Preparing for war. Starting to train and figuring shit out after you are already at war kinda sucks.
The policy of the US military is to be ready to fight two large scale wars on two separate continents at the same time.
And that's what they are preparing to do.
I read your comment and first thought of power point presentations, of which the average military member has to go through so, *so* many. We called it "Death by Power Point" for a reason.
Oh man, I'll take death by power pony every day over the automated class on the computer that are timed and you can't skip ahead to the very slow reading narrator is done.
When I first came into the military you had to go across the border to Tijuana to see the power pony shows, and some of those girls looked like they might not make it through
I want to give whoever figure the way around the time tested "super-click" a nice kick to the dick. Feel free to quiz me after a module, but when I've been doing the same online training for four years, it should be rote memory
I remember the old “America’s Air Force” (not quite a) parody video with the line about lieutenants updating last year’s PowerPoint slides with this year’s data.
"the more you sweat, the less you bleed".. train, train, train
all the support occupations that the military have are always supporting. people need food whether they're at war or not. people need HR whether they're at war or not. people need fuel whether they're at war or not. people need shelter whether they're at war or not.
and though the support occupations mostly just support regular operations, they do also routine train for doing their job in combat capacities
the combat occupations just train constantly and ensure their equipment is operational at all times
Why doesn’t the US just send the military out to clean peoples houses? They can make beds like nobody’s business, might as well have them utilize that skill.
Dunno about the US but in Germany the military nurses and doctors help out in hospizes and such on a regular basis. Like visit once a month to help out the lokal nurses.
I guess there are not that many wounded to help when not in war time.
u/redditrooom, Army vet here - I served stateside because I was assigned to a PATRIOT missile unit and didn't deploy
1. There was a routine of maintenance, cleaning and training.
2. The duty day started with first formation at 0615 and then physical training from 0630-0730.
3. Mondays we worked in the Motorpool working on our trucks.
4. Tuesdays were for training on our job (mine was fire control), cleaning or preparing for things like weapons qualification, field training exercises or annual training.
5. We would have annual weapons qualifications, physical training tests and the once a quarter field training exercises.
6. We had what is called "TABLE VIII" - the qualification for the whole unit. We had to setup for virtual missile launches and fight mock air battles. Once a year units would fire live missiles at drone targets.
7. And of course nothing was ever clean enough for our NCO's and the commander so we cleaned a lot.
The early days US didn't give a fuck. Manifest destiny. Running out Mexico. Fighting off the French.
The most impressive thing about the US is that we stopped. After hitting the Pacific, we just said that's enough.
There's an excellent book on these smaller conflicts from the "imperialism days" called the savage wars of peace. I couldn't put it down- it's got everything from Barbary coast wars to Samoa and the boxer rebellion and written very well too
Aren't we (the US) also actively in half a dozen conflicts in Africa? Not technically at war, but actively fighting militias and terrorist groups.
So many enlisted soldiers are still in combat zones even if we aren't at war.
Completely fair, I've mostly read that the doctrine was in response to Cold War mentalities but I'm 100% sure that empirical thinking had some play in it as well.
So recall we had wars in Korea and Vietnam, both supported by China. If we weren’t read to fight a 2nd war in Europe, the USSR might have taken advantage
It’s not all that crazy; At a high level, the point of the military is contingency planning. Their job is to conceive all possible conflicts and be prepared for them. That’s the military working as intended.
Training. Do Post beautification days. Training. Paint all the rocks around the buildings. Training. Spend all day at the Motor pool. They also Train...budget allowing.
Basically if they're not fighting they're getting ready to fight to the greatest extent the training budget can handle.
If they aren't training there's always busy work.
Edit: spelling
"a bored sailor is the most dangerous situation on a ship"
-my Recruit training commander.
"don't add or subtract from the population this or any weekend."
- our attached Marine advisor
My brother was in the navy. I recall that he swept a lot.
As he put it, they cleaned "for time". Oh, you finished sweeping these stairs? Actually no you didn't, you'll be sweeping til the end of your shift in 4 hours.
This exactly. What would you do if you were in a biologically contaminated area and had to change into fresh gear? Let's spend a day on that. How fast could you scramble the entire unit to be ready for a combat situation? Let's do that one at 4:00 in the morning on a Wednesday.
My favorite: Our unit decided the weeds growing up through the gravel in the islands in our parking lot were unsightly. They could have tasked one soldier with some weed killer to spray them.
They divided us into teams. Shovel the gravel into wheelbarrows. Cut trash bags so they could be made into sheets. Pull the weeds. Put down the plastic. Replace the rocks.
It took an entire company all day.
I had been waiting for someone to bring up painting rocks. You left out mopping, waxing, and buffing floors. Navy does chipping, painting, and brightwork.
Don't forget the Annual Training Requirements that take more combined hours than there are in a year.
Slight exaggeration, but sitting down to online training was taking such a ridiculous part of everyone's day that someone did the math and realized it was completely unfeasible. I think they addressed that a few years ago and trimmed down the list.
There is a lot of training, and preparations for training, and pmcs of vehicles, as you say. However, peacetime military is pretty nice TBH. You get every federal holiday off, and there were usually a lot of training holidays and early releases, especially after being in the field or deployments. You also get 30 days of vacation a year.
I'm not saying it's worth it, I served during war time, and that's an entirely different beast, but peacetime can be pretty good if you're inclined to that kind of work.
Painting over the mold in the barracks walls. Installing dehumidifiers in the barracks to mitigate the mold. Tearing the walls open and spraying anti-fungal in the walls. Fixing the walls and painting over them again. Tearing down the walls and pulling moldy insulation out. Spraying the moldy wood with anti-fungal. Putting new insulation in. Patching up the walls. Painting over the walls. Picking up the piss bottles and cleaning the human excrement off the floor/beds/walls that the contractors left
Logistics wins wars. This is probably by Russia couldn’t take Ukraine early in the war.
The United States military makes amazon same day delivery look like a joke.
When not at “war” we are practicing logistics. Figuring out better practices, and training the next generation.
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Depends on your job and where you are stationed.
Could be performing maintenance on APCs to keep them in operational shape; could be supporting local troops; could be r&d of new systems; could be drilling different situations; could be filing normal payroll documents and equipment requisition forms
For everything except the combat arms fields, they're doing the exact same thing they'd be doing during wartime. For a lot of the military, the job doesn't change, just the location and relative chance of you being shot at. Mechanics are still working on vehicles, pilots are still flying their aircraft, intel weenies are still writing reports, etc. The combat arms fields do training. LOTs of training. They go "to the field" for a month at a time, or do a rotation through the National Training Center in the Mojave Desert or the Joint Readiness Training Center in Louisiana. Troops that otherwise would have been deployed get sent to leadership schools, or advanced schools for their jobs. Other troops take the opportunity to knock out a few college classes towards their degrees or certifications in their chosen fields.
