What do soldiers do all day?

[davekhps]

@mutantmoose

Partly out of sympathy - I hope they’re not bored - and partly out of wondering whether, if they’re all just effectively idle waiting for some kind of situation to arise where they are needed, maybe they could be used in some other way in the meantime. Even if only on a voluntary basis - maybe on a nature reserve or something.

As you have now read, in the U.S. military, they’re not effectively idle-- lots of maintenance, training, small sundry tasks of the day.

Now, for some soldiers in some specialties at some postings, on a routine day that’s not exactly full employment. But some days it is, and then some. And for other soldiers in other duties, they can be busy nearly 24/7, even in peacetime in CONUS.

Basically, the short answer to your question is: it would be a personnel nightmare using the military to do anything other than military things, mostly because we want our military doing military things. A lot of poorer countries tend to use their armies doing things other than fighting wars/preparing to fight wars/recovering from fighting wars, and they end up having lousy militaries as a result. It’s nice and easy for North Korea or China to order their militaries to go pick fields or build children’s toys, but time spent doing that is time spent NOT focused on what a military needs to be focused on.

That said, in the U.S., we also have the National Guard-- if you need a military organization to do a civil activity, they’re the first folks you call. The regular guys and gals? They have another job to do.

[Chefguy]

@CutterJohn

If its like the rest of the navy, little to none. After boot camp, the only PT i ever did was the biannual Physical Readiness Test(PRT). And I’m fairly sure I probably only did 1/2 or less of those. The rest… Chief would show up and ask us what our scores were on the PRT we did the day before.

Seabee battalions have morning battalion muster and PT every day in homeport. When deployed, you’re working pretty hard, so PT is set aside. Overseas, we were generally working six 10-hour days.

Peacetime military for combat units is devoted to training, both military and professional. For the Navy, include deployments at sea in that picture. The Seabees do pretty much the same thing regardless of war status. Since they are trained in defensive combat, during wartime they provide armed defense of camp perimeters, and a battalion carries a full armory of personal and crew-served weapons.

Most military types hate the peacetime military, as the “chickenshit” factor goes way up. Inspections, training and drilling are the order of the day, and the focus is on minute bullshit instead of the larger picture.

[flyboy]

The way I see it, as far as PT goes, the services are slowly migrating to the Marine Corps way–not only do you have the PRT’s and body fat thing, but you have to look good in uniform.

The Navy has historically been not too concerned with PT. The last 10 or so years has seen a slow change in the way we do business, though–there is more integration with the other services, and Navy folks are finding themselves deployed more and more as boots on the ground vice on the ship. So PT has become more of an issue lately, and the service has pushed to have commands carve out dedicated time for their sailors, or to at least be accomodating to PT-ing in general for a few hours a week. Not only does this protect the sailor by making him more healthy, but it will hopefully drive down healthcare costs, provide a better/more capable body to fill a boots-on-the-ground job, but also be less embarrassing. It doesn’t look good to send an augmentee to an Army unit who is almost bursting out of his uniform.

The Air Force, too, has seen its share of shaping. They were used to having a once-per-year physical test consisting of, I believe, a stationary bike ride. That’s changed over the last decade to becoming more like the Navy test (twice per year with run, pushups and situps), but with a stricter grading policy–I believe weight and/or waist measurements are factored in the score.

As far as my time goes, I currently have more of a desk job, 0730 to 1630. Being in the DC area, coming in late is perfectly understandable. Some days it takes me 30 minutes to get to work; other days it takes 50. I try to PT for an hour or two every day, but usually wind up only getting 3 or 4 days per week. If duty calls and I need to stay late, then I stay until whenever I’m done. When I travel, my days can run anywhere from 12 to 18 or 20 hours. “Weekends” are not applicable–every day is a workday. At home, weekends are my own unless something big is going on.

I’m slated to go to the sandbox in the summer where every day will be groundhog day for about a year and I’ll probably be standing 12 on/12 off shifts of staff work. Back in my squadron days, days consisted of training (both flying (aircraft systems, emergency procedures, etc) and preparing for deployments–studying the threat (aircraft, missiles, radars, visual recce (what aircraft and ships look like), orders of battle (what bases have what ships/aircraft), etc), current events and historical backgrounds of countries (i.e., why whatever country isn’t on our “friend” list))… this takes an amazing amount of time. When deployed, I would fly 11-12 hour sorties every now and then and in the down time I could either study, sleep, PT, or do whatever else I wanted.

This was my job as a flyer. Other guys, like the aircraft mechs, were busy depending on the health of the aircraft. Healthy aircraft=little work, and they were free to do what they wanted when not doing routine maintenance and other administrative things. If the planes were cranky, then they were busy as hell, working crazy long hours, trying to provide us something that would fly for the next mission (during which, of course, something else would break).