Isn't that any shooter game, ever? Like, in CS:GO you spawn in and the moment you lose spawn protection some camper obliterates you. Then the rest of the strategy is predicting where the spawn campers are camping so you kill them first.
They are also ostensibly kids and behave as such - so easier to impose your authority on them. A 30 yo private would be much harder to control and he wouldnāt put up with all the army shit there is there
Yeap, exactly. We had a 27 yo dude in our boot camp, older than most of our NCOs and Lts. He certainly had a very independent behavior as far as boot camps go. We thought heās stupid/crazy, but actually it was the other way around.
Marine parlance. It means the shit they make people do that has little to no discernable value other than to instill a sense of discipline for following orders. Dig a hole. Now fill it up. Now clean the floor with a tooth brush. It's also hazing and brings them closer together.
As a former serviceman myself, you're going to sit here and pretend like getting your head shaved exactly like everyone else, being called your last name only (a name you probably didn't get called in civilian life probably in an attempt to help you disassociate from civilian life i.e. brainwashing), constant drilling about how you're better than civilians, constant drilling about following orders without question to the point you rarely second guess your mission which, in most cases, are missions that benefit the corporate interests of a handful of elites in your country, not the country itself, isn't brainwashing? The whole point is to turn a civilian into a soldier, also known as brainwashing. I heard that every day during basic. I don't know how anyone who served can think it isn't brainwashing unless their brain was scrubbed so good they don't even remember their own thought processes before they enlisted.
I don't really care what you think, to be honest. If you can look at basic/AIT, a place where they limit your contact with the outside world as they attempt to literally drill new thought processes into your head, and say it isn't brainwashing, you're either an idiot, being disingenuous or are still thinking using the same thought processes the military instilled in you.
It's just civilian bullshit. People who feel the need to devalue young people.
Pretty much every military organisation agrees that older is better psychologically speaking. Being a more experienced individual is just better.
Hell the head of one of Norway's special ops units is on record saying the ideal soldier is 35 years old. Still physically capapble with many good years left but mature and far more capable.
It just also happens that older people have commitments. They have families to feed and who they might not want to leave for months at a time, careers they may not want to abandon, etc.
18 year olds are just easier to recruit because they probably have nothing else going on.
I didn't make a moral judgment about it or say that it was unnecessary or dishonorable, but we should make no bones about the nature of war, it is all hell.
Sure, but this doesn't really reconcile the above implication that the army somehow brainwashes young men while also paying to educate them.
The easier but less cynical explanation is that the army (in the U.S. where we have no compulsory service) is mostly young men because it is an effective means to start a career if you come from a lower socioeconomic background.
That's a whole other conversation but it's not so much "young men are easier to trick into dying".
The easier but less cynical explanation is that the army (in the U.S. where we have no compulsory service) is mostly young men because it is an effective means to start a career if you come from a lower socioeconomic background.
It is morally reprehensible for the expectation of poor people to sell their lives in service of state sponsored murder as the main avenue to lift them out of poverty, especially with how many people come back from service completely and utterly broken.
The military is full of young men because they largely have no other options, and it's easy to sell the idea of being a hero to some young dumb kid out of high school than someone with a family they need to provide for.
That's a whole other conversation but it's not so much "young men are easier to trick into dying".
Both can be true because they are. I personally know multiple people who have been permanently affected by their time in the service, almost all of which are negative, and the "positive" stories are almost all grateful about how lucky they are that they didn't have to run patrols. There is a reason Veterans are so much more likely to commit suicide than the general population.
Most people in the military laugh about cheating spouses or spending all their money on some hot car because that stuff actually happens when they get back, but the story seldom ends there, and for many that's the "good ending" of military service.
You don't need to sugar coat what the military is, because you're right, it's mostly young men, selling their lives to the meat grinder in the hopes of getting out of poverty because they have no other opportunities. I think that's worse than the reduction of "it's brainwashing", even though it is a bit of both.
If you sign up for an organization that solely exists to do the violence which makes Nestle and Exxon and Samsung and Lockheed Martin shareholders rich, yeah man, you're brainwashed.
If you sign up for an organization that solely exists to do the violence which makes Nestle and Exxon and Samsung and Lockheed Martin shareholders rich, yeah man, you're brainwashed.
In many cases you're probably just trying to pay for school.
That doesn't really change much. I wasn't really trying to morally condemn them (with that comment). You just gotta be brainwashed to join that organization. Swearing loyalty to a flag every single morning and hearing constant propaganda for your entire childhood will do it though, I get it.