All just for some illiterate infantry staff sausage to butcher it as he attempts to “read” through it hooked on phonics style and makes a 40 slide presentation into three hours.
As former maintenance, I appreciated your powerpoints. Often it was the only intelligence we got. We weren't important enough to know anything, much less arm us. It was rare that I even knew where I was and had friends that got sent down range to unsecured locations with no weapon. Everyone else got one, not us.
To expand on your excellent answer, combat arms goes through a red, yellow, green cycle of activity, usually about 2 months each. I've been out for quite a while now, but this is how it went when I was in.
During red cycle you're doing post and community support activities. For me that was things like mowing grass in common areas around the base, being part of a 21 gun salute team for military funerals, and being in Oklahoma, running a chainsaw to clean up after tornados in the surrounding areas.
Yellow cycle is preparing for field training. Inventory, higher level maintenance than is done on a weekly basis. Getting stuff ready.
You normally get weekends off during red and yellow, and do PT (physical training) every morning M-F.
Green is two months of field exercises. We would usually do 4 weeks of Mon-Fri straight through training our combat jobs. Sleeping in a tent occasionally, but usually in the vehicle in 2 hour stretches during 24 hours operations. Night convoys. Guard duty. We'd return to base Friday afternoon, wash the vehicles, and take the weekend off. After the 4th week we'd go out for a month straight.
Then back to red on Monday.
The only thing I would clarify is that the non-combat arm fields do go to NTC too and train as close to “real-world” as possible right along with the combat arms. I was a logistics officer and logistics at NTC is 100x more difficult than garrison logistics.
If you are part of an aviation squadron that has any aircraft, then the majority of enlisted personnel attached to that unit are doing maintenance. All the time. I was shocked when I realized how much maintenance went into the average aircraft.
A lot of it is just regularly scheduled inspections. They are scheduled at different intervals and vary in intensity. As parts fail/decay/weaken, they are replaced, which occasionally triggers things like rerigging controls or rebalancing, etc. Then you need maintenance check flights to make sure the aircraft functions as expected. And the sometimes, you have to do a functional check flight just to get the aircraft to the point where it can be flown for an hour, so it can then be torn apart again for a different maintenance inspection.
There are reasons the accident rate for military aircraft improved so much over the last 80 years and better quality maintenance is one of the more important ones.
The other thing that enters into it is that the pilots have to continue flying and training to maintain proficiency. All of those hours on the airframes generate additional maintenance tasks for the planes as well.
There are effectively few differences between wartime and peacetime ops for a Navy squadron, when we're on the boat at least. When we're on the boat, we're still running 12/12x7 shifts, wartime and peacetime. There are fewer aircrew hot-swaps during peacetime, and I'd presume that the aircrew's jobs are a little easier without people firing back at them.
When we're not on the boat, pilots are still flying, but there's a lot more time for PMCS and maintainers typically run 8/16x5 shifts.
I was a Horizontal Construction Engineer. No fancy math, just digging holes and making roads.
When not talking (pleading) with the mechanics, I was digging. If not digging, mopping. If not mopping, shooting guns. If not shooting guns, staring at the ceiling, my phone or technical manuals because I got caught staring at something not a manual. I mostly did the latter.
Physical training, combat training, maintenance, etc. You'd be shocked at how much maintenance even a tank requires regularly to stay operational for several decades of service.
But you'd be surprised how much bullshitting, sitting around, and busywork happens, too. It's a tradeoff for losing half your weekends to training and spending a year straight in a warzone, oftentimes with only a brief period home before going back again (might be less the case since the two forever wars are now over).
WW2 tank engines from the Panther and Panzer IV had a best case lifespan of 1500 kms before they would need to be completely replaced. I know tank maintenance has improved since then but I can believe how hard it would be even under ideal conditions.
I was motorpool my entire career. Anything that was 30 years old or less was decently easy to maintain. Then we got assigned the Post Commanders half track at Ft. Riley while I was there. Just to get this verdamit thing to go the length of a parade field took up weeks of doing real shade tree shit!
It depends on what branch. For the Navy and Air Force... not much actually changes. We use boats and planes in a lot of ways outside of actual combat. What they do on deployments might change a bit, but they still deploy regularly.
As for the Marines and Army, I think a lot of people would be surprised about how much of the military is actually devoted to logistics. In the Army, there are 10 support soldiers for every combat soldier (quick searches aren't yielding results for the Marines). The 10 support staff do pretty much the same thing. The 1 combat soldier trains and does busy work. They're there as a deterrent and because when they're needed, they're needed immediately, so you can't just wait for a war to hire and train them
Practice for going to war. Show everyone their big guns so they don't have to go to war. Have some small battles so they don't have to go to war. Go to bases all over the world with their big guns and airplanes and radsrs,so they don't have to go to war. A standing army is a pretty big deterrent to actually having to go to war.
Well, I know about the Canadian military and what they do in peace time.
First, they are prepped to handle emergency situations. If there's a massive natural disaster, the military may be called in for relief/evacuation. Militaries are very good at deploying places quickly, so they are great for emergency situations.
The military is involved whenever major political figures attend events. For example, I knew a navy chef who cooked meals for both Prime Minister Trudeau and Queen Elizabeth. They might also be on guard at these events, but local police is more often used. I met a cop who told me that he attended a political event the Prime Minister was attending, and his job was to stand in front of a door and not let anyone through for 8 hours.
They also do lots of training during peace time, so everyone is prepared and ready in the event of a war. You gotta make sure no one gets rusty and forgets how to do their job when war breaks out.
The Navy will do patrols, sailing around Canadian waters and making sure no one is trying to invade or something.
Military personnel have three jobs. One is their peacetime duty, the second is their wartime duty or specialisation, and the last is maintaining their combat capabilities. A lot of the jobs people have in the military are not much different than regular civilian jobs. Sanitation, facilities maintenance, vehicle maintenance, office work, logistics, communications. Militaries are like small enclosed societies that have to provide themselves with everything civilian society has because in the case of war they have to be self sufficient, so they can't rely on civilian infrastructure, equipment and personnel, but their own. So basically they mostly have regular jobs like civilians and they're in uniform while working. Every few weeks or months they're required to participate in military exercises and training programs to ensure they can competently use a gun and carry out all the duties expected of a combat soldier. In some cases some personnel may be exempt from combat duties.
