Edit: just to be clear, I don't mean to imply that teachers aren't important, just that the immediate consequences of them all missing work is less severe than some other occupations.
It's also important to consider that when you're talking about the military who dies matters more than how many people die. How many civilian drone strike casualties would it take to get the same attention that Benghazi got?
What mechanism does the US military have to force people to work in the event that the whole military is on strike? Are they going to charge the entire military if they go on strike? Everybody walks down into the brig and the last man in locks the door behind them?
A group of young adults gets drafted into the Army. They're told to show up at base Foo on some date for boot camp. They go to base Foo and cross the picket line to enter the base. All of the instructors are on strike so there is no one to teach them. They can't get uniforms and equipment because the quartermaster is also on strike. They head to the mess hall to get some food but the cooks are on strike. It's getting late and they want to sleep. The barracks for trainees is locked up and no one is around with the key because they're on strike.
Now you've got a group of tired, hungry people, who didn't want to be there in the first place, who have no training or equipment. How does this help?
National Guard are mobilized all the time during crisis such as Katrina or the ongoing covinavirus pandemic.
US military was the single largest contributor to the response effort to the 2010 Haiti earthquake [0]
They were also heavily involved in the relief operation in response to the 2015 Nepal earthquake [1]
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unified_Response [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sahayogi_Haat
What’s unique here? Isn’t the whole point of all strikes that the employer doesn’t want the employees to go on strike?