I am not familiar with a lot of military people and have never served myself, so this may be an ignorant question. But I’m wondering whether military people have a lot of free time during times when no wars or military conflicts are going on, and if not, then why not.
My thinking is that pretty much anything that the armed forces need to do during peacetime they also need to do during wartime. But during wars, they also need to find a lot of time for actual fighting. So wouldn’t that imply that there should be a hole in their schedules during the peacetime, from the time that would have been available for fighting during wartime?
I used “pretty much” because I’m sure there are some things that can get cut back during a war to make room for fighting. And it’s also possible that soldiers need less practice if they’re actually out there fighting. But I’m still wondering if in fact military people have a lot of free time during peacetime.
But what do I know? Any input from military or otherwise knowlegable people would be appreciated.
Most jobs in the military are equally applicable to both peace and wartime. A cook, for example, cooks all the time and has a schedule something similar to shift work. For pure combat positions, there are any number of tasks that have to be done during peacetime. Range time to perfect marksmanship, training on tactics, guard duty and the like.
The difference between peacetime and wartime is the ammunition used and your priorities, which change dramatically.
It’s hard to answer. There are time when deployed or close to deployment with a lot of training being done when you are very busy.
When returning from deployment, there is some slower time to make up for that.
By and large I’ve been very busy (in the Navy) when we were not at war. Navy still puts ships to sea, planes in the sky and boats in the water during peacetime. And this equipment doesn’t maintain or fix itself.
At lot of the time that forces spend fight now, would have spent training if not at war. Yes the OPTEMPO is higher during war time, but it’s still pretty busy when we aren’t at war.
The peacetime military is about readiness and training. It’s not enough to fight; you have to make sure you’re ready and able to fight.
So there are still field exercises and deployments to go on; equipment to maintain; paperwork to do; people to feed; watches to stand and so forth. Believe me, all of this keeps people busy in peacetime.
That said, occasionally there are reductions in force after active conflicts; I myself got out in the post-Desert Storm RIF in 1993. Requirements to re-enlist tighten and some people who might have been allowed to re-up in the past are no longer able to do so, so they’re out. As with civilian layoffs, this reduces the number of people available to do the actual work, so people who are still in stay busy. It’s also harder to get in in the first place; people who might have been able to get necessary waivers to enlist in wartime can’t do so in peacetime.
It also depends on the branch: when my father was in the Army, if he wasn’t deployed somewhere, he basically had an office job with extra duties every so often (when he was in a unit - later in his career, it was essentially purely an office job). That was a drastic change from when he was in Desert Shield/Desert Storm and Bosnia.
In the Navy, it’s a bit different in that there’s less distinction between “peacetime” and “wartime.” The deployment schedule may be slightly heavier, but in general, you still alternate between sea tours (during which you will go out to sea multiple times) and shore tours (a more office-like environment). Even when you’re in port during your sea tour, you’re most likely training on and maintaining your equipment, peacetime or wartime. (Your schedule is also heavily affected by what type of ship or boat you’re on, but again, that’s relatively the same no matter the political atmosphere.)
It’s not just training for your current job. In peacetime, you’re expected to advance or you may be asked?? to leave. So there’s required classes for the current job, next level and college courses for degrees.
Right now I’m instructing Transportation of Hazardous Materials. It’s a required course; a unit needs to have a certain number of personnel certified by this course. We do 15 two week courses [80 hours] a year and the students get 4 college credits in addition to certification that’s good for two years.
Every unit I’ve been in did physical fitness 0630-0730, then took a break for breakfast and hygiene, and then worked 0900-1700. “Work” being whatever training or administrative tasks had to be accomplished that day. It varies wildly depending on your job. If you have a job that can be performed in peacetime (admin, IT, food service, medical) then you’re one of the lucky ones. I don’t know how it is for other MOS’s, but for me garrison time might as well be a prison sentence.
All correct so far, and I can speak for peacetime Marine Corps infantry.
Pretty much every day in garrison, you can count on PT for an hour or so beginning at 0630; sometimes longer if you’re doing the O-Course or a larger unit run. Sometimes, you PT again in the afternoon.
During a training cycle leading up to a deployment you do spend a lot of time in the field, ranging from a couple days to over a week. When you get back, it takes a while to get your gear and weapons clean.
Weapon maintenance…at least one full day a week.
Classes, from squad to company size. Also, some time during the week to work on professional advancement (basically correspondence) courses.
Every cycle, there’s a change of command or two. You spend at least a week getting ready for that, practicing marching on to the field. Marching off the field. Marching on the field. Marching off the field.