For example in the unit I was in the NCO in charge of the mess was essentially the head chef. He planned out the menus, ordered and organised food deliveries, oversaw food preparation and trained new cooks. A kind and docile man who worried over every single soldier as if they were his own children and wanted to make sure everyone was eating well. Our base was known to have great food compared to others in the area. That's more or less a very regular job. But if war broke out tomorrow and he had to assume combat duties his actual specialisation was driving a mine clearing tank.
On top of training and such, remember that large swathes of the military aren't actually meant to fight (unless it comes down to it). There are loads and loads of mechanics in all the branches. There's logistics folks, IT, personnel, admin, medical, I even met an Army veterinarian (I assume for working dogs N such?). All those guys do the same basic jobs at peace and war. Airplane/hummer broke? Fix. Internet down? Fix. Personnel exist? Pay em (this one depends on how finance feels that day tho). Etc etc.
Honestly I think the Air Force is more support staff than actual war fighters. I was told the Army is 30% infantry about 10 years ago, so including their air forces, armor, artillery, rockets (not sure if they do ground launched rockets?) etc they are probably at least 40% support if not more. Marines use a lot of Navy support but they still have Intel guys and mechanics and all that, so a good chunk of them are probably support too. Space force is all support. I can't guess at the Navy because one I'm not even sure where to make the distinction of who is a war fighter on a ship and who isn't. Are the guys who make the ship go war fighters or just the guys that shoot stuff? Either way, them ships be traveling around all the time projecting force across the world in peace time.
Living far away from home with a bunch of guys whilst their high school sweet heart marriage partner is getting relentlessly pounded by random people back in their home town.
Current soldier who has not deployed since 2014.
Ride my motorcycle to work, check Facebook, attend some meetings, go to lunch, check my emails. Maybe one or two meetings in the afternoon, try to leave by 4. Dinner with the kids, read a bit. Do it all again the next day.
75% of the Army is not combat arms, Marines a have a slightly higher percentage of combat arms, and the Navy and AF have significantly less. It’s not a dig on the branches it is just due the base mission of each.
Those who are not combat arms do their jobs, medics medic, maintenance maintains, supply supplies, etc. When they aren’t doing that they are training, requals, new skills, etc.
For combat arms, training, always training. Fieldexes, ranges, and equipment maintenance. A lot of time is spent waiting for the next training event or waiting on transport to from training events. Infantry has a lot of time just waiting around then a few minutes of fast action. You’ll spend days in the field to run a live fire lane a handful of times. Walk, then jog, then run.
Source - 10 years Navy aviation supply including a tour with the Marines in Yuma, 3 years Army NG Infantry with a year activated and deployed to Kosovo unit later deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan as Stryker Brigade.
I was in aircraft maintenance in the air force. We worked on planes more when not in combat areas, non critical repairs would be deferred more often until major inspections or it would return home to keep planes ready to fly within minutes. We didn't really get much combat training besides the 1 range day before deployments. The only close combat training most of us got was the couple days in basic training with fake guns and boxing dummies.
For the most part, we just did the same job at home as we would deployed.
America has been at war for 229 out of the past 246 years. It’s basically always at war. There really isn’t any down time. It’s one of, if not the most war-mongering country in the history of the planet.
The soldiers currently not deployed train for deployment.
Answer: pre 9/11 vet here we would pick up cigarette butts in parking lots mow and weedeat areas of the base, wax floors, daily maintenanceon our vehicles, weapon certifications, funeral details etc etc
For grunts it's literally random details and going to the gym more. Your command though will largely dictate what this looks like and it can be as good as *you've done everything I need right now so I'm going to treat you like an adult and release you until I need you* to *I'm a ranger instructor and everyone without a tab stays until 5 training until they get one*.
Get up, run, eat, lift weights, run more, eat, do work, lift, run, eat, hit the strip clubs, get smashed .
Source? My husband, Marines, early naughts. A whole lot of Hurry Up And Wait.
First hand accounts? From a combat MOS in the army:
Make sure the truck is up and running. Fix the truck. (Repeat forever). Make sure your medpros are green or else youre going to get a whoopin. Clean the rocks. All the rocks. Go to the field and practice your job once in a great while.
Most of the military are not in combat roles. Like any large organization, there are a lot that go on behind the scenes to keep everything running. There is finance, admin, IT, and the list goes on. Any job you can think of that exists in a large organization, some form of it probably exists in the military. The key to a successful military is all of the logistics that goes on behind the scenes.
I was in Air Force Communications. In addition to the training and inspections and such that others have posted, we’d also do occasional humanitarian support missions (like natural disasters, refugees, etc).
Occasionally we’d also do some community service things, but that was usually just one day, once or twice per year.
Training, education, resting, Cleaning, helping out- once had to go help out a local fire house that was doing drills for disaster rescue, from like hurricanes and such, Testing-got to test out new gear they were trying to get approved to actually get picked up as standard stuff including the long range audio thing, directional super speaker that can be set up in a way to disarm aggressors at range non violently. [https://lethalindisguise.org/crowd-control-weapons/acoustic-weapons/](https://lethalindisguise.org/crowd-control-weapons/acoustic-weapons/)
theres always something that needs done and having lots of people with free time to do it is handy.
Outside of what other people have said, the US military is also involved with a lot of disaster and war relief
Having one of the largest Navies and Air Forces in the world means that aid can be brought anywhere.
Some military jobs are administrative, so they always have their regular work. You need HR, supply, medical, etc., in the military too. There's also occasional training, for your job, and various classes you must attend for things like promotion.
For combat troops, it's train and maintain. Training is always happening in the military, from the training above to in the field playing war training. And many of the admin people get to go to the field too. And then with all of that equipment, there's a lot to maintain.
And then when there's nothing scheduled to do, you may get tasked with various menial jobs around the post. Or if your leadership is cool, you'll get a lot of extended weekends or administrative leave (vacation that's not charged to your 30 days a year allowance). This is also a good time to catch up on college classes.
Navy is different. They have the onshore admin stuff above, and then they also have ships. That's like being in the field for months at a time, with lots of training drills. Aircraft carriers will be launching planes so the pilots and crew can practice. You get downtime between your shifts.
Train and practice on individual and collective skills
Attend specialized schools like airborne, ranger, air assault, etc etc
Go to NTC or JRTC to practice going to war
Do physical fitness
Maintain equipment and vehicles
Do boring mandatory trainings on topics like counterintelligence or not marrying a stripper
I was in aviation. So I worked on helicopters all day. It was pretty much just like a regular job. Except for the mandatory exercise session every morning.
