Birth Control Policies at Boot Camp Affect Military Readiness

Discussion in 'Warfare / Military' started by Lil Mike, May 15, 2019.

  1. vman12

    vman12 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Go tell it to Little Sisters of the Poor.

    And no, the general article isn't real specific, that's what makes it the general article. All they have to show is "prejudice of good order and discipline".

    Having double the pregnancy rate is a good argument for that. Not being able to deploy is a good argument for that.

    Sure.

    https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121798362

    http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/12/21/iraq.us.soldiers.pregnancy/index.html

    I've known people who got NJP for sunburns. Surely they can give you one for getting pregnant/making someone pregnant.

    And, of course, if you're single and can't care for the child and perform your military duties under a family care plan, you're discharged.

    https://www.thebalancecareers.com/military-pregnancy-discharge-3356965

    Single parents and military spouses with children can be discharged if they fail to implement and maintain a family care plan, which is one of the terms of remaining in the military after having a baby. Basically, the pregnant servicewoman has to demonstrate that once she has the baby she will be able to fulfill her obligation to the military and provide care for her child.
     
  2. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Almost entirely nonsensical, therefore flushed.

    And I love your attempt to include the final paragraph. That is for failure to comply with a regulation. And it applies not only to any military parent (male and female), it applies to any dependent of such a military member. One guy I served with decades ago was such an individual, when his parents were killed and he became the "parent" of his 13 year old sister. He had to comply fully with all rules and regulations, as if it was his own child.

    You are seriously grasping at straws here, and have yet to actually come up with anything.
     
  3. vman12

    vman12 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Oh I'm sorry the facts I posted didn't make it through your reality filter.

    Yeah, anything other than actual sources and suggesting that pregnancy is prejudicial to good order when they can't deploy.

    Other than that, I'll let you get back to pretending the military can't tell you what to do.

    If they can punish you for getting a tattoo, they can do it for getting pregnant.

    I'll let you get back to editing my posts of the stuff you don't want to look at.
     
    Last edited: May 17, 2019
  4. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Let me know when I can stop rolling in laughter.

    Once again I find myself in a rather curious position. To be honest, I actually agree with many of the things posted here.

    However, my own personal beliefs do not alter the fact that such is prohibited, and can not be done. You see, I have this strange ability to be able to detach my own opinions, and only react on the reality of a situation.

    No, getting pregnant is not "prejudicial to the good order" of the military. That is a very specific legal definition, as defined under 10 US Code Chapter 47. And Article 134 is specifically 10 US Code Chapter 47 Paragraph 934. And in essence all the UCMJ really does is say "This is a shortcut for military purposes to the rest of the US Code. Refer to other sections for further definitions and clarifications".

    So no, there is a reason why I specifically asked where in the US Code several posts ago asking where getting pregnant was not allowed. What, did you think I was just saying that for no reason?

    No, they can not punish you for "getting a tattoo". What they can punish you for is in violating a rule or regulation for your new tattoo. Like getting it on your face, or having "hate speech" or gang symbolism in said tattoo. But they can also do it for getting the same thing as a patch on your jacket. Because such is part of US Code, and has been battled out many times over the decades.

    So unless you can find something in the US Code that gives the military the power to give somebody an order to not get pregnant, your entire claim basically falls apart. You can try to rehash it in any way you like, it really does not matter.

    And yea, I have been a "Barracks Lawyer" for over 35 years now. I even recently gave a 15 minute class on Article 114, and why it still applies even today.

    To me, when talking about the law (especially military law), what a person thinks or believed does not matter at all. It is what is that matters. Does your claim follow military law, yes or no. And you have yet to prove anything, therefore the answer is no. No, the military does not have that authority, they can not make such a regulation or order, and it can not be enforced.

    Otherwise you would have a US law stating that a parent that abuses or kills their child can no longer have children. If not even that could ever be passed or enforced, the chance of this is basically none.
     
  5. vman12

    vman12 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You can do whatever you'd like, I don't care.

    Sure you do.

    Yes it is, since "good order" requires you to be deployable and/or fit for service.

    So they can punish you for getting a tattoo. Thanks for using a lot of words to say they can punish you for getting a tattoo.

    I'm sure the Provost Marshall is very proud of you.

    They can't?

    Well, Mr. "Barracks Lawyer", miss your next deployment and let me know what happens.

    Alternatively, take an unplanned vacation for a few weeks, then come back.
     
