-industry-seattle.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/us/army-recruiting-tech-i...
- Terr_ 5y ago
  The flip-side is that with mandatory manpower for military adventurism, politicians and the military leaders who advise them have fewer reasons to temper their aspirations. > Part of the problem is the narrow population from which the military recruits. I wonder if this relates to how military service (not civilian-contractor roles) appear to have a bit of an, er, "sign your soul over and hope for the best" mechanic. I dimly recall some event where some state was offering a "Try it for a year" promotion for their National Guard service, and the guy on it ended up being stop-lossed over to Afghanistan or Iraq.
onion2k 5y ago
Posts like this are really helpful, a lot of Americans are disconnected from members of the military, especially in the upper classes where people do not need to serve, or in fields (like tech) where people can often find less intrusive ways to pay for college. 8% of the US population are veterans. 34% of the US population have a bachelors degree. That suggests to me that quite a low proportion of people use the military as a route to education.
exdsq 5y ago
> especially in the upper classes where people do not need to serve Weird! In the UK the army is very cross-class
EdwardDiego 5y ago
> a lot of Americans are disconnected from members of the military, especially in the upper classes where people do not need to serve Why do Americans need to be connected with the military though? What do you think the benefits of being more connected would be? Many of us are disconnected from members of the constabulary, from members of the ambulance services, from members of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing, Pipefitting and Sprinkler Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada. It's just how disparate careers go.
- jjj123 5y ago
  From a leftist perspective, it’s beneficial to have something like a draft because it forces all classes to confront the reality of our wars. Instead of how it is now when it’s mostly the lower class that goes to war. The last draft we had was Vietnam, which was a PR disaster for the US military because middle class america saw (and experienced) the war for what it was: destructive and unnecessary. I guess the difference is the sprinkler fitting industry doesn't result in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths the way a war does, so I don’t really care how the general public perceives it.

umvi 5y ago

Some reserve units in the US are highly technical too. I did a cyber education course at AFIT when I was in Air Force ROTC and there was a particular reserve unit somewhere in Maryland I want to say nearish NSA that had a lot of super smart security researchers that came to guest lecture us including Raphael Smudge (creator of https://github.com/rsmudge/armitage https://github.com/rsmudge/armitage)

tomcam 5y ago
I refuse to look up the name Raphael Smudge. I choose to believe it is the name of a villain in the third Sonic movie.
theturingnerd 5y ago
Mudge is great. Super smart guy. He, too, left, rather tired of the mess. People like him are exceedingly rare and never appreciated.

oaxacaoaxaca 5y ago

>None of that is true. All of that is true about my Army experience lol. If I could go back and do it again, I'd definitely choose Air Force. I agree that the military can be a positive experience and it's a good idea for some people, but the caveat with my endorsement is that you gotta carefully choose the branch and the job. I almost chose linguistics, but for some silly reason chose mechanic and paratrooper, and wouldn't you know it I ended up with injuries causing me to walk with a cane in my 20s.

freedomben 5y ago
> you gotta carefully choose the branch and the job yes absolutely. I'd even say "the job" is the most important part. There are Army jobs that are pretty good, and there are Air Force jobs that are pretty bad.
- iostream24 5y ago
  Yes, MOS is key…
- causasui 5y ago
  There's a saying in the Navy I was told from day 1 at the recruiter's office: Choose your rate, choose your fate. Your choice can be the difference between getting out after 4-6 years and easily making six figures, or struggling to find employment at $35k. Not to mention your lifestyle while in and other side effects of your service like PTSD.
  - germinalphrase 5y ago
    Are there known “good” paths that lead to the former result?
    - causasui 5y ago
      For sure, speaking for the Navy (though I'm sure the same applies for the other services as well). Cryptologic/electronic/nuclear fields are all known to be cash cows after getting out. Granted, you need to score well on your ASVAB, especially for nuclear fields. But the ASVAB can be studied for and is probably the easiest of all the standardized tests someone that age may face in my experience.
      - germinalphrase 5y ago
        Thank you. Can anyone comment with regard to the Air Force? Not asking for myself. I am a high school English teacher, and I am currently helping a young man with his application to the academy. He is committed to the Air Force either way, but I try to pass along any information that I come across (with the caveat, of course, that I don’t know what I’m talking about).

