Page 1 2
Go | New | Find | Notify | Tools | Reply | |
| Member |
It's been well documented over the last 5-years that recruiting goals have been very challenging for the military services, this generally focuses on the enlisted ranks. Various reasons have been pointed-out from more options in the civilian sector, unable to meet physical-fitness requirements, failing medicals or, seeing leadership embracing DEI & political policies. Now, it seems we're seeing similar within the officers, the field-grade cohort, this group who've made the military a career, they're closing in on the twenty-year mark and they're turning-down the opportunity to command. While this article pertains to the Army, military-wide is loosing plenty of talent and they seem unable to comprehend it. Like the various cringe inducing recruiting commercials of late, senior-leadership, like those in the civilian-world, remain in their towers unable and likely unwilling to connect with the wider-world, they continue to double-down on failed polities, wishing things were so instead of adjusting, addressing and fixing the issues. More than Half of Senior Army Officers Are Turning Down Command Consideration This message has been edited. Last edited by: corsair, | ||
|
Member |
They are fed up with the woke bullshit they would have to put up with and, unfortunately, support. Hopefully, Trump's administration will correct this and turn it around. _________________________________________________________________________ “A man’s treatment of a dog is no indication of the man’s nature, but his treatment of a cat is. It is the crucial test. None but the humane treat a cat well.” -- Mark Twain, 1902 | |||
|
Political Cynic |
as much as it would be the ultimate career path, look at what they likely have to work with would you want to take responsibility for a bunch of trannies in camo sashaying across the battlefield what do they expect? The enemy to die laughing? | |||
|
| Member |
Most of those LTC rank level soldiers started in the early years of the GWOT or even prior, and many having “seen the elephant” know what it takes to win fights, and know the current direction of the DOD is not going to take them there. Realistic to bail at retirement eligibility and not get sucked into the current politics that if you run counter to it, can destroy a career, reputation, or black ball you from lucrative civilian opportunities. Also I speak for myself. I was very likely ( near 100% chance in my career field) to be promoted to LTC the year I retired. However, coming off nearly back to back deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan I knew that if I stayed for that promotion and the mandatory minimum 3 years time in grade to retire at the LTC rank ( I was already well over 20 years service due to 7 years prior enlisted service before becoming an officer) that would buy me another deployment, and I didn’t want to put my wife through that,so retired a major. Many troops at the field grade officer level ( major through Colonel) have been on multiple deployments and are getting pretty burned out - especially those that actually care about their troops and the mission. The ones that remain sadly are those desk jockeys more concerned about power point bar graphs and pie charts. These are the same bozos ( those of us on the ground knew better) that insisted with every briefing the Afghans were making progress and could hold their own against the taliban. We all know how that worked out | |||
|
| Get my pies outta the oven!  |
It's the Woke but also there is a really pervasive zero-tolerance attitude in our military now and they don't want to walk on eggshells and jeopardize their careers. | |||
|
| Shit don't mean shit |
I'm not sure if it's still the case, but requiring officers to pack up and move every ~4 years or so is a recipe for disaster. My FIL retired as a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force, probably 20 years ago. The reason he retired...his wife and kids were tired of moving every 4 years. New friends will often ask my wife where she grew up. Her answer is California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, and a few more. | |||
|
| His diet consists of black coffee, and sarcasm.  |
Of what? | |||
|
| Member |
This is just a possible 'way out there' example: a battalion commander mis-speaks someone's pronouns and gets fired. _________________________________________________________________________ “A man’s treatment of a dog is no indication of the man’s nature, but his treatment of a cat is. It is the crucial test. None but the humane treat a cat well.” -- Mark Twain, 1902 | |||
|
| Member |
With Dad in his Army career, it was usually 2. 4 would have been a big improvement. Well, maybe. At 2 years, you didn’t have that much time to get too close to anyone. Learn to play with who’s near you. He did take the LTC route in the late 70s, but it was solely for the improved retirement. -- I always prefer reality when I can figure out what it is. JALLEN 10/18/18 https://sigforum.com/eve/forum...610094844#7610094844 | |||
|
| Member |