Oh yeah, working parties…especially in the down time after a deployment. Regiment or Battalion will order up working parties of certain sizes for certain tasks. Always a gamble with those…sometimes they’re cake, sometimes they’re absolute shit.
Other than Vietnam, I spent all of my career in a peacetime situation. As a Seabee, this meant the usual shore duty-“sea” duty rotations (never went aboard a boat). While in a battalion situation, we deployed regularly to different overseas locations: Rota, Spain; Okinawa; Guam; Diego Garcia, with detachments going to other locations. While deployed, we did construction projects on military bases. While in home port, we did military/professional training and project planning for the upcoming deployment. Loads of readiness inspections, which meant standing out on the parade field for hours while some Regimental asshole pawed through our clothes to make sure we had enough underwear.
We also went on a military field exercise (or FEX) to some shithole like Pendleton, where we played war games with the Marines. There were also the annual rifle/pistol quals and classes in military field operations. The smart people got themselves signed up for professional classes in order to miss out on all the mickey mouse crap. The really smart people (like me) realized early on that getting assigned to a detachment was a plum job.
Shore duty for me was being stationed at some Naval base in the states, either in a public works department or to what was basically a small construction group called a Construction Battalion Unit (CBU). Peacetime was every bit as busy as wartime, IME.
After I retired, I couldn’t believe how little I could do and still get everything done, and how little accountability there was in government employment.
IBTS once a year - takes about two weeks to a month, depending on when everything is scheduled. That is Battle Task Standards so you take refreshers on everything so your readiness is green (first aid, weapons quals, PT test, navigation etc). The rest of the year, you work. If you are an infanteer, there are other courses (Advanced RECCE, for example) as well as maintenance around the unit lines and exercises throughout the year.
If you have a trade, you work in that trade. My day in the office is 0800 - 1600. I get an hour in there for PT, and time for lunch. I carry a Blackberry and am on call whenever they need me. Lots of meetings and planning conferences because there is always tons of stuff going on.
We are surprisingly busy all the time, just a slightly different kind of work if it’s peacetime.
Former USAF here, with a mix of wartime and peace during my tour. Though I was never near a combat zone (unless you consider a farmer scaring away rabbits with a shotgun right outside the base combat), I was in an intelligence branch and we always had work, 24/7, 365 days a year.
Our schedule was on a 16 day cycle and went like this:
Day 1: Day shift (8am - 4pm)
Day 2: Day
Day 3: Day
Day 4: Day
Day 5: Swing shift (4pm - midnight)
Day 6: Swing
Day 7: Swing
Day 8: Swing
Day 9: Off (Yes, they counted that we were off from midnight until midnight as day off)
Day 10: Mid(night) shift (midnight - 8am)
Day 11: Mid
Day 12: Mid
Day 13: Mid
Day 14: Off
Day 15: Off
Day 16: Off
Towards the end of my tour, they switched it so that your rotation began with the swing shift (Swing *4, off, Mid *4, Day *4, off *3).
I bring this up just to say that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ schedule for the ‘military’, even during peacetime. Too many different jobs across the services.
Oh, then there’s guard duty. That’s loads of fun. Stay up all night guarding the front gate. Or the barracks. Or the headquarters. Or the SCIF. Or the tents they set up for next week’s exercise. You show a Sergeant Major anything of any value and they’ll come up with a roster for who gets to guard it. And it’s not just MPs or the infantry, either. Everybody takes a turn.
0430: Wake up.
0545: Arrive at the office.
0545-0610: Accountability and daily coordination. I will be away from the platoon for most of the day, so I have to make sure things are going to get taken care of in my absence. (They won’t be.)
0610-0630: Drive to the Airborne Sustainment Training Area.
0630-1030: Jumpmaster refresher training.
1030-1230: Back at the office. Got handed a tasking request asking for the company to provide 20 men to support a “bring your spouse to work day”. We have to set up and operate a rifle range where Soldiers will bring their spouse for a full day of playing Army. Our range will be one of a dozen activities. Oh yea, and this is going to happen on Friday. No minute like the last minute! So I spent these hours trying to fill all the slots with 1) people qualified for that position (does he have an ammo handler certification? is he RSO qualified? Can he be an OIC?). Oh, and 90% of the company will be on block leave starting that Friday. So I have a small pool of Soldiers to pick from. Only those staying behind, and not taking leave, are available to pull these duties.
1230-1530 Back at the ASTA to continue Jumpmaster Refresher Training
1530-1700 Continue finding all necessary personnel for Friday’s tasking. Email the entire list out to company leadership.