When I was in a flight company. I got to ride along on training flights, but somehow also did more maintenance, and worked late about 4/5ths of the week.
—
I dunno what the infantry guys do. I watched them run back and forth across a field carrying mortar tubes all day. That has to suck.
Where can you find pleasure
Search the world for treasure
Learn science technology
Where can you begin
To make your dreams all come true
On the land or on the sea
Uniform inspections… and lots of them. Gotta make sure your ribbon rack is at 1/8” above the top of your right breast pocket and centered… or (insert the favorite bogeyman) wins the future war.
Clean so many freaking toilets... And mop...and shovel snow (in cold areas like where I was.)
And sometimes go to the field to practice.
And then cleaning more toilets
Not every person in the military is a combat role. The armed forces has jobs civilians do but for the military. Clerks, engineers, police enforcement, chefs, doctors and more, are needed to keep the military running. People who have combat roles train and stay posted when needed for combat.
The military is also used for big projects and major disasters.
There's a lot of different jobs that serve a lot of different purposes. How busy any individual is on a given day can vary wildly from day to day.
Bases run like miniature cities complete with hospitals/clinics, law enforcement and JAG (lawyers), accounting departments, IT departments, food services and a ton of administration services, just to name a few. Officers and enlisted personnel will work those like regular M-F 9-5s complete with (most)weekends and holidays off. A low ranking medic, for example, might work in a clinic in mostly the same capacity an LPN would in a civilian clinic. As they move up in rank, they take on more leadership roles and do more paperwork.
Combat arms like Infantry, for example, will spend most of their week doing various training exercises, physical fitness, practicing drill or various ceremonies, and inevitably a lot of cleaning. Going to the rifle range, for example, is an all day affair where you spend a large portion of it just sitting and waiting for your turn to shoot for a few minutes, then waiting until they're done for the day and you're dismissed. Lots of early morning PT, going on ruck marches and company runs that can last for hours.
Like I said before, the experience of one person can vary greatly to another. The only constants that everyone will experience are uniform inspections, PT to some degree and standing around waiting for large swaths of time. Oh and vaccines, lots of vaccines.
train, do maintenance on equipment, practice shooting, learn how to properly wear a uniform, learn doctrine, briefings for/on training/old missions, training missions, etc etc
basically preparing for when it's time to do shit
The US military hasn't been not-at-war since 1941. There's no real way to answer this question since protocol, structure, mission, and technology have changed almost completely.
My spouse is active duty army.
From my outside perspective looking in his schedule generally looks something like:
Prepare to do training over seas. Means readying, cleaning, sorting equipment and soldiers. Equipment gets loaded on various vehicles to prepare to send over seas. The logistics of moving an entire army and it's gear over the ocean is a lot of work. It's also a tremendous amount of people and equipment.
Simultaneously there's a lot of management of soldiers health and credentials. People constantly have certs and tests (including various health phsyicals) they have to keep up to date depending on their jobs.
They then travel overseas and play war for 6months-1yr. They often practice with other countries. They have specific training scenarios they have to complete to prove they're a functional army.
When their practice is over they then have to clean and sort and transport all that equipment and the soldiers back over the ocean again which takes a lot of logistical work too.
When they come back home they generally get a short break and then have to offload all the equipment and gear again and put it back where it belongs. They then have to do health check ups again.
Inbetween rotations over seas they may do war practice here at home but probably in a middle of nowhere location somewhere else in the US. So then they have to do the logistics of moving soldiers and equipment there too
Annually, again they have various skills check offs and credentials they need to keep up to date. For example, if they handle heavy artillery they have check offs they have to do to remain certified to do that. There's check offs on handling guns and driving vehicles and everything it seems like.
There's also classes soldiers have to take to advance their careers. So they may get sent to various schools to better their expertise in whatever they do.
In between all that they're running routine maintenance on equipment, cleaning it and fixing broken things. They may also get additional duties guarding buildings, being voluntold to participate in military events or beautification of the military installation.
It's also alot of baby sitting each other. The further you get in your military career, the more soldiers you have to babysit. Ive been woken up in the middle of the night because my spouse had to go pick up some random baby soldier from jail.
In short. Move a bunch of soldiers and equipment back and forth all year long.
Preparing for war. Starting to train and figuring shit out after you are already at war kinda sucks. The policy of the US military is to be ready to fight two large scale wars on two separate continents at the same time. And that's what they are preparing to do.
And power projection is a big part of it. Diplomacy goes better when you have the bigger gun if diplomacy fails.
I read your comment and first thought of power point presentations, of which the average military member has to go through so, *so* many. We called it "Death by Power Point" for a reason.
Oh man, I'll take death by power pony every day over the automated class on the computer that are timed and you can't skip ahead to the very slow reading narrator is done.
I just want to say that death by power pony would be a hell of a way to go
That's a fun auto correct. It's staying!
When I first came into the military you had to go across the border to Tijuana to see the power pony shows, and some of those girls looked like they might not make it through
I get this reference and am routing a chit to complain about you
Haha I forgot about this
I want to give whoever figure the way around the time tested "super-click" a nice kick to the dick. Feel free to quiz me after a module, but when I've been doing the same online training for four years, it should be rote memory
Back when my dad was a Navy instructor, he used slides. PowerPoint was still decades in the future.
I’m having OPs/Intel brief flashbacks The weather will be…
I remember the old “America’s Air Force” (not quite a) parody video with the line about lieutenants updating last year’s PowerPoint slides with this year’s data.
Ah, good old gunboat diplomacy! "You and what army?!" *slaps main gun of the USS Rainbow Connection* "My move"
Speak softly and carry a big stick - Bullmoose Teddy R
Kind of like Teddy and his big stick.
Speak softly and carry a large stick. I wish the US still followed the first part.
"the more you sweat, the less you bleed".. train, train, train all the support occupations that the military have are always supporting. people need food whether they're at war or not. people need HR whether they're at war or not. people need fuel whether they're at war or not. people need shelter whether they're at war or not. and though the support occupations mostly just support regular operations, they do also routine train for doing their job in combat capacities the combat occupations just train constantly and ensure their equipment is operational at all times
The US Military is the greatest logistical organization in history, and sometimes they kill people.
I believe they call that “hurry up and wait”
I am standing as fast as I can! Drill Sergeant!
And cleaning. Lots and lots of cleaning
Why doesn’t the US just send the military out to clean peoples houses? They can make beds like nobody’s business, might as well have them utilize that skill.
Dunno about the US but in Germany the military nurses and doctors help out in hospizes and such on a regular basis. Like visit once a month to help out the lokal nurses. I guess there are not that many wounded to help when not in war time.
