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Five war dogs you’d want in your squad

migration — Fri, 02 Jun 2017 17:35:21 +0000

As a former K-9 handler who worked with both explosives detection dogs and a narcotics detection dog, I have developed a great deal of respect for all military working dogs and their handlers.

My first dog, Marco P707, and I were both new to the career field. We had unknowingly attended K-9 school together: While he was learning how to sniff out drugs and bad guys, I was learning how to work with these amazing animals.

I remember pulling him out of his kennel for the first time, nervous that I would do something wrong or we wouldn’t click. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Marco and I bonded pretty quickly. We learned a lot from one another: I learned that dogs have their own personalities, for instance: Marco was one stubborn dog, who would lay down when I said “sit,” and sit when I said “down.”

I remember the first time we started doing “bite training” — basically teaching the dog commands on when to “get the bad guy” and when to stop the pursuit. My trainer suited up in a big fluffy jacket for protection; Marco had other ideas.

We hadn’t even started the scenario when Marco jumped up and bit him on the butt, where he had zero padding. Worse, Marco didn’t quite have the “stop biting” part down. It took me, the trainer and the kennel master quite some time to get Marco off, luckily leaving only a giant bruise and no serious bite marks.

After a lot of training — and I do mean a lot — and some bonding, Marco and I figured out what we really wanted from one another: He wanted the KongI had in my pocket, and I wanted him to find drugs and bad guys.

Marco and I worked together for about a year; I had him searching rooms off-leash, doing cool tricks and finding real narcotics, but eventually it was time for me to move on to my first explosives detection dog.

I didn’t realize how hard it would be to give Marco’s leash to another handler. After all, we had been together for a year. I was his first handler and he was my first dog.

There are more personal stories I could tell about the dogs I’ve worked with, but instead, here’s a quick look at five other notable military working dogs, or MWDs, across multiple services.

Stubby, wearing his coat and medals.

Photo Credit: Courtesy photo via Air Force

1. Stubby, America’s first war dog

In brief:

A stray dog that wandered into an Army training center in New Haven, Connecticut, and ended up on the front lines of World War I.

What you might know:

A famous mascot upon his return from Europe, Stubby participated in multiple parades, met three presidents, posed for a photo with Gen. John “Black Jack” Pershing and received more than a dozen awards, including a Purple Heart. He reportedly could sense incoming rounds and warn soldiers, and once attacked a German spy sneaking into camp, a tale retold in the dog’s obituary. In the New York Times.

What you don’t know:

Frequently called “Sgt. Stubby,” his biographersaid the rank wasn’t used in media accounts during the dog’s life, and may have been added to his legend posthumously.

What else:

Stubby died in 1926. His coat, covering a cast of the dog, is on displayat the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

A photo of Bak taken by Capt. Andrew Pedersen-Keel. The U.S. Military Academy graduate died March 11, 2013, along with a fellow soldier and the military working dog, while deployed to Afghanistan.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of APK Charities

2. Bak, heroic in Afghanistan

In brief:

A 3-year-old German shepherd made the ultimate sacrifice on a deadly day.

What you might know:

Bak and handler Sgt. Marel Molina, with 93rd Military Working Dog Detachment, 385th Military Police Battalion, 16th Military Police Brigade, were looking for explosives in Afghanistan’s Jalrez district on March 11, 2013, when local forces opened fire on U.S. soldiers in a blue-on-green attack. Molina survived, but Capt. Andrew M. Pedersen-Keeland Staff Sgt. Rex L. Schadlost their lives. Bak died later that day from his injuries, according to an Army news release.

What you don’t know:

Bak and Molina deployed in June 2012. The dog made six “major” improvised explosive device finds while in service, per the Army release.

What else: APK Charities, a nonprofit created by Pedersen-Keel’s parents, notes Bak’s sacrifice on a pageabout the officer’s life.

A passerby takes pictures of newspaper headlines reporting the death of Osama Bin Laden, in front of the Newseum, on May 2, 2011, in Washington, D.C.

Photo Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

3. Cairo, part of the bin Laden raid

In brief:

A member of SEAL Team 6, Cairo was widely recognized after the team’s 2011 mission in Pakistan that put an end to the long-serving al-Qaida leader.

What you might know:

Much like other military working dogs, the Belgian Malinois was trained to stand guard (alerting team members of anyone approaching), as well as in crowd control, sniffing out bombs and discovering booby traps. The dog was part of perimeter security during the mission, according to the New Yorker’s extensive account of the raid.

What you don’t know:

Per the New Yorker’s account, mission plans called for Cairo to enter the building if SEALs couldn’t find bin Laden right away, “to search for false walls or hidden doors.”

What else:

When President Obama met the SEALs responsible for the mission, Cairo was waiting in a separate room, according to the New Yorker. “I want to meet that dog,” the president reportedly said; he did, but the dog’s muzzle stayed on.

Lucca, a retired Marine Corps military working dog, poses during a visit to Camp Pendleton, Calif., on Feb. 29, 2016.

Photo Credit: Lance Cpl. Caitlin Bevel/Marine Corps

4. Lucca, a wounded warrior

Brief bio:

Through 400 patrols, not a single Marine died under Lucca’s service. The dog’s final mission proved costly.

What you might know:

The half-German shepherd, half-Belgian Malinois already had found nearly 40 explosive devices while in service when another find came while off-leash in front of Marines in Afghanistan. But a second, undetected blast went off. Lucca’s handler at the time, Cpl. Juan Rodriguez, “ran past the known IED, applied a tourniquet, and carried Lucca back to the safety of the nearby tree line,” according to a U.S. Central Command news release. The dog lost its left front leg to the blast.

What you don’t know:

The dog served six years on active duty before retiring to a couch in California with Gunnery Sgt. Christopher Willingham. In 2016, Lucca flew to London to receive the Dickin Medal, recognized as the highest valor award for animals and seen by some as the canine equivalent to Great Britain’s Victoria Cross.

What else:

See a video about Lucca from “Inside Edition” here.

Senior Airman Salema Panama and JJackson run through a security vehicle sweep before a presidential mission at Joint Base Andrews, Md., on June 1, 2010.

Photo Credit: Bobby Jones/Air Force

5. JJackson, everyday Air Force hero

Brief bio:

He may not have the media pedigree of the rest, but as one of “JJ’s” former handlers put it, “I knew immediately that there was something about him, I just didn’t know what.”

What you might know:

The dog’s picture is part of the tribute to those who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.

What you don’t know:

One of JJ’s missions in Iraq had a rough start, but an impressive ending. From then-handler Harvey Holt: “We landed a Chinook literally next to the main house and they never heard us because of the extreme wind that night. JJackson was the last off. We had [night-vision goggles] on and there was no depth perception. We thought they landed but they were actually three feet off the ground. Needless to say, JJ and I went face-first into the dirt as the Chinook took off. JJ then found a man hiding in an abandoned bus that we all missed. Saved our ass again.”

What else:

JJ received multiple awards for his time on duty, including the Army Commendation Medal. In November, 2014, JJ had a memorialservice in his honor when he passed away at age 11 from health complications. More on the dog’s story

here

AMERICA’S MILITARY: A conservative institution’s uneasy cultural evolution

migration — Sun, 21 Dec 2014 20:11:32 +0000

&lt;!–iframe–&gt; Then he broke with one of the military’s most deeply rooted traditions and vowed to lift the ban on women serving in combat.

And the commander in chief has aggressively sought to change military culture by cracking down on sexual assault and sexual harassment, problems that for years were underreported or overlooked.

Obama is an unpopular president in the eyes of the men and women in uniform. Yet his two-term administration is etching a deep imprint on the culture inside the armed forces. As commander in chief, he will leave behind a legacy that will shape the Pentagon’s personnel policies and the social customs of rank-and-file troops for decades to come.

For Obama’s supporters, the cultural changes he’s overseeing are on a level with President Truman’s 1948 order that desegregated the military and put it at the forefront of the national push for racial equality.

But to his critics, his moves amount to heavy-handed social engineering that erode deep-seated traditions and potentially undermine good order and discipline.

And for the troops in today’s career force, the wave of changes to deep-seated policies and attitudes can be jarring.

“It’s a very different Army than the one I came in to,” said Sgt. 1st Class Eric Rexilius, who joined the Army 21 years ago and is now a helicopter repairman at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state.

“I personally don’t think it’s a bad change,” he said â€” while acknowledging that among his cohort of older career soldiers, “I’m probably a minority.”

“For most of my peers,” Rexilius said, “it makes them uncomfortable because it’s not what they are used to.”

The long-term effects of Obama’s social policies on the military remain unknown. But one thing is clear: He is a deeper unpopular commander in chief among the troops.

According to a Military Times survey of almost 2,300 active-duty service members, Obama’s popularity â€” never high to begin with â€” has crumbled, falling from 35 percent in 2009 to just 15 percent this year, while his disapproval ratings have increased to 55 percent from 40 percent over that time.

But despite their misgivings about him personally, evidence suggests some quiet acceptance, and even support, for his policy changes.

The greatest cultural shift under Obama may well be the swiftly-growing acceptance of homosexuality in the ranks following the official change in law that took effect in September 2011.

A Military Times poll in 2009 found 35 percent of troops felt that gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve in uniform. Five years later, that figure has jumped to 60 percent.

Similarly, open opposition to homosexuality in the military has collapsed. In 2009, 49 percent of troops felt gays, lesbians and bisexuals should not be allowed to serve. In 2014, such disapproval fell to just 19 percent.

It is “the biggest change in the military’s culture that happened on [Obama’s] watch,” said Richard Kohn, professor emeritus of history and peace, war and defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

During years of intense political debate about gays in the military, the military’s top brass repeatedly voiced firm opposition and warned that such a sweeping change could create a serious morale crisis. But in the three years since the law changed, military leaders have seen virtually no problems.

“We have heard no reporting of the kinds of disruptions that were predicted,” Kohn said. “It has been unsurprisingly smooth. It’s not surprising because military people have always known of gay people and lesbians in their units, and have either accepted them, or abused them based on the quality of their leadership. There’s been a change of public opinion, and the fact that the force is made up largely of young people,” who tend to be more tolerant of homosexuality.”

Petty Officer 2nd Class Nate Bates, a Navy hospital corpsman who is gay, said his co-workers essentially shrugged when they found out.

“It was like no big deal: … ‘Oh, OK, I didn’t know, but we’re still cool,’ ” he said.

The nonchalant reaction was a tremendous relief to Bates, who came out in January because he was about to marry his husband, Wayne, an Army soldier.

