This passage from a 2011 NPR article on the 50th anniversary of Eisenhower's warning caught my attention:
Eisenhower was worried about the costs of an arms race with the Soviet Union, and the resources it would take from other areas -- such as building hospitals and schools.
https://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-mil...
Seems especially prescient at the moment.
> the median age in 1940 was 29.0 years, compared to 37.2 years in 2010
[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/1940-us-census-data-released-on...
Here's a good book on it: https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Man-History-Great-Depressio...
Do you have any estimation of the truth of such claims?
$250k is $5k a week for 50 weeks. These folks often didn’t work 50 weeks since generous home leave was frequently given, so $1000 a day may actually be on the low side.
Also note that there are tax exemptions via treaties or war zone exceptions that can make a significant impact on take-home wages.
$20k/month is a quarter mil a year. Worst case, you live in a high tax state, you might pay $100k in total tax, state + federal + local.
That leaves a take-home of $140k/year. Still almost 3x as much as a soldier making $50k/year.
The larger point is that, yet again, we have a govt bureaucracy handling a budget in hamfisted ways. (Big rigid hierarchy >> underpay recruits >> wow, the org is bloated and still expensive >> we can save money by hiring contractors.) The bureaucracy is is callous to the incentives they're creating.
If it's a much better deal to be a private military contractor vs a soldier, what does that do for morale? For cohesion? For career trajectories? (Get trained, quit asap to go private with a big pay bump...)
This general pattern has a deep historical roots. Many countries at various points in history have hollowed out their formal military by shifting to hired mercenaries. That pattern has a bad track record.
(Additionally, it is not clear to me that GP's example numbers for private contractors were actually modal, or just some high numbers he heard about.)
Depending on your rank and what your active duty is like, much can be excluded.[1]
> Combat pay: Compensation for active service while in a combat zone
Combat zones: much of the middle east, including relatively stable countries that aren't Afghanistan or Iraq, as well as the Balkans.[2]
> Enlisted member, warrant officer, or commissioned warrant officer. If you are an enlisted member, warrant officer, or commissioned warrant officer, none of your combat pay is included in your income for tax purposes.
For officers, the exclusion has a threshold. That threshold is:
> For 2019, the applicable amount is $8,803.50 per month
Or $105,600/yr income not subject to taxes.
In addition to BAH being excluded as you mentioned, there's also BAS, BAS, OHA, other housing benefits, moving and travel, healthcare, all not subject to income taxes.
These are all sources of income (in an accounting, not IRS sense) civilians would need to pay taxes on. As a result, active military pay a much lower tax rate on their income than civilians with the same pre-tax income.
[1]: https://www.irs.gov/publications/p3#en_US_2018_publink100017...
Keep that date in your head.[1]
That the interview is public at all is amazing. It is a very good overview of the man and the issues that the US dealt with in Afghanistan. Especially considering the current media tornado with Flynn, it offers an insanely unique look under the tent.
Flynn's attitude is really one of exhaustion. He's tired, after nearly 14 years fighting in Afghanistan, he's just done with it all. He's done with Congress, he's done with the White House, he's done with the military. What is especially interesting is his attitude towards the US voting public: He's done with them too. His faith is caput.
Sure enough, exactly one month and 30 minutes after the end of this interview, Flynn is shoulder to shoulder, sitting directly next to Putin in Moscow. 12/10/2015. [2] That dinner is wild by the way.
So, not only are the lower level contractors looking outside, the top line staff are as well.
Not to be too alarmist, but there is a whole whale of bad news here. There are uncomfortably large similarities to the lead up of the Social War of 91 BC afoot [3].
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/...
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/...
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/guess-who-came-dinner-fly...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_War_(91%E2%80%9388_BC)
If you don't really have the time to read through it, the Washington Post did a fairly good job of highlighting the interesting bits. If you have not looked at it and don't want to read the grainy .pdf, that's ok too. The audio is free to listen to. I cannot stress enough how crazy this is. That this document is out there at all, that they went through all the highlighting and editing, that the audio tape is out there, and then the cornucopia of other info too. It's amazing technical journalism, let alone the content.
Just skimming over [2], I see... wtf is Jill Stein doing at this dinner?! Yea, that Jill Stein! How odd.
Oh, and I get why but the WaPo links are paywalled and I am not a subscriber - FYI to others.
There are benefits to serving, but troops are not well compensated compared to the work performed. I'd also be interested in what you think the job market looks like for someone who has spent twenty years in a combat arms MOS. Most of the officers wind up well-prepared for management roles, but I don't know any enlisted retirees who didn't have a hard time transitioning.
Interestingly, the last one served ~2 weeks before receiving a medical discharge due to complications from a high-school football injury. He graduate high school, did practically nothing for two years before enlisting. Comes back a month later a veteran with a medical discharge and is getting multiple job offers.
Granted, special forces is pretty difficult to get into, you have to be smart and physically capable. So I'm sure there's a healthy amount of selection bias going on there. People capable of getting into the SF are generally capable of excelling anywhere.