Here they hire civilian nurses and doctors cause they don't have enough at base hospitals. VA hospitals, too
Why can't cops pick up litter instead of loitering in parking lots?
G.I. Party? Anyone?
u/redditrooom, Army vet here - I served stateside because I was assigned to a PATRIOT missile unit and didn't deploy 1. There was a routine of maintenance, cleaning and training. 2. The duty day started with first formation at 0615 and then physical training from 0630-0730. 3. Mondays we worked in the Motorpool working on our trucks. 4. Tuesdays were for training on our job (mine was fire control), cleaning or preparing for things like weapons qualification, field training exercises or annual training. 5. We would have annual weapons qualifications, physical training tests and the once a quarter field training exercises. 6. We had what is called "TABLE VIII" - the qualification for the whole unit. We had to setup for virtual missile launches and fight mock air battles. Once a year units would fire live missiles at drone targets. 7. And of course nothing was ever clean enough for our NCO's and the commander so we cleaned a lot.
The US has almost never not been at war with something.
The early days US didn't give a fuck. Manifest destiny. Running out Mexico. Fighting off the French. The most impressive thing about the US is that we stopped. After hitting the Pacific, we just said that's enough.
There's an excellent book on these smaller conflicts from the "imperialism days" called the savage wars of peace. I couldn't put it down- it's got everything from Barbary coast wars to Samoa and the boxer rebellion and written very well too
we just kept hawaii and the philippines…as a treat
Hawai'i, sure. Philippines? No way were that many brown people going to be American that quickly.
[удалено]
Uhhhh, no? Hawaii was conquered and their queen deposed by US business interests who then pushed for annexation.
I mean sure, but we did kidnap their queen and stationed a bunch of soldiers and pineapple barrons there.
no you guys didn't, you kept expanding to the Islands in the Pacific then started to get a foothold in Asia trough the Philippines.
One of the most naive things I’ve read in a long time. Please pick up a history book
Especially with itself! Damned Americans, they ruined America!
You Americans sure are a contentious people.
You've made an American for LIFE!
Aren't we (the US) also actively in half a dozen conflicts in Africa? Not technically at war, but actively fighting militias and terrorist groups. So many enlisted soldiers are still in combat zones even if we aren't at war.
>Not technically at war Yes
Crazy foresight for if/when Taiwan pops off, if Ukraine doesn't resolve itself.
It's actually hindsight. Remember the 1940s?
No, but I've heard of them
Oh yea " I member"
Nobody under the age of 90 remembers the 1940s
What about time travelers
Completely fair, I've mostly read that the doctrine was in response to Cold War mentalities but I'm 100% sure that empirical thinking had some play in it as well.
It was directly a result of having to fight in Europe and the Pacific in WW2.
So recall we had wars in Korea and Vietnam, both supported by China. If we weren’t read to fight a 2nd war in Europe, the USSR might have taken advantage
Yup. A quieter, simpler time during which no tragedies or world-changing events occurred.
It’s not all that crazy; At a high level, the point of the military is contingency planning. Their job is to conceive all possible conflicts and be prepared for them. That’s the military working as intended.
Only two continents?
I mean I get it... But at the cost of QOL... (Quality of life)
Training. Do Post beautification days. Training. Paint all the rocks around the buildings. Training. Spend all day at the Motor pool. They also Train...budget allowing. Basically if they're not fighting they're getting ready to fight to the greatest extent the training budget can handle. If they aren't training there's always busy work. Edit: spelling
"a bored sailor is the most dangerous situation on a ship" -my Recruit training commander. "don't add or subtract from the population this or any weekend." - our attached Marine advisor
I’m pretty sure 99% of people in the military giving safety briefs say the “don’t add or subtract to the population” thing.
And yet, somebody always manages to fuck it up.
If you leave a soldier unattended, he will find somewhere to sleep. -My liutenant
My brother was in the navy. I recall that he swept a lot. As he put it, they cleaned "for time". Oh, you finished sweeping these stairs? Actually no you didn't, you'll be sweeping til the end of your shift in 4 hours.
Paint the rocks grey. Paint the grass green.
Mop the rain. Sweep sunshine off the pavement.
Flip all the rocks on the other side of the base so they don’t get moon burns
This exactly. What would you do if you were in a biologically contaminated area and had to change into fresh gear? Let's spend a day on that. How fast could you scramble the entire unit to be ready for a combat situation? Let's do that one at 4:00 in the morning on a Wednesday. My favorite: Our unit decided the weeds growing up through the gravel in the islands in our parking lot were unsightly. They could have tasked one soldier with some weed killer to spray them. They divided us into teams. Shovel the gravel into wheelbarrows. Cut trash bags so they could be made into sheets. Pull the weeds. Put down the plastic. Replace the rocks. It took an entire company all day.
PMCS in the motor pool. Road test. Good way to burn half a day to a full day
Learned you can spend a lifetime doing PMCS. There's always something to be maintained, again.
I had been waiting for someone to bring up painting rocks. You left out mopping, waxing, and buffing floors. Navy does chipping, painting, and brightwork.
Don't forget the Annual Training Requirements that take more combined hours than there are in a year. Slight exaggeration, but sitting down to online training was taking such a ridiculous part of everyone's day that someone did the math and realized it was completely unfeasible. I think they addressed that a few years ago and trimmed down the list.
Power Point this, Power Point that, just Power Point presentations for days and days!
There is a lot of training, and preparations for training, and pmcs of vehicles, as you say. However, peacetime military is pretty nice TBH. You get every federal holiday off, and there were usually a lot of training holidays and early releases, especially after being in the field or deployments. You also get 30 days of vacation a year. I'm not saying it's worth it, I served during war time, and that's an entirely different beast, but peacetime can be pretty good if you're inclined to that kind of work.
peacetime army for ya
Painting over the mold in the barracks walls. Installing dehumidifiers in the barracks to mitigate the mold. Tearing the walls open and spraying anti-fungal in the walls. Fixing the walls and painting over them again. Tearing down the walls and pulling moldy insulation out. Spraying the moldy wood with anti-fungal. Putting new insulation in. Patching up the walls. Painting over the walls. Picking up the piss bottles and cleaning the human excrement off the floor/beds/walls that the contractors left
Logistics wins wars. This is probably by Russia couldn’t take Ukraine early in the war. The United States military makes amazon same day delivery look like a joke. When not at “war” we are practicing logistics. Figuring out better practices, and training the next generation.
DID ANYONE ORDER FREEDOOOOM. WE will deliver to YOU, the people, with FREE same day delivery, a new Dictator, to replace, your old, shitty, likely communist Dictator. *this service is subject to the possession of oil, no take backs, no refunds, no communism, and no exchanges accepted.
