Corporal Brooke Dieters. Sergeant Brian Threat. What is the difference between officers and enlisted service members? How do I become an officer? What does "part-time duty" mean? With the exception of Space Force, all service branches offer part-time opportunities. What's the difference between the National Guard and the Reserve?
How long are people who enter the Military obligated to serve? How long is an average term of service? Are there shorter enlistment commitments available? When were the service branches first established? What is military rank? Learn more at Enlisted and Officer Paths. Who is in charge of the Military? What is Selective Service?
Learn more at SSS. What is MEPS? The student testing program, also known as the ASVAB Career Exploration Program CEP , is used for career exploration and is given in high schools and community colleges, at job corps centers and at correctional facilities. What is ROTC? What happens during basic training? Do you need a high school diploma to join the Military? What are the requirements for joining the Military?
Requirements vary by Service, but generally speaking, candidates must meet certain criteria for: Age Physical ability Education Citizenship For details, see Eligibility Requirements.
Why do candidates need to speak to recruiters, and what should they ask? Can certain health problems prevent a candidate from serving? Can foreign-born American citizens join the Military?
Can people join the U. Military if they are not American citizens? Are there special considerations for women enlisting in the Military?
Does having a criminal record disqualify a potential recruit from military service? If a candidate has children dependents , can he or she enlist? In fact, most of the Services are even stricter in their policies: Army: Allows married applicants to have two dependents or more with a waiver Marine Corps: Waiver for any dependents is required; eligibility for waiver is based on applicant's relationship to the dependent married, unmarried, separated, divorced, etc.
Navy: May require a waiver for applicants with dependents, and each case is reviewed independently to determine eligibility Air Force: Allows married applicants to have two dependents or three with a waiver ; single applicants require a waiver for up to three dependents; no waivers granted for anyone with four or more dependents Coast Guard: Allows no more than three dependents Once serving, all service members are free to marry and have children as they wish. How many people join the Military every year?
What jobs are available in the Military? How do candidates find the career that they are interested in? Jobs are assigned based on several factors: Current and anticipated military needs Individual career aspirations Individual skills and qualifications Results from the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test ASVAB Potential recruits and parents should review the job categories in the careers section of this site and then discuss possible career paths with a recruiter.
Is it possible to switch jobs once in the Military? What is pay like for military jobs? How are service members prepared for success upon leaving the military? How often do service members get raises?
How can a young person learn what job might be good for him or her? What kind of training do service members receive? Can service members attend college and earn a degree? Will the Military pay for college? What is it like to live and work in the Military? What are the benefits of life in the Military? Opportunities for personal growth , including developing confidence, leadership, and motivation. A wide range of careers that align with many personal interests. These roles often include advanced training that helps develop skills which are transferable to employment after the military.
Employment benefits , like health care, retirement savings, paid vacation, life insurance, and more. Where are new service members stationed?
Where do service members live? How much vacation and leisure time do service members receive? What happens to my job if I am in the Reserve or Guard and I get deployed? Are new recruits shipped off right away? What are the benefits of joining the Military? How can parents of service members find support? How often do service members see their families? How do service members stay in touch? They are comfortable making command decisions, working in teams, and motivating people.
Why is the military so bad at retaining these people? But the reason overwhelmingly cited by veterans and active-duty officers alike is that the military personnel system—every aspect of it—is nearly blind to merit. Performance evaluations emphasize a zero-defect mentality, meaning that risk-avoidance trickles down the chain of command.
Job assignments are managed by a faceless, centralized bureaucracy that keeps everyone guessing where they might be shipped next. This only ensures that the services retain the most risk-averse, and leads to long-term mediocrity.
In contrast, the conventional explanation for talent bleed—the high frequency of deployments—was cited by only 63 percent of respondents, and was the fifth-most-common reason. According to 9 out of 10 respondents, many of the best officers would stay if the military was more of a meritocracy.