    Last edited: May 17, 2019
  6. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Not likely. I have been away for well over 2 years in the past, and if given another chance will go again.

    And no, not going AWOL or UA either. But yea, since instead of trying to respond with some kind of facts bolstering your claim, you simply throw up some attempted insults. So I guess this is over since after repeatedly asking for such you have never provided anything.

    Goodbye.
     
  7. vman12

    vman12 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Why not? Surely they can't tell you what you can do with your own body.

    Toodles.
     
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  8. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    Obviously I can't speak to your Marine experience, however I didn't see that sort of tolerance applied in the Army. That's not to say it didn't happen, but I've known plenty of guys who were either deployed with newborns or with their wives expecting.
     
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  9. vman12

    vman12 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    We got deployed all the time in the Marines, kids or not.
     
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  10. PrincipleInvestment

    PrincipleInvestment Well-Known Member

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    Liberals were being washed out of boot camp by torrents of their own tears back in the day. Those who couldn't survive the oppressive indignity of forfeiting their individuality to the barbers clippers were my favs. ::): Cry all the way to the gates half scalped. :roflol:
     
    Last edited: May 17, 2019
  11. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Depends on when, of course. When I rotated, it was during inprocessing, so I was not already part of an established team. And the deployment schedules were known well in advance.

    I know of at least 3 kids born during my last deployment in my Battalion. In each case the father went home for the delivery during their R&R, then returned. But since it was a year long deployment, this also was not much of an issue.

    I am sure if I had already been in 1/2 for a year before the deployment I would not have been given a transfer. Of course, then I also would have known the rotation schedule, and we would have planned around that.

    General rule of thumb was 6 months gone, 18 months home. Rinse and repeat. You could almost set a watch to it, give or take a month or so for other reasons, and not counting any conflicts that might arise that would throw that schedule off.

    More than a few I know back then got their wives pregnant right before we deployed. Being 6 months, they would then be home in plenty of time for the baby to be born.
     
  12. Crownline

    Crownline Banned at Members Request

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    I wonder if the high birth rate in the army corresponds with the level of lesbians. Fewer lesbians, higher pregnancies? Navy and marines have more dykes than army and air force.
     
  13. vman12

    vman12 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I caught a glimpse of 4th Battalion while on mess duty in boot camp.

    To this day, I still shiver thinking about it.
     
  14. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    OK I'm not getting what you're saying now. R&R allotted during a year long deployment has nothing to do with what the parental status of a deployed soldier is. If your tour is long enough, you get it regardless.
     
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  15. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    No, but you can schedule your R&R time for the expected delivery date. Today doctors do not have a problem inducing labor so long as the baby is at or near their due date.

    I myself had kind of a crappy R&R, because I took mine just a month after arriving. Before I even left my wife was diagnosed with cancer, and the surgery was arranged for a month after I left. So I got on a flight, landed back in Texas, and the next day she was in surgery. Then after 2 weeks of recovery she could take care of herself again and I was flying back. But the next 11 months without a break really sucked.

    That was for a 1 year deployment, which in ADA is generally 1 year, with 2-3 years return time before going back. That is really the only major Army groups that still do the 1 year deployments, because of the amount of time it takes to get trained up locally for the mission and get certified. The Advance Party shows up a month early to start the process, and the main body spends a month training with the outgoing unit before they can take over the mission before the old unit can leave.

    But this is still easy to work around if you want a family. In our entire Battalion we only had a couple females become non-deployable due to pregnancy. Although it was like a "baby factory" once we returned, as within the next year it almost felt like 20% of the females got pregnant once we got home.

    Most of the females I worked with were no less professional than most of the men were. They knew what was expected of them, and did it without issue. Most like us wanted to deploy with their teams, and were not going to let something so easily prevented stop them from doing it.

    Yes, you will always have that handful that use it as an easy way out of deploying. But most of them also take advantage of the "easy out" of being a single mother to get out of the military rather than staying in. And in a unit of 400+, you will always have 1 or 2 like that, it is simple statistics. The same way you will have some dudes pull something similar.

    I was offered to stay back after my wife's surgery, and I refused. So long as she was OK, I was not going to leave my team short a man. It was bad enough pulling 24 hour shifts day on and day off for a year. If they had been down a man (which we were when the others took their R&R), it became 48 hours on and 24 hours off.
     
  16. Nightmare515

    Nightmare515 Ragin' Cajun Staff Member Past Donor

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    No.

