8 years for Space Force

The Space Force is trying to retain trained people by offering an eight year active duty contract.

The Space Force hopes to offer new Guardians the option of serving the regular eight-year enlistment — with four years typically spent on active duty and four in the Individual Ready Reserve component — entirely on active duty, in an effort to retain highly skilled new recruits.

So as I read it, a young Forceketeer enlists, does 4 years on a Force base, then is off to join a Force Reserve unit as an active-duty  person, right? Oh, and bonuses are on offer, presumably for an 8 year hitch, hefty ones.

New Guardians who take the option would not drop into the Individual Ready Reserve status the way most enlisted personnel do — their ties to the Defense Department would be complete the day they left active duty.

Makes sense…they day they leave completes their entire commitment, no Reserve component duty needed – served your time, paid your debt to society, done.

In addition to changes made to boost retention, top Air and Space Force officials announced structural changes in early February that they said should better prepare their troops for a potential conflict in the Pacific with China.

The changes include bringing back warrant officers after more than 65 years without them — a plan first reported by Military.com — as well as changes to training; renaming and upgrading training and educational systems for Air Force Academy and ROTC cadets; and setting up a new field command called Space Futures Command that would focus, in part, on “experimentation and war games,” the Department of the Air Force said.

Time for a little something I didn’t know about the Force:

It was formally established in 2019 and has only around 8,600 personnel.

Comprised of near-equal numbers of enlisted and officer personnel,…  Military.com

Forgive me for laughing, I can hear it now: “Lieutenant! Do you know what your sergeant did last night?”  Or “Have you seen my privates?”

I have to be honest, I am not terribly sure this is a great idea. As I recall, back in the Stone Age when Ed was young (okay, me too) the two most traumatic days in the service were:

1) Arrival at whatever your service called Basic Training, whether at Great Lakes, Leonard Wood, PI, or the hotel at Lackland. Holy crap! Everything you had ever heard or knew of the military somehow turned out to be incredibly wrong.

2) Arrival at your first duty station after training when you found out that a whole bunch of what you had spent weeks or months learning didn’t mean squat in the “real” Army, Corps, Navy, etc.

I remember a lot of gung-ho kids who left training  and KNEW they wanted to make a career of it – until they found out about things like 2AM alerts, motor pool days, overnight work/guard shifts and all the other fun aspects of active duty. Within a few months all they wanted to do was ETS and “git th’ f outta Dodge”.

Now, I’m not saying this is everyone or even a majority – but remembering how easy it is to get into the military versus how hard it is to quit, and putting that up against the maturity of a BIG percentage of enlistees – it’s going to take some really squared away – mentally – kids to make this 8 year first term workable. Maybe give them a decision point a year or so in:  “hey, if you really do want to stay 8 by now, sign here and that bonus is yours. But this is the final decision.”

 

 

Category: Reality Check, Space Force