I always wonder what it means for enlisted soldiers
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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.
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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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
Surprising amount of work just maintaining all these bases around the world. Training as well but the work is there constantly.
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.
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.
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