    As good as that would look on paper it would have an even more negative effect on readiness in the form of lack of enlistment. The Army is already struggling with both recruitment and retention, we need to do more to address that not do more to harm it.

    The Army has always been the branch lagging behind all others in terms of getting "with the times". I mean always....it's always the Army that is last to do almost everything it seems. The Army consistently lags behind other branches in terms of quality of life for it's Soldiers, it lags behind in making small decisions such as allowing Soldiers to roll their sleeves up, it lags behind in realizing that deploying people to war for 18 months at a time is a bad idea, etc, etc. Even today the Army still has the longest tours overseas even after literally cutting their tour lengths in half of what they were during the onset of these terrorism wars.

    Even the highly praised and "tough as nails" Marine Corps realized that 18 month deployments were stupid and didn't do that, and they are supposed to be the proverbial "bad asses" of our Armed Forces.

    Lets face reality and look at the world as it IS, not as we wish it was, a category in which the Army is once again lagging behind it's fellow branches of service.

    Times have changed, period. Our society and our pool of recruitment options are not the same as they were decades ago. The overall pool from which we can even recruit people is shrinking to alarming numbers due to a lack of basic health and a willingness to join. Most people are literally unqualified to even sign up if they wanted to and it's only getting worse. What the Army needs to do is accept reality and adjust it's organization to fit with modern times, for better or for worse.

    In blunt layman's terms, the Army needs to improve it's quality of life and do more to make a career in the Army suck less. It needs to figure out how to make a life in the Army more in line with the life of a normal job in order to attract more people to it. Patriotism, free college and healthcare ain't cutting it anymore, the recruitment and retention numbers tell the tale.

    Forcing female Soldiers to be put on birth control (with the negative effects birth control may have on some women) in order for them to join the Army would have disastrous results. Less would join first of all and then you open up the can of worms with dealing with female Soldiers who broke regulation and got pregnant. What do you do with them? Article 15? Discharge? Forced abortion? (Yeah right). That's one less body you have which defeats the purpose. At least with a pregnant Soldier she will have the baby eventually and be back on deployment status at some point.

    This is just the cost of doing business and allowing female Soldiers into the Army. Restricting their ability to do so will simply drive many away and open up a can of worms that will be way more trouble than it's worth.

    And at this point, whether the Army wants to admit it or not, we can't afford to drive anybody else away, we need bodies and we have to learn how to bend a little bit to get them whether we want to swallow that nasty pill or not.

    This ain't the society of our parents anymore, our young people are not willing to sacrifice as much for this country as past generations were...You tell women that they can't have children for their first term of enlistment and they won't "understand" and agree due to wanting to help strengthen our war machine.

    They will tell you and your Army to go **** yourself...And in the year 2019 when we are struggling to even get young people to walk into the recruiters office we can't exactly afford to do something like this.
     
  17. Nightmare515

    Nightmare515 Ragin' Cajun Staff Member Past Donor

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    The Army can absolutely tell you what to do. The underlying problem is that we don't draft people, this is an all volunteer Army.

    Voluntary Army means being able to choose whether or not you want to serve.

    Implement policies that people don't like and less people will sign up.

    In the day and age where we literally can't get enough people to sign up to meet our numbers nor can we retain enough trained Soldiers after their contracts expire even with massive amounts of bonus money......we sort of don't want to make things worse by shooting ourselves in the foot by implementing policies that will help strengthen the force yet simultaneously weakening the force even more by driving people away from it.

    The Army is currently actively trying to figure out ways to make "The Army" suck less for people in order to attract more people to it. Less restrictive leave policies, more paternity leave, more stabilization, etc. Overall trying to make having a "life" and a "family" in the Army more accessible while simultaneously trying to maintain the strength of our war machine. It's a very hard balancing act that they still can't figure out.

    The Army has a very big problem with "Life in the Army" vs "Life you actually want to live". No need to go backwards in that regard when even when they are desperately trying to go "forwards" they are still failing to meet recruitment and retention numbers...

    Like it or not, the military lifestyle isn't as popular today as it was in generations past. They gotta figure out how to fix that and if it means gritting your teeth and "giving in" to some things then so be it.

    Having a smaller more qualified force isn't always a good plan, Obama's stupid downsizing policy is proof of that. We simply have way too much **** to do as a military to do it with a "smaller stronger force". We need bodies, and women = bodies even with all of the "issues" they bring with them. A smaller more highly trained war machine only works if America agreed to stop going to war with and/or defending planet Earth. Until that day we need enough bodies to fill all the bases in those 70 countries we keep running around in.
     
