phrogpilot73
Well-Known Member
Didn't know my former CO's wife wrote a book. Learn something new everyday.
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The Call To Serve
- Thread starter scoober78
- Start date
I think it's Norway that has one or two year things like that. Also South Korea and Israel have similar programs (not sure about college benefits though).
The draft would be very, very difficult for America...for many reasons. Not the least of which is explaining, despite all the changes of the last decades, why it's for guys only...again.
navjack
K-Vegas
For our specific job, I agree wholeheartedly. I think people with connections to past/other service members are some of the strongest (if relatively few) threads tying today's navy to what it used to be. I showed the CoNA issue of Proceedings to my grandpa with the article about how navy flying ain't what it used to be and he told me he shed a tear. That's a pretty convincing reason not to accept that it's all about flight suit patch regs and breathalyzers at the front door.
That said, it creates problems when those are the lion's share of people who want to stick around. We're not exactly a model of diversity of any kind to start with, and drawing from the same groups or families of people continuously isn't going to work as it becomes harder and harder to retain JOs. The irony of the situation is that the difficulty in keeping JOs is largely a byproduct of the same culture shift that is aggravating everyone across the board, first generation or legacy. If you're bored...http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_documents/Falk-Rogers PAE 03-11 vF.pdf. Long read but interesting.
exNavyOffRec
Well-Known Member
Even surface non nuke engineers are pretty worthless when we only had them for 2 years, I was on a ship when they had the 2 year program, and those guys would just qualify senior in rate and then be getting ready to leave. There might be some rates where 2 year programs might work but engineering isn't the place.
Ordered...curiously, the Kindle edition is more than the hardcover. Bizzare.
Reading the description on Amazon, I felt like it was a smoother version of the questions I asked at the beginning...good to know that you aren't totally out to lunch. Thanks for the find.
Haven't read that book. But I have read this: http://www.heritage.org/research/re...+Demographics+of+Enlisted+Troops+and+Officers It was written in 2008 covering data for 2006-2007. The height of OIF.
In summery:
- U.S. military service disproportionately attracts enlisted personnel and officers who do not come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Previous Heritage Foundation research demonstrated that the quality of enlisted troops has increased since the start of the Iraq war. This report demonstrates that the same is true of the officer corps.
- Members of the all-volunteer military are significantly more likely to come from high-income neighborhoods than from low-income neighborhoods. Only 11 percent of enlisted recruits in 2007 came from the poorest one-fifth (quintile) of neighborhoods, while 25 percent came from the wealthiest quintile. These trends are even more pronounced in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program, in which 40 percent of enrollees come from the wealthiest neighborhoods-a number that has increased substantially over the past four years.
- American soldiers are more educated than their peers. A little more than 1 percent of enlisted personnel lack a high school degree, compared to 21 percent of men 18-24 years old, and 95 percent of officer accessions have at least a bachelor's degree.
- Contrary to conventional wisdom, minorities are not overrepresented in military service. Enlisted troops are somewhat more likely to be white or black than their non-military peers. Whites are proportionately represented in the officer corps, and blacks are overrepresented, but their rate of overrepresentation has declined each year from 2004 to 2007. New recruits are also disproportionately likely to come from the South, which is in line with the history of Southern military tradition.
Basically, what I stated in post #15, and that was over 50 years ago, so that hasn't changed much, with the exception of nuclear propulsion which was in it's infancy back then.
BzB
I have to tell you, I'm not terribly impressed with The Heritage Foundation's quality of research. I tend to find that when you have such a clear ideological point of view as they do, the research (surprise, surprise, surprise...) tends to support it. Call me when they publish something that doesn't support one of their stated goals or a GOP party platform position.
They are to serious research what Sean Hannity is to Walter Cronkite.
You say US Military, so I'm assuming that's a generalization across all services? I'd venture to guess that something like Subnuke navy is a vastly different demographic than, say, Army grunt. I'd also be curious to see the comparison in demographics in officer vs enlisted accessions as it relates to family/background (not education, of course). I'd also venture to guess that the enlisted ranks are on average/above average for coming from poor families compared with other folks in equally paying jobs in the civilian world and when compared with same-age officers. I know you quoted 11% from the poorest one fifth, but how does that compare to civilians of the same age on average in this country?
Bottom line: it seems as if the stats are just corroborating the point that a voluntary service is the way to go. Maybe it's only this way in the wake of 9/11 but that's what the data shows.
I agree about voluntary service being a much better system. If you work on the recruiting piece and see to it that the benefits and opportunities in the service are good and the word is spread correctly, you'll get quality people. I am a first generation American (or is it "zeroth"?) and I was very eager to join in part because of the above reasons and environmental things like 9/11 etc.
Meant that since the book was asking alot of the questions I was, that I wasn't totally out to lunch. Awkward phrasing maybe. Sorry.