Sounds fishy to me.
Re-enlistment bonuses in the SEALs can be as high as 6 figures...
The US is pretty terrible to their armed forces - but they're quite nice to the R&D side of the military, because that's the side that's in competition with private industry.
It's less expensive than private health care, but it's not free, and it doesn't cover everything, and it's standard government run bullshit. And it goes away as soon as you become medicare eligible and you have to go on medicare.
There is, in fairness, a difference.
My understanding is that the SOF and SEALs get paid well, even as enlisted folks (who get paid less than officers), but why settle for an adequate paycheck when you can have a kick-ass one? Doubly so, since the kinds of people who become Spec Ops are hyper-motivated and deliver results.
Its great if you can get through the interview process at some place decent (I did for the record).
But that's like saying "I'll just go play for the NBA".
Competition is stiff
I was merely pointing out that it is muuuuuch more difficult than that comment made it seem.
Wait, what?
- You may not smoke marijuana - it violates federal law.
- You are required to regularly report on close contact with foreign nationals, though I'm not sure a casual hookup meets that criteria. But if you're in an ongoing sexual relationship with a foreign national the Feds will want to know.
And then very quickly figured out that the "drug cartel" bit was the easy part and they got rid of their employers rather quickly.
The whole Zetas story is a fascinating one. If only their employers had read The Prince:
"Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy. The fact is, they have no other attraction or reason for keeping the field than a trifle of stipend, which is not sufficient to make them willing to die for you. They are ready enough to be your soldiers whilst you do not make war, but if war comes they take themselves off or run from the foe; which I should have little trouble to prove, for the ruin of Italy has been caused by nothing else than by resting all her hopes for many years on mercenaries, and although they formerly made some display and appeared valiant amongst themselves, yet when the foreigners came they showed what they were. Thus it was that Charles, King of France, was allowed to seize Italy with chalk in hand;"
Unfortunately professional armies fail the one test that matters these days, which is the number of opportunities they provide for private actors to siphon money into their own pockets. So we have decided to ignore the lessons of history, because private profit today is worth social collapse tomorrow.
It won't stop everyone, but done correctly it could stem the most egregious of revolving doors.
I think it's very likely that entities like drug cartels already pay for things like location data for DEA agent's cellphones.
It was new information to me but supports your idea.
[0]: I'm not saying we shouldn't have a welfare state, it's clearly necessary in the modern world, but the America of today is nothing like the America that was intended, for better or for worse.
And a permanent, standing, large, and fairly dysfunctional (look at descriptions of military leadership and its civilian oversight in WWII and earlier, then look at same in Vietnam, then look at the linked Afghanistan Papers documents in this thread re: same in Iraq and Afghanistan) US military is even newer, only 80ish years. Even more recent if you consider its modern form to have taken shape only after the Vietnam draft ended.
I think the whole idea of the US being the world's most powerful country and acting outside our borders would have been something the founders would have struggled with, because they fought a war to get away from the world's most powerful country.
I wonder if the civil war counts here.
I found this quote resonating well even for myself and tech, specifically for the adoration of tech leaders: "It’s easy to fall in love with oneself, but this is not about us...It cannot be about us". [2]
I know a certain unit that loved to remind people "You will give more than you receive". I found that quote quite helpful in helping myself decide if a certain company / team is worth my efforts. I do believe that under most circumstances we will give more than we received (monetarily or otherwise). Is that cause worth it?
1: https://www.duffelblog.com/2014/05/us-navy-seal-training-wri... (satirical)
2: https://web.archive.org/web/20200404171023/https://www.nytim...
This may be true, but it also reminds me of the long and lucrative relationship between the US military and Hollywood[0]. It's pretty well established at this point that the military is willing to pay for opportunities to look good in movies, like they did in the Transformers series. There's an incredible amount of money behind the scenes influencing military presence in our media, and a lot of people don't realize it.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-entertainment_complex
"All warfare is based on deception" - Sun Tzu
[1] - https://www.businessinsider.com/navy-seal-pay-compared-with-... [2] - https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS21048.pdf [3] - https://beta.trimread.com/articles/16942
I forget the details, but my dad retired from the service after 20 years.
I think he gets ~50% of his basic pay. I want to say it's inflation adjusted as well.
Their salaries are low, so it's not exactly an amazing retirement. In a low COL state with Social Security it could be helpful assuming you've got everything paid off already.
TriCare is a medical insurance component, but I don't know the details of how good it is. I think for us it was useful as it could sometimes be used as coinsurance, picking up what our other insurance did not. But I also vaguely recall having issues with it being accepted, though I was a kid and didn't pay much attention.
All in all, you're definitely not joining the military to get rich, especially as an enlisted man.
Each year that you miss a promotion compounds. You can only miss so many promotions before it becomes impossible to hit the rank where you may retire.
Edit: I'm also tired of being lectured on integrity, honor, sacrifice, and duty only to see them cower in the face of questions about Eddie Gallagher.
They're getting gigs as paid assassins, moonlighting as military officers in other nations' Direct Action missions so they can pull in $25k/month.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/aramroston/mercenaries-...