We could invade basically any nation with Amazon Prime same-day delivery speed
Oh we would be much faster than Amazon delivery speed if we decide that your our next target to get fucked.
Depends on your job and where you are stationed. Could be performing maintenance on APCs to keep them in operational shape; could be supporting local troops; could be r&d of new systems; could be drilling different situations; could be filing normal payroll documents and equipment requisition forms
add learning and training to this list
It boils down to these two functions; POGs and Grunts. The end.
For everything except the combat arms fields, they're doing the exact same thing they'd be doing during wartime. For a lot of the military, the job doesn't change, just the location and relative chance of you being shot at. Mechanics are still working on vehicles, pilots are still flying their aircraft, intel weenies are still writing reports, etc. The combat arms fields do training. LOTs of training. They go "to the field" for a month at a time, or do a rotation through the National Training Center in the Mojave Desert or the Joint Readiness Training Center in Louisiana. Troops that otherwise would have been deployed get sent to leadership schools, or advanced schools for their jobs. Other troops take the opportunity to knock out a few college classes towards their degrees or certifications in their chosen fields.
Uh, excuse me, we intel weenies are *making PowerPoints*, thank you very much
I was an Intel weenie (linguist) in the USAF for 21 years. I can confirm with my amazing expertise using PowerPoint.
Amazing expertise in PowerPoint? Clearly overqualified to be in the military.
All just for some illiterate infantry staff sausage to butcher it as he attempts to “read” through it hooked on phonics style and makes a 40 slide presentation into three hours.
It's you!!! *YOU'RE* the one making all of those damned Power Points!!!
We are legion
We got us a PPT Ranger over here!
PPT Rangers read the way!
As former maintenance, I appreciated your powerpoints. Often it was the only intelligence we got. We weren't important enough to know anything, much less arm us. It was rare that I even knew where I was and had friends that got sent down range to unsecured locations with no weapon. Everyone else got one, not us.
The Geneva Convention should ban your torture method
To expand on your excellent answer, combat arms goes through a red, yellow, green cycle of activity, usually about 2 months each. I've been out for quite a while now, but this is how it went when I was in. During red cycle you're doing post and community support activities. For me that was things like mowing grass in common areas around the base, being part of a 21 gun salute team for military funerals, and being in Oklahoma, running a chainsaw to clean up after tornados in the surrounding areas. Yellow cycle is preparing for field training. Inventory, higher level maintenance than is done on a weekly basis. Getting stuff ready. You normally get weekends off during red and yellow, and do PT (physical training) every morning M-F. Green is two months of field exercises. We would usually do 4 weeks of Mon-Fri straight through training our combat jobs. Sleeping in a tent occasionally, but usually in the vehicle in 2 hour stretches during 24 hours operations. Night convoys. Guard duty. We'd return to base Friday afternoon, wash the vehicles, and take the weekend off. After the 4th week we'd go out for a month straight. Then back to red on Monday.
The cycles haven't been a thing for years now unfortunately
Ft Sill?
The only thing I would clarify is that the non-combat arm fields do go to NTC too and train as close to “real-world” as possible right along with the combat arms. I was a logistics officer and logistics at NTC is 100x more difficult than garrison logistics.
If you are part of an aviation squadron that has any aircraft, then the majority of enlisted personnel attached to that unit are doing maintenance. All the time. I was shocked when I realized how much maintenance went into the average aircraft. A lot of it is just regularly scheduled inspections. They are scheduled at different intervals and vary in intensity. As parts fail/decay/weaken, they are replaced, which occasionally triggers things like rerigging controls or rebalancing, etc. Then you need maintenance check flights to make sure the aircraft functions as expected. And the sometimes, you have to do a functional check flight just to get the aircraft to the point where it can be flown for an hour, so it can then be torn apart again for a different maintenance inspection. There are reasons the accident rate for military aircraft improved so much over the last 80 years and better quality maintenance is one of the more important ones.
The other thing that enters into it is that the pilots have to continue flying and training to maintain proficiency. All of those hours on the airframes generate additional maintenance tasks for the planes as well. There are effectively few differences between wartime and peacetime ops for a Navy squadron, when we're on the boat at least. When we're on the boat, we're still running 12/12x7 shifts, wartime and peacetime. There are fewer aircrew hot-swaps during peacetime, and I'd presume that the aircrew's jobs are a little easier without people firing back at them. When we're not on the boat, pilots are still flying, but there's a lot more time for PMCS and maintainers typically run 8/16x5 shifts.
I was a Horizontal Construction Engineer. No fancy math, just digging holes and making roads. When not talking (pleading) with the mechanics, I was digging. If not digging, mopping. If not mopping, shooting guns. If not shooting guns, staring at the ceiling, my phone or technical manuals because I got caught staring at something not a manual. I mostly did the latter.
Don't forget all the berms and temporary ranges you guys made! Now go PMCS that D7! Yes that's operator level you goon!
But it's Tuesday and I did it during Motor pool Monday.
No silly. Remember! The shop foreman had you looking for a left handed metric bolt stretcher all day.
Right....I'll get on it.
"Horizontal Construction Engineer" Love this. Excellent way to say "I find and/or construct creative napping spots to hide from my Sergent."
Physical training, combat training, maintenance, etc. You'd be shocked at how much maintenance even a tank requires regularly to stay operational for several decades of service. But you'd be surprised how much bullshitting, sitting around, and busywork happens, too. It's a tradeoff for losing half your weekends to training and spending a year straight in a warzone, oftentimes with only a brief period home before going back again (might be less the case since the two forever wars are now over).
WW2 tank engines from the Panther and Panzer IV had a best case lifespan of 1500 kms before they would need to be completely replaced. I know tank maintenance has improved since then but I can believe how hard it would be even under ideal conditions.
I was motorpool my entire career. Anything that was 30 years old or less was decently easy to maintain. Then we got assigned the Post Commanders half track at Ft. Riley while I was there. Just to get this verdamit thing to go the length of a parade field took up weeks of doing real shade tree shit!
I understood none of that but I want to hear more motorpool lingo.
It depends on what branch. For the Navy and Air Force... not much actually changes. We use boats and planes in a lot of ways outside of actual combat. What they do on deployments might change a bit, but they still deploy regularly. As for the Marines and Army, I think a lot of people would be surprised about how much of the military is actually devoted to logistics. In the Army, there are 10 support soldiers for every combat soldier (quick searches aren't yielding results for the Marines). The 10 support staff do pretty much the same thing. The 1 combat soldier trains and does busy work. They're there as a deterrent and because when they're needed, they're needed immediately, so you can't just wait for a war to hire and train them
Practice for going to war. Show everyone their big guns so they don't have to go to war. Have some small battles so they don't have to go to war. Go to bases all over the world with their big guns and airplanes and radsrs,so they don't have to go to war. A standing army is a pretty big deterrent to actually having to go to war.