1700: Lower enlisted Soldiers are released for the day. Up until this point, they have been laying out equipment for inspections and inventories. Today it was mostly our winter tents. We had to make sure that all the tents are serviceable and ready for the winter. It may take that long to order replacement parts and make necessary repairs. So we prepare for winter in the summer. Soldiers were mainly occupied with this task all day, and then spent the last hour or so cleaning the area, mowing grass, weed killing, etc.
1700-1930 Only the privates were released. Squad leaders, the platoon leader and myself still have stuff to do. Still waiting on some of the squad leaders to finish their squad’s tattoo memos. The Army changed its tattoo policy several months ago, and now every Soldier is required to report all of his/her tattoos. They have to be measured and photographed. And the photos need to be a specific size, at 300 dpi resolution, and in TIFF format. These are infantrymen using cell phones and government computers. They don’t know what TIFF format is, do not have the means, software or knowledge to convert photos. So they were all going to rely on one guy to do all the leg work. But surprise! CSM says this shit is due TODAY. So nobody is going home until it is finished. While that squad leader is finishing the memos, I am busy working on administrative stuff for training that is coming up in September. Everyone in the platoon who has completed this training successfully needs to have their certificate and orders for the award printed out to turn in. And their name has to go on a roster along with all kinds of other random data. And there is another roster (in a different format of course) that has to list all of the people who NEED to complete the training in September. See, it isn’t enough to subtract the list of people who completed the training from the list of total Soldiers. Sounds like it should be that easy, but it isn’t. Not every Soldier in the unit today will still be in the unit in September. They may have moved on to another unit by then. So Soldiers who are scheduled to leave the unit before September need to be kept off of both rosters.
Finally let the guys all go home. One Soldier can’t find his certificate anywhere. He thinks it might be at home. Squad leaders are released with the understanding that all of the completed memos and the certificates better be on my desk by 0600 the next day! Doesn’t matter that they have squad competition tomorrow and will not even be near the office until 0903, I don’t care. They can swing by early and slide the shit under the door.
1930-2130: Finally some peace and quite! The platoon leader and I spend the next couple hours finishing an operational concept report, a composite risk management worksheet, and a training request for a Combatives course we want to conduct next week. We finally finish this up around 2130.
2130: Get home and eat dinner. My first meal of the day. My first food at all, actually. Up until now I have had only 7 Monsters and half a sack of Levi Garrett.
2200-0200: Sweet beautiful sleep.
0205: Wake up to study for Jumpmaster duties that I have on Thursday. There are three pages worth of instruction (called prejump) that need to be pitched to the jumpers before every jump. Some people use note cards to help them remember all of the key points. Other peole (myself included) prefer to pitch the entire thing verbatim from memory. It instills greater respect and confidence from subordinates, IMO. Spend about an hour trying memorize prejump. Well, to re-memorize it. I have memorized it in the past, so it isn’t like I am starting from scratch. Just a bit rusty.
0250: Can’t focus or concentrate. Time to check the SDMB.
0300: Complete a post.
0300: Back to studying prejump and reviewing this unit’s Airborne Standard Operating Procedures. Every unit is a little different. I have to make sure I am tracking the way this unit does things. I also have to make sure I am completely prepared for Thursday. There have been several fatalities in the past year from Airborne operation training accidents. It is important to do everything perfectly.
I probably will not go back to sleep. I would normally be waking up in an hour anyway.
This day is pretty much the Army life in garrison: paperwork, taskings, lay outs, cleaning, training. The bullshit changes, but there is always something. This day was not all that unusual and quite accurate represents daily life in the Army. Amazing that I find time to work on my Master’s Degree.
I’ve always wondered about drill instructors since watching “Full Metal Jacket”.
The DI slept in the barracks with his recruits it seems for the full 9 weeks of boot camp. Dont they have homes and familys?
Also isnt it hard for them to be mean, grouchy, and yell at people all day? Dont they ever just want to take a rest? Can they turn it off when they go home?
Yes. Food is always available. Time is not. The refresher training did not release us for breakfast. They did give us a long lunch, though. 1030-1245 we were released for a nice long lunch. Unfortunately, I didn’t have that luxury. I needed swing by the office to make sure everything there (my primary responsibility) was being taken care of. That big tasking was handed to me, so I ended up spending the whole lunch period working on that. Plus all of the side stuff like playing dad for a few dozen 18-22 year-olds crying and fighting with each other over girls, and other high-school-style drama!