To an outsider it seems like a startup that's been swallowed up by an enterprise company. For the programmers at the startup they had a lot of autonomy, but now most don't have this. Other opportunities seem exciting and there is a feeling that many others are living off the success that you felt you created. I'm sure that's a bad analogy, but it's hard to know from the outside unless you have military links in the US.
Maybe it is the result of glamorizing the Navy Seals, and Delta Force and what not in movies, everyone wanted to be one because it was portrayed so cool; however just like internet communities once you become popular what made you popular died, an eternal September for Spec ops if you will.
Also the groups that are doing the sausage making are probably ones that you aren't hearing about. Such as the CIA SOG, Airborne Pararescue, or other groups you just don't hear a lot about.
Most raids were uneventful but contact with enemy happened often enough.
But they rarely had access to 160th SOAR helicopters because the 160th was usually busy supporting SEALs and Delta.
To your point about training, deployment was considered an easier time than being state-side because state-side time mostly consisted of high tempo training to prepare for other missions as well as get ready for the next rotation.
Are they? Mercenaries for hire have been a thing for centuries. And ultimately, mercenaries are selling a service, and need to market to their potential customers, like wealthy CEOs of huge corporations.
Today, possibly owing in part to the growing inequality in the world (though not specifically in Ghosn's case), wealthy individuals are looking for ways to protect themselves from a restive populace. One way in which they find out about the availability of private defense/security purposes is by that industry marketing themselves in some way.
Mercenaries have been marketing themselves for offensive or defensive purposes to people with a lot to lose like this for centuries, whether the medieval Hashishin (from whom we get the term assassin), or the Swiss Mercenaries (whose modern continuation is the Papal Swiss Guard of the Vatican).
Sadly, this re-privatization of mercenary services appears to be more of a reversion to a historical norm that was only brought under state control in the late 19th through mid-late 20th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_(military) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
It has definitely gotten worse since the Iraq War for a variety of reasons, and I think a big part of it is the lack of a draft has created a growing disconnect between "military people" and the population at large. There's no sense of shared sacrifice. People think they pay their taxes and that's as far as they need to sacrifice, and soldiers look around at their friends dying to secure oil fields for exxon-mobil while nobody at home is paying attention and can't help but get cynical.
You can thank the propaganda machine being run through Hollywood, especially over the last few years (Zero Dark Thirty, American Sniper, Hurt Locker, etc.), for a lot of that.
About the privatization of specops - that would seem to follow the general trend of mercenary forces. As private military contracting has picked up on the last few decades, it's natural that special operations gets roped into that.
Really myopic view. You may not consider it cool but this is their livelihood which they've put a lot more into than many I know.
I have personally had an opportunity to serve alongside some of the most incredible leaders. I wish they had money set for the rest of their lives and not have a need to cash in on their hard work and end up taking shots like yours.
If there was some disingenuous military folks cashing in and exploiting the system, sure I agree, those people suck.
Doesn't seem very decent for you to paint an entire community with a single brush.
Moreover, it's not really them, it's the media landscape.
Imagine if after retiring from a life of duty in which you were paid peanuts, someone offered you $2M for some stories. Which really were benign anyhow? How can we ask people to 'not tell anyone about their adventures'. It's a tiny bit of a paradox. At least they are not Kardashians.
In the same way that Harley Davidson makes more money with merch than with motorbikes and George Foreman made more money sponsoring a kitchen grill than with his boxing career.
That said all of that is different from becoming a mercenary or pseudo mercenary.
But these guys did believe in what they were doing, and they made huge sacrifices for it, including being willing to lay down their own lives. So maybe the overall operation being conducted wasn't honorable, however in my mind at least, what they were willing to sacrifice for what they believed was right, is something commendable.
So did the Nazis.
And if the US military was a machine for murder they do a pretty bad job of it.
This is some John Wayne fantasy of what the military does and what war is about.
On the recent anniversary of the fall of Auschwitz, The White House twitter account claimed it as a victory of ‘The United States and UK’. Supposedly the already-dishonest ‘Allied Troops’ is not cutting it anymore.
(The Red Army liberated Auschwitz)
And then proceeded to imprison the whole country this camp is located in. And a few others on top of that.
Probably would have been best to praise the result without mentioning any specific parties involved in carrying it out. Then again, Trump isn't really known for thinking in nuance.
From his supporters? Bearing in mind that he has a well established history of openly admiring Putin? I don't see why that would be a problem at all.
What is honorable is certainly subjective though.
Edit: And destroying Isis.
Now, it seems like every Navy SEAL now publically writes a book, sponsors a coffee line, or slaps their name, likeness and story all over everything from T-Shirts to gun accessories to clothing lines. It's made a complete mockery of what has always been a silent service and honorable job, and it's spawned a HUGE environment of tacticool people who want to act and look the part.
And then a lot of these special operations folks have decided to cash in on the privatization component of special operations - we've seen the Venezuelan attempted coup, and this.
Crazy times...