I don't blame them. I think our military is foolish to squander the defense budget on childish toys like helicopters, aircraft carriers and tanks. They learn nothing from our enemies. For a fraction of the money they could simply send front men into hostile countries and buy up their television and radio stations, newspapers, entertainment companies and other information sources. We could run their stock market, tell them which politicians to support, run their elections, omit any criticism of US policy, Tell them the US is their greatest ally and promote a host of bad ideas to unravel their social fabric. We could tell them which vaccines to inject into their bodies, all supplied by us. We would have the power of social engineering. With that influence we could mold their perceptions and tell the men to be women, the women to be men and the children to choose their gender. Within a short time the majority would stop having children. We could tell them their ancestors were mean and hateful and shame them into accepting millions of immigrants from the jungles of Africa and India and if any of them complain we could label them extremists and racists and trigger their guilt. Then we could offer them redemption from their guilt by suggesting they intermarry with the immigrants. Eventually the people of that country would lose their national and ethnic pride and identity and they would be willing to negotiate with us rather than resist in the name of their ancestors. | |||
|
| I Am The Walrus |
Something along those lines. The soldiers have weaponized systems against leadership. Get enough people to lie and it becomes the truth. Why should any officer take command when their peer is being paid the same? More work, more responsibility and exponentially more stress for the same pay. 16 years in service and I have never seen so many soldiers with the entitlement mentality yet have accomplished so little inside and outside of the Army. _____________ | |||
|
| Just because you can, doesn't mean you should |
People that truly have great leadership skills can go into the corporate world and do much better financially. If you do something to get crossed up with leadership that's not outright criminal, you can easily go elsewhere. You know you're not saving the world. You're not sending others off to potentially die for no good reason. In the military, you can't easily jump ship to another branch, you are unlikely to actually ever do what you are trained for, and the politics are getting really stupid. ___________________________ Avoid buying ChiCom/CCP products whenever possible. | |||
|
| Member |
Woke bullshit? | |||
|
| Member |
Not entirely but, its a contributing factor. Everyone understands that when rising to senior officer levels, the jobs/positions become much more political: who you know, who you network with, where you've been, what you say and how, etc... At the same time when you have command, the requirements for compliance, the ability to accomplish tasking, having to account for every single person's actions, can lead up to a pile of stress that makes the job near impossible to manage, particularly when the support that you thought would be there, doesn't actually exist and there's an existing precedence of zero tolerance for any error or missteps. Compounding the frustrations is seeing senior flag officers violate similar and related issues and maintain their jobs...basically its easier to be a 2 and 3-star, than it is to be a colonel or, lt col. | |||
|
| Lawyers, Guns and Money  |
I have previously shared here (in the Covid thread) my frustration with the military command regarding my son-in-law. For 3 years they tried to throw him out of the military for refusing the mRNA non-vaccine injection. When he finally out lasted their attempts to have him booted he realized that his career was shot because he was blacklisted, not allowed to travel and not promoted. He finally got out this year, voluntarily, and they offered him his old job back in a civilian capacity. He was 15 years into his 20. It's the "woke" command that has ruined the military. "Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." -- Justice Janice Rogers Brown "The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth." -rduckwor | |||
|
Member |
In battle you may find a need for cannon fodder.  “There is love in me the likes of which you’ve never seen. There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape." —Mary Shelley, Frankenstein | |||
|
| The Main Thing Is Not To Get Excited  |
That's just silly. Our .gov doesn't know anything about stock markets. _______________________ | |||
|
| Member |
Almost reminds me of the Pretty Mice experiment. | |||
|
| Member |
John B Calhoun’s mice utopia experiments? Silent | |||
|
Member |
Just an observation, but even from SIGforum members I’ve noticed a pattern - it’s almost exclusively daughters/grandaughters/nieces joint the armed services, I can’t recall seeing too many members posting about males joining. Then there was one who posted about his US citizen son joining a foreign military, but that isn’t quite the same. | |||
|
| Powered by Social Strata | Page 1 2 |
 | Please Wait. Your request is being processed... |
|
© SIGforum 2024