Playing video games on line, the Internet, text messaging, 150 TV stations and sleeping 10 hours a day and going to school doesn't leave our younger generation a lot of time to go outside and do something physical....
As I work for the military, I find to my horror that at 48, I'm physically stronger and quicker than almost every soldier I have had in my class over the past four years. I smoke and still have better wind than most of them.
They get a real shock when they get mercilessly and painfully dropped by an old civilian man during my CQC combative principles class. I don't fool around in my class and I'm pretty frikkin' ruthless as I have more leeway to "rough them up" a little than a military instructor. I demonstrate and lecture them on all that time spent on their Wii and their playstations has finally caught up with them and it STOPS at this class.I tell them their "fun and games" is going to get them killed by the "animals" they will face overseas unless they get their head out of their ass REAL quick!
And they DO listen! I'm convinced that they are just as tough as we were when we were kids with the proper conditioning and guidance.
Part of what I'm there for is a blunt reality check and they most CERTAINLY get that!
Well you've got to think about what the average kid does nowadays... or what they DON'T do...
Hell when I was a kid, we played outside all the time... now all the kids do is play video games, eat, complain, and watch TV... hardly something that makes them fit for military service.
I'm getting out of shape myself and I resent that but at least I can see that I'm slowly becoming a lardass!
Agreed. Could you imagine the army trying to fight a war with a bunch of 40+ year old enlisted men? The army only wants a select few for more than a few years.
Think about this...the 40+ year old guys don't care if they die or not.
Once you've been married long enough, death in battle starts looking pretty good
__________________ Marlin & Calico Specialist
I'm not just Trigger Happy, I'm Trigger Ecstatic!!
What are you talking about? Your pay check is 40% special pay?
You will get 40% - 50% of your base pay. Also, when you retire from the Active Army you get your retirement check the next month....Reservist get there retirement check at 65....
The longer you stay in, the more Rank & Time In Service you get. By the time you've hit 20 years, you've got darn nice pay
And since most folks joined up when they were 18-21, that means you get retirement, plus whatever job you feel like doing when you get out.
Benefit of that, when a boss tells me something I don't like, I can tell him to "Go Blow a Goat", & go find another job, because my pension covers my @$$. Same thing when the economy went south...two companies closed down under me...but I was at least covered by pension & unemployment...try that without the pension sometime...
So yeah, it's worth it
__________________ Marlin & Calico Specialist
I'm not just Trigger Happy, I'm Trigger Ecstatic!!
The longer you stay in, the more Rank & Time In Service you get. By the time you've hit 20 years, you've got darn nice pay
And since most folks joined up when they were 18-21, that means you get retirement, plus whatever job you feel like doing when you get out.
Benefit of that, when a boss tells me something I don't like, I can tell him to "Go Blow a Goat", & go find another job, because my pension covers my @$$. Same thing when the economy went south...two companies closed down under me...but I was at least covered by pension & unemployment...try that without the pension sometime...
So yeah, it's worth it
I understand...I just retired with 21 years and 24 days as of August 1st 2009. Trust me, I just turned 39 OCT 19.....and I'm fully aware of the benifits of making that retirement check "just for waking up."
He said his pay was 40% special pay..and that 40% was half of his retirement pay....which would give him 25% at retirement.....that is physcially impossible....when you get "Special Pay" (flight pay, jump pay, what ever pay) it is added to your base pay..which means his total pay goes up not down....and his base pay stays the same...and he also stated that hes gets a retirement check when he retires from the reserve....not true.....when he turn 65 is when he will recieve his check.
Surprisingly, there are a lot of good, hard working kids out there in that age group, so I believe that it is slightly unfair to label all of them as lazy bumps on the log.
I have seen plenty of folks around my age that couldn't be counted on to do anything other than eat and sleep all the time!
__________________
NRA Life Member
God Bless the United States Military
What are you talking about? Your pay check is 40% special pay?
You will get 40% - 50% of your base pay. Also, when you retire from the Active Army you get your retirement check the next month....Reservist get there retirement check at 65....
He has a point. Consider too the base privileges you, your wife and minor children will have when you retire. Regardless of when you get out, you will have VA medical for life, with or w/o insurance. The VA took my State Blue Cross-Blue Shield for almost two decades with no deductable. If ever I had no insurance, they would still provide medical services.
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Last edited by SightNSqueeze; 11-04-2009 at 07:10 PM.
let us look at the American family of 1941 versus today.
In 1941 kids in general had a father who had a job that provided for a home and a stay at home mother plus almost all the children had both a father and a mother.
Today a very large percentage of children have a one parent situation with that woman working between 40 and 50 hours a week.
So, while I do not defend the current situation I can expect nothing else from a society in which kids are pretty much raised by television and spend hours upon hours in a sort of sit down lonliness.
I'm fit.
I don't watch TV except for a few hours (2-3 shows) a week.
I try to stay away from video games (but they're pretty addictive).