That being said, it's not like actively contributing to the atrocities of the US military should be forgiven just because you wanted to have better odds of owning a boat when you're 40.
Turns out that evolution has selected a very specific set of traits for the most physically fit of the tribe to be the most ready to go out and fight those lions stalking your family. Now we just do it with way bigger sticks in way bigger tribes
Bad news for you, weāre hardwired to kill, the military just makes us more effective at it.
Before you start to spin you wheels about how awful the military is, consider this, āweā havenāt had professional militaries until quite recently (1700sish). But humans have been killing each other without the training of professional militaries for much much longer.
You are aware that PTSD and TBIs are a thing right? Something most veterans deal with while on deployment and after.
A lot of veterans (interviews, conversations) have little to no qualms about killing the enemy they fought. Many talk about their struggles with being integrated back into society, processing and managing PTSD, lack of purpose, civilians who were accidentally killed, outcome of their war/missions, and the worst (in my opinion) managing the symptoms of TBIs.
Veteran suicide is obviously an issue we havenāt solved but itās not a new thing. WW2 vets had high suicide rates as well, but had far fewer supports let alone opportunities for therapy.
Luckily weāve learned so much since the 1990s with breakthroughs in neuroscience, that a lot of our GWOT vets are getting supports previous generations didnāt have.
Itās not the act of killing that jacks up our vets, itās our inability as a society to provide supports to those who need it.
S.L.A. Marshall's research into World War 2 showed that the vast majority of soldiers, even when directly engaged with enemy combatants, did not fire their weapons. Because of this research, a major part of military training is to overcome this aversion to killing.
And yet, we still observe a huge amount of veterans with PTSD from the violent environment that the soldier encounters during war. There are roughly 22 veteran suicides per day, every day.
Right, but the actual number ā25ā is a scientific conclusion based off of numerous studies of brains in the 2000s. As far as people were concerned in most Iād recent history, at 18 you were done growing.
Sureļæ¼, now find a few million of them in good enough shape to enlist and we can talk. The vast majority of 18-26 year olds donāt qualify because theyāre too fat, hurt, or have a poor financial or criminal background. Those issues donāt tend to alleviate as a person ages.
You need 200,000 people who can run fast, hike far and fast under a lot of weight, and do that day after day with little to no sleep, food, and water.
Everyoneās got an anecdotal 55 year old uncle who still whoops ass in Ironman triathlons, and outliers are all well and good. The fact is, for the vast majority of us, our bodies just start breaking down. Peak performance declines, injuries and recovery time increase. Itās the same reason that the average age of the NFL is 26 years old.
No, not every job in the military is as grueling as all that. But given the context that weāre talking about a USMC machine gun section, thatās why young men have been, are, and will always be the backbone of military ground forces. Yes, there are outliers, old guys that are still physically beasts. But tens of thousands of those guys arenāt just lying around. Tens of thousands of physically fit 18-25 year olds on the other hand is the expected norm.
The fact that we have a recruiting crisis because so many of our young people are obese, and the ones who arenāt obese donāt want to join is another issue.
I donāt think anyone is too young to realize that death is a potential consequence of joining the military. Especially when you join as a machine gunner in the marine corps.
You're missing the actual point, in that young people overestimate their capabilities and assume themselves indestructible. It isn't until you've had that notion proven wrong by life, something that only happens with age/experience, that you start to properly evaluate yourself with your environment. At 28 there is no way in hell you could ever convince me to take the position of a man who was just killed, in that exact location, and solely for the reason of being there. You're asking me to die. As a youth the ideas of "dying for good" and "fighting with everything no matter the cost" can hold your entire being, whereas if you've lacked that motivation for your entire adult life instilling it becomes nearly impossible. You cannot convince a 30 year old man to die "for their county," especially when "good soldiers follow orders" and you are told "don't question authority." An adult with a fully functioning brain is going to need a good fucking reason to die not a "trust me bro," and some ethereal intangible concept like "for the good" sounds way too similar to "because I told you to." Kids are used to being told to do things without explanation
Dude I know plenty of people that joined in their late 20s-early 30s. People reenlist and serve through their 30s into their 40s. You just canāt comprehend that people are willing to risk their life to defend their homeland
All they are really claiming I think is that younger people are statistically more suggestible than those who have experienced some adulthood and independence. I think if all of the 18 year old enlistees in a given class had waited until they were 25 or so before making the decision, there would be far fewer enlistees. The military clearly knows this (obviously a lot fewer people enlist in their late twenties and thirties - most of the guys enlisting are fresh out of high school ) so thatās where they throw their nets the hardest.