“I was nervous, but it had gotten to the point where, ‘I’m getting ready to get married, but I’m not going to hide this person I love,’ ” Bates said. “I just didn’t care what anybody else thinks about it.”

And it’s provided opportunities to increase understanding, Bates said. He cited one friendship with another sailor whom he didn’t think had ever previously had a close friendship with a gay or lesbian person.

Now, “We ask him to hang out, he knows about my husband, he has a girlfriend and is thinking about getting married,” Bates said. “He was asking us, ‘Have you ever thought about adopting?’ It’s normal conversations like that.”

But not every experience has been so positive.

Bates said his Army husband has encountered hostility from his commanders and fellow soldiers since coming out. He said his husband has heard senior noncommissioned officers use homophobic slurs.

His husband, who is in Kuwait on his fourth deployment overseas, hasn’t been picked to go on missions he asked for, he believes because he is gay. And the Bates’ request to be co-located as a legally married couple has been approved by the Navy but held up by the Army.

The final straw came in April, Bates said, when he contracted an unknown illness and ended up in an induced coma. His husband asked his supervisors for permission to come home to help care for Nate, but his request was denied. Particularly aggravating, Bates said, was the fact that other soldiers in his husband’s unit were allowed to come home for less-urgent events like graduations.

“I was in the hospital seven days, and on convalescent leave another seven days at home,” Bates said. “There was nobody by my bedside that whole time. Because of actions like that, he’s leaving [the Army] within the next year and a half.”

Some gay troops say lingering homophobia in the military still compels them to hide their sexuality while in uniform. And some don’t think they’ll ever be able to come out of the closet as long as they are in the uniform.

“Nothing’s really changed for me” since the don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy was repealed, said a gay master sergeant in the Air Force who asked to remain anonymous. “I think [coming out] would ruin my career.”

The master sergeant said that the end of DADT helped younger troops, who feel more comfortable coming out. But for senior noncommissioned officers, he said, it’s a different story.

“For SNCOs, it’s word of mouth for promotions,” the master sergeant said. “We’ve still got some crusty old chiefs â€¦ on the promotion board, making decisions. It’ll take a few years to get them out.”

He said he’s heard some Air Force chief master sergeants make derogatory, homophobic comments â€” sometimes including slurs â€” about younger airmen who have come out. And if those chiefs knew he was gay, he said, he could kiss goodbye any chances of making senior master sergeant.

Marine Pfc. Anne Creasy talks about being one of the first women to train as an 0311 Marine rifleman.

Army infantry officer Capt. Jerry Wolford talks about military health benefits.

Another major cultural shift under Obama can be seen in the evolving policies on women serving in combat units.

In 2012, the Pentagon set in motion a plan to carefully lift all gender-based restrictions on all military jobs. But the four services have until 2016 to fully end the ban on women in combat units or seek exemptions for specific jobs such as infantry and special operations. It will be at least several years, maybe more, until the full impact of that policy becomes clear.

Yet already the force is slowly coming to accept the change.

From 2011 to 2014, the percentage of survey respondents who felt that all jobs in combat arms units should be opened to women remained unchanged at 24 percent.

But the percentage of troops who felt some combat-arms jobs should be opened up to women â€” while allowing the military to continue to place some jobs off-limits â€” increased from 34 percent to 41 percent, while the percentage of respondents who felt the military should not change its policies excluding women from combat arms units fell from 43 percent in 2011 to 28 percent in 2014.

“I grew up with five sisters, and I know they’re as capable as any man,” said an Army staff sergeant who asked for his name not be used. He is a CH-47 helicopter mechanic who has deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan multiple times and supports having women in combat-arms units. “Women are in harm’s way to start with. It would just change the location of where they’re in harm’s way.”

But others said they see problems â€” both operationally and culturally.

&lt;!–iframe–&gt;

“They didn’t realize you didn’t need to protect” a female soldier, he said. “The chivalry factor is always there. There’s always going to be, out of every 10 guys, five guys who will want to protect her because she’s their little sister. There are three guys who are trying to hook up with her, and there are two guys who hate her and treat her like crap because she won’t hook up with them.”

“For good or for bad, all-male units like the infantry and artillery and tankers, it’s like a seventh-grade locker room,” the captain said. “Some guys, the maturity isn’t there yet.”

He said introducing women into previously all-male units also can cause trouble at home.

“Another problem is the wives,” he said. “Everybody’s OK with an all-male unit until the wives see there’s a fit, ambitious young lady, and you’re going to go overseas with 15 dudes, and I’m supposed to trust that situation? That creates a lot of stress family-wise. No matter what the soldier may or may not be doing, his spouse might be convicting him either way.”

Over time, he believes the military will adjust. But “until it all works itself out, which eventually it will, there’s going to be growing pains,” the captain said.

Marine 2nd Lt. Christopher Fox, a student naval aviator who was a radio operator during his prior enlistment, believes putting women in combat jobs is just a bad idea.

“There are a lot of accommodations that have to be made where females are present,” he said. “It changes the whole dynamic of a unit. I cannot explain to you the drama that centered on females. I had a sergeant that was not only dating one of the females [at his old communications squadron], they were living together. It caused a lot of tension in the shop.”

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel visited female Marines on an infantry training range at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in November. Afterward, he spoke to about 200 mostly male Marines and told them this change reflects the nation’s history.

Hagel noted that the U.S. is a country “that believes strongly that every individual deserves the same opportunities, if you’re capable, if you can qualify, if you can do the job. And we are doing that.”

Capt. Micah Hudson, a Marine Corps Financial Management Officer, talks about recent cultural changes within the Marine Corps.

Army infantry officer Capt. Jerry Wolford talks about military health benefits.

A third cultural shift under Obama is in how the military approaches and deals with the pervasive problem of sexual assault i

n the ranks.

“They’ve just started to get more successful by establishing programs, getting senior leadership to speak out on it, and enforcing bans,” Kohn said. “It’s going to take a lot of time and effort, and we’re not going to know for a while the extent to which we’re successful.”

Combatting sexual assault is not only the moral thing to do, Kohn said. As the economy improves and potential recruits have more job opportunities open for them, the military can’t afford to be viewed as a place that does not take sexual assault seriously.

“The military knows it needs to attract the best,” Kohn said. “And if women aren’t going to enlist because they fear assault, it’s going to hurt recruiting.”

Yet the Military Times survey showed some dissatisfaction with the service’s focus on sexual assault. Only about half of respondents believe sexual assault to be a “serious or significant” problem in the military. About 18 percent had no opinion and 31 percent said they they do not believe it’s a significant or serious problem.

Nearly all troops said their unit recently conducted some form of sexual assault training, yet only 48 percent said they believed it was effective.

Some

About 31 percent of troops surveyed were “not sure” whether the training was effective, and 21 percent said it was not effective.

And 16 percent â€” about one in every six or seven troops â€” believe sexual assault training is having a negative effect on military culture.

Army Staff Sgt. Alexander VanArsdall said the military’s sexual harassment and assault prevention training has been “one-sided,” and overly focused on painting men as aggressors and women as victims.

“A common thing among male service members, when they head into the training, is to say, ‘It’s time to learn what a racist, sexist, intolerant bastard I am,’

” VanArsdall said. “That’s what it feels like. We start to get a little indignant and upset, and feel persecuted in our own right.”

Not only does this create a divisive command climate and leave male troops feeling defensive, he said, but it may be backfiring, and result in some troops not putting their training to use when they have an opportunity to intervene and stop a potential sexual assault.

“The more you beat somebody down on something, the more likely they are to say, ‘Screw this,’ and toss it aside,” VanArsdall said. “The less likely they are to be conscious about something â€” check their buddy out, and make sure he’s doing the right thing. They get sick of being browbeat over something they’re not doing.”

He acknowledged that the military has problems with sexual assault and sexual harassment, and that training is needed. But the training has been inadequate in many ways.

“Is there a culture problem in the military? Absolutely,” VanArsdall said. “Yes, this is a discussion we need to have, but the military and the Army’s approach is wrong.”

He noted that sexual assault prevention and response training has almost entirely portrayed sexual assault as a male-on-female crime. The military’s classes should also recognize that male-on-male, female-on-female, and â€” although it’s rarely acknowledged â€” female-on-male sexual harassment and sexual assault.

VanArsdall also said that after the military began seriously acknowledging its sexual assault problem about two years ago, units began requiring troops to attend multiple, redundant courses. First it was twice-yearly, then quarterly, then monthly, or even more frequently than that, which he also thinks prompted some troops to reject the message.

“We literally were having sexual assault prevention and response classes every single week â€¦ for a good two or three months,” VanArsdall said. “It was the exact same training, the exact same words. After a while, people start to tune it out. It was in one ear and out the other, just checking a block.”

Things have improved lately, he said. His new unit has one annual block of training, as well as additional quarterly training sessions, which he said seems about right.

And the training classes are starting to become more interactive. He said the sessions used to amount to little more than watching a basic video or PowerPoint powerpoint presentation. Now, he said, the classes feature interactive videos that walk troops through different scenarios, pause along the way, and give troops several options to choose from.

Former Army Sgt. Ralph Demaree, who recently retirerd, thinks the increased focus on sexual assault has created a double standard where accusations against enlisted troops are punished more swiftly than those against officers â€” a phenomenon often described as “different spanks for different ranks.”

“If there’s an accusation against an enlisted soldier â€¦ everyone beats down on him,” Demaree said. “Some form of action will be taken against him before any investigation is completed. If it’s an officer, everything’s hush-hush.”

Demaree said he feels strongly that the military needs to treat all accusations equally.

“Regardless of how high they go up, it needs to be exactly the same, whether it’s a private just coming in or a general.”

VanArsdall said it’s important to have strong, effective sexual assault and prevention training not only for young male troops, but also for young female troops. He said he has intervened in some situations where a female troop didn’t recognize she was being harassed or assaulted.

He intervened in one encounter in 2013 during a joint training environment, where a young male Marine on a break began telling a young female sailor that he had a stain in the groin area of his uniform. The male Marine began essentially straddling the female sailor on a bench while she laughed, at which point VanArsdall intervened and told them that wasn’t appropriate.

“Her reaction was, ‘No big deal, he’s just playing,’ ” VanArsdall said. “I was kind of shocked by her response, especially after the training we try to give them. But that was just the one time I saw it. How often does that go down when I’m not around? How often did he do this, and [a female troop] thought, ‘He’s just playing?’ That’s the culture we need to stamp out.”

