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Bingo bango bongo. Although I still feel like the bulk of the impact is on retention and not recruitment. I mean, I'm a pretty cynical guy. But apparently I'm not cynical enough. Because before the announcement of the pay adjustments / PLD/CFHD changes, I was damned sure that the raises that...

Because those are two separate skills, trained and practiced separately. The one does not lead to the other. Training someone to march in step doesn't make them better at watching arcs or taking up proper fire positions, etc, nor would training them on those combat skills make them better at...

I mean, yeah, we kinda led the way on that front. And I would like to remind everyone that it lead to months if not years of bitching on this forum, largely from the same people complaining in this thread about rifle drill. And, while we're at it, none of the grand predictions made about how...

No, but those two are more directly tied to attention to detail, imposing discipline in daily routine, etc. Probably not. Likewise for example, the land nav stuff while in the field during basic. Now I'm fairly convinced that you're being disingenuous here. Please at least pretend to argue...

Right, because militaries are typically open to change in the way they do things, and totally never continue doing things solely because it's a tradition.

You don't understand. You can better build the whole by eliminating / de-emphasizing those parts which are less useful / efficient in contributing towards the desired end state. To use a somewhat tongue in cheek analogy, you don't get from point A to point B faster by doing a lot of marking...

I'd say it's the daily routine of basic training itself that does the vast majority of the heavy lifting when it comes to emphasizing the importance of discipline. Get up early, keep things clean and orderly, be where we tell you to be when you tell you to be there, follow this list of rules for...

I believe we're now getting into tautological arguments here. Sure, some folks are in the habit of referring to basically everything we do in a coordinated fashion as "drill". And yes, if we use that categorization, then the first drill that's done is on the parade square. But you don't need...

Clear and valid reasons like the fact that we're hemorrhaging people and that maintaining the the status quo will lead to a complete inability for us to do any aspect of our core mandate? Is that a good enough reason to prompt change? Younger generations are cynical because they've been...

Meh, and if we didn't bother trying to improve quality of life on ships and do little things to raise esprit de corps, we'd be able to bring less violence to the enemy because our staffing situation would be even worse. Our personnel levels are by far the largest threat to our operational...

Meanwhile, the engineer in me would like to point out that there is no such thing as exactly 12 inches; no matter how measured, there will always need to be some sort of acceptable tolerance range within which variation is acceptable. 12.00001 inches isn't exactly 12 inches, but you sure as heck...

Despite the protestations of some people on this forum, buttons and bows, pomp and circumstance, shiny boots, silly hats, and marching up and down the parade square aren't actually "everything [the CAF] does and stands for". We have an actual job; it's about bringing violence to the enemy in...

So... to sum up. You think that we need to teach a lot of drill in basic because otherwise no one is going to think it's important enough to bother teaching it at all. Might I suggest that probably just means that it isn't actually important and we could probably do without it?

The institution may have limited control over the facts of life of warfare, but let's face it, that's not what's causing us to be bleeding people. What the institution does have a lot of control over is how it functions when not on operations. Refusal to do so is only going to further...

You can say that. But if the vast majority of the people who we're trying to recruit and retain think differently, that doesn't make it so. The institution needs to adapt to changing social norms. And one of those strongest shifts is the growing focus that people are placing on work life...

We aren't going to change society's attitudes towards work. Those are shifting away from something compatible with the traditional military model, and, well, we need to work with the populace we've got because we can't recruit from other countries, or other eras. It's borderline insulting IMHO...

Let's face it, there's a reason that we diverged, once again, onto fitness, in a thread about ballcaps. Because the concerns that Castus actually has about fitness levels in the forces has basically nothing to do with the actual ability of people to do their jobs, but has everything to do with...

Do we need to focus on the "core demographic"? No. We need to focus on expanding the institution's appeal beyond the core demographic, because relying upon the outdated model of said core demographic clearly isn't working. We're bleeding personnel for a reason. People need to wake up and smell...

No they won't. That hasn't been the case since last September.

Yes, the Navy had a culture of ignoring rules regarding alcohol consumption. But, well, I really do think that everyone here should be very cognizant of the fact that changing culture is at best, a very difficult task, one which requires buy in from all levels. Lord knows that we've seen this...