rickair7777

The draft hasn't been necessary for a very long time. While it would serve a societal purpose (turning certain simpering millennials into men), I'd prefer to serve in a volunteer force.

CERTAIN military jobs are special, and they're not all officer jobs. But the people who qualify for those jobs earned it. I did a couple of those jobs, but I didn't get them by winning a lottery...

I've told you before, the problem is your attitude... if you want it, whatever "it" is, go make it happen. Stop complaining about some imaginary privileged class that doesn't exist (in America).

Excargodog

Actually, RIGHT NOW the promotion rate to O-4 approaches 100%. At least in the Air Force.

Air Force announces 100 percent promotion opportunity to major > U.S. Air Force > Article Display

But that absolutely changes constantly with the market. Before 15 years of fighting stupid - trying to win the hearts and minds of people whose culture absolutely doesn't care about such things - the numbers were very different.

When I was first in the Air Force I recall a TSgt who worked in base ops who wore Senior Pilot wings. About three months later, the base had a retirement ceremony for those on that base retiring that month and there he was, wearing a LTC uniform. The story was that he had started out as everyone's fair haired boy, making both O-4 and O-3 below the zone, before getting crosswise with some senior officer, which lead to him being passed over twice before eligible for retirement. With only a couple years to go, he opted to take the reduction to SSGT to remain on active duty. He made TSgt before he had his 20 years in and of course ultimately retired at the highest rank he satisfactorily had served (O-5).

Typically firemen and police can retire at twenty years service, on 50% of the average of their last 2-3 years pay, which can be seriously increased by working overtime and cashing in unused sick pay and vacation during the last couple years. By only modestly gaming the system, they can get their pension up to about 70% of their actual last working salary! oftentimes inflation adjusted. They also typically get lifetime medical care.

It's also sort of a misrepresentation to claim that police and fire personnel have risky jobs. They really don't. They have difficult and often unpleasant jobs but they are rarely if ever anywhere near the top 10 in the Bureau of Labor Statistics annual lists of occupational injuries and deaths and in many states we lose more police to on the job MVAs due to high speed pursuits than die from any other single cause. Typically, ranchers and farmers and, yes, even airline pilots have a higher rate of on the job fatalities, although those "airline pilots" tend to actually be air ambulance pilots if you dig into the stats.

But yeah, if you are going to be career military you accept the fact that for at least 20 years of your life you are going to go where you are told to go and do what you are told to do and that if the proverbial $heiss hits the turbine blades you are considered expendable. Anyone who thinks it's an easy life ought to try it for twenty years.

rickair7777

Navy hasn't fared so well in recent years, < 60% average for aviators if go back a while. As you said it varies with the market, but if you want to stay you need to hustle and compete. If you don't stack up you might get lucky if your timing is right. Or not.

And the market should be very favorable right now... service conditions are poor, moral is low, and the airlines (and everybody else) is hiring.

Bizarre. In the Navy, you either succeed as an officer or go home. There's no option to " downshift" to enlisted and then run out the clock... not even for prior enlisted. I'd prefer to leave enlisted career opportunity for those who committed to that track.

MaxQ

Since this is social media, will toss in my two cents.

CBreezy is correct. In the USA, and just about any other country (in the modern day) the military is an organization that meets socialist criteria.

The country has decided to create a collective manner of providing its military force, as opposed to having a privatized military. It does not exist for profit (for the organization, militaries often exist to create profit, power, influence etc for it's country, but not directly for the organization itself ). It exists and answers to what the leaders view as the national interest, not self serving profit.
If a military starts to create a profit for itself, the world generally views them as a criminal enterprise rather than an arm of defense for it's country.
It is as close to pure socialism as probably exists in the world.

Because the word "socialism" creates all sorts of images in peoples heads, they mindlessly dismiss trying to understand how it fits into the world they live in.
Every even modestly successful country that I can think of is a mixture of socialism and capitalism. Most take a collective approach to areas that benefit society as a whole, (police protection, fire protection, education of children, public parks, libraries, the list is long) while leaving the areas of individual choice to capitalist enterprises.(say, shopping for clothes or a car)

Flogger

The military is not socialist. By nature and function it is fascist. I don't mean that in a derogatory manner, it simply is a fact.

When applied to civilian government, fascism is a bad thing. For the military, it's just about the only way to go.

Please don't make me explain. Just google fascism and the origin of the term. Stop reading at Mussolini. That's when the term got hijacked.