Staff writers Andrew Tilghman, Hope Hodge Seck, David Larter and Michelle Tan contributed to this story.

Army Sgt. 1st Class Gregory Pettigrew said before November’s midterm election that he felt feels like he should vote, in the midterm elections on Nov. 4, but that he was completely dissatisfied with the ballot options on the ballot.

But he’s completely dissatisfied with the options on the ballot.

“I just feel like all politics goes back to money,” the 32-year-old soldier said. “It seems like all the [congressional] debate now is completely disconnected from reality. They don’t really seem to care about how their decisions impact us.”

He’s not alone in that opinion. Results of the most recent annual Military Times Poll of more than 2,200 active-duty troops show growing frustration with gridlocked congressional politics, mirroring low approval ratings for national lawmakers in recent polls.

More than one-third of readers who responded to the Military Times Poll said that neither Democrats nor Republicans have been a strong advocate for the military, and 44 percent think both major political parties have become less supportive of military issues in recent years.

Only 12 percent believe both parties have the armed forces’ best interests at heart.

But unlike many dissatisfied voters who decry the disconnect in Washington politics, most Military Times readers say decisions made by congressional lawmakers have a direct impact on their readiness and morale.

That makes rhetoric on pay raises, training policies and budget cuts even more personal for service members like Pettigrew, a 13-year veteran stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

“Congress is responsible for keeping us at reasonable pay and funding levels so we can do our job,” he said. “But from their comments, I don’t know if they have any regard for the things we do every day.”

One Air Force lieutenant colonel who responded to the poll but did not want to be identified said field combat and medical training exercises have dropped sharply because of funding trims, leading to worries among his airmen about their readiness for future missions.

And a Navy master-at-arms stationed in Europe who also asked to remain anonymous, said his sailors often don’t have the spare parts readily available to repair the harbor security vessels they man.

Both blamed congressional infighting for the shortfalls.

Shifting loyalties

The loss of faith in lawmakers comes at a time when troops are less likely to identify with either major political party.

In the last nine years of the Military Times Poll, the percentage of respondents who consider themselves Republican has slowly dropped, from nearly half of those surveyed in the late 2000s to just 32 percent this year. Increasingly, readers are more likely to describe themselves as libertarian (9 percent) or independent (28 percent).

Likewise, readers who described themselves as “very conservative” have remained steady over the years, but “conservative” respondents have dwindled as well â€” down to 29 percent from a high of 41 percent in 2011.

Democrats and liberal readers make up about 8 percent of the poll respondents.

National polls of veterans have shown a strong preference for Republican candidates over Democratic hopefuls, although not as wide a gap as shown in the Military Times Poll. But they have also shown the same strong affinity for the “independent” label, more so than voters without military experience.

Army Sgt. 1st Class Gregory Pettigrew

“The military follows national trends but lags and skews conservative,” he said. “The libertarians’ sensibility fits with some of the military’s profile more naturally, particularly the ‘don’t tread on me’ kind of mentality.”

Army Maj. Wayne Lacy describes himself as a libertarian but said he has seen some of his fellow soldiers gravitate away from the Republican Party line and toward tea party candidates.

But the 45-year-old staff officer at North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado Springs, Colorado, sees that as a subtle shift more than a philosophical change in troops’ politics.

“After 25 years, I think it’s fair to say most of the force remains fairly conservative in their values,” he said.

Feaver concurred, saying he doesn’t see “a tidal wave of libertarianism” in the military. Instead, it’s a reflection of the same political frustration nationwide, indicated in a recent Gallup Poll that had fewer than one in five Americans approving of Congress’ job performance.

Politics as usual

When the new Congress is seated in January, lawmakers will immediately face a host of military issues: sequestration, Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria, lingering Veterans Affairs Department access problems, military pay and retirement reform.

All are issues that the current Congress has struggled to deal with, despite repeated promises of supporting the troops and keeping the nation secure.

Marine Lt. Col. Amy McGrath, a political science instructor at the Naval Academy, said she thinks the political infighting doesn’t affect most troops’ ability to do their jobs, but it does weigh on their minds, especially those of her students.

“They don’t have a framework of reference because they haven’t seen it yet,” she said. “I spent a year on Capitol Hill as a congressional fellow. … The fact that they can’t come together, it’s all politics. It’s not one side wanting to cut.”

Pettigrew said the October 2013 government shutdown and preceding shutdown threats caused major concern among his fellow soldiers, especially amid rampant rumors of paycheck delays. That only increased his dissatisfaction with the state of national politics.

President Obama gets similar low support from Military Times Poll respondents, with 55 percent disapproving of his performance as commander in chief.

Even support for the tea party was spotty, with just 13 percent of readers saying they back nearly all tea party candidates and 34 percent saying they never back the conservative offshoot.

Despite mixed feelings about national candidates, military voters in recent years have been more engaged than their civilian peers. According to statistics from the Federal Voting Assistance Program, the number of troops voting in recent presidential elections has stayed around 55 percent, just below national rates, and around 45 percent in midterm elections, about 8 percentage points above civilian rates.

Despite his misgivings, Pettigrew said before the midterm election that he probably would will be one of those participating military voters.

“I don’t particularly like my choices,” the self-proclaimed independent voter said. “But I still really need to vote.”

Staff writers Andrew Tilghman, Hope Hodge Seck, David Larter and Stephen Losey contributed to this report.

&lt;!–iframe–&gt; Those are among the key conclusions of our special report on America’s military, “A force adrift: How the nation is failing its troops and veterans.” This series was built upon an exclusive survey of almost 2,300 active-duty troops. Included are firsthand accounts from soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines on how they’re coping with a relentless operational tempo, deep cuts in end strength, a growing workload and shrinking compensation.

The series reflects a stunning reversal of fortune for troops who only a few years ago were regularly rewarded with big pay raises, new benefits and well-deserved public adulation for their service.

Yet for all the flag waving and political grandstanding while the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan raged at full tilt, this latest postwar period seems to be bringing an awkward and uncomfortable reprise to the fore.

As in past post-war periods, the troops now are being regarded as a budgetary burden rather than the national security backbone that must be continuously maintained at robust levels of manpower, training, readiness and compensation. Time and again, the nation has had to endure the painful lesson that it is far more costly, and dangerous, to adopt a “boom and bust” model in which the military is allowed to degrade between conflicts.

The morale crisis revealed by Military Times’ survey sounds a warning that we are seeing this scenario yet again, as lawmakers and the nation renege on their wartime vows of support for the 1 percent of our citizenry who volunteer to serve in uniform.

&lt;!–iframe–&gt; McCain, likely to lead the Senate Armed Services Committee in the new Republican-controlled Congress, said the situation “requires immediate attention and action” by the White House, Pentagon and Congress.

In the near term, two festering issues loom if Pentagon leaders hope to thwart a worsening internal crisis: the legacy of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the future of military compensation.

Military Times’ survey indicates top officials will find it a big challenge to address the enormous cynicism and pessimism among troops about the wars in which they were asked to sweat and bleed for more than a decade.

The percentage of troops who feel the war in Afghanistan ultimately will be viewed as a success has taken a nosedive since 2007. Similarly, only 30 percent of respondents feel the eight-year Iraq War was a success. And when we asked whether the U.S. should send a large force of combat troops back to Iraq to fight Islamic State militants, 70 percent of survey respondents said no.

The pessimism about Iraq is especially understandable; troops have spent years listening to senior leaders tell them Iraq was emerging as a stable democracy, its army a reliable ally in the fight against Islamic extremism. Just a few years later, both notions turned out to be spectacularly wrong.

“The junior folks have a right to question their leaders and say, ‘Hey, you told me to do this U.S.-led counterinsurgency, and it didn’t work. What the heck?’ They want to know why they were told to do all the dumb stuff they were told do,” said retired Army Lt. Gen. Daniel Bolger, who commanded troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan â€” and who took a stab at addressing those questions in his controversial new book titled “Why We Lost.”

Indeed, Congress just approved, at the request of the Pentagon and the White House, a 1 percent basic pay raise the for the troops next year â€” the second straight year of such a raise, constituting the two smallest annual increases in the 41-year history of the all-volunteer force. And for icing on the cake, they also approved a cut in housing allowance rates for troops who live off base.

In February, more earthquakes may come with the arrival of the final report and recommendations from the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission.

The last time the Pentagon and Congress allowed the value of military compensation to erode significantly, troops responded with their feet, creating a major recruiting and retention crisis in the late 1990s that took years to reverse.

In this latest postwar era â€” even as new threats spark around the world â€” the nation simply cannot afford to watch its military get taken over that cliff again. And with all that’s asked of it, America’s military certainly deserves better.

About 70,000 subscribers received e–mail invitations to participate. Others were recruited via social media. In total, about 10,000 respondents completed the survey, including 2,299 who identified themselves as current active-duty personnel.

The sample is not a perfect representation of the military as a whole; it over-represents soldiers, officers and noncommissioned officers, and under-represents junior enlisted personnel. However, it is representative of the more senior and career-oriented members of the force who run the military’s day-to-day operations and carry out its policies.

After the survey’s completion, Military Times reporters spent several months interviewing dozens of active-duty survey respondents, speaking with them in detail about their views on military life today. In some instances, service members asked not to be identified so they could speak more candidly about military policy, senior leaders and political views.

Military Times has conducted a similar survey routinely for the past 10 years. Survey data cited from years prior to 2014 are based on those survey results. This is the only long-term, independent tracking survey of its kind.

The voluntary nature of the survey, the dependence on e-mail and the characteristics of Military Times readers may affect the results. Statistical margins of error commonly reported in opinion surveys that use random sampling can’t be calculated for this survey.

Readers or researchers with questions about the methodology and analysis may contact staff writer Andrew Tilghman at atilghman@militarytimes.com.

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AMERICA’S MILITARY: Were the wars worth the cost?

migration — Mon, 15 Dec 2014 17:47:50 +0000

A soldier assigned to the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, provides security during a live-fire exercise at Forward Operating Base Thunder in Paktia province, Afghanistan, on April 12.

Photo Credit: Capt. John Landry/Army

Personally, many troops simply are tired of deploying there. Professionally, many wonder what the 13-year war really accomplished.

“I don’t think we learned anything because we are still fighting the same damned people,” said Navy Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Don Bradshaw, stationed at Camp Pendleton, California.

Bradshaw’s sentiments are widely shared across the force. Pessimism about the U.S. mission in Afghanistan has grown steadily during the past several years, and today a majority of the force thinks the war’s aims were unfulfilled, according to a recent Military Times survey.

