First term (contract enlistments) retention levels are down below 30%...
My nephew who took the Marine Corp and everything it challenged him with and totally screwed that career up...He made corporal, not a slouch achievement, and is coming back from his last deployment to Afghanistan as we speak...
Ironically his new wife, just completed basic, and is trained as a combat medic in the Army...She is in the reserves and just told me her unit was just activated, and she is do to deploy for somewhere between Kuwait and Afghanistan soon...
Which leads me to believe, that I thought we were done over in that particular area...Something must have happened??? /SARC
You know, political lies do not fare very well with the guys and gals filling those boots on the ground you don’t want to insert into a situation that needs to support the gains you think you are achieving thru air power...
And the Zoomies are not all that excited about not having backup available for timely extraction if Jeb Clampett manages to get a lucky shot off on their ride...
So all in all, our administrations handling of international crisis has left an even bigger hole in world relations than actually doing something about it...
I’ll coin the phrase “Doofus Diplomacy”...I got dibs on that one!!! ;-)
With them gutting up to 20K lower ranks, and putting in fast track citizenship for ILLEGALS, we won’t have a real Military.
I’m a Ret. SCPO’s wife. My dad fought under MacArthur for 6 yrs, my BIL fought under Merrill, I have cousins who went to Nam, cousins in this current war. Hubby’s bros both served 1 WW2 aboard the New Lady Lex. Middle bro was Korea. Hubby was on the Midway when the pulled the Amb. out of Nam, off the coast of Cuba during the Missile crisis.
We sure don’t need them for meals on wheels, or trying to stem Ebola and the other deadly viral out breaks in countries that practice NO Sanitation.
The military does not need a high retention level - only in critical skills which they cover with bonuses.
Retention levels, promotion and time in service pay raises work together to field a balanced force.
If all a grunt can do is be a good infantry private then it’s not in the military’s best interest to retain him and be an Infantry Private over 20 years time in service.
You could sign up two privates for what you would be paying him.
That all works with the up or out and time in service for grade requirements.