  18. vman12

    vman12 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yeah and I think you answered the solution in your final paragraph.

    We're spread too thin, and honestly we need to stop being the world's cops. Massacre somewhere? Go ask Europe to help.

    The dumbing down of the military will only lead to one thing, and that's a lot of dead Americans.
     
  19. Nightmare515

    Nightmare515 Ragin' Cajun Staff Member Past Donor

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    Yup, but the Pentagon doesn't see it that way. There's a running gag at work that the Pentagon will never change, whether we have a standing military of 2 million or 20,000 the Pentagon would still have us running around in the same number of foreign countries doing the same things. America wants to maintain it's global military footprint and influence and they will do it whether they have enough warm bodies available or not. We'll just work the troops more if necessary and send the same people to war year after year after year until they get burned out and resign and the cycle continues.

    This problem isn't even the Army's alone this is the DoD. The Army is nothing more than one of the tools used by the DoD along with the other branches. The Army has a history though of self inflicted wounds by being the branch most hesitant to adapt to the current society. It still wants to hold on to policies that worked during the era when the current high brass were low brass and fails to understand and/or accept that this ain't the 80's and 90's anymore for better or for worse.

    Finding enough qualified recruits who are actually willing to serve to obtain the numbers we need to maintain this global footprint is an uphill battle on ice skates. It's impossible in the year 2019, there are simply not enough young citizens in America wishing to do this job anymore. So that leaves the Army with only two real choices, make the Army "suck less" to get more people which inevitably leads to a larger less powerful force or maintain course and cull the herd which leaves a smaller more powerful and disciplined force that literally doesn't have the raw numbers to perform the myriad of tasks asked of it.

    It's basically like asking SEAL Team 5 to perform the mission of a Brigade Combat Team. It's impossible, yeah the SEALs are a hell of a lot better trained fighters than the average Rifleman, but there simply isn't enough of them to do the job of 6000 "normal" troops. In most cases the military mission requires a bunch of "normal" troops over a few elite ones. And in the modern era where America wants to have it's fingers in everyone's cookie jars we require A LOT of normal troops.

    The sad reality is that although Soldiers such as pregnant non deployable females or below average Soldiers are a burden on the war machine, they are a necessary evil in this modern time. Unfortunately, the 19 year old Private female who graduates basic then gets knocked up can still do SOMETHING. She may not be able to deploy to war with her unit but she can perform some sort of necessary task that the Army requires to function which is what she will do. And at the end of the day, having a pregnant Soldier who can't go to war and sits on rear D doing paperwork is still better than having no Soldier at all during a time where we desperately need bodies.
     
  20. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    That's true if you can live with a system in which the same people deploy time and time again, and others never deploy. It seems that would create a lot of resentment.
     
  21. Nightmare515

    Nightmare515 Ragin' Cajun Staff Member Past Donor

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    It does create a lot of resentment but when we strip away all of the emotion what real choice do we have?

    I have good friends of mine who have literally been deployed 10 times in 20 years. I have friends who have been deployed 9 times in 17 years. I have friends who have deployed 5 times in 9 years, etc. And I also know 2 women who fit the exact description in your OP who have been on active duty for over a decade and haven't deployed ONCE. The reason? One of them is pregnant like every other year and the other has some strange custody family care plan thing that allows her to not have to go anywhere. Both of them still serve a purpose, not as good of a purpose as others but they are still better than nothing. They help keep the equipment running.

    I am currently at a duty station that is one of the "undesirable" duty stations of the entire military. The one where we have the highest suicide and alcoholic rate of any base in the WORLD, literally. Why am I here? Because I was specifically placed here due to the fact that the person who was SUPPOSED to come here couldn't go. Why? Because he has special needs children and this is such a ****ed up duty station that the Army medical corps literally won't let you come here if you have a family member with any sort of problems whatsoever. It's simply too hard on people. So when he was outprocessing our last duty station and he had to do the family medical screening it pulled up a red flag for this assignment. He was pulled, and yours truly was his replacement. He's a good friend of mine we served together for years at my last assignment, I was there with him at the hospital when this all happened. And he was there with me when branch gave me the bad news that I had to take the assignment that was supposed to be his.

