Posted on Nov 26, 2013
A Future Single-Service Military vs Branches of Service?
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With budget cuts, debt issues, and penny saving all current hot-topics, what are your thoughts on the idea of a Single-Service Military as opposed to our present traditional branches operating jointly/independently?
Meaning that, for example, the DoD combine specialties (e.g. Medical, Military Police, Intelligence, etc) from each service into a larger pool, much like a force consolidation to reduce redundancies (e.g. Army MP’s, Air Force SP’s, Navy MA’s, and Marine MP’s all provide similar services, and receive similar training, and can likely do the same jobs already. Force consolidation would combined the 4 groups in to one force with one pot of funding, and provide a larger pool of personnel to cover world-wide mission and billet requirements). One uniform, one unified team, greater efficiency? Within 1 service: a single aviation community; a single infantry; a single intelligence community; etc.
Obviously certain traditions exist in all branches, and a level of resistance is expected for such an idea. But with joint operations becoming more and more the norm, is this a direction we might head? Should we?
Agree or disagree, what are your thoughts?
Agree or disagree, what are your thoughts?
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Joint Service
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 27
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<p>We are the United States Military and even though we have our individual branches, economically things should be under one. For exapmple Recruitment Marketing...why are there 5 pots of money for recruitment. What are there 10,000 Army Recruitment Offices, 9000 Navy, 6000 Marines and 1300 AF (estimating those numbers). A person should be able to walk in one office and be able to discuss all service opportunities. there is so much more that can be changed and would save the tax payer money, plus keep out benefits without getting more and more cuts.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
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CPT Jacob Swartout
A joint recruiting office with all branches makes more sense in saving tax papers money. We don't need to have so many branch independent offices scattered all over the country. Each branch can have their own small and separate internal office while sharing a larger common waiting room. I would put the AD recruiter with the RES/NG recruiter for each branch in the same room. Recruits can benefit from all services under one roof.
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LCpl Stephen Tombs
The vast majority of recruiting stations I've seen have been one large room, usually in a mall or other public location with ample space, with one or two desks per branch. Immediately inside the door you'd find a poster outlining the differences between the branches to give you a quick overview before you decided which recruiter(s) you wanted to talk to.
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MSgt John McGowan
TSgt. The local office has 3 branches of the serices in a single location. Army, Navy and my favorite the Air Force.
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I think that would be a mistake--'Economies of scale' and 'Government Run' don't seem to be something you hear in the same sentence. Not to mention, there would be a huge degradation in the culture of our military which would, in turn, lead to other unintended (negative) consequences.
Full disclosure--I am a former Coastie. The size of our branch allows for dynamic problem solving ability that would be lost in a single-service military.
And, it seems like there are quite a few joint operations out there that already exist to fill in gaps that require more than one service to be present.
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