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Since apparently we have a bunch of lurkers, I figured we could do a more educational thread or whatever. I know many haven't served so I can totally understand why stuff like the branch threads or DFAC probably aren't appealing, or at least difficult to just kind of jump into anyhow. We have a wide variety of experience in this forum, and while mostly US military, there is still a lot of representation from other countries. I think we even have a dude that was in the Finnish Army and is now in US Army training so WTF basically. Ask "dumb" questions about the military and I'm sure you'll get a good answer. You can ask about dumb acronyms or policy. You can even ask about doctrine and we can divulge all the SECRET OPSEC stuff for you! You can even ask if you should join, but the answer is NO. If you still think you might want to join because REASONS, feel free to PM me though for at least Army stuff and I'll try to give you a nuanced but overly negative answer. Maybe other dudes can volunteer for other branches I don't know. This place has gotten pretty negative towards this kind of stuff, and while it's meant with the kindest of intentions, we all know that people gonna join so at least try to get some answers I guess.
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Feb 4, 2017 03:38
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Zeris posted:Why is it that one should not allow one's dog tags to dangle in the dirt pick up your dog tags and put it in your shirt. also lol if you wore dog tags and it wasn't a daily inspectable item
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Feb 4, 2017 03:42
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I mean haha new thread lets talk poo poo but I was kind of trying to make a sincere thread 
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Feb 4, 2017 03:45
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Rad Lieutenant posted:Oops sorry hct When I was a cav scout, absolutely not. To be honest chemical had some cool things in it civ side, but nothing I really want to do, but sometimes think about getting into. A lot of my training for NCO schools and stuff was like industrial chemical clean up poo poo in the SCBA suit. I got the highest rating for HAZMAT response stuff, which came from the Natl Firefighter Association or something. Totally probably could have made a career out firefighting/hazmat response stuff of that or OSHA inspector poo poo I'm sure, but I just never really felt passionate enough to pursue it. I'm doing an IT program in school now because I'm a goon of course, and I really don't exactly love it to be honest, and I think sometimes that if I had that job in the Army I could probably skip all t his poo poo and just get whatever certs I needed and be great at it.
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Feb 4, 2017 04:00
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To further expound on that, I don't think poo poo like THE ARMY VALUES made me a more valuable employee, but I definitely feel a bit more confident in being a manager or whatever. Not necessarily because of Army poo poo, but just because of at least having some experience in dealing with all the dumb drama and poo poo and dealing with peoples concerns and stuff. It probably made me worse in someways because I tend to lean towards an us vs THE ORGANIZATION with my dudes vs ramming whatever bullshit down their throat so in that way, sticking up for subordinates, i'm probably terrible for corporate culture
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Feb 4, 2017 04:07
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Nostalgia4Butts posted:honestly it didnt help me out with work but you can totally yell right into my face and i can not give a poo poo yeah same, I regret missing my 20s.
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Feb 4, 2017 04:49
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It's just the gallows humor. In my recruiting office like our most quoted line was "KILLLLL MEEEEEE" basically from Aliens poo poo also "Let's burn this motherfucker to the ground"
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Feb 4, 2017 04:58
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Nostalgia4Butts posted:our deployment was 13 months of us repeating the rick james sketch from chappelles show yeah same really lol. I forgot about that. I"M RICH BITCH
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Feb 4, 2017 05:05
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I'm thinking of the Lil Jon one but really chappelle in general was huge
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Feb 4, 2017 05:07
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Mustang posted:HCT you were a cav scout? Seems like there's a strangely high number of scouts and Pacific North Westerners here in GIP I was 19d for my first enlistment. Like 6 months after AIT I had a grand mal seizure and they took me off the line and put me as a brigade mail clerk lol. I deployed as basically a brigade s1 and gtfo after that. I Came back in and didin't want to come back in as an E4 cav scout with 0 experience and the MOS's they offered me were like 18x, 11x, truck driver, cook and chemical. I took chemical. Yes I'm a dumb rear end who got out and came back in
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Feb 4, 2017 05:10
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There are always people loving up in dumb ways, half the time it's with good intent and poor execution, or you could probably just blame lovely leadership and bad communication. Or it's regular stuff that people are doing anyways like DUIs and drugs type stuff. Most frequent "gently caress up" that I can think of is poo poo like missing morning PT formation, or being a second late to the 10 minutes before the 5 minutes before the 10 minutes before the formation type stuff. A lot of the non criminal gently caress up poo poo is somewhat understandable because it's just volumes and volumes of rules and regulations that are selectively enforced, if at all, until someone decides to gently caress you with it. It's cliche to say this but really the easiest way to stay out of trouble in the army was to just be in the right place, at the right time, in the right uniform, and it was smooth sailing for the most part. I'm a weirdo who did 12 years and never got UCMJ though so I guess I was a good little soldier until they decided I was garbage for whatever reason.