For the past seven years, Military Times has asked thousands of active-duty service members the same question: “In your opinion, how likely is the U.S. to succeed in Afghanistan?”

The number of troops expressing optimism — responding either “very likely” or “somewhat likely” — has taken a nosedive to 23 percent this year, from 76 percent in 2007.

In the eyes of many who served there, the mission in Afghanistan is ending ambiguously.

“I don’t know that we can say we won, I don’t know we can say we lost either,” said Army Maj. Wayne Lacy, an artillery officer who deployed to Afghanistan in 2004.

The black-and-white issue of winning and losing is not something most service members dwell on. Instead, the conversation among military professionals is more nuanced.

“What actually comes up is more the question of what our goal in Afghanistan was, not so much, ‘Did we win or did we lose?’ or ‘Should we stay or should we be pulling out?’ The question I hear is about what we as a nation intended to accomplish,” Lacy said.

Meanwhile, billions of U.S. tax dollars went to build up infrastructure to improve the Afghan economy — efforts often hobbled by corruption and ineffective planning. At times, the U.S. military helped eradicate Afghanistan’s primary cash crop, opium, but at other times, the official policy was to permit opium production precisely because it was so vital to the country’s economy.

For the troops who deployed there repeatedly, the shifting goals became confusing.

“Initially, our goal was to go find bin Laden, that was the impression that most of us had. We accomplished our mission. But then all the other stuff? How much do we need to be responsible for another nation? If we are somehow responsible, then for how long are we responsible?” Lacy said.

Many defense experts in Washington have criticized President Obama’s plan to keep a small contingent of U.S. forces in Afghanistan for the next two years and delay withdrawal of all U.S. military personnel until the end of 2016. Those defense experts say that without an ongoing, long-term U.S. military commitment, Afghanistan could again become a safe haven for extremists planning attacks on Americans.

Yet most troops disagree with those defense experts on the value of staying in Afghanistan. In the Military Times survey, only 28 percent of active-duty troops say the U.S. should maintain a troop presence there beyond 2016.

Many troops base their pessimism on firsthand experience with Afghanistan, its culture and its people.

“The men there, they buy women like they’re goats,” said Marine Lt. Col. Amy McGrath, F/A-18 fighter pilot who now teaches political science at the Naval Academy. “I think that we’ve got to get out of there. I think the people there have to figure it out themselves.”

Her work with detainees in Afghanistan in 2009 made her question the enemy’s motivation. “Some of them were just trying to get money and buy a goat. That 14-year-old, he doesn’t care about the United States. But he put the darn bomb under the bridge because he could start a life that way. It’s really complicated.”

Some troops question the way the wars were managed by senior leaders. Bradshaw, the Navy corpsman who deployed several times to both Iraq and Afghanistan, said he was frustrated by the conservative rules of engagement imposed due to concerns about civilian casualties.

“At one point, the Marines couldn’t shoot unless they were shot at first. That added to the body count, and I’m the one that has to go try and patch them up,” Bradshaw said. “I’m not sure who was to blame, whether it was the military leadership or politicians that tied their hands, but I lost a lot of Marines because of the ROE.”

Many troops’ views of Afghanistan and Iraq are intertwined, and pessimism about the latest Iraq mission also is widespread. Some About 70 percent of the active-duty troops surveyed said the U.S. should not send a significant number of ground troops to Iraq to support Baghdad’s fight against the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

“We can stay there until the end of time and not be successful in either one of those countries,” said one Army staff sergeant who has deployed to both as a helicopter mechanic.

“Change does not come from without, it comes from within. If the people don’t want it, it’s not going to happen. They have to want it for themselves,” said the staff sergeant, who asked not to be identified. “They’re simple country people who’ve lived the same way for the last 5,000 years. They have no need for modernization. They couldn’t care less who’s in control as long as they get to live their lives. All the education they need teaches them how to maintain the land so they can grow their crop next year.”

In total, 2,354 U.S. troops died in Afghanistan between the October 2001 invasion and Dec. 8 ceremony that lowered the flag at NATO’s International Security Assistance Force’s Joint Command and formally ended its deployment — although the U.S. military plans to have up to 10,800 troops in Afghanistan through 2015.

Many troops will be glad to see the mission officially end in the hopes that number will not be ticking upward.

“Truth be told, I couldn’t be happier,” said Marine Gunnery Sgt. Geoffrey Barisano, a 37-year-old Marine who’s deployed to Afghanistan four times as an aviation ordnanceman. “None of our boys are going home in a box anymore and that’s a good feeling.”

Yet the end of the war brings a hint of disappointment to certain troops.

“There’s a really selfish Marine side of me that always wants a war because I want something to do,” said Marine 2nd Lt. Christopher Fox, 28, who has prior enlisted service.

“I think it’s good that the war [in Afghanistan] is winding down,” Fox said. “As always, the Marines are going to do what they’re told to do to the best of their ability. If it so happens that there isn’t really a military solution to a particular problem, that’s not on us. And that pretty much sums up Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Staff writers Reporters Hope Hodge Seck, David Larter, Steve Losey and Michelle Tan contributed to this story.

From July 8 through Aug. 7,

2014,

Military Times conducted a voluntary, confidential survey of readers who include active-duty, National Guard and reserve component service members as well as military veterans, retirees and spouses.

About 70,000 subscribers received e

–

mail invitations to participate. Others were recruited via social media. In total, about 10,000 respondents completed the survey, including 2,299 who identified themselves as current active-duty personnel.

The sample is not a perfect representation of the military as a whole; it over-represents soldiers, officers and noncommissioned officers, and under-represents junior enlisted personnel. However, it is representative of the more senior and career-oriented members of the force who run the military’s day-to-day operations and carry out its policies.

After the survey’s completion, Military Times reporters spent several months interviewing dozens of active-duty survey respondents, speaking with them in detail about their views on military life today. In some instances, service members asked not to be identified so they could speak more candidly about military policy, senior leaders and political views.

Military Times has conducted a similar survey routinely for the past 10 years. Survey data cited from years prior to 2014 are based on those survey results. This is the only long-term, independent tracking survey of its kind.

The voluntary nature of the survey, the dependence on e-mail and the characteristics of Military Times readers may affect the results. Statistical margins of error commonly reported in opinion surveys that use random sampling can’t be calculated for this survey.

Reporters and researchers with questions about the methodology and analysis can contact staff writer Andrew Tilghman at

atilghman@militarytimes.com

AMERICA’S MILITARY: The crushing deployment tempo

migration — Sun, 14 Dec 2014 16:50:48 +0000

Army paratroopers sit in an Air Force C-17A Globemaster III before an airdrop during a joint operational access exercise (JOAX) at Pope Air Force Base, N.C., Feb. 9, 2011. JOAX is a joint Army and Air Force training exercise held to practice large-scale personnel and equipment airdrop missions. (DoD photo by Staff Sgt. Greg C. Biondo, U.S. Air Force/Released)

Photo Credit: Staff Sgt Greg C. Biondo/Air Force

After four deployments in five years, he was making one more.

The chief had been on four deployments with his last two commands, which included the heavily deployed aircraft carrier Carl Vinson. Now he was assigned for a year to a cruiser out of San Diego, a short tour that his detailer and the boat’s top enlisted leader had assured him would not include another deployment.

But maintenance problems, budget cuts and manning shortfalls have played hell with Navy schedules. Ships have been forced to make often unplanned and ever-longer deployments as the service tries to catch up. One ship wasn’t ready, so the chief’s ship got the call.

“I came home, my wife came back from work and the first thing I said was ‘Honey, I want to sit down and talk about something,’ ” said the chief, who asked that his name not be used. “And she knew immediately: ‘You’re going, aren’t you?’ “

He had told his wife only what he’d been told — that he wasn’t making any more deployments, that the billet he signed up for was short-term. Coming up on the 20-year retirement mark, he had assured her that his days of deploying were over.

“She was kind of left holding the ‘Well, I thought’ bag,” he said. “And that bag gets heavy real quick. That’s when things get bad … angry tears, spiteful words. She’ll say, ‘You said this and you said that,’ and what am I supposed to say? That’s the way it was supposed to be, and now it’s not.”

Thirteen years of high-intensity ground combat comes to a close in December. But many troops across the force are still grinding like it’s 2009, with individuals seeing very little, if any, decline in the overall operational tempo.

And with both budgets and force size shrinking, many service members say they are doing the same amount of work with fewer people and less money.

About 38 percent say it’s unchanged, and only 14 percent say they feel less busy compared to with five years ago, when deployments peaked for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

No one single overseas operation consumes today’s force, yet new and disparate missions continue worldwide. The newly named Operation Inherent Resolve that is drawing the U.S. military back into Iraq is only the latest example.

Thousands of soldiers are deploying to West Africa to help fight Ebola. And thousands more are now operating in and around Eastern Europe in an effort to deter Russian military aggression.

Supporting the relatively small number of boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan will continue to require massive support from troops in other parts of the U.S. Central Command region.

And the Pentagon brass are not giving up on their 2012 plans to “pivot” the national security strategy to the Asia-Pacific region, where all four services are doing more low-intensity operations that keep the U.S. force present and training with allies in the region.

For the Navy chief, and tens of thousands of service members like him, the end of the war in Iraq and the winding down of the war in Afghanistan have offered no respite from difficult conversation at the kitchen table about yet another deployment.

Faced with a growing array of disparate assignments, many troops feel a sense of force-wide mission creep that creates a sometimes tenuous link between their traditional training and the missions the military is now undertaking.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel directly addressed that point on a recent trip to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, when he spoke to soldiers getting ready to deploy to West Africa in support of the mission to help contain the Ebola virus.

“I know the question is obvious: What is our military doing involved in a mission like Ebola? And it’s a legitimate question,” Hagel said on Nov. 17 in a town hall setting before any soldier had even raised the issue.

“But you all understand the perils, the threats. … The challenges and threats that face our country in the world today are not just from Islamic fundamentalists or from terrorists. Yes, that’s a real threat. That’s a threat we are dealing with,” Hagel said. “But pandemic health diseases and pandemic health threats threaten the world. Ebola is part of that overall scope of threats.”

Spc. Zack Stafford, an infantryman with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, said he’s trained to fight and is uncomfortable with today’s missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, where a primary task for many combat troops is training locals and adhering to high-level policies that restrict direct ground-level engagement.

