Military
Times
How
the Nation Is Failing The Troops And Veterans
For
many of the war-weary troops who deployed to combat zones over and
over again for 13 years, the end of an era of war in Iraq and
Afghanistan is good news.
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]."
Troops
say morale has sharply declined over the last five years, and most of
those in uniform today believe their quality of life will only get
worse. Compared to 2009, more are unhappy with their pay and health
care, and very few trust that senior leaders fully support them. A
closer look at what's driving this trend:
are unhappy with their pay and health care, and very few trust that senior leaders fully support them. A closer look at what's driving this trend:
Overall my quality of life is good or excellent:
Quality of life will decline in coming years:
Morale meter
A
| How would you rate your military pay and allowances? 2009 – 87% good or excellent 2014 – 44% good or excellent |
B
| How would you rate military health care? 2009 – 78% good or excellent 2014 – 45% good or excellent |
C
| Overall officers in the military are: 2009 – 78% good or excellent 2014 – 49% good or excellent |
D
| People in the military are supplied with the best possible equipment: 2009 – 47% agreed 2014 – 36% agreed |
E
| The senior military leadership has my best interests at heart: 2009 – 53% agreed 2014 – 27% agreed |
Source: Military Times annual survey of active-duty service members
Credit: Military Times staff
Credit: Military Times staff
'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 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.
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 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.
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.
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