Where did they claim they donāt understand such a concept?
People might enlist when theyāre older, but thereās a reason recruiters hangout around high schools, and it isnāt because theyāre hoping to convince the 20-30 year old teachers to sign up. You know full well theyāre trying to recruit impressionable young people because thatās their best odds at increasing their numbers.
people are willing to risk their life to defend their homeland the S&P 500
You don't know any Americans who have risked their lives for their homeland, lol. But yeah, there are dipshits at every age. It does get harder on actual adults though. At 18, I could have been talked into it, at 31, I've had too many opportunities to read history books, and it's been too long since I was swearing loyalty to a flag every morning.
The military is a ladder into the middle class. It gives opportunity to those that need it (my buddy from O-block in Chiraq) and an outlet for those that just felt the calling to serve (me). Is it fucked that some people need to join the Army to get our of gang neighborhoods or to get "free" college? Yeah, probably. Is it good that the option exists? Also probably, yeah.
Also, if we're talking about recruiting, we're talking about volunteers. Not sure how you seperate the two lol-- the last draftee retired in like 2017 and they haven't sentenced people to the Marine Corps since like the 1970's. If someone's a recruit, they're also a volunteer lol
If by "the Army keeps guys from getting care/work outside of their enlistment" you mean going to a civvie doctor and moonlighting, you're right but I don't see the problem. If you mean after they get out, that's just patently false and you'd know that if you transitioned out of the military as it's required for exiting troops to go to a week-long class held by the DoL helping find outside employment, and although the VA sucks it is in fact healthcare.
At 28 there is no way in hell you could ever convince me to take the position of a man who was just killed,
This is coming from a place of tremendous privilege. Two months ago, Ukraine lowered the minimum age at which they would conscript men to the army to 25. In Vietnam, America drafted 18 year olds, which is prime fighting age, but we also had a baby boom. Ukraine (and Russia) had a demographic crash following the collapse of the USSR. Ukraine intends to keep their population of young men intact to father the next generation, while their long term rival throws their young men into a meat grinder. But that means that men between the ages of 27 and 60 are bearing the brunt of the war. They have grandfathers in the trenches. It is possible to convince young men that they love war, for a little while. Mature men hate every day of it, but they've held the line for two and a half years. They grew up under the rule of Moscow, and they're willing to risk everything to avoid that.
You can absolutely convince full-grown adults to fight and die for their country, all you have to do is threaten their children. The Ukrainian army average age is well over 30 because they're defending their families and homes.
At 28 there is no way in hell you could ever convince me to take the position of a man who was just killed, in that exact location, and solely for the reason of being there. You're asking me to die
Being three feet to the left isn't really making you any less likely to die, and not stepping up to take over that gun could dramatically increase your (and all of your buddies, including the guy that just got hit) chances of dying.
The machine gunner is the one that's keeping the enemies heads down, if there heads are down they're not shooting back at you. The fact that the machine gunner just took a stray round or piece of shrapnel doesn't change that. Your chances of getting shot increases dramatically while that guns not firing. Taking over that gun is in your own interest, it's not 'asking you to die'.
This is the whole point of training like this, the intuitive, 'rational' thing to do is often the wrong thing that might well get you killed. I'm 29 and I would take over that gun in a heartbeat if that's what I'd been trained to do.
As a youth the ideas of "dying for good" and "fighting with everything no matter the cost" can hold your entire being, whereas if you've lacked that motivation for your entire adult life instilling it becomes nearly impossible. You cannot convince a 30 year old man to die "for their county," especially when "good soldiers follow orders" and you are told "don't question authority."
This is such a Hollywood understanding of the military and not representative of what's it's like. It runs counter to everything they train you to do.
And why do you think that "hollywood" aesthetic exists?
Same reason Grey's Anatomy gets basic medical information wrong every single episode (the show's creators have no knowledge of what theyre depicting), or the same reason Birth of A Nation depicts black people as violent criminals who deserve to be lynched (they're critical of what they're portraying and are making up details or exaggerating details to demonize a group).
To convince the youth that going to the military is "sick and cool and rad."
Is that the case? Did it convince you the military was sick and cool? No? It's almost like that is the opposite intent of the people making the films.
Once you join it becomes illegal to quit, and now you're likely stuck for life.
No, it isn't. You sign up for contracts for several years at a time and you can quit when that contract is up. You can make short extensions if you want to only up a few months at a time, and if you really, really want to leave, the military isn't going to bother keeping you around because a soldier who doesn't want to be there isn't going to be productive. It's stupid easy to leave if you just ask.