    He is a burden on the war machine, he has EFMP children (Exceptional Family Member Program), meaning his kids have special needs. By him having that he is unable to be assigned to specific duty stations, the ones that suck ass. He can only be assigned to the more lucrative assignments that most people want, the "easier" ones. That in itself when we strip away the emotion is not fair to people like me. I have no wife, no children, and no "problems" that can be associated with those. I can go anywhere the Army needs me, he can't. So I get stuck with the **** assignments time and time again while he spends his career at TRADOC and rare deployable units.

    He and his family are currently at a base that borders a resort town on the Atlantic Ocean. I am at a base where they literally card you for Listerine. At this point in my career I have literally been assigned to two out of the 3 "highest probability of suicide" bases that the US Army offers. All because I am a single guy without the "burden" of a family to give me special treatment.

    I have another good friend who was also supposed to be assigned here with me. He utilized the new Army policy of "stabilization" to allow his high school son to stay put and graduate with his class, so he was able to dodge this assignment and stay where he was. I have no such luxury, I can't do something like that. Out of the 9 Soldiers that were assigned to this duty station on this cycle, only ONE was able to actually go. That one was me.

    In a perfect world we could say no more of this. These people are burdens on the war machine. Due to your wife's history of depression it prohibits you from being 100% available for the Army's needs. Due to your sons learning disability it prohibits you from being 100% available. Due to your pregnancy or ability to get pregnant it prohibits you from being 100% available for the Army. All of you are discharged.

    We can't do that. We don't have the bodies left over to do something like that. Having an active duty Soldier with a special needs kid who can't follow me to a shithole duty station is just as unfair as having a female pregnant Soldier who can't follow me to Afghanistan again. But there are no calls to discharge Soldiers with special needs kids when at the end of the day both Soldiers are just as much a burden on overall readiness.

    In a perfect Army the entire Army would be composed of Soldiers like me. Highly trained specialized male Soldiers who have no spouse's and no children who can go wherever the war machine may need whenever it may need it. But that ain't the real world. And if we try to create an Army like that we'd have about 1 battalion worth of troops left to fight.

    I am a bit resentful that I eat the grenades that others can't due to one reason or another, and during the face to face meeting with my branch manager a few months ago I told him flat out without filter that this is absolute bullshit and admittedly acted in a manner unbecoming my rank and position in his presence . But I also understand that the Army has no real other choice...

    Family is always more important than any job. And at the end of the day the Army is still a job. And if the Army tries to instill policies that put itself before your family then we will have no Army because nobody is putting up with that, not in the year 2019.
     
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  22. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Just two excerpts:


    ”“Nothing is more basic than Basic Combat Training. Basic to the ways of war. Basic to national security. Basic to the very survival of the United States. So how come Fort Jackson, the single largest producer of Basic grunts, male and female, is under the command of a general who piled up more friendly fire casualties than anyone else in Desert Storm?”The Victory Tower looms up like a gallows, its timbers and planks cutting off the sun. It’s a huge thing, three stories high, girdled with ropes and rope bridges, and fitted out with ladders.

    Next to it rises an awesome rappelling wall with a sheer, 40-foot drop to a sawdust pit. A line of young recruits are lined up, ready to leap, rope in hand, out over the edge.WHUUUMP….WHUUMP….WHUMP…boots hit the wall. Three or four thumping steps followed by four dick-shriveling swings and the grunts are back on the ground. The first fewtwo or three male recruits take it as a rope-burning rite of passage that leaves their asses hot and their spirits high

    .A fat guy stands frozen on the ledge above. The drill sergeant has to wet nurse him for 10 minutes before he flops over the side and drops like a bag of rocks. Then I spot the first female. Up there at the rim of outer space, she peers over her shoulder, her jaw quivering, tears streaming down her cheeks. She backs off until the drill sergeants surround her, talking quietly, gently cajoling her back to the edge, and this time she’s out there flying, WHUUMP…WHUUMP…WHUUMP, tear-stained but game. “I’ll be damned! Well done, soldier,” I mutter to myself. The next female appears. This one collapses. No amount of friendly persuasion gets her to take the leap. Sobbing, she’s led from Victory Tower in total defeat.

    Welcome to Basic Combat Training. Welcome to Camp Snoopy, the U.S. Army’s let’s-play-soldiers theme park tucked in the piney hills of South Carolina. Does the idea of an obstacle course scare you? Hey, no sweat. The one they’ve build down here is called the Team Development Course. If you can’t make it over the wall someone nice will lend you a hand. Do guns, bayonets, fists upset you? No problem. At Camp Snoopy you stick two marshmallows on a stick and duke it out with someone your own size. You say, you’re no Hawkeye? Relax. If the drill sergeant can’t get you through rifle training, the Chaplain can.

