I just separated from the Army and I spent 11 years on both active duty and reserve status. I’ve been deployed to Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. I think a problem stems from the long continuous deployments. Some soldiers like it, but a majority of the senior career soldiera despiae it as they have families and lives to attain to. Another large problem are the DoD contractors that make $200,000 a year doing jobs that soldiers used to fill or could fill. Intermingling civilians into the Army has caused a problem with moral that no one speaks of because of the high business costs that these large influential corporations have. My last tour was a mox of 5-6 civilians and 6 soldiers in my shop. When soldiers are disciplined and made to sjave and adher to basic rules they wonder why they are doing their job when they can get out and be a civilian and make loads of cash. The.other issue is that less than 1% of the population serves and when a service member returns home he cannot relate to the rest of society.
The reason you have contractors is because the active force was gutted under Gramm-Rudman. The Army used to be over 1 million men and the AF was up to 850,000. Now both are a shell and have to do the same mission.
Entire bases are being run by civvies.