I'm supposed to be a 2nd year engineering student (taking a break this semester for $$$ reasons).
I want to join up (Navy) after I graduate (Entering OCS and flight school if everything goes good).
I would consider myself a leader (Eagle Scout).
The thing is, if 70% of my generation is unfit for the military, wouldn't that now become the "normal" making me abnormal? I am truly disheartened by this news if it does hold any legitimacy.
I'm fit.
I don't watch TV except for a few hours (2-3 shows) a week.
I try to stay away from video games (but they're pretty addictive).
I'm supposed to be a 2nd year engineering student (taking a break this semester for $$$ reasons).
I want to join up (Navy) after I graduate (Entering OCS and flight school if everything goes good).
I would consider myself a leader (Eagle Scout).
The thing is, if 70% of my generation is unfit for the military, wouldn't that now become the "normal" making me abnormal? I am truly disheartened by this news if it does hold any legitimacy.
Being physically fit and an Eagle Scout by themselves makes you out of the ordinary. Consider this: You could join the Navy now and enter into the Navy Nuclear Power School and Submarine School to follow, finish college while in the Navy and go the OCS route from there. Sub duty is not as glamorous as naval aviation, but definitely in higher demand right now as it always has been. Just a thought. You might want to call a Navy recruiter and line up an appointment with someone who has been there recently.
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Well, look who schools them, socialists. Look what they eat, junk. They watch junk TV and video games and want their parents to bail them out. The military doesn't operate like that, you stand on your own feet and serve, with honor. Notice the Commander in Chief, also.
I can run 5 miles just to put a single 5.56 round through a ragheads face without a problem..but the SECOND the Army finds out I have a history of asthma they dont ****ing want me..maybe when they stop being so picky..
__________________ Colt Trooper Mk III, K-98, 91/30, Next gun: Ruger Security Six
There are times, like right now, when I wish the military's recruiting and training operated a little more like Heinlein's Terran Federation Mobile Infantry and less like an if-then flowchart. I admit the physical standards are important, but I believe that fighting spirit counts for more. A lot more.
You don't want someone who does not want to be there covering your butt; or someone who enlisted for some form of technical training that's highly salable on the outside and either couldn't qualify for the program or washed out of it and was then dumped into the infantry. The guy you want on your flank is someone who has fighting spirit, who won't give up when things look grim or the going gets tough. Even the Marine Corps can't inculcate that spirit into their recruits. It has to be there, inborn, or it won't come for all the training in the world. (What the Marines are good at is sniffing out those who have that spirit and then bringing it to the surface. As the ads say, they don't accept applications, only commitments.)
I agree that a lot of people only do one hitch and then get out because they have learned military life is not for them; that it does not give them the satisfaction they want or the approval of those around them that they need. Some do one enlistment because it's the family tradition to do so. The ones who stay the course to retirement are the ones who have that fighting spirit and take pride in their service despite the efforts of the sheeple in the parent culture, brainwashed by the ex-hippies and draft dodgers of the 1960s who taught them in school and college, and the cynical, politically correct intelligentsia who dodged or chose not to serve themselves who comprise the media to portray those who choose to serve as unable to "make it in the real world." I've nothing but respect for them, and not only because I was denied the chance to serve by a bunch of scum-sucking Navy doctors I wouldn't trust to lance a boil.
Just last month, all of the armed services achieved 100% enlistment over a specified period of time for the first time since the all volunteer service took effect in 1977 when virtually everybody in the armed forces was a volunteer. I don't think it was because of the bad economy. Certainly, there is plenty of student loan money still out there. Perhaps enlistments are up because people can see results in the GWT, a more secure Iraq, an al-Qaeda on the retreat, and the truth being told by returning vets that challenges and transcends the leftist smoke screen of lies spewed out by the mainstream media and this congress for the past few years. Too many hand wringers and defeatists were bracing themselves for another “post-Vietnam” as if it had become an American tradition to expect and accept the worst. Certainly, the media and Hollywood had made a shameful “industry” out of post-Vietnam and they thought that they would do the same with the Global War on Terror. Unlike Vietnam, the GWT is viewed entirely differently by the general public here at home who are spoon fed information by the MSM, and the troops down range who see the progress that is being made on a daily basis.
Remember, General Patton said it himself that Americans love a winner and would not tolerate a loser, because the thought of losing is despicable to most Americans. Certainly the Vietnam veterans who won every military battle must have thought it despicable that their gains were left to wither on the vine and be lost to an enemy two full years after the war was handed over. The underhanded politics and foreign policy in that fiasco are still not fully understood or accurately documented.
Hopefully, a tradition of military and foreign service will grip the rest of this two-sided generation that could have, but didn’t or wasn’t able to participate in this struggle. Hopefully too, the armed forces will stop making a science out of picking and choosing who they perceive as model candidates and closing the door on potential contributors to our nation’s defense. If everybody is told that they are needed in time of national defense, we might see more people act like they have a part in this struggle by staying fit, staying informed, and staying ready.
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