    At Camp Snoopy, they’ve invented a whole new meaning to “Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition.”It’s just past 0800 hours at Fort Jackson and I’m sitting in a small conference room waiting for the commanding general. The general’s running late because he’s at a prayer meeting. The delay is fine with me. I use the time to review the e-mails that led me down here to South Carolina. on a fact-finding mission. The private who wrote “Basic training stinks” pretty much sets the tone for all the rest....


    “Hormones will flow,” Lt. Colonel Henry says with a straight face and I have to admire his way with understatement. Beyond the Executive Conference Room, where 38,000 young males and females, most just out of high school, have been thrown together over the past year, hormones aren’t the half of it. They’ve been caught doing the dirty in the laundry and in the mop room, in the Clipper room where machines power wash the mess trays, in the wall lockers, where it takes tight bodies and true commitment for two to tango.

    Most of the time, of course, they’re not caught at all. “We teach ’em the buddy system for combat and they use it for gettin’ down,” one sergeant tells me. “One guy says to his buddy, ‘We’ll be in the laundry. If the drill sergeant comes around, yell ‘At ease,’ so I can pull my pants up and get outta there.”

    The game begins the moment they step off the bus. “First day, they tell us the Dumpster Story, the Woods Story, the Porta John Story,”a young woman tells me, choking back a grin. “It’s like a How-To-Do-It-Handbook.”

    The Dumpster Story?

    “Yeah, well, it’s like, they say, ‘If we ever catch you with a person of the opposite sex near the dumpsters you’re automatically out. At the field bleachers you can sneak in between the rear seats and the wall, but something always hangs out to give you away. The great thing about the dumpsters is they’ve got a lid.’ When hormones and pheromones reach critical mass, who cares about how anything else smells?

    In a losing battle to keep the recruits zipped up and on course, General Barrett oversees something he calls the Safe and Secure Program. In the barracks, females and males sleep on separate floors. The doors are locked at night, and surveillance cameras scan for sleepwalkers. They have so many electronic alarms even Tom Cruise couldn’t get through them. Mission impossible, the watchdogs say.

    Yeah, right. With a piece of tinfoil from a gum wrapper you can disarm the klaxons. From the windows of adjacent barracks, you signal with flashlights. At chow you pass notes like wiseguys out of Oz. There’s always a way.

    One drill instructor says he discovered a young woman sitting at Mass one cold Sunday giving a fellow recruit a handjob under the blanket spread across their laps. He ungummed the couple and because the Army’s nurture and salvage policy prevented him from toss them out on the spot, he sent them to Bravo 1/28, the post’s school for scandal and reform. Once there, the fox was caught at the same handiwork on the bus to special Easter Services. Given a third chance, she went on sick call, where a sergeant made the mistake of accepting her services. Only then was she asked to go home. The sergeant is now facing jail.

    I admit this case is extreme. In fact, the significant problem isn’t even about sex, it’s about distraction. The upshot of coed training is a level of tension that destroys focus and discipline, eats up time that could be spent on more important things like marksmanship’with the rifle, not the short arm.

    Sure, a few ******* cadre do get it on with the female trainees. While I was on post, one battalion in recent cycles had lost three drill sergeants and one company commander. A female sergeant described Fort Jackson ‘a playground where the drills do everything to get into as many BDU pants as they can.” No doubt, that’s a gross distortion, especially since the Aberdeen sexual abuse trials. The fact is that the majority of the drills, even the hardcores, are now scared to death of their female recruits. They have to take extreme measures in self defense. One of them tells the females coming in from Reception that he’ll yell rape if any of them get anywhere near him without their buddy standing right by.

    This begs two questions: How can a scared drill sergeant turn out a good Soldier? And what about equal treatment, the very heart of unit cohesiveness? You can go out to the dumpsters and kiss that one goodbye. “

    Full article well worth the read. -> http://usdefensewatch.com/2016/04/the-march-of-the-porcelain-soldiers/

     
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  23. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    First of all, I want you to know that I appreciate the fact that when you reply to a comment, you're not just whipping off a quick one liner; you're giving a detailed, thoughtful response. That's very rare around here so it's noticeable and notable when it happens.