scruple 5y ago

I spent 4 years in the USAF and echo the same sentiment. Military service isn't for everyone but I had a positive experience and my decision to join remains one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.

giantg2 5y ago

"My favorite part of the article is dispelling the myth that in the military senior people bark orders, and don't ask for feedback, and subordinates dutifully carry out those orders. None of those is true. There is a time to "shut up and color" but that is by far the exception." Based on my limited knowledge, I think it's highly dependent on the leaders in the unit. I have a friend who always dreamed of being an naval aviator, went to the academy, and served for several years as a pilot. They are leaving due to the political BS of the organization and poor leadership by those in command. My relatives' experience back up similar experiences - up to and including the extreme example that an XO overrode a maintenance officer in order to bark orders that work needed to be done in a way that was contrary to documented procedures and resulted in loss of life (in training no less). Basically 9/10 leaders range from decent to excellent. That other 1 is the one that can make your life hell or get you killed with little to nothing you can do about it.

baud147258 5y ago
> an XO overrode a maintenance officer in order to bark orders that work needed to be done in a way that was contrary to documented procedures and resulted in loss of life (in training no less) did the XO suffer any consequences from this?
- giantg2 5y ago
  It seemed like a sore point so I didn't ask questions about it (form things I pieced together it sounded like they were injuried and their copilot, maybe others, died; in sounded like the XO probably didn't have any serious consequence or I think they would have mentioned it). Generally, I would only ask questions about the good stories they shared but let them just share what they wanted when they were not happy stories.
tekknik 5y ago
> They are leaving due to the political BS of the organization and poor leadership by those in command. I have a brother-in-law (a chief) leaving 3 years prior to retirement for the same reason. Except it’s exactly the opposite. They’re not allowed to yell anymore, have a lot of limitations on punishment, and have to accept things like enlisted being late to work. They’re leaving because they think the military is on a downtrend and can’t control the high schoolers under their command.

YATA1 5y ago

>especially in the upper classes where people do not need to serve This is a often repeated myth. The upper class serves more per capita than the lower class.

chrisseaton 5y ago
The man who did my job back in the 80s was a literal billionaire, putting on the same uniform as me for the same pay.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  Are you claiming that billionaires serve at the same rate as others? Or that there are many billionaires in the military?
  - chiph 5y ago
    They're even more rare in the military than in the general population. Firstly for the obvious reason - they don't need any of the benefits so they don't join. Secondly - someone that becomes that wealthy while serving (via a trust-fund, large inheritance, or winning the lottery) would no longer be a good fit for the military. They usually get offered an Honorable Discharge. However, if they still desire to serve the remainder of their term, they can place the money into a blind trust.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      > someone that becomes that wealthy while serving (via a trust-fund, large inheritance, or winning the lottery) would no longer be a good fit for the military. They usually get offered an Honorable Discharge. That's shocking. Where is this rule? Have you seen it happen? I didn't know wealth defined fitness for service.
      - analognoise 5y ago
        Of course wealth defines fitness for service (in America, anyway). Isn't "money for college and healthcare" kinda obvious about it? Like there's almost a wink and a nudge at the end of it. It's super blatant that having very few economic options and no healthcare chooses fitness for service for you.

tempnow987 5y ago

One issue with reserves, especially army. Through the iraq/afghanistan deployments BOG time was way up (ie, your service commit is not just that weekend a month). BOG = Boots on ground time. In afghanistan Army deployments (both active and reserve) were far higher than other service branches. My quick understanding is that normally they would like to target 1/4 BOG/Dwell time. So if you are thinking of reserves, particularly army, be asking, could I be gone 12 months out of 48, with potential for more?