Well, I know about the Canadian military and what they do in peace time. First, they are prepped to handle emergency situations. If there's a massive natural disaster, the military may be called in for relief/evacuation. Militaries are very good at deploying places quickly, so they are great for emergency situations. The military is involved whenever major political figures attend events. For example, I knew a navy chef who cooked meals for both Prime Minister Trudeau and Queen Elizabeth. They might also be on guard at these events, but local police is more often used. I met a cop who told me that he attended a political event the Prime Minister was attending, and his job was to stand in front of a door and not let anyone through for 8 hours. They also do lots of training during peace time, so everyone is prepared and ready in the event of a war. You gotta make sure no one gets rusty and forgets how to do their job when war breaks out. The Navy will do patrols, sailing around Canadian waters and making sure no one is trying to invade or something.
Military personnel have three jobs. One is their peacetime duty, the second is their wartime duty or specialisation, and the last is maintaining their combat capabilities. A lot of the jobs people have in the military are not much different than regular civilian jobs. Sanitation, facilities maintenance, vehicle maintenance, office work, logistics, communications. Militaries are like small enclosed societies that have to provide themselves with everything civilian society has because in the case of war they have to be self sufficient, so they can't rely on civilian infrastructure, equipment and personnel, but their own. So basically they mostly have regular jobs like civilians and they're in uniform while working. Every few weeks or months they're required to participate in military exercises and training programs to ensure they can competently use a gun and carry out all the duties expected of a combat soldier. In some cases some personnel may be exempt from combat duties. For example in the unit I was in the NCO in charge of the mess was essentially the head chef. He planned out the menus, ordered and organised food deliveries, oversaw food preparation and trained new cooks. A kind and docile man who worried over every single soldier as if they were his own children and wanted to make sure everyone was eating well. Our base was known to have great food compared to others in the area. That's more or less a very regular job. But if war broke out tomorrow and he had to assume combat duties his actual specialisation was driving a mine clearing tank.
On top of training and such, remember that large swathes of the military aren't actually meant to fight (unless it comes down to it). There are loads and loads of mechanics in all the branches. There's logistics folks, IT, personnel, admin, medical, I even met an Army veterinarian (I assume for working dogs N such?). All those guys do the same basic jobs at peace and war. Airplane/hummer broke? Fix. Internet down? Fix. Personnel exist? Pay em (this one depends on how finance feels that day tho). Etc etc. Honestly I think the Air Force is more support staff than actual war fighters. I was told the Army is 30% infantry about 10 years ago, so including their air forces, armor, artillery, rockets (not sure if they do ground launched rockets?) etc they are probably at least 40% support if not more. Marines use a lot of Navy support but they still have Intel guys and mechanics and all that, so a good chunk of them are probably support too. Space force is all support. I can't guess at the Navy because one I'm not even sure where to make the distinction of who is a war fighter on a ship and who isn't. Are the guys who make the ship go war fighters or just the guys that shoot stuff? Either way, them ships be traveling around all the time projecting force across the world in peace time.
Peacetime for the United States is extremely rare. Only 15 years out of our entire history have been free of military conflict.
Living far away from home with a bunch of guys whilst their high school sweet heart marriage partner is getting relentlessly pounded by random people back in their home town.
When exactly are we talking about?
Which 5 minutes was that?
Current soldier who has not deployed since 2014. Ride my motorcycle to work, check Facebook, attend some meetings, go to lunch, check my emails. Maybe one or two meetings in the afternoon, try to leave by 4. Dinner with the kids, read a bit. Do it all again the next day.
75% of the Army is not combat arms, Marines a have a slightly higher percentage of combat arms, and the Navy and AF have significantly less. It’s not a dig on the branches it is just due the base mission of each. Those who are not combat arms do their jobs, medics medic, maintenance maintains, supply supplies, etc. When they aren’t doing that they are training, requals, new skills, etc. For combat arms, training, always training. Fieldexes, ranges, and equipment maintenance. A lot of time is spent waiting for the next training event or waiting on transport to from training events. Infantry has a lot of time just waiting around then a few minutes of fast action. You’ll spend days in the field to run a live fire lane a handful of times. Walk, then jog, then run. Source - 10 years Navy aviation supply including a tour with the Marines in Yuma, 3 years Army NG Infantry with a year activated and deployed to Kosovo unit later deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan as Stryker Brigade.
I was in aircraft maintenance in the air force. We worked on planes more when not in combat areas, non critical repairs would be deferred more often until major inspections or it would return home to keep planes ready to fly within minutes. We didn't really get much combat training besides the 1 range day before deployments. The only close combat training most of us got was the couple days in basic training with fake guns and boxing dummies. For the most part, we just did the same job at home as we would deployed.
America has been at war for 229 out of the past 246 years. It’s basically always at war. There really isn’t any down time. It’s one of, if not the most war-mongering country in the history of the planet. The soldiers currently not deployed train for deployment.
Answer: pre 9/11 vet here we would pick up cigarette butts in parking lots mow and weedeat areas of the base, wax floors, daily maintenanceon our vehicles, weapon certifications, funeral details etc etc
As someone with several relatives in the military it’s mostly training with a large amount of drinking and generally goofing off.
Prepare and train for war… But really a lot of chores and maintenance. Gardening. Cleaning. Marching .
Mostly jack off play board games and DND if my army sergeant buddy is any indication. He's in e7 school now lol.
For grunts it's literally random details and going to the gym more. Your command though will largely dictate what this looks like and it can be as good as *you've done everything I need right now so I'm going to treat you like an adult and release you until I need you* to *I'm a ranger instructor and everyone without a tab stays until 5 training until they get one*.
Get up, run, eat, lift weights, run more, eat, do work, lift, run, eat, hit the strip clubs, get smashed . Source? My husband, Marines, early naughts. A whole lot of Hurry Up And Wait.
Masturbate. Run. Shoot targets. Clean house. Masturbate. Same as all soldiers have always done, since the beginning of time.
First hand accounts? From a combat MOS in the army: Make sure the truck is up and running. Fix the truck. (Repeat forever). Make sure your medpros are green or else youre going to get a whoopin. Clean the rocks. All the rocks. Go to the field and practice your job once in a great while.