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Feb 4, 2017 18:35
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I'll try to answer the UH1Y question in a friendly informative way! The UH-1 Iroquois, from here on out referred to as the Huey, is probably one of the most iconic pieces of US military hardware. The name Huey comes from when it originally supposed to be the HU-1 or Helicopter, Utility - 1. Instead of course it became Utility, Helicopter - 1 as the military kind of redid the numbering system. It was the first turbine helicopter built for widespread use, and was used by every branch in the military! It was a pretty versatile airframe and did about every conceivable mission for a helicopter, from CASEVAC (Casualty evacuation, medical air lift type stuff, and a real huge game changer in life expectancy of US soldiers), fire support, observation, transport, marking targets for other things to come blow poo poo up and so on. While as far as I know every branch in the mil has moved away from the UH-1 in favor of more modern helicopters, specifically the UH-60 blackhawk models, the USMC has continued with the huey over the years, improving it steadily. A lot of it has changed, where the original just had the 2 rotor blades which gave it a very specific sound, the new one has four! As a side note, and referenced in the Billy Joel song "Goodnight Saigon" he mentions counting rotors, which was probably a legit thing the Viet Cong did to know if it was either a huey or something else. Back on topic they (the USMC) updated it to have two turbine engines rather than the one. I'd guess for better range, survivability and payload reasons. They even started making new hueys, which is pretty cool when you think about it, as most of the old hardware like that, the B52, C130s, and so on ceased production FOREVER ago and generally speaking it's usually just as affordable to build a whole drat new helicopter rather than restart old lines. Here is a vintage Army UH1  compared to the more modern UH1Y  Let me know if there are any corrections to make, just kinda pulled that out of my rear end to be honest. CHICKEN SHOES fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Feb 4, 2017 |
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Feb 4, 2017 18:52
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:What's the deal with recruiters? My impression is that people wind up assigned in recruitment as sort of a punishment, but I don't know how accurate that is. In the Army it wasn't really a desirable job, but not a punishment by any means. It is viewed as a "career booster" kind of thing like drill sergeant and so on when it comes to like big army promotion stuff. People sometimes volunteer for it but like 90% of it is just SURPRISE YOU'RE GOING TO RECRUITING SCHOOL, and the poo poo sucks because it's easy to underperform as a recruiter for reasons that are realistically out of your control and then all of sudden recruiting is NOT a career booster, but rather a career ender, or at least not a good thing, depending on your evaluation reports. Recruiting is really hosed up and no one really wants to do it because how bad it sucks, it had a lot of suicide problems in the command for awhile, with lots of high pressure sales tactics poo poo that honestly most people arent interested or necessarily comfortable doing
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Feb 4, 2017 21:07
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:That last bit is particularly surprising. I wouldn't figure recruiting would have a suicide problem, even if it can be unpleasant. Did the higher ups change anything about how the system works (I'm guessing you had quotas?) to address that? I got to USAREC (US Army Recruiting Command) about a year or two after the high profile suicide epidemic thing. One Battalion located in Houston area had like 4 recruiters kill themselves in a week or even maybe it was a matter of days. poo poo like that apparently had been going on like that for years, but this time it hit the news so the Army had to pretend to care because they got embarrassed. Major General Mann came in to fix this poo poo and made a lot of policy changes that most reasonable person would say was good. Instituted work hour policies, mandating that work day, unless specifically approved on an case by case basis by a Colonel, ended at 1700hrs. Of course people willingly violated this all the time, I did, it just happens that you get stuck in traffic driving some kid somewhere, or it's just in the best interest of the applicant that you do all his paperwork at 6pm because of his school activities or work and so on. Eventually that general left the command for usual reasons after doing his 3-4 years, and the new guy came in and said gently caress all that poo poo, everything is up to unit commander discretion. Our commander said "well basically you guys are working to 1800-1900 hours anyway, so now thats mandatory! Hooray!" and poo poo like that and it got shittier and shittier. Morale goes down and as a result quotas start getting missed, so more dumb poo poo comes down because of the numbers, morale goes further down and it's just this downward spiral of bullshit. Regarding quotas, the one thing that did change is MG Mann changed it from being individual quotas for each recruiter, and instead made it per recruiting station as a group effort kind of thing. A lot of old timers grumbled about this because "BACK IN MY DAY" poo poo but while USAREC as a whole was still massively toxic (almost primarily because of "BACK IN MY DAY" senior enlisted) it made the stations a lot more cohesive, and I'd imagine more tolerable. You could take leave without worrying about some other guy stealing all your contracts while you were gone and totally getting you hosed up for missing quota and poo poo. When I left people were still day dreaming about bringing back individual quotas and stuff like tracking every recruiters every movement 24/7 via smartphones and poo poo. gently caress all that poo poo.