blobbers 5y ago
Is there data on how much real service one might be doing? As in incoming mortars, bullets flying over your head, in a place with IEDs or mines etc. I feel like if I wanted to be put in that specific situation, I'd want a whole lot more training than a reservist.
- fredophile 5y ago
  I can't speak for other people's experiences but I did deploy to Afghanistan as a combat arms reservist in the Canadian army. Typically, you're expected to be overseas for 6 months but anything from 5-8 isn't that uncommon. Other roles had other expected deployment lengths. To prep for a 6 month tour involved full time training for about 8 months. This is the same training time the regular forces got and was done with them. I think you may also underestimate the amount of training reservists do. To get fully qualified in my trade took over 3 months of full time training split up over a couple years. During my time in the reserves you'd do 1-2 evenings a week from September to May/June. You'd also have 1 weekend a month training for most of those months and 1 week long training exercise per year. During the summer, people who had the time could do full time work taking or teaching on courses.
- UncleEntity 5y ago
  > Is there data on how much real service one might be doing? Not really ‘data’ but the last time I was in a combat zone there were mortars/rockets flying in on a daily basis, usually around chow time. Also ‘safe’ jobs weren’t a guarantee. We were going out on a convoy mission and the reservists unit escorting us was short handed so just found a warm body to ride in the gun truck in the form of an office girl in the Air Force who had been in country three weeks and probably hadn’t touched a weapon since basic training. Mission takes priority and if you need a body you find a body. Also my last ‘real’ deployment was in a reserve unit and I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone. Zero discipline and we were a transportation unit so mobile enough to get into all sorts of trouble. We got out of there before things got really bad (our mission was over so they just sent us home) so there’s that.

routeerror40 5y ago

I signed up for 4 years for the US Army in order to finish college. Ended up doing 5 years for being stop lossed due to a deployment that got extended. When I joined I had 72 hours college under my belt, went in as a PFC. The reality of service is it is both the good as portrayed here and the shit experiences I know we have all had in the service. Would I change anything, no. Was it all cake, hell no. But I wouldn't change anything. The single best thing about service, that I think most people actually need in life, is the forced mega dose of reality, and how the military deals with it, especially when as a person you've refused to, and made it the militaries problem. Everything about my time in has helped me in my civilian life, except how to explain to people that they are denying reality.

vlod 5y ago
>is the forced mega dose of reality >except how to explain to people that they are denying reality. It would be great if you could expand on this.
- routeerror40 5y ago
  The Military forces you to strip yourself of your preconceptions. To see things as they are. No lying to yourself, no lying to others, that is a great way to get called out, its expected and encouraged, but you better be right. The concept of this if foreign to civilians. Most civilians would be down right offended at the idea if questioning someone's beliefs, its expected in the military. INTJ's that I have met seem to do this naturally as Civilians but they are the exception. Academic debate, papers, also does this but the acts are again frowned on outside of that environment. After years of this Military members have a core belief system that has been striped and rebuilt, with all the fluffy civy nonsense discarded. All this happens during those in-between times in the Military, the times we spent waiting for the next event, training, location to be at, bullshitting to each other. Someone inevitably say's something so naïve or untrue, they get called out on it. This happens enough and you start examining yourself. You want to fit in, belong, your subconscious starts to reorient its self and realign your thinking.
wolverine876 5y ago

gadders 5y ago

>> My favorite part of the article is dispelling the myth that in the military senior people bark orders I heard Petraeus (I think) on a podcast and he said the biggest misconception by civilians about the military is you can just order people to do things, and the biggest misconception by the military about the private sector is you can just sack people.

snerbles 5y ago

> None of that is true. Really depends on your AFSC (job code), unit and era. I was in one of the more infamous career fields (Security Forces), and the running joke was that we were "real military" compared to the rest of the "Corporate Air Force". A lot of maintainers I knew had similar sentiments towards other office-based career fields. And that was only at a stateside base - the dynamic got really weird when we deployed on in-lieu-of taskings to relieve understaffed Army units in Iraq. Their Military Police had a similar level of intensity as us, but most of their rank-and-file in the role were augmentees pulled from other career fields without a law enforcement background.

jcurbo 5y ago

High five. 6 yrs in the USAF here.