“With infantry units, we need to go over there and try to kill the enemy, not try to be friends with them,” said Stafford, 28. “Our mission right now is not really suited to my kind of unit. But you know, we’ll do what we are told to do.”

When asked if he wants to go back to Iraq to confront the extremists known as the Islamic State, he said he would welcome a new combat deployment — but he’d also prefer a mission that is clear-cut and unambiguous.

But as Hagel told the troops at Fort Campbell, today’s military plays a far wider role in the world than simply as a combat force.

“We have, in our enterprise, unique capabilities that no other institution in the world has,” he said. “You understand that better than anyone. You’re a part of that.”

The end of major combat operations and a shift to nontraditional missions is placing new and unique pressure on the special operations community. While the Pentagon’s planners are studiously avoiding large-scale deployments of ground troops, the small teams of highly skilled men, including Army Special Forces, Navy SEALS and others, are working harder than ever.

“We’re very exhausted from a very high ops tempo,” said an Air Force lieutenant colonel who now serves as a doctor with the special operations forces.

He fears that 13 years of breakneck pace has worn down the nation’s elite warriors. “Special operations is for limited scope, limited time, high-threat, high-risk activities, but not repeated deployments over and over. And that’s how we’re being used,” he said.

Today, special operations troops make up a large percentage of dwindling number of U.S personnel on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are also deployed in dozens of other countries, many in operations that are classified.

The doctor worries that if special operations forces are ground down and decide to leave the service, it’s going to be incredibly tough to replace those highly trained troops. He said he already has seen “more than a few” extremely talented special operators leave because the operational tempo has been too strenuous and placed too much strain on them and their families.

The end of the wars, combined with mounting pressure on the Pentagon’s budget, is forcing the military to make steep reductions in the size of the force. The Air Force is cutting 20,000 airmen this year. The Marines are whittling an end strength north of 200,000 down to 174,000 by 2017.

In the Army, nearly 22,000 soldiers departed in 2014 and its not yet clear when reductions in that service might stop. The Army has shed more than 60,000 soldiers since it began a drawdown in 2010 and faces the possibility of losing 80,000 more by the end of the decade.

As one Air Force captain in the security forces put it: “The overall mission doesn’t change, but the resources you have to accomplish that mission just keeps shrinking.”

An Air Force tech sergeant told Military Times that cuts have whittled his unit from 10 airmen to eight, with two more deploying this year. That means his airmen pull 60-hour work weeks to catch up, which has eaten into morale.

“We’re all pretty ‘Type A,’ high-energy, high-motivation people,” he said. “So we get the job done. We bitch about it a little bit, but we generally do our best. But it is more stressful.”

For the Army and Marine Corps, the force structure that expanded during wartime is now contracting, leaving plenty of work for those who remain.

And while large-scale deployments have slowed, many soldiers feel just as busy as they support smaller missions and catch up on training that was delayed at the peak of the wars.

“It hasn’t changed. … We are not going overseas, but we are going to Fort Stewart, we are going to Texas, we are going to Indiana for different training events,” said Army Staff Sgt. Chris Sandoval, an operations noncommissioned officer for a medical training center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

“All these little things you’ve got going on … take you away from the unit for an extended period of time,” Sandoval said in an interview.

Specific communities are seeing demand for their skills continue to soar. Aircraft mechanics have been especially hard hit. Commanders’ need for deployed aircraft has changed very little as new missions continue to require mobility and a steady flow of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets.

Faced with an aging fleet, thousands of men and women from all four services who are tasked with maintaining aircraft are working overtime to keep planes and helicopters in the air.

Spc. David Potocnik, 33, stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado, with the 4th Aviation Regiment, 4th Combat Aviation Brigade, said the long hours are wearing out him and his unit out.

“If you’re in a flight company, you compare it to a factory worker. You might work night shifts for a month, then you work days. But here, it’s daily. You come in Monday morning, then you’d have a Tuesday night flight, then you come in Wednesday morning. It bounces all over,” Potocnik said.

“People are just burned out,” he said. “They’re just exhausted. They can’t see working these long, horrendous hours, and you don’t have any sort of stability.”

Today’s force is more highly specialized than ever before, and those specialty skills are in near-continuous demand. The force’s corps of explosive ordinance disposal units are often tapped to train allied militaries. Intelligence professionals struggle to keep up with the new data that flows in every day.

In October, the Army summoned hundreds of combat engineers to deploy to West Africa and help fight Ebola. And senior leaders feared that the active component might not be able to handle the first-of-its kind mission, prompting President Obama to authorize mobilization of the National Guard and Reserves if needed.

Many service members watch with alarm as the new mission in Iraq continues to incrementally expand, most recently on Nov. 7 when Obama doubled the number of authorized troops to a total of 3,000.

“We are so tired,” said the aviation machinist mate from California. “It’s kind of a punch in the gut. I’m going back to sea duty and it’s really disappointing that we are going back to Iraq and Syria. I foresee a lot of time away from my family.”

Staff writers Andrew Tilghman, Stephen Losey, Michelle Tan and Hope Hodge Seck contributed to this story.

From July 8 through Aug. 7, 2014, Military Times conducted a voluntary, confidential survey of readers who include active-duty, National Guard and reserve component service members as well as military veterans, retirees and spouses.

About 70,000 subscribers received e–mail invitations to participate. Others were recruited via social media. In total, about 10,000 respondents completed the survey, including 2,299 who identified themselves as current active-duty personnel.

The sample is not a perfect representation of the military as a whole; it over-represents soldiers, officers and noncommissioned officers, and under-represents junior enlisted personnel. However, it is representative of the more senior and career-oriented members of the force who run the military’s day-to-day operations and carry out its policies.

After the survey’s completion, Military Times reporters spent several months interviewing dozens of active-duty survey respondents, speaking with them in detail about their views on military life today. In some instances, service members asked not to be identified so they could speak more candidly about military policy, senior leaders and political views.

Military Times has conducted a similar survey routinely for the past 10 years. Survey data cited from years prior to 2014 are based on those survey results. This is the only long-term, independent tracking survey of its kind.

The voluntary nature of the survey, the dependence on e-mail and the characteristics of Military Times readers may affect the results. Statistical margins of error commonly reported in opinion surveys that use random sampling can’t be calculated for this survey.

Reporters and researchers with questions about the methodology and analysis may contact staff writer Andrew Tilghman at atilghman@militarytimes.com.

AMERICA’S MILITARY: Readiness ‘on a shoestring’

migration — Sat, 13 Dec 2014 15:16:02 +0000

A ride at sunset

Photo Credit: Cpl. Codey Underwood

But beyond the Capital Beltway, at military installations across the country and around the world, the picture seen through the eyes of rank-and-file service members is vastly different.

By and large, most troops say their units are plodding along, business as usual. And they sometimes wonder what all the hand-wringing is about.

“When they talk about readiness … I honestly don’t know they are talking about,” said Sgt. 1st Class Jose Fernandez, an infantryman at Fort Drum in upstate New York, an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran and a married father with 17 years of service.

At his post, Fernandez is not seeing any signs of a readiness problem or budget crunch. Large-scale infantry exercises continue for the soldiers at Drum, and the post is still full of contractors working on new fiber-optic networks and expanded garrison facilities.

“Construction has been going non-stop,” he said.

Fernandez’s views are common across the force. A Military Times survey of about 2,300 active-duty troops finds that three-quarters say readiness in their unit is either good, high or optimal. Only 7 percent described their unit’s readiness level as poor. The results for the four services were roughly similar.

Individually, service members feel mission-ready. When asked whether they agreed with the statement: “I am well trained for my military job,” 78 percent responded positively, down relatively slightly from the 2009 figure of 86 percent, when defense budgets were still soaring.

To be sure, rank-and-file troops might not see the full military readiness picture.

“What the guys from the field see is near-term readiness, readiness for the fight today. They can’t see what readiness might be in five, 10 or 15 years from now when the equipment they are using today may no longer be serviceable,” said Todd Harrison, a military expert with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.

It’s impossible to rely on service members in the field today to provide that long-term readiness picture, he said, adding that ultimately there is no hard definition of readiness.

“The E-8 may see aspects of readiness that an O-8 can’t,” he said.

The survey results are an “interesting data point, but its still a subjective assessment of readiness based on individuals and the limited knowledge that they have.”

Harrison is critical of the military for lacking good metrics to measure readiness.

“We don’t really know enough … to make an assessment one way or the other. When the [service] chiefs talk about how training and maintenance has been cut back, what they don’t talk about is how our performance has declined. That is what we need to hear: Has it declined? We don’t know.”

In March 2013, Congress allowed a law to take effect imposing “sequestration” of defense money, in effect capping the Pentagon budget at levels far lower than previously planned. A deal brokered on Capitol Hill in December 2013 softened the blow of the defense spending caps for 2014 and 2015. Yet many senior officers worry about what will happen in 2016 when that deal expires and the full impact of the law kicks in again.

Maj. Gen. Ted Martin, commander of the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, one of the Army’s largest training facilities, said he sees no significant impact from budget cuts at the moment.

In 2013, budget pressures forced NTC to cancel four of its 10 brigade-level, month-long exercises, Martin said in a recent interview. Yet this year, NTC has returned to a full schedule of 10 exercises.

“We are funded … I feel good about the quality of the training we are providing,” Martin said. “It’s the uncertainty about the future that makes it difficult. I don’t know what the future holds. Will we be able to maintain this level of training?”

One pocket of the force where troops express specific concern about readiness is in the aviation community. Many pilots and maintainers worry about an aging fleet that has been used aggressively for a decade and is requiring more money and manpower to stay aloft.

“Airplanes are flying broke,” said one Air Force lieutenant colonel and former fighter pilot, referring to planes with problems that are not severe enough to ground them but increase the safety risks for pilots.

“These airplanes are flying into uncharted territory. … I’m concerned. Just like if your car was old, you’d be concerned that the risks go up of something going wrong. Though planes get much more maintenance, there’s only so much you can do.”

Similar complaints are heard in naval aviation. “We’re on a shoestring,” said an aviation machinist’s mate first class who fixes F/A-18 Super Hornets in California.

He complained that it can take more than a month to get the right part for the aging F/A-18 fleet. But he and the sailors in his shop have learned how to work around the traditional logistics supply system with a process known as “cannibalization” — fixing broken jets by removing working parts from the grounded aircraft that are due for a complete overhaul.

“We make do,” he said.

A Zivco Edge 540 performs a demo near 16th Street in Ocean City during the Ocean City Air Show on Saturday, June 18.