    Secondly, you seem to highlight exactly the issues the article in the OP can generate. You seem very cognizant of the current limited pool of young people that the military is drawing from, and the need for them; ergo, female soldiers are a value added asset when the alternative is no soldiers at all. However the consequence of that is exactly what I've previously stated, and that you seem to be seconding; that the constant leaning on the same soldiers to deploy over and over is bad for morale and is a disincentive in retention. Right now, the better deal to re-enlist is exactly the female who intends to keep herself pregnant and other solders, with permanent profiles or EFMP families. For them, re-upping is a great deal. But that sure comes at a price.

    Rather than settling for the idea that a nondeployable person is better than nothing, the Army should be working on it's recruiting problem. Otherwise the better than nothing policy will open the Army to people with psychological issues, criminal issues, obesity or other physical fitness issues or people with drug use issues. After all, you could argue that they're better than nothing.
     
  24. Nightmare515

    Nightmare515 Ragin' Cajun Staff Member Past Donor

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    Great article, most of which is unfortunately very true in the modern era. But once again we face the underlying problem, what exactly are we supposed to do?

    I agree 100%, female Soldiers are a huge distraction and a burden, much of the time to their own dismay and for no fault of their own. It's basic human social norms, having a couple females around hundreds of males is going to cause conflict and there is no way around it. People can try all they want to play political correctness and strip away basic human behavior, but not even the discipline of the Army is going to prevent a young man from gawking at a young woman.

    My best friend is a female Soldier in the same unit as me, luckily we seem to follow each other around throughout our careers. I've written extensively on this very forum about the sheer amount of **** she causes by simply being a relatively pretty woman in a 99% male dominated work environment. It ain't her fault, shes very professional at work and doesn't entertain advances at her or anything but it happens to her all the time because shes a relatively attractive single woman in a battalion with 200+ men in it. She really isn't even THAT attractive, shes an average looking person who most people likely wouldn't double take at in public or anything. She doesn't even "fill out" a uniform and provide something to glance at when she walks by. But shes a female, and shes in the Army, that alone puts her at the top of the mountain in an arena where shes damn near the only one to look at.

    The SHARP program has been a disaster and has caused way more harm than good and statistically literally has done NOTHING at all to prevent sexual assault or harassment. Raw statistical date...it has done NOTHING. But what it has done is create the climate described in the article. A climate to where due to some irresponsible actions by other Soldiers, leaders are often terrified to even interact with female Soldiers. A bad scenario when it's the leaders whose job it is to train Soldiers...As in the case with these Drill Sergeants.

    Fact remains the same, an all male military is a hell of a lot easier to deal with both socially and logistically. Washing out shithead recruits in Basic Training to provide our combat units with qualified disciplined Soldiers is also a much better scenario for obvious reasons.

    Problem is simple. We need 10 Soldiers. 5 suck ass and cry when you yell at them, 2 are females, and 3 are good qualified Soldiers who aren't afraid of the rappel wall and can strap a ruck on their back and hike it 10k without issue. We WANT those 3, but we NEED 10. What do we do?

    That is the problem. This ain't a perfect world. And we don't have a perfect pool from which to recruit the raw numbers we need anymore.
     
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  25. Nightmare515

    Nightmare515 Ragin' Cajun Staff Member Past Donor

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    Thank you, I try not to get too long winded which I have been known to do, I just try to be as thorough as I can to get my point across.

    Now you are seeing the exact problem that the Army is desperately trying to tackle right now and can't quite figure out how to do it.

    You are 100% right, the Army is trying to balance training and family. Like I stated before it's trying to make the Army "suck less ass" as a career choice while simultaneously maintaining a training program to ensure overall mission readiness. That is a HARD problem to tackle because at the end of the day, training = "sucks ass".

    Just a quick example from a very recent past experience of mine. My last unit had an operations tempo that was literal hell on earth. OPTEMPO = how much we work and train (Im sure you know that but for others unfamiliar). We got HAMMERED at that unit, we worked weekends more often than not, we were in the field which added up to a total of over 6 months out of the year and spent 3 more of those months flying non stop 24 hour training exercises from home station. So we spent 9 total months out of 12 training our ass off. We hit Christmas break and we come back swinging like before. Then a bunch of us PCS'd away, the majority of those who just spent the last year being expertly trained and highly proficient. Then a bunch of new people show up to fill the gaps, and they got the warno....Afghan deployment inbound, boots on the ground in a few.