Colonel Jeff Peterson, a member of the faculty at West Point, likes to illustrate this point using a parable about hedgerows. After the Normandy invasion in , American troops found that their movements were constrained by the thick hedgerows that lined the countryside of northern France. The hedges frequently channeled American units into German ambushes, and they were too thick to cut or drive through.
American troops are famous for this kind of individual initiative. Lieutenants, even corporals and privates, are trained to be entrepreneurial in combat. Creativity of this sort is increasingly celebrated by economists who study growth, many of whom now believe that innovation is essentially the only factor that drives long-term increases in per capita income. Since innovation relies entirely on people—what economists call human capital— academics are showing more appreciation than ever for Joseph Schumpeter and his pioneering focus on entrepreneurship.
Likewise, martial progress relies on innovative officers, especially those who question doctrine and strategy. Usually, rebels in uniform suffer at the expense of their ideas. In a essay in the Armed Forces Journal , Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling offered a compelling explanation for this risk-averse tendency.
A veteran of three tours in Iraq, Yingling articulated a common frustration among the troops: that a failure of generalship was losing the war. Despite the turnaround in Iraq since engineered by General Petraeus and his allies, it is hard to escape the impression that the military has indeed become less hospitable to entrepreneurs at the strategic level in the past few decades. Schumpeter predicted that as capitalist economies evolved, innovation would become routinized in large organizations, obviating the need for individual entrepreneurs.
Until the s, this idea was widely accepted in corporate America, and certainly in the defense industry. In America today, capitalism is entrepreneurial: our economy is defined by individuals failing or succeeding on the strength of their ideas.
Crucially, the military has not recognized this shift. It still treats each employee as an interchangeable commodity rather than as a unique individual with skills that can be optimized. The most blatantly anti-entrepreneurial aspect of the Army is the strict time-in-service requirement for various ranks. Consider the mandatory delay for becoming a general. Active-duty officers can retire after 20 years of service.
But to be considered for promotion to general requires at least 22 years of service, and that applies to even the most talented and inspiring military officer in the nation. John Nagl might have been that officer. His book, Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife , anticipated the kind of insurgency warfare America was likely to face in the new century, and it proved a prescient warning as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on. But the surge was more than just the 30, or so additional soldiers and marines who were deployed.
In , Nagl hit the year mark, and what happened? He retired. Since he was not yet a full colonel, let alone a general, it was clear that he could be more influential as a civilian. Had he stayed in the Army, odds are he would have been a career colonel, or a professor at the Army War College.
While I assumed the loss of Nagl would be seen as an outrage within the military, most officers I spoke to shrugged it off as typical. I asked the survey respondents to grade different aspects of the military in terms of fostering entrepreneurial leadership, using a standard Athrough-F scale.
Formal training programs and military doctrine also got good marks. Barron said the rule brings with it great potential to recruit highly skilled, mid-career civilians into critical skills gaps. But it also could present a shock to other officers whose promotions are suddenly overtaken by complete outsiders to the military community. Will the services use it?
None of the changes are mandatory, meaning service officials could completely ignore the ideas. Exactly when the changes will go into effect remains unclear. Senate lawmakers are expected to finalize the measure and send it to President Donald Trump for his signature next month.
But Korb said the changes are already well overdue. But this is where the 21st century military is heading. He has covered Washington, D. Your Military. Jul 25, The military's officer promotion system will get its most significant reforms in decades. Juan A. Key House lawmaker wants another look at 'Force of the Future' The House Armed Services Committee chairman says some of the controversial personnel reforms could help military readiness.
Carter: New generation needs new military personnel system Defense Secretary Ash Carter told troops and veterans Tuesday that he's looking at some large-scale reforms for the military's personnel system, but that careers in uniform should remain distinct because not all civilian-sector solutions will fit the By Andrew Tilghman. More In Your Military. Congress looks to improve military vehicle safety Michael McDowell, an advocate for increased training safety in the military, said he has worked with Congress to get six amendments added to the National Defense Authorization Act to improve training safety and hopefully save lives.
Marine-turned-kingpin pleads guilty in drug trafficking case An indictment said Angel Dominguez Ramirez Jr.
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