Marine Lt. Col. Colin Smith, commander of a combat engineer battalion, said his battalion is well-prepared for its core mission now. But he worries that readiness will take a big hit next year.

“We haven’t felt the pinch in training or ammo yet, but we’ll see it,” Smith said. “The immediate impacts of sequestration is in lack of funding for facilities and future infrastructure projects. Fixing a barracks that was supposed to last 15 years … there’s not the money to fix it.”

Smith said his own unit’s building is Spartan because budget cuts forced the Marine Corps to halt the construction project before completion. “The building is shiny and clean on the outside and on the inside, I have a warehouse instead of an office,” Smith said. “Thankfully, in SoCal, it’s sunny.”

Fernandez, the soldier, said the biggest readiness issue he sees is a shrinking force, which is affecting the Army most dramatically.

“The only real place we’ve seen any of the budget cuts is in people losing their jobs,” he said, noting that many noncommissioned officers are anxious about getting promoted before up-or-out rules end their Army careers.

Readiness concerns in Washington seem especially abstract for the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and Marines in the combat arms career fields.

“We’re in the infantry — all we need is an open field and I can train my guys to get done what needs to be done to make sure our soldiers are getting ready,” Fernandez said. “We make do with what we have and I think it’s been like that forever and ever.”

Staff writers Hope Hodge Seck, David Larter, Steve Losey and Michelle Tan contributed to this story.

A Zivco Edge 540 performs a demo near 16th Street in Ocean City during the Ocean City Air Show on Saturday, June 18.

About 70,000 subscribers received e-mail invitations to participate. Others were recruited via social media. In total, about 10,000 respondents completed the survey, including 2,299 who identified themselves as current active-duty personnel.

Readers or researchers with questions about the methodology and analysis may contact staff writer Andrew Tilghman at

atilghman@militarytimes.com

AMERICA’S MILITARY: A force adrift

migration — Sun, 07 Dec 2014 20:16:16 +0000

But for Marine Sgt. Zack Cantu and other service members, it’s a total morale killer. For many of them, particularly the young grunts and others in combat arms specialties, it’s the realization that they may never go into battle for their country and their comrades.

“Most people in [the Marine Corps] are in because of the wars,” said the 25-year-old Cantu, a former infantryman at Camp Pendleton, California. Cantu has retrained as a telephone system and computer repairer, a specialty more likely to survive as the service downsizes.

“Now, everyone’s coming to the realization, ‘It’s probably not going to happen for me,'” he said.

The wars against America’s enemies gave troops like Cantu a noble purpose. Their training had focus, their sacrifices were appreciated by a largely grateful nation. That gratitude was reflected from the White House to the citizen in the street, all of whom heaped praise upon military members for their service.

Congress lavished generous pay increases and expanded benefits on them while spending deeply to provide the gear and weapons they needed. Recruiters raced to grow the size of the services, and society vowed to never again undervalue the 1 percent of the country who stepped forward to keep them safe.

Today, however, that gratitude seems to be dwindling. The services have weathered several years of deep cuts in funding and tens of thousands of troops have been unceremoniously given the boot. Many still in uniform and seeking to retire from the military fear the same fate, as those cuts are not yet complete.

A Military Times survey of 2,300 active-duty troops found morale indicators on the decline in nearly every aspect of military life. Troops report significantly lower overall job satisfaction, diminished respect for their superiors, and a declining interest in re-enlistment now compared to just five years ago.

Today’s service members say they feel underpaid, under-equipped and under-appreciated, the survey data show. After 13 years of war, the all-volunteer military is entering an era fraught with uncertainty and a growing sense that the force has been left adrift.

One trend to emerge from the annual Military Times survey is “that the mission mattered more to the military than to the civilian,” said Peter Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University who studies the military. “For the civilian world, it might have been easier to psychologically move on and say, ‘Well, we are cutting our losses.’ But the military feels very differently. Those losses have names and faces attached to [them].”

‘Bare necessities’

According to the Military Times survey, active-duty troops reported a stunning drop in how they rated their overall quality of life: Just 56 percent call it good or excellent, down from 91 percent in 2009. The survey, conducted in July and August, found that 73 percent of troops would recommend a military career to others, down from 85 percent in 2009. And troops reported a significant decline in their desire to re-enlist, with 63 percent citing an intention to do so, compared with 72 percent a few years ago.

Army Spc. David Potocnik is one of the troops who has seen morale in his unit take a hit, though he can’t really put a finger on why. A Black Hawk mechanic with 2nd Battalion, 4th Aviation Regiment, 4th Combat Aviation Brigade, at Fort Carson, Colorado, Potocnik said stress levels in his unit seem to be on the rise, despite a softening deployment tempo. Fellow soldiers, he said, struggle to connect what feel like excessive training and additional duties in garrison with operational readiness and the overall mission.

“There are people who are really motivated, really high-speed … but they don’t seem to be a majority,” he said. “You’d think garrison would be more relaxed, but it’s frantic — for no reason.”

Troops said more stress is created by long-term budget cuts imposed on the force through sequestration — the much-despised but apparently inexorable automatic spending reductions over a decade approved enacted by Congress — and drawdown measures designed to shrink the force. An Air Force captain working in security forces said the fiscal insecurity is taking its toll, causing more workplace exhaustion and frustration. And personal career uncertainty, he said, is driving many of his colleagues out of the service, perhaps earlier than they otherwise would have departed.

“It makes it really hard for folks to build strong résumés for themselves if we can’t provide the opportunities for them, both in and out of the service,” he said. “If they see us pinching pennies, and we can’t afford to send them to school, there’s no long-term stability for them. So at that point, they start to look for a job outside, where you don’t have the additional strain on their family.”

A Navy aviation machinist’s mate first class based in El Centro, California, said operational budget cuts left him and fellow sailors cannibalizing working parts from other aircraft entering phased maintenance so they could repair higher-priority broken jets. Even uniforms are in short supply, he said, as the Navy embarks on what could be a decade of scrimping under sequestration.

“We are on the bare necessities and sometimes not even that. For example, I need new boots but they’ll ask me, ‘How long can you stretch that?'” he said.

Dismal outlook

Survey data show that service members are also feeling pain in their own wallets. Congress this year capped the military pay raise at 1 percent, rather than the 1.8 percent that would have kept pace with average annual growth in private-sector wages. It was the first military pay raise since 1999 that did not at least keep pace with private-sector wages, and it was also the lowest annual military pay raise in 40 years.

In the 2015 defense authorization bill taking shape on Capitol Hill, lawmakers appear headed for a repeat of the 1 percent basic pay bump. In addition, lawmakers have apparently agreed to trim back the housing allowances paid to troops who live off base.

To save money, the Pentagon had sought to roll back the tax-free housing benefit provided to troops by, in effect, making troops pay 5 percent of their housing with out-of-pocket cash. The new deal on Capitol Hill will result in next year’s housing allowance covering 99 percent of estimated costs and troops themselves covering the 1 percent shortfall. Service members are unlikely to see an outright reduction in their housing allowance unless they change duty stations, but rates for troops moving into new areas will be set slightly lower when compared to projected housing costs.

Several services also have cut pay for special duty assignments — such as recruiters, divers, drill sergeants and others — while promotions in some fields slow as competition for jobs during a drawdown heats up. And of course, those troops who have frequently collected hazardous duty and deployment pay over the last decade may now have fewer opportunities to do so.

In 2009, 87 percent of active-duty troops who participated in Military Times’ survey rated their pay and allowances “good” or “excellent.” This year, the figure was just 44 percent. When asked how quality of life might change over the next several years, 70 percent of respondents predicted it would decline further.

A Navy fire controlman chief with 10 deployments said budget fears are contributing to a feeling of distrust and abandonment. “If sailors are worried about not getting paid, how am I supposed to do my job?” he said. “I’m not an effective warfighter if I don’t have the backing of my government at home.”

A pervasive sense of pessimism about the post-9/11 wars may also contribute to the overall feeling of dissatisfaction among troops and a feeling of detachment from the decision-makers who sent them to those fights. Of those surveyed, 52 percent said they had become more pessimistic about the war in Afghanistan in recent years. Nearly 60 percent felt the war in Iraq was somewhat unsuccessful or not at all successful.

Keeping a wary watch

Despite the cloudy outlook, Pentagon officials report recruiting figures are as high as ever across the services. Data for the first quarter of fiscal 2014 showed all the services except the Army Reserve had achieved 100 percent of their recruiting goal or better. Predictably, retention also remains high, officials say, as most services look to natural attrition to meet mandated reductions in force size, and many troops fight to save their place on active duty, in spite of the quality-of-life and budget troubles.

Many of them hang on only because prospects for good civilian jobs have been dismal for many years. And often those who do land good jobs on the outside are those the military can least afford to lose.

Last year, retired Army Lt. Gen. David Barno joined a small chorus of military experts who decry a perceived “brain drain.” Barno wrote for the website Foreign Policy? that the services are losing their most talented junior officers and enlisted leaders to opportunities in the civilian sector because military leadership wasn’t providing them with the right opportunities or fighting hard enough to keep them.

Departing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said all military leaders are watching morale very closely, and for the most part he believes it is holding up.

“The reality is that every day I’m sure is not jolly,” Hagel told the Military Times on Nov. 14. “But morale is critically important for any of us, and any institution to do our jobs right. And we watch it. We are concerned all the time about it, but I think, overall … the morale of our men and women in uniform, our civilians, is high. I know there are different dimensions of that, depending on the force.”

When Hagel made those comments, he was on a visit to Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota — where he was trying to buck up the morale of airmen in the intercontinental ballistic missile community. Over the past year, repeated scandals in ICBM units — drug use, cheating on tests, failing a safety inspection — have forced the Pentagon’s top leadership to focus attention on the community. That included firing several nuclear commanders, finding more money and manpower for ICBM units and taking dozens of measures to improve quality of life for those airmen.

This morale crisis is prompting Air Force officers to give new thought to how procedures and policies can improve or erode morale. For example, Lt. Col David Rickards, the 91st Operations Group deputy commander at Minot, believes commanders should resist the urge to aggressively micromanage from the top down.

“What seems to impact morale the most is empowerment,” Rickards said. “We’re trying to take the decision-making and push it down, so that you’re still accountable, but you also have the authority to do it.”

Just 10 days after his visit to Minot, Hagel resigned under pressure from the White House. The given reasons were vague, leaving many to believe the move only reinforced the impression that the Obama administration had no clear vision for the post-war role for the military.