VictorPath 5y ago

wolverine876 5y ago

> a lot of Americans are disconnected from members of the military, especially in the upper classes where people do not need to serve, or in fields (like tech) where people can often find less intrusive ways to pay for college. I think that's a serious problem. Americans have little idea how the US military works and tend to form extreme opinions, either glorifying it or villifying it - the former especially in the last 20 years or so but neither is at all healthy. When people understood the military - when we had a draft and a wide spectrum was personally familiar with it - we had popular entertainment like Gomer Pyle and MASH, and expressions like FUBAR and SNAFU. The military was seen as an enormous, absurd, powerful bureaucracy; people understood its limits and capabilities, and could make decisions about using it. Warfare was not glorified so much, but seen as the scourge it is, the last option, because many actually had experience of it. They also had skin in the game during a war, risking being drafted and knowing people who were. Now we fight the 20 year GWOT, send people on one tour after another, and many outside don't even realize there's a war on or wonder how it's going - but they do say 'thank you for your service' endlessly (a young relative in ROTC (US undergrad trainee program) was thanked several times wearing their uniform around town!). Part of the problem is the narrow population from which the military recruits. In the US Army, 79% of recruits come from families which already have service members. [0] Consider that only a few percent of the population is in the military. Also, I read that the military does not recruit in - or puts very little effort into - major cities (though I can't find the cite now, and it was a few years ago). [EDIT: cite found: 1] [0] https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2022/03/about-face-army-expects-shrink-next-year/363878/ https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2022/03/about-face-army-ex... [1] From 2019: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/us/army-recruiting-tech-industry-seattle.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/us/army-recruiting-tech-i...

Terr_ 5y ago
The flip-side is that with mandatory manpower for military adventurism, politicians and the military leaders who advise them have fewer reasons to temper their aspirations. > Part of the problem is the narrow population from which the military recruits. I wonder if this relates to how military service (not civilian-contractor roles) appear to have a bit of an, er, "sign your soul over and hope for the best" mechanic. I dimly recall some event where some state was offering a "Try it for a year" promotion for their National Guard service, and the guy on it ended up being stop-lossed over to Afghanistan or Iraq.

onion2k 5y ago

Posts like this are really helpful, a lot of Americans are disconnected from members of the military, especially in the upper classes where people do not need to serve, or in fields (like tech) where people can often find less intrusive ways to pay for college. 8% of the US population are veterans. 34% of the US population have a bachelors degree. That suggests to me that quite a low proportion of people use the military as a route to education.

exdsq 5y ago

> especially in the upper classes where people do not need to serve Weird! In the UK the army is very cross-class

EdwardDiego 5y ago

> a lot of Americans are disconnected from members of the military, especially in the upper classes where people do not need to serve Why do Americans need to be connected with the military though? What do you think the benefits of being more connected would be? Many of us are disconnected from members of the constabulary, from members of the ambulance services, from members of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing, Pipefitting and Sprinkler Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada. It's just how disparate careers go.

jjj123 5y ago
From a leftist perspective, it’s beneficial to have something like a draft because it forces all classes to confront the reality of our wars. Instead of how it is now when it’s mostly the lower class that goes to war. The last draft we had was Vietnam, which was a PR disaster for the US military because middle class america saw (and experienced) the war for what it was: destructive and unnecessary. I guess the difference is the sprinkler fitting industry doesn't result in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths the way a war does, so I don’t really care how the general public perceives it.