    So what do we do now? We HAVE to train these folks to get them ready to goto war, but the ones who were highly trained just rolled out to other duty stations leaving only a few remaining. A few who just went through a year of hell sacrificing 3/4ths of their lives in garrison training. So the unit has a choice to make, do we send these new guys to Afghanistan without proper training? Or do we revamp the training and kick it into high gear? They choose the latter.

    But what about me? I just spent the last year working every damn weekend and not seeing my family for 9 freaking months while at GARRISON, and then I have to deploy to war for 9 months soon and won't see them then either....Sorry man, you're trained up, we need you to help train these new guys who just showed up or the unit isn't gonna be ready for war. Pack your bags up, we're going back to the field again.

    That's the reality, that is what happened. So how do we balance that? How do we empathize with the guy who just got dragged through the trenches for a year who is exhausted but we NEED him to go back out again to train the UNIT for war? Do we sacrifice and say screw it lets just give these guys time with their families and hope for the best in Afghanistan? Or do we say suck it up we HAVE to train we can't just goto war with a bunch of unqualified Soldiers...

    That's the problem the Army is facing. We simply have too many wars to fight and too many deployments and not enough personnel to do it all. So the same people get dragged through the trenches again and again which is absolutely bad for morale as you stated. THAT by itself is the single biggest reason why the Army has such a huge retention problem.

    We don't have enough bodies, but we have the same amount of work, so we work those we have left harder because we have to in order to get the work done, then they get tired and quit, then we have less bodies, then we work those bodies even harder to do the same amount of work, then they quit, and we keep the cycle going, and we can't replenish the losses fast enough to ease the pain. It's a nasty cycle that the Army can't figure out how to fix.

    We throw money at it, just stay we'll pay you a massive bonus. Soldier says go **** yourself this isn't worth any amount of money, so the Army throws more, it still doesn't work. The Army says ok let's just replace them with more recruits, but nobody is signing up. Why is nobody signing up? Because the guy who just quit told his buddies this job sucks ass. Alright we admit the Army does suck ass, how to we make it suck less ass? Well lets identify what actually "sucks ass" about the Army? The field, the training part, nobody likes sleeping in tents with no AC and crapping in the woods for weeks. But we have to do that because its training, we can't just let everyone chill at home and BBQ and pray for the best when it comes time for the inevitable deployment...Well the deployments also suck ass nobody wants to really go to Iraq and live like crap and possibly get killed. Yeah but that's the Army...they knew what they were signing up for...

    I know, that's why they aren't signing up...

    How the hell do we "fix" that? Stripping off all of the proverbial bullshit about Army service what is our actual job? Go and fight wars against people America doesn't like. That's our job and it's no real secret. Well war sucks, I've been there a few times. If war sucks and your literal job description is to go fight wars then how exactly do you make that not suck?

    There really is only one solution, this isn't me talking alone this is the result of years of raw data collected from official surveys in the Army and by just me being in the Army forever and obviously talking to people. The quality of life of the US Army sucks ass, period. It is no longer financially worth it to do this job for many people even with the perks of free healthcare and college and in reality a pretty decent steady paycheck. What the Army asks you to sacrifice for those things has tipped the scale too far. This ain't the 80s and 90s, a 6 year E-5 has done more in those 6 years today than a 20 year E-8 did in the 90s. This is real world evidence, the average Soldier in my particular career field who transitions to our civilian equivalent profession takes on average a 50-60% paycut. And the Army is currently offering MASSIVE bonuses for us to remain in and not resign, I'm talking 6 figures, and it still isn't stopping the bleeding.

    We are leaving at an ALARMING rate, one that has made the national news on a routine basis. And we are willing to give up HALF of our money AND forgo a 6 figure bonus check in order to walk away.

    Why?

    Because 6 figures doesn't buy our lives back, and 6 figures doesn't ease the pain of telling my son that I'm sorry I can't take him to the park because daddy has to work again this Saturday, or go to war AGAIN.

    Give Soldiers their lives back, there is no other tourniquet that will stop this bleeding. Raw indisputable evidence is proving that every single day in the Armed Forces. Make this job "suck less ass" and that will solve the recruiting problem and the retention problem. I have some ideas that may help that I've shared numerous times through surveys and letters and speaking in person with high brass. Nothing short of flat out ending these *******n terrorism wars will completely stop the bleeding, but I have some ideas that I think can at least slow it down.
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2019
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