That’s anything but reassuring to a force that, according to survey results, widely believe the Defense Department, Congress and the president do not have the troops’ best interests at heart.

Tackling intangibles

When it comes to long-term retention, good leadership actually matters more than pay and benefits, said retired Brig. Gen. Thomas Kolditz, a professor and director of the Leadership Development Program at Yale School of Management.

“The traditional wisdom holds [that] what brings people into the service are the tangibles” such as benefits and bonuses,“ Kolditz said. “But what keeps them in the service are the intangibles: the feeling that service matters, good leadership. Retention is more about meaning, leadership and pride.”

Morale is often lower among the lower ranks. One prior enlisted Marine officer, Capt. Micah Hudson, recalls being disgruntled as a young lance corporal in the late 1990s. But that changed as he moved up in rank.

“Lance Corporal Cpl. Hudson could not wait to get out of the Marine Corps,” the captain said, referring to himself years ago. “He didn’t like sitting around and cleaning his rifle and having the gunnery sergeant yell at him all day. So that is part of it.”

“Me, Capt. Hudson, my morale is really high,” he said.

Spc. Zach Stafford, an Army infantryman, discusses morale.

That means training aggressively and strategically, he said, and finding ways to make troops understand they are valued and their jobs are significant. At the same time, he said, leaders should steer clear of overemphasizing minor discipline issues — a common tendency during peacetime. Recent controversy in multiple services over appropriate women’s hairstyles, and the Army’s tightening of its tattoo policy this year, are evidence of that trend, he said.

Leaders also should be conscious of troops who negatively impact morale by denigrating the service of others, particularly those who have not had the opportunity to deploy to a combat zone, he added.

Morale is often lower among the lower ranks. One prior enlisted Marine officer, Capt. Micah Hudson, recalls being disgruntled as a young lance corporal in the late 1990s. But that changed as he moved up in rank.
“Lance Cpl. Hudson could not wait to get out of the Marine Corps,” the captain said, referring to himself years ago. “He didn’t like sitting around and cleaning his rifle and having the gunnery sergeant yell at him all day. So that is part of it.”
“Me, Capt. Hudson, my morale is really high,” he said.

In the Army, some soldiers say sinking morale stems from the Army’s reduced recruiting standards at the peak of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially six and seven years ago, when the service granted waivers for people with criminal records and filled the ranks with not-so-highly-motivated soldiers.

“What you have right now is just a retroactive action of what the Army did by letting in the influx of soldiers when it was quantity, not quality,” said Sgt. 1st Class Jose Fernandez, a 17-year soldier at Fort Drum, New York.

“And now we have a whole bunch of people and they can’t wait to get out. They hate the Army. There’s a lot of negativity,” he said.

Embracing the challenge

Amid the doubt and frustration, there are leaders embracing the challenge of inspiring a postwar force during these lean times.

Capt. Samuel Baumer, the active-duty adjutant for the 4th Marine Logistics Group, a Marine Corps Reserve unit in New Orleans, said morale in his section was at its highest level in months — the result, he said, of new initiatives in which he and enlisted leaders worked to build unit rapport through weekend barbecues and even group community service at organizations like Habitat for Humanity. It all worked to inspire troops to succeed in their own careers, regardless of whether Marines were deploying to combat zones, he said.

“You get meritoriously promoted. You get to go to school. You get to do those things that the Marine Corps is all about,” he said. “Whatever me and my gunny have to do to make sure that [the unit’s Marines] do well and get promoted, that’s what we’re going to do.”

For Cantu, the Marine sergeant at Camp Pendleton, he’s choosing to make the best of a career, even as many colleagues choose to bail. With few deployments in the offing, Cantu will try to land a special duty assignment in an effort, he said, “to be a little more adaptable.”

When it comes to leading Marines through a lean era and what appears to be a nadir in morale, he suggested taking advantage of institutional knowledge from prior eras of war and peacetime.

“You go back to the super senior staff [noncommissioned officers] and officers that were around pre-war time, and you ask them, ‘Hey, how did you guys do it?’ A lot of them said, ‘We had stories, war stories that we would tell,'” Cantu said. “We’re going to have to survive with stories and traditions until the next time we go to war.”

Staff writers Andrew Tilghman, David Larter, Stephen Losey and Michelle Tan contributed to this story.

The height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were fat times for military pay and benefits. Troops were flush with combat cash and other special pays, tax breaks and sometimes six-figure re-enlistment bonuses.

Those who wore the uniform were confident that the nation appreciated their sacrifices. Citizens thanked them for their service in word as politicians did in deed, generously raising military pay and other compensation, year after year.

And the payoff was sky-high morale even though it was a time when troops pulled repeated war tours that separated them from family and friends for long stretches.

Five years ago, a full 87 percent of active-duty respondents to the annual Military Times poll rated their pay and benefits as “good” or “excellent.”

But that’s all changed. Several years of steep cuts in defense spending, troop layoffs and diminished pay raises has left those in uniform shaken, worried whether the military remains a viable career path and whether they can get ahead while in uniform.

In the most recent Military Times poll, just 44 percent of 2,300 active-duty respondents rated their pay and benefits as “good” or “excellent” — a new low.

More than 10 percent say they struggle to pay monthly bills, and at least once during the past year resorted to a high-interest payday loan service to make ends meet.

“I can’t tell you how many sailors and Marines I know who have been in a few years but are still barely making it,” said a Navy hospital corpsman second class stationed at Camp Pendleton in Southern California, where the cost of living is among the highest in the nation.

“They’re still living paycheck to paycheck,” said the sailor, who asked to remain anonymous. “It’s really only after you’ve been in 10 or 12 years when you actually start making money.”

Money spigot tightens

Troops today are pocketing far smaller annual pay raises. The 2014 bump of just 1 percent was the smallest in the 41-year history of the all-volunteer force. That compares with 3.9 percent in 2009 — and 6.9 percent in 2002. Congress may well vote to authorize just another 1 percent in 2015. In the best-case scenario, that might go to 1.8 percent.

On top of that, the once-vast pool of cash that flowed directly into service members’ pockets in the form of combat pays and re-enlistment bonuses has dried up. In 2014, troops received $3.8 billion in special pays and incentive pays, down from $6.1 billion, adjusted for inflation, in 2003, according to VisualDoD, a company that tracks Pentagon spending. For 2015, that budget is expected to fall to $3.5 billion.

And looking ahead, many military families see a future filled with uncertainty. They worry about the Defense Department’s new plan to cut housing allowance rates, which would amount to a direct pay cut for most troops who live off post. The newly minted 2015 defense authorization bill mandates that future allowance rates cover an average of only 99 percent of troops’ housing costs, not the traditional 100 percent. Service members would have to cover that 1 percent shortfall out of pocket.

A Russian war plane takes off on a combat mission at Hemeimeem airbase, Syria, on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2015. Since early morning, Russian combat jets have been taking off from this base in western Syria, heading for missions. (AP Photo/Vladimir Isachenkov)

In addition, troops worry they might not have a job in a few years. And if they do, they wonder if they’ll see the same retirement package provided to previous generations.

Moreover, the survey shows about half of troops say they are “very worried” or “somewhat worried” about their household finances.

An Air Force security forces captain, who asked that his name not be used, said the airmen he works with are stressed because they don’t know if they’ll be cut next as the services draw down in light of shrinking budgets. The airmen also are working longer hours to make up for colleagues who have already been cut.

“You don’t know if you will have a full-time job in a year or three or five because the Air Force keeps cutting bodies,” said the captain, who has 13 years of service. “It adds to family stress. There’s stress across the board for our folks.”

The uncertainty is noticeable in the workplace, the captain said.

“When you’re looking at trying to plan for your kids and their education and being able to provide for your family in the near and the long term, you can definitely see with some of our folks that it’s wearing on them a little bit,” he said. “Folks are more stressed at work, a little more tired at work.”

Managing expectations

Even troops who have had long careers and planned well are feeling the pain and are making sacrifices on the home front to ride out the downturn in military compensation.

For Washington, D.C., the military’s basic allowance for housing for his rank “is not bad,” he said. “It covers rent and utilities.”

To make that happen, however, “I have to live an hour away.”

Wolford, a prior-enlisted soldier with 19 years of service and three deployments under his belt, works at the Pentagon. He and his family — wife, Victoria, a first sergeant in the Army Reserve, and four kids, two of them still at home — live in Stafford, Virginia, 40 miles south of the Pentagon.

To save money while Victoria finishes her master’s degree to become a teacher, the family relies on coupons and visits the library, and holds off on new movies until they hit DVD.

Wolford, an infantry officer, also has found a way to practice shooting without spending money on ammo.

“We live out in the country now, so we’ve got a crossbow. I don’t have to spend $50 a day on ammo if I want to go shooting,” he said. “I can just walk out into the backyard with a handful of arrows and we can shoot all day.”

The Wolford family is hardly unique.

A staff sergeant who serves as a Chinook mechanic with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment at Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia, said he’s living a minimal lifestyle.

“I don’t have to go without food or anything like that, but I don’t like to live paycheck to paycheck,” said the noncommissioned officer, who asked that his name not be used. “Basically everything I do from one month to the next is all covered, but by the end of the month the paycheck is gone.”

“You’re always waiting for the second week to hit so you can get more money, whether it’s providing something for the children, or right now I’m trying to buy a house,” he said. “It’s hard to put money in the bank and anticipate those [unexpected expenses] when there are already bills. There’s nothing left at the end of the day for savings. It’s all going somewhere.”

The staff sergeant said he sometimes has to use installment loans to make ends meet.

“I still use them, unfortunately. So far, my credit score is still bouncing around, but it’s climbing,” he said. “I’m not a financial genius. [Balancing the budget] is usually a combination of robbing Peter to pay Paul, and planning.”

Spouse income suffers

For the Wolfords, part of the reason for their scrimping goes back to the many moves the family has made for Jerry Wolford’s career — moves that put dents in his wife’s civilian career, he said.

“Before we got married, she lived in Pennsylvania, and she had a career … as an insurance agent,” Jerry Wolford said.

When they married and he got assigned to Fort Hood, she found herself jobless in Texas.

Victoria Wolford eventually landed a job managing the fitness programs on Fort Hood.

Her husband got orders for the Pentagon, and she was uprooted again. “She had to quit Fort Hood, and when we moved up here to Virginia, she began substitute teaching,” Jerry Wolford said.