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Feb 4, 2017 21:39
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Arc Light posted:Thanks! I learn something new every day. I had no idea the Marines outright modded the Huey into a quad-rotor configuration. Yeah the army still has some around too, I should have specified as a frontline type chopper suboptimal posted:I'd like to hear some stories about motards who came in bragging about how they were going to be Delta/SEALs/etc only to flame out hilariously. How long would it usually take before that happened? About day 2 of reception to basic training usually
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Feb 4, 2017 21:46
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AmyL posted:What organization, posting, or whatever decides what a certain unit does in the Army for a certain day? I used to work as a volunteer at a Soldier Family Activity center for a few years at Ft. Meade and I always wondered how far advance a schedule was made up in general for a unit, especially they seem to do so much different stuff day per day. It's not one singular organization other than the collective bureaucracy of the Army. You get tasks from Department of the Army (Have "Please don't be racist and also please don't rape people, with a seasonal class on how not to die while BBQing" classes quarterly or whatever) Then maybe your division has events and stuff that gets pushed down. After division you have your brigade (BDE) demanding stuff, then battalion (BN) and finally company (CO) A bulk of your schedule is, ideally anyway, coming from your BN and CO commanders. That usually includes the implementation of the DA and DIV stuff. CO commander makes a training schedule, and I think it has to be signed off by the BN commander, but I wouldn't be suprised if in some units it doesn't go higher, depending on the amount of micromanagement each level demands. Training schedule, which is just the term for basically your units complete day to day calendar, such as allowing time for soldiers to bathe and stuff, is usually published maybe 3 months out IIRC. It's almost never placed somewhere accessible to junior enlisted people, so a lot of times no one knows what the gently caress is actually going on. Also most units that I've been in only loosely follow it anyway, because often times you're reacting to last minute orders from higher echelons for usually a bunch of dumb poo poo. Tl;dr, honestly it's almost 90% made up as we go along it seems like
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Feb 5, 2017 19:27
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Zeroisanumber posted:My dad did his basic training at Ft. Leonard Wood. Is it the worst place in the US or the worst place in the galaxy? Because the old man can't mention his time in the military without appending, "And gently caress Missouri" to every story. I'll confirm that it's bad Polk is also bad most military bases are actually bad
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Feb 5, 2017 21:43
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Ft Leanard Wood had Luna moths which are one of the most horrifying animals I've ever had fly at my head. I'm also a huge baby about bugs and poo poo, especially when they are bigger than my hand
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Feb 6, 2017 00:40
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LITERALLY SHAKING posted:I went to Knox, so I cannot vouch for the shittiness of Leonard Wood. While knox did suck, I did OSUT there, I've probably spent a year of my life at FLW for various schools and it really is worse I promise and those mustachioed 70 year old women at knox looked good at around week 12
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Feb 6, 2017 01:17
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Everything I heard about mixed gender AITs is it always erupted into some drunk orgy on the first weekend pass and I feel like I missed out.
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Feb 6, 2017 01:28
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You're expected to buy new uniforms and boots and stuff. They wear out. You're given an initial issue when you join of 4 sets of fatigues and 2 pair of boots. After that its out of pocket to replace them, which can be frequent, but they throw like $200 a year your way to cover it. When a new uniform comes out like with the ACUs, and whatever they call the new ones, sometimes you're issued a new set, usually before a deployment if you're "lucky," but otherwise you have to buy them. When the new army dress uniform came out they said get hosed, and you had to buy them. They usually have a wear out date on the old uniforms, like 2-3 years past the official introduction of the new stuff. You're typically pressured into buying the new poo poo ASAP because if not then your unit is mismatched and thats how you lose wars and poo poo.
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Feb 6, 2017 04:33
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mercenarynuker posted:Is that how we lost the war? Depending on who you ask, yeah, probably edit: To be clear I'm not even joking. Most probably won't admit we lost though so
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Feb 6, 2017 04:45
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car wash hill bitches
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Feb 6, 2017 04:59
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Suicide Watch posted:What do people in the military stateside do when they're not doing PT, field exercises, or cleaning? Like I know the military isn't a 9-5 job so they must be filling up their time with something? sitting around bitching and staring at a wall while leadership sits behind closed doors talking about football
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Feb 6, 2017 05:12
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Yeah, really there is no universal standard for poo poo, that stuff will be completely different for people depending on many factors. Just to point out that Mustang's poo poo seems like highly irregular to a lot of other GIP posters as it actually seems decent. It's weird as gently caress.
