Do you think, that our military will recover, after this past few years?

Recover from what? If you were paid well in the past, you haven't had a pay cut that I'm aware of. And for those who think that the changes allowing more Americans who are willing to volunteer to possibly give their lives for their country to serve in the military is something that we need to recover from, take a look at the picture posted with the question. There's two women in it. After WWII, the commandant of the Marine Corps fought vigorously to prevent women from serving in the active duty Marine Corps. He said they had no place in it, and the Marine Corps shouldn't get used for social experiments. I wonder what the woman marine in the picture feels about that attitude.

So there's nothing to recover from. Downsizing happens all the time. It goes in cycles. And what "half heartedness" are we talking about? Does anyone really think the military and their families would be better off today if we had maintained over 100,000 troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting and dying in place of the host nation militaries who have no desire to die for their own freedom? Or stick a few divisions in Syria for the next thirty years so we can ensure that the next generation of Americans will be able to live through a nonstop war? And we do all that so that in 20 or 30 years we finally leave, after thousands of dead Americans and trillions of dollars spent, and the day we leave it all goes back to the way it was before we got there.

If by half heartedness you mean a reluctance to use US troops to fight in local conflicts for decades when we know that the solutions will not be determined by military force, then I'm all for half heartedness. So what exactly is it that we need to recover from, and what different policies do you expect a new POTUS to implement that will change things?

It has to, or we're screwed.

I think the military services and the military personnel will eventually recover SSgt (Join to see). Once sequestration is no longer applicable and we have a POTUS and Congress that has a focused foreign policy agenda things will be to shape up.
I know several of the 4-stars who command the COCOMs and I have confidence that they will do a great job over the next few years to both guide their command and work to improve the military services. Once we have a new POTUS, who hopefully will be much more conservative and consistent than our current POTUS, the bully pulpit can be used to help the people of the USA honor the military service members and veterans.
Rebuilding the recruitment processes so that qualified people will be drawn to the military is important. For DoD in particular NORTHCOM and NGB working with DHS and the States to share relevant intel in real time and protect service members at home against Islamic and other terrorists will hopefully be a good sign.

I think that a lot of what direction the military will go is dependent upon the upcoming presidential election, SSgt (Join to see).

Downsizing and Social Experimentation

Two issues to address here.

Issue Number 1. Military downsizing and cutbacks. To all of my younger military brethren, this is nothing new. Our military has been expanding and shrinking since the the American Revolution. The Navy and its Marines were disbanded after the Revolutionary War due to budget constraints, our overburdened debt from fighting the war and in part to help isolate us and keep us out of the affairs of our European cousins, specifically those of France and Great Britain. For that time ships were very expensive to build, maintain, equip and man. But the reality set in that the young nation with an ocean as its eastern border needed access to the sea to survive. The Naval Act of 1794 was in response to the threat of the oppression of our trade by the British Navy and the attack of our merchant ships by the Barbary Pirates. And hence the American Navy was reborn.

And so it goes in cycles, in time of war, we build up, after the conflict, cutbacks. It happens after every war;

American Revolution
War of 1812
Mexican American War
American Civil War
Spanish American War
World War I
World War II
Korea
Vietnam
Desert Storm

My tour of duty lasted over forty years and I have personally lived through massive cutbacks after Vietnam, again after Desert Storm and the beginning of this after Operation Iraqi Freedom / New Dawn and Enduring Freedom. Speaking of pay, the there was a stretch in the seventies where we received NO pay raise, unless you were promoted, for a couple of years.

Our elected representatives always seem to forget the lessons of the previous wars. The budget cuts never are made with a scalpel, but instead with a meat cleaver. Today our dysfunctional lawmakers abandon their Constitutional responsibilities to fund the government by instituting such legislation such as Sequestration allowing them to avoid developing a meaningful budget. Times could be tough over the next several years regardless who gets elected Commander-in-Chief in the next election.

As service members we need to continue to lean forward in the foxhole and be a part of the solution, not part of the problem. This too will pass and the greatest military in the world will survive as it always has, typically coming back from the ashes even stronger than it was before. It will be painful, it always is. But to put this in some perspective we still spend exponentially more on our military than any other nation.

Issue number 2 is about the military being used as a social laboratory.

Sorry but that ship sailed as early as the American Revolution. One of the first real opportunities for freed slaves was to serve in the Army, on both sides during the Civil War. Yes it basically took an order from FDR to truly integrate the services during World War II, but that was still before most African-Americans were considered for mainstream civilian jobs.

For women it was pretty much the same. Men going off to fight World War II not only opened up opportunities for the Rosie the Riveters of the world but to positions in the military ferrying aircraft to the front, working in intelligence and other support rolls. Again it was a while before they were generally integrated into the mainstream military with the likes of the Women's Army Corps lasting till the end of the 70s, but it happened. In the military women had the opportunity for advancement and leadership rolls that for the most part they were denied in the civilian arena.

So it has been for homosexuals. Just because we didn't officially recognize their existence in the military didn't mean they weren't there. We had one in my unit when I got to Bragg in 1973. They finally "outed" him and put him out for violations of UCMJ, basically because he was gay. During that time there were several cases where "known" gay service members, some decorated Vietnam Veterans, that had served entire careers as honorably as possible given the regulations without problem until that final tour that would qualify them for retirement and then the issue would be brought forward and they would be separated before retirement without recourse.

So yes, the military has always served as a social testing lab. And the same arguments are repeated with almost every new challenge. Then it becomes an issue for service members. Do they obey the oath they were sworn to uphold and obey the orders that they are given, salute the flag, adopt and move on? Or do they make it a personal vendetta and try to subvert the change within the system? Or do they just say, screw this, this is not what I signed up for, pop smoke and get out? It's your choice.

We will recover because it's the troops that make it work.

The military is taking steps... Some of it is in the right direction. Ultimately we will have to come to the understanding that this is a new generation. The question shouldn't be can we go back to the way things were but more of what do we want to be like going forward? Are we going to be less kill, more drill? Are we going to be training warfighters, or Marines? Are we going to follow the doctrine of "the ends justify the means", or are we going to find something new? This shouldn't be thinking of the past; this should be looked at as an opportunity to establish something new. Sure, there are leaks in the pipe and some old tactics might be useful in fixing them, but we should be taking lessons learned both before and after and applying them to something that could be better and greater than ever before. The PFCs today have an average higher IQ than the ones joining 50 years ago; that knowledge should be utilized to its fullest extent.

The US Military goes in cycles. When I first enlisted in 1983, the Army was just beginning to leave the bad times after Vietnam and start cleaning it's act up. My first room was nicknamed "the Zoo", and everyone but me in it got a Chapter 8 for Drugs. We went through almost monthly piss tests, and cleaned out lots of soldiers before establishing a more professional force trained to a high standard. The proof of what happened came in Desert Shield/Desert Storm, where our training and equipment destroyed the Iraqi army in place. The Army will transition from a wartime to peacetime Army again, and no doubt many things will change again, but hopefully dedicated professionals can keep the faith until they are needed again.

Everything in life moves in a cycle. Many thought the military would never recover from the post Vietnam era, yet with the presence of a strong leader and numerous reforms it transformed into a Goliath not seen since World War 2. Yes the military is in decline, mostly because as a nation we have no direction or leadership and second because we as a people have embraced equality in every conceivable way and we have tried to use the Military as some sort of science experiment instead of using the Military for what its made for, the protection of our people, values, and nation. Eventually we will see this error and a reversal will be made. God willing enough of the old breed will still be among us to lead us back to the light.

Recover from what? Doing our jobs?