That pattern is a common concern across the military community. About one in three married service members say their household income has suffered because the demands of a military career make it difficult, or in some cases impossible, for military spouses to find work.

It’s one of the main reasons Victoria Wolford is now working on her master’s degree in teaching, Jerry Wolford said.

“One factor for her going back to school to teach is because it’s portable,” Wolford said. “My wife will finish the first half of her program in December, and she’s doing a career switcher’s program, so she’ll finish the first half and she’ll be able to teach the second half of the year in order to get her provisional license.”

Meanwhile, the family still has a house in the Fort Hood area, and both parents’ cars are paid off — a 2010 sedan and a 1994 Jeep.

They also moved to their current house from one that was closer to work in order to save $1,000 a month in rent, Jerry Wolford said. But that means less time with his family and more time spent slogging through the relentless traffic in northern Virginia.

His wife is the real money-saver, “big into coupons,” Jerry Wolford said.

She’s also in a circle of friends who help each other save, he said.

“You don’t need to buy every movie that comes out. Somebody’s going to buy it. Borrow stuff. Go to the library,” he said. “We have friends who go to the movies every week, and that’s insanely expensive.”

The family also gets creative at home.

“That’s something my wife and I were able to work with the kids, to find stuff around the house and use that to entertain yourself,” he said. “And all of their old toys and stuff like that, we’ve encouraged them to donate to the thrift stores, and we go to thrift stores. When I was younger, you got made fun of when you went to thrift stores. Now, nobody cares.”

Staff writers Andrew Tilghman, David Larter, Stephen Losey and Hope Hodge Seck contributed to this story.

No way — that wasn’t possible, in spite of the medical urgency. Why not? Simply because he was not at his home duty station; rather, he was at Fort Polk, Louisiana, in the field on a monthlong training exercise.

“They just didn’t want to deal with me down there because I wasn’t stationed there,” Stafford recalled in a recent interview. “And my unit didn’t want to send me back. … I was like ‘That’s great, I’ll be in pain the entire month.’ “

One of the most well-known selling points of military service is its health care system. Legions enlist in large part because of that benefit. Many, like Stafford, learn the military’s health-care system sometimes falls short of its reputation. Complaints continually surface in surveys, Pentagon studies and anecdotal conversations: Getting an appointment is very difficult.

In part, that’s due to staffing shortages, especially at smaller military treatment facilities. In town hall meetings that were part of a massive Defense Department review of its health system, 27 percent of all negative comments involved understaffing, coupled with a focus on efficiency and quantity of visits, that put quality at risk. In addition, some treatment facilities have let contracted physicians and nurses go because their military counterparts have returned from deployments or combat.

The most recent annual Military Times readers’ survey of 2,300 active-duty troops shows Stafford is one of many frustrated with the military health system appointment process. Nearly one in four are dissatisfied with getting an appointment at a military hospital or clinic.

Nearly 70 percent said they are “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with the military health program, called Tricare — yet about the same amount said that given a choice, they would rather find health care at private-sector or civilian facilities.

After getting back home to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in September, Stafford waited about a month to see a doctor, who promptly slotted him for surgery a few weeks later in October.

The good news: the tumor was benign.

The bad news: When they sewed him back together, they damaged a nerve bundle in his groin, he said.

Enduring “excruciating” shooting pains that sometimes made walking tough, Stafford spent about eight months trying to get the military health system to fix its screwup.

He tried calling for an appointment to see a doctor at Womack Army Medical Center, but that proved all but useless, he said.

“They don’t always answer the phone. It was easier to just to go up there and wait and hope there’s not a long line of people waiting to schedule an appointment.”

He eventually got one, but his unit’s training demands forced him to reschedule several times.

FILE – In this Tuesday, June 21, 2016 file photo, Japan Self-Defense Force members set up a PAC-3 Patriot missile unit deployed ahead of North Korea’s planned rocket launch at the Defense Ministry in Tokyo. Japan has called North Korea’s nuclear and missile development a “grave and imminent threat” to the region and international security, and criticized China’s increasingly assertive military action in its annual defense report. The report, approved Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2016, by the Cabinet, comes as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government pushes for Japan to take on greater military roles abroad. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi, File)

In June, he finally got a procedure — a “radio frequency ablation” — that ended the pain.

“Once I got in to see an actual doctor, it was OK. But there are so many people here and so few health professionals … it takes a month to see anybody,” he said.

“They’ll just throw pills at you until they can get you in.”

Getting on the calendar

A Pentagon review of the military health system published in October found most military hospitals and clinics meet Defense Department standards for appointment wait times — 24 hours for an urgent care visit, a week for routine care and four weeks for a specialty appointment. But DoD patient surveys, as well as the Military Times poll, tell a different story: Patients don’t think they can get timely appointments, even if they’re on active duty and have access to sick call.

“The bottom line is the Army health care system is broken and ineffective,” said one Army noncommissioned officer who asked not to be identified. He said he can’t go to sick call because of his work hours and can’t get an appointment with his primary care doctor, who is the most popular physician at the Presidio of Monterey clinic in California.

“I have gone to urgent care more in the last six months than I have [to] my own provider, and I almost consider them my new primary care physician,” the Army NCO said.

Frustration abounds

Navy Lt. Nathan Deunk described the doctors and corpsmen he sees at Portsmouth Naval Hospital in Virginia as “dedicated professionals who do their best to care for their military patients.” But their patient load, he said, is overwhelming, and trying to get an appointment is “frustrating.” Deunk has spent 23 months trying to get treatment for a tumor in his foot.

“Three weeks to get an appointment, two more weeks to get a referral and then two more weeks to get the first procedure approved. And in the case of my foot, I’ve had to go see different specialists. And every time you see a new guy, add another month onto that,” Deunk said.

Military leaders acknowledge the problem. In response to the military health review earlier this year, departing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has ordered military treatment facilities that don’t meet DoD access standards to draft a plan to fix that.

The service surgeons general have said they are investigating disparities between the facilities’ reported wait times and negative feedback from patients.

Some leaders wonder whether the official data on wait times reflect the reality experienced by military patients.

“In many cases where we believe we are meeting access standards, we have beneficiaries who think we’re not,” Navy Surgeon General Vice Adm. Matthew Nathan said in October. “So we’re telling our hospitals, ‘OK, you’ve told us 95 percent of your people are getting seen, based on Tricare standards, yet when we survey the people, they are not happy.’ We have to figure out where that disconnect is.”

Hagel ordered the health system review in May after Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned his post amid an unfolding scandal at VA hospitals over delays in patient care and appointment wait times. Those problems were related largely to pressure applied by administrators on schedulers to game the appointment system to meet VA access standards. Allegations also swirled that excessive treatment delays may have lead to patient deaths.

Journalists film Su-30 jets parked at Hemeimeem airbase, Syria, on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2015, as Mi 24 helicopter gunship flies overhead. Since early morning, Russian combat jets have been taking off from this base in western Syria, heading for missions. (AP Photo/Vladimir Kondrashov) 2

But service members who answered Military Times’ survey poll think the system’s scheduling processes need improvement.

Not ‘gaming the system’

Some describe a system that prevents schedulers from booking appointments more than a month in advance. For those dates, schedulers often jot down names using pencil and paper and call the patient when the calendar opens. Or they tell beneficiaries to call back on a certain day.

“They are not necessarily gaming the system, but with the appointment books not being open, they write down your name and email you when the window opens. Then you end up with an appointment that looks like it meets the standards, but it really doesn’t because you’ve already waited days to make it,” said Air Force Master Sgt. James Alverson.

Years ago, Alverson was diagnosed with a rare spine disorder, but it took eight years bouncing from doctor to doctor, and being told the excruciating pain was “all in his head,” before he found out what was wrong.

The time he spent among primary care visits, neurologists, spine experts, chiropractors, lab tests and rescheduled appointments at various military facilities, and finally at Portsmouth Naval Hospital, added up to more than 18 months, from diagnosis to final treatment.

“Civilian docs have told me they could have gotten me in, done the procedure and had me back at work within 30 days. But that doesn’t happen at military facilities, and it’s cost me my career,” said Alverson, a former Marine combat engineer now serving as an Air Force imagery analyst.

Deunk agrees that the Navy and Marine Corps health system is not ideal.

“The paper scheduling system probably isn’t the most efficient way to manage appointments,” Deunk said. “It’s better than it was years ago, when they would only open up the appointment books for only two to three days. But it’s still not great.”

Although they had complaints about the system, many troops said they wouldn’t want to spend more money to see a civilian provider, for themselves or their families. In the reader survey, 49 percent of respondents said they would not pay more to go outside the military system.

Creating a backup

Some service members report no major problems. “In El Paso, the hospital here seems to be better than others I’ve been to,” said Army Capt. Eric Hatch, who is stationed at Fort Bliss in Texas. “My wife had the baby here [at Beaumont, the Army hospital], and it was top notch.”

But some personnel think the Defense Health Agency could design a system that would allow service members and families enrolled in Tricare Prime at military treatment facilities to see a civilian doctor if their own physician is booked.

“Relying on civilian physicians to provide surge capacity is a good idea … VA is doing it,” Deunk said.

Other improvements proposed by these troop patients include fixing electronic health records to ensure they can be viewed by primary care doctors and specialists regardless of their duty station, overhauling the scheduling system and freeing up specialists from tasks other than seeing patients in their specialty.

Military medical care falls short

Some respondents said DoD also should outsource care for military dependents and retirees — a proposal unlikely to sit well with those groups or the Pentagon, which is working to rein in the amount of money it spends on health care.

“I feel like since spouses have been allowed to be seen at the Presidio of Monterey clinic, it has become nearly impossible to get an appointment,” said the California-based Army officer who uses urgent care.

The scheduling crunch makes some troops wonder whether the millions of dependents and retirees lining up for appointments are overloading the system.

“Active-duty personnel are supposed to have priority, but I don’t see a lot of evidence of that,” Alverson said. “We should cut out care for retirees and dependents, unless there really is room. They can go to a network doctor. And I say this even though I’m going to be a retiree soon.”

Staff writers Andrew Tilghman, Stephen Losey, Hope Hodge Seck, Michelle Tan and David Larter contributed to this report.

Reporters and researchers with questions about the methodology and analysis can contact staff writer Andrew Tilghman at atilghman@militarytimes.com.

Russian ground personnel members load a Su-30 jets with weapons at Hemeimeem airbase, Syria, on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2015. Since early morning, Russian combat jets have been taking off from this base in western Syria, heading for missions. (AP Photo/Vladimir Kondrashov) 2