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Feb 6, 2017 05:33
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Kung Fu Fist gently caress posted:hazing or being hazed mostly yeah this, holy poo poo my first year was doing little man in the woods and other varieties of smokings just to amuse people senior to me, for the sin of being the FNG
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Feb 6, 2017 06:15
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Kung Fu Fist gently caress posted:look here boot, when i come into your room at 2 am drunk as gently caress and beat the poo poo out of you in the bathroom, it isnt hazing, its incentive training. tracking?  Now I understand your anger
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Feb 6, 2017 06:16
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Lake of Methane posted:Are there salesmen for … products? Recruiters Like they unironically would show the Alec Baldwin Glenngarry Glenn Ross video as motivation because they were retarded and thought it was inspirational
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Feb 6, 2017 06:19
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suboptimal posted:What's the average level of medical training that an average individual in a combat arms unit usually receives? Is it limited to "this is how you put on a CAT/pressure dressing, good luck" or is it more involved? What were you mandated to have in your IFAKs, and was there anything extra that you would put in yours? It varied I think a lot. The general class for that is CLS (Combat Life Saver) and the first time I took it it was probably irresponsible and teaching poo poo like tracheotomies and the thorax relief poo poo (the name escapes me, the collapsed lung thing where you jam a needle between ribs) Having students give each other IVs in class to learn was pretty bog standard. I took it again like 10 years later it was 100% powerpoint slides and they handed around various bandages for us to look at.
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Feb 6, 2017 06:25
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redneck nazgul posted:
Honestly its for the better because no week long course would ever give me the confidence to do a tracheotomy. Tourniquets sure man that's easy enough
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Feb 6, 2017 06:40
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CMD598 posted:Sounds more like big army cutting costs. that or one time some guy sprayed arterial blood everywhere in a classroom environment taught by medics and the dude still died and the army just said gently caress it. I'm just imagining that but it sounds just as plausible as anything else.
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Feb 6, 2017 08:16
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EVA BRAUN BLOWJOBS posted:Let me give you a personal example. I was running a night range for 50 Caliber machine guns. The last people who have to take the shooting test finish, it's 2 AM, and we have 10,000 rounds left. A normal group of people would turn in the ammunition for somebody else to use, right? Not us. Range guys deem it too much of a pain in the rear end to got through ammunition turn in procedure and decide to shoot it all into the darkness instead. Here's the cost to the taxpayer: Don't forget the ranges at the end of the fiscal year where you just go to shoot poo poo so your allocations don't drop the next year so that you can not use it all the next year either until the last minute. multiply that by every unit in the army, every year
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Feb 6, 2017 18:38
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The Army literally cannot account for trillions of dollarsquote:The United States Army’s finances are so jumbled it had to make trillions of dollars of improper accounting adjustments to create an illusion that its books are balanced.
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Feb 6, 2017 18:42
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When I had to make cold calls, whenever I spoke to a parent who were receptive and suggested that it "might straighten him out" the kid was almost without fail disqualified to join due to criminal record/probation/adhd
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Feb 7, 2017 01:26
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LITERALLY SHAKING posted:Like the recruiters that would forge HS diplomas and GEDs to get people in. Not common, but not unheard of. lol if you think people still don't do that
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Feb 7, 2017 02:03
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before belts were the thing we were wearing the orange vests 2004-6ish at Ft Hood.
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Feb 8, 2017 02:27
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Do The Evolution posted:Is the US army upsizing or downsizing? What I read here indicates the latter, but my friend in intel says they're trying pretty hard to get him back (if you can call a 10k bonus for a one-year reup trying hard, I dunno how good that is for an army grunt). no idea but even with downsizing there can be certain jobs in demand. I just got a text the other day about joining PYSOPS for some reason.
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Feb 8, 2017 06:05
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redneck nazgul posted:On the Army side, being able to yell, recite canned answers from a script, and be in decent shape will get you promoted if there's a slot available. then you just start yelling various lines of the NCO creed at other NCOs to demonstrate your proficiency UH FIRST SERGEANT I WILL ALWAYS PLACE THE NEEDS OF MY SOLDIER ABOVE MY OWN becomes a legit defense lol its all poo poo burn it all down
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Feb 8, 2017 08:19
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Man if people could really do that, enlisted, officer, or otherwise, I think the military would probably hover at about 10% manning.
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Feb 8, 2017 17:47
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Nystral posted:When does my contract start? Say I'm a dumb 18 yr old with high ASVAB scores that never followed up with the recruiter. IIRC I give 4 years to the branch but not when that starts. First day of basic? your basic 8 yr contract (IRR time) that everyone signs begins the day you swear in. Your active duty time starts the day you ship to basic. Reserves also begins the day you swear in. CHICKEN SHOES fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Feb 8, 2017 |
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Feb 8, 2017 22:23
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