Have you ever seen a 50 year old Captain trying to lead 18 year old soldiers? I have (Bundeswehr and U.S National Guard). It is not a pretty sight. War is a young man’s game. And no, there are not, and should not, be enough slots for uniform folks to sit while others bear the real burden.
The 20 year retirement is a small price to pay to avoid an attenuated, lard assed military that is less warrior than social program. And yes, there are specialties where more mature Americans can serve. But those are not line dog roles and can and should be filled with fireable civilians.
WRT “20/30/40 years of work”, how are you counting “a year”? In the civilian world, it is ~2000 hours. A deployment year is, +/- ~6570 hours, not counting wear and tear, stress on the body etc and oh yeah, the chance at getting seriously hurt.
What we will see is a repeat of what we saw last time this was attempted with the Redux program in 1986-96. Mid grade retention will crash, and we will scramble to reverse the effects. Unlike Walmart, the military cannot run job ads for mid and senior grade leadership. Every single leader is hand made from scratch.
Agree we need to shrink the Fed gov’t and its debt. Suggest we start by zeroing out all UN-earned benefits, then we can look at the altering the terms of the earned benefit contract. With the defense of the nation, oh yeah, gov’t job #1, comprising less than 25% of the Federal budget, I bet we can solve the problem well before re-negotiating the terms of the contract the American people signed up to with their Soldiers.
Have you ever seen a 30 year old female captain trying to keep up with her 23 year old male lieutenants? This is just another step along the lines of ‘military as a social program’. The tip-off was the increase in child care facilities. REAL IMPORTANT, especially for the uniformed mother of four kids with four different fathers.
Thanks for your informative and thoughtful posting, redlegplanner!
One question, though: What kind of person is still only a Captain at age 50? Wouldn't that, all by itself, be a warning sign? And aren't many 50-year-olds in the military still in excellent shape?
Regards,
War has changed a lot; what was a young man’s game fifty years ago has morphed technologically into something different altogether. While select units might require youth & stamina, more and more of wars are waged from behind computer consoles.
I think these things are being re-examined (in both the public & private sector) as people live longer, and to pay a retiree for thirty years after they’ve worked twenty isn’t economically feasible. As with so many programs, everybody wants the best benefits but nobody wants to foot the bill.
I say we start with your tagline. Fix that, and a lot of other things will get fixed reasonably quickly.
You are absolutely correct, except to say there are some things you just don’t know until you’ve done them for a decade or two. The younger guys ALWAYS need NCOs and officers with more than one hitch. But once you get in your 40s and start physically slowing down, it is time to let the next cadre take over. In doing it this way, I believe the US Armed Forces has the best NCOs in the world, and that’s why our military is so good. But in the end, it’s all about retention. Right now, they think they have enough people willing to make a commitment by re-enlisting/staying on as a regular—even without the retirement benefit.
That made a lot of mistakes over the years, trial and error, and finally came up with the current system. I retired under the previous system. Had I not been able to, I wouldn’t have stayed in as long. Under what they’re proposing, I would do 4 and out.
So, when the shit hits the fan, and they really need experienced NCOs and officers, they very well will not have any, or have too few.
If we’re lucky and not get totally defeated early, the benefits and enticements will return.
It’s always been that way up until WWII. After WWII, the Cold War was “fought” for 45 years, immediately replaced by the “Global War on Terrorism”.
It would be typical for this country to drop down to a tiny cadre of regulars and have very few benefits until the next fan hit.
I’m not saying the younger guys should get screwed, I’m just saying if they hadn’t offered me what they did I would not have been a career man. So I think the younger guys are more than welcome to bail. I understand that in my day, they needed me, offered me a contract I liked, and we both fulfilled it.