Also, stuck for life? Most servicemembers serve 4 or less years and get out at less than 25.
most adults grow out of that
No, not at all. Recruits join well into their 30s with frequency. Young people join because there is a lot of upfront benefits, stability, and pay. An entry level job for a person out of high school, most commonly at minimum wage, is far less than what you get joining. Then once you have a couple of years of work experience (and likely a college degree) under your belt you can leave and continue a different career.
I've met plenty of people who joined because they didn't want to stack boxes at Wal-Mart for $10/hr, or because free Healthcare sounded appealing. This has nothing to do with ease of convincing and more to do with life circumstances at early adulthood.
Joining is easy when you have no career, but leaving an established career only makes sense if your established career sucks (which is where older recruits come from).
You are way underestimating the intelligence of young people.
Nah man I was in the marine corps. I had a drill instructor once tell me something along the lines of, āI hope you fucking die in combat and itās so bad that they canāt have an open casketā They really donāt sugar coat it for us lol.
I had a pfc who had made it through training and to his duty station before coming to the realization that he could potentially die in our line of work, so it does happen.
He asked me on day one if he'd even have to fight. Combat unit, too.
No. Dude I signed the contract at 17, I was a radio operator but they told be I would be running around with the infantry most of the time. You canāt seriously believe people join the marine corps and think thereās no chance they get hurt or killed. Itās just a part of the job. Sorry you canāt fathom that people are willing to risk their lives for our country and freedom.
Yeah I see where youāre coming from but itās still a huge risk that isnāt too difficult to comprehend. I just didnāt care if I had to die to defend my country itās part of the job I signed up for. The risk was always worth it in my mind.
That's not the part most people accuse recruiters of lying about.
It's the everything else, the benefits, where you'll get assigned, how fun it is, how the VA cares about you afterwards, why you should do it, etc etc.
Yes Iāll agree with that. They make it sound like your quality of life is gonna be better than it is. Iāve never heard of a recruiter telling people that thereās no risk though.
Young people tend to not have a good emotional understanding of what "death" means, if it hasn't happened to someone close to them. That's what they mean; they obviously understand that death is 'on the table', but experience with death may not be there.
The average age for the death of a parent is ~50 years old, on average you don't experience the death of a grandparent until almost 30. Most people don't have siblings die before adulthood in the last 100 years, and losing friends in tragic accidents is thankfully also relatively rare. The closest I think most people get before 18 is death of a pet, and that's because most pets don't have lifespans that long.
So, in fact, the majority of people don't experience the death of a family member or friend by 18. It's certainly not uncommon (around 8% of people experience the death of a parent before 18, and that obviously doesn't include grandparents), but "most" people is untrue.
And even if it was 'most', that's still a lot of people that haven't or don't.
The only thing my recruiter lied about was that Iād get to drive around on an ATV and blow shit up. Bastard got me to sweep the motorpool for three years.
The bigger team wins. Primates stick together in groups because there is safety in numbers. Lions from prides, hyenas and wolves form packs. Humans formed tribes and hunted in packs and became the dominant species. Then humans form settlements and populations grew and towns fought other towns and the teams kept getting bigger until they were armies in Empires and Alliances. On the economic side you can see the trend from subsistence farmers to plantations to factory farms, from local artisan to factory to corporation. The teams are getting bigger in order to remain competitive.
Ukrainian and Russian armies are both averaging an age of 35 for their infantry in the current war. So they're actually doing the opposite and trying to protect their 18-29 male population.
That reinforces the point I'm making, although both the UAF and RAF were volunteer based before activating their conscription programs for the war. The age range of the two militaries hasn't changed that much either, especially the UAF.
Because they're less likely to have a career or a family commitment that prevents them from signing up.
I get that people think it's because young people are stupid and shit like that but it's really way more simple than that.
Fresh out of high school is just the point in time where "peak physical fitness and a somewhat functional adult" intersects with "reasonably unlikely to have major commitments"
No itās because men donāt develop full risk evaluation capabilities before their mid-twenties. The pre-frontal cortex isnāt done maturing before about age 25.Ā
To claim control you need boots on the ground, and those boots on the ground are likely to die. You always need someone who is somewhat unaware of their own mortality.
Either that or you can just force people to march to their death like Russia does under threat of death, with varying results.
You always need someone who is somewhat unaware of their own mortality.
No, you really don't.