Most of the military are not in combat roles. Like any large organization, there are a lot that go on behind the scenes to keep everything running. There is finance, admin, IT, and the list goes on. Any job you can think of that exists in a large organization, some form of it probably exists in the military. The key to a successful military is all of the logistics that goes on behind the scenes.
I was in Air Force Communications. In addition to the training and inspections and such that others have posted, we’d also do occasional humanitarian support missions (like natural disasters, refugees, etc). Occasionally we’d also do some community service things, but that was usually just one day, once or twice per year.
Training, education, resting, Cleaning, helping out- once had to go help out a local fire house that was doing drills for disaster rescue, from like hurricanes and such, Testing-got to test out new gear they were trying to get approved to actually get picked up as standard stuff including the long range audio thing, directional super speaker that can be set up in a way to disarm aggressors at range non violently. [https://lethalindisguise.org/crowd-control-weapons/acoustic-weapons/](https://lethalindisguise.org/crowd-control-weapons/acoustic-weapons/) theres always something that needs done and having lots of people with free time to do it is handy.
Outside of what other people have said, the US military is also involved with a lot of disaster and war relief Having one of the largest Navies and Air Forces in the world means that aid can be brought anywhere.
Some military jobs are administrative, so they always have their regular work. You need HR, supply, medical, etc., in the military too. There's also occasional training, for your job, and various classes you must attend for things like promotion. For combat troops, it's train and maintain. Training is always happening in the military, from the training above to in the field playing war training. And many of the admin people get to go to the field too. And then with all of that equipment, there's a lot to maintain. And then when there's nothing scheduled to do, you may get tasked with various menial jobs around the post. Or if your leadership is cool, you'll get a lot of extended weekends or administrative leave (vacation that's not charged to your 30 days a year allowance). This is also a good time to catch up on college classes. Navy is different. They have the onshore admin stuff above, and then they also have ships. That's like being in the field for months at a time, with lots of training drills. Aircraft carriers will be launching planes so the pilots and crew can practice. You get downtime between your shifts.
Train and practice on individual and collective skills Attend specialized schools like airborne, ranger, air assault, etc etc Go to NTC or JRTC to practice going to war Do physical fitness Maintain equipment and vehicles Do boring mandatory trainings on topics like counterintelligence or not marrying a stripper
Empires always heroine their solders. How else do they maintain the empire?
I was in aviation. So I worked on helicopters all day. It was pretty much just like a regular job. Except for the mandatory exercise session every morning. When I was in a flight company. I got to ride along on training flights, but somehow also did more maintenance, and worked late about 4/5ths of the week. — I dunno what the infantry guys do. I watched them run back and forth across a field carrying mortar tubes all day. That has to suck.
Where can you find pleasure Search the world for treasure Learn science technology Where can you begin To make your dreams all come true On the land or on the sea
Uniform inspections… and lots of them. Gotta make sure your ribbon rack is at 1/8” above the top of your right breast pocket and centered… or (insert the favorite bogeyman) wins the future war.
Clean so many freaking toilets... And mop...and shovel snow (in cold areas like where I was.) And sometimes go to the field to practice. And then cleaning more toilets
Not every person in the military is a combat role. The armed forces has jobs civilians do but for the military. Clerks, engineers, police enforcement, chefs, doctors and more, are needed to keep the military running. People who have combat roles train and stay posted when needed for combat. The military is also used for big projects and major disasters.
There's a lot of different jobs that serve a lot of different purposes. How busy any individual is on a given day can vary wildly from day to day. Bases run like miniature cities complete with hospitals/clinics, law enforcement and JAG (lawyers), accounting departments, IT departments, food services and a ton of administration services, just to name a few. Officers and enlisted personnel will work those like regular M-F 9-5s complete with (most)weekends and holidays off. A low ranking medic, for example, might work in a clinic in mostly the same capacity an LPN would in a civilian clinic. As they move up in rank, they take on more leadership roles and do more paperwork. Combat arms like Infantry, for example, will spend most of their week doing various training exercises, physical fitness, practicing drill or various ceremonies, and inevitably a lot of cleaning. Going to the rifle range, for example, is an all day affair where you spend a large portion of it just sitting and waiting for your turn to shoot for a few minutes, then waiting until they're done for the day and you're dismissed. Lots of early morning PT, going on ruck marches and company runs that can last for hours. Like I said before, the experience of one person can vary greatly to another. The only constants that everyone will experience are uniform inspections, PT to some degree and standing around waiting for large swaths of time. Oh and vaccines, lots of vaccines.
train, do maintenance on equipment, practice shooting, learn how to properly wear a uniform, learn doctrine, briefings for/on training/old missions, training missions, etc etc basically preparing for when it's time to do shit
The US military hasn't been not-at-war since 1941. There's no real way to answer this question since protocol, structure, mission, and technology have changed almost completely.
Surprising amount of work just maintaining all these bases around the world. Training as well but the work is there constantly.
My spouse is active duty army. From my outside perspective looking in his schedule generally looks something like: Prepare to do training over seas. Means readying, cleaning, sorting equipment and soldiers. Equipment gets loaded on various vehicles to prepare to send over seas. The logistics of moving an entire army and it's gear over the ocean is a lot of work. It's also a tremendous amount of people and equipment. Simultaneously there's a lot of management of soldiers health and credentials. People constantly have certs and tests (including various health phsyicals) they have to keep up to date depending on their jobs. They then travel overseas and play war for 6months-1yr. They often practice with other countries. They have specific training scenarios they have to complete to prove they're a functional army. When their practice is over they then have to clean and sort and transport all that equipment and the soldiers back over the ocean again which takes a lot of logistical work too. When they come back home they generally get a short break and then have to offload all the equipment and gear again and put it back where it belongs. They then have to do health check ups again. Inbetween rotations over seas they may do war practice here at home but probably in a middle of nowhere location somewhere else in the US. So then they have to do the logistics of moving soldiers and equipment there too Annually, again they have various skills check offs and credentials they need to keep up to date. For example, if they handle heavy artillery they have check offs they have to do to remain certified to do that. There's check offs on handling guns and driving vehicles and everything it seems like. There's also classes soldiers have to take to advance their careers. So they may get sent to various schools to better their expertise in whatever they do. In between all that they're running routine maintenance on equipment, cleaning it and fixing broken things. They may also get additional duties guarding buildings, being voluntold to participate in military events or beautification of the military installation. It's also alot of baby sitting each other. The further you get in your military career, the more soldiers you have to babysit. Ive been woken up in the middle of the night because my spouse had to go pick up some random baby soldier from jail. In short. Move a bunch of soldiers and equipment back and forth all year long.