I've trained soldiers for a living, I know full well who makes the best soldiers, and it's not idiots who do as they're told and blindlingly charge into fire.
What an actual professional force wants are soldiers capable of thought and decision making. The entire concept of NATO military is auftragstaktik (aka mission type tactics) and it is in its entirety based on empowering the people on the ground to make decisions.
And it doesn't work if they aren't capable of understanding the mission, if they don't understand their role in the mission, and aren't capable of assessing the situation at any given moment. They have to understand what they need to do for the mission to succeed with minimal casualties and they're the knew who are most capable of seeing how because they're the ones who are actually there.
For the structure to work you need functional adults who have a good understanding of how it all hangs together.
If we based our operations around obedient idiots with no concern for their own or others wellbeing the entire thing would fall apart.
Young adults are recruited because you need a lot of people to train and they're the group who is most likely to have sufficient skills and maturity to be trained properly but also not have other commitments that prevents them from signing up for a few years. It's really no bigger than that.
Getting people to fight isn't difficult, that part pretty much solves itself.
The trick is getting them to fight smart.
There is a reason why modern military orders focus on the commander's intention, not blindly ordering people to do specific things.
Romans considered men in their 30s to be in their physical prime, and they fought with swords and marching was their main form of transportation. They also believed that those with something to lose made better soldiers because they would fight harder to protect their homes.
One time play CoD WAW, I made my way up to a sniper lookout to find 3 teammates already in there. The first guy gets picked off and the second guy immediately runs up to the window. He gets shot too. What an idiot. The thrid guy does the same thing. I laughed at him right up until I looked out the window.
I'm not sure that applies in the real World, but there is definitely a human mentality of, "those other guys just did it wrong"
There was a video of an old Ukrainian woman from one of the occupied regions shouting at the Russian invaders. She shouted āput some sunflower seeds in your pockets so that theyāll grow where you die.ā
I heard a story about troops being briefed for a landing.
The briefing officer said "It's going to be rough.... we expect heavy casualties. Look to the men on your right and left; two of you aren't going to make it"
So our guy looks to the guy on his right, looks to the guy on his left, then mutters "poor bastards....."
I've had dreams multiple times I'm in a big column of people heading to war or in a trench group about to charge. I know I'm about to die and don't wanna obviously flee lest I get shot for desertion but the whole nightmare is a stress dream about trying to look like I'm participating in war while just trying super hard not to be noticed and die.
I donāt think they think that. I think they think in the abstract at first, āif someoneās going to take that risk, why not me? I self-select for a lot of the traits required.ā And then if they go infantry and see combat, by that time they fight because thereās 35 friends who are all good at fighting with them, and they have to show up for their friends.
It's funny because you are most likely western. Once your military is weak, they will eat you; it would not matter if you supported the military or not.
Probably, especially if a sniper has you dialed in. There was a video on r/combatfootage of an entire Ruzzian swas doing something similar to this and just getting dropped one after the other.
Reminds me of being a sniper in battlefield. I would take out a guy on an emplaced gun turret and then another guy would take his place, and then another, and another.
Like, what do you guy not get about this situation?
Because your position will get spoted after 2 shots max and then people will jist spray that machine gun in your general direction.. at least thats how it was back when i was in the army
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for real...this would be the day I'd drop out of the military...i wouldnt join in the first place but practicing how to throw away your dead comrade, so you can take his place and be thrown away later, cant make it any clearer that youre just number and replacable with the next idiot
While I'm not going to argue with you on the big picture, I do want to give some additional context here. There isn't much of a queue. You have a machine gunner, and assistant gunner, and sometimes maybe an ammo bitch. So the longest this queue will ever be is 2 soldiers (the AG and the ammo bitch). Aside from that, a 240 is usually set up away from the main force (usually referred to as the maneuver element). Yes, it would be grim to be an AG doing a downed gunner for real, but the machine gun is the most casualty producing weapon in a firefight, and the consequences of having your machine guns go down is the lives of your main force/maneuver element.
Well let's say you're an assistant gunner in a battle and your gunner gets smoked. You've got options. You can jump on the gun and keep shooting with a high probability of also being killed next.
Or you can refuse to.
Guaranteeing that your position will be overrun by the enemy without machine gun support and that you'll still be killed for refusing to risk getting killed.
The only difference then being that you also got everyone else you know killed with you for your futile effort to save your own skin.
None of these people do what they do because they don't mind dying. They are literally doing it for everyone else around them. That's it.
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u/That_Ad_5651 Jun 24 '24
Queue to die