Why does the Army appear to have a discipline issue with the lower enlisted ranks?

Lack of Respect, Good Order and Discipline go hand in hand with a lack of proper effective leadership. A challenge for sure in the more touchy feely stress card era of our modern military. Today's leaders more than likely have their hands tied and so the "troops" are able to get away with a lot more then perhaps during times past. Morale issues from enduring multiple deployments, entitlement running amok, political correctness, lack of proper accountability for ones actions are just some of the many issues that cause this general lack of respect and discipline you speak of. Great Post Michael. I've not spent much time on here but when I received notice of this discussion in my email I had to come check it out. BZ and All The Best with your paper!

Because we can't all be infantry.

It's the unit. I was in the Infantry and a Combat Engineer and believe me, we didn't have issues like that! As an NCO , we handled business. What you are seeing are the hobbits, pogues, rear echelon units. Non combat units young Capt. I began my service in 1985, also an Army brat, dad was 30 yr MSG, Vietnam veteran, I'm an old school NCO.

Rank, no rank. If I ever had a little shit disrespect me I would tear him a new ass, regulations be damned. I saw NCOs get disrespected back in the 80s because they shouldn't have been an NCO in the first place. I was an E-6 and lived in the barracks with the soldiers for several tours. They knew who they could push and I wasn't one of them. When I was in my room whether it was weekend or not it was "all quiet on the western front." I wasn't the only one though. There were many NCOs I knew that wouldn't take no shit. If I were in the Army today I would probably be brought up on assault charges my first day…….but I wouldn't be disrespected.

Not sure if anyone else experienced this issue but in in recent years during my second time in the Army, I served as a Platoon Sergeant for a while and when assigning daily tasks such as PMCS at the motor pool or other details that would come up, I found that a lot of soldiers would actually pull out the race card and accuse the high ups of singling out certain individuals out because of their race. I personally took offence to this as tried to assign tasks to my soldiers as I saw they could actually accomplish the mission in a timely manner with minimal supervision. When it came to discipline it was the same way. there was always that race card coming into play.

In my experience, it has a lot to do with the quality of the individuals we are selecting to serve in our military. MANY bad choices were forced onto drill sergeants and first units when I came through in the beginning. Having to backfill the servicemembers that left prior to OEF and OIF quickly without properly vetting or training our troops didn't help matters, either. Out of nearly 300 recruits who came through with me in 2000, more than 60% had criminal records. Over half of THAT population had felonies! And that's just one problem.

17 Marines arrested for human trafficking and you don’t have this type of issue. Better wake up Captain.

Is it an issue of discipline, or a matter of observed customs and courtesies? Are they failing to perform their assigned tasks, or just not locking up in casual conversation?

I never felt respected because a soldier stood at parade rest and adressed me by title at the beginning and end of every sentence. Respect was when they spoke to me candidly, heeded my counsel, and when appropriate, carried out my orders.

VOLAR was a problem, down grading was, Untrained soldiers replacing trained Solders after the down grade, auto promotions, on and on. We started injecting the Army with ill trained Officers and NCO'S at all levels. Now today well try not to let this interfere with my Civilian Job. JMT

Is this true about all MOS-es ? I don't see how the Infantry can lack discipline and be combat functional !

TOP Furr is correct. From what I have seen (besides men holding hands in uniform; I guess that's alright but don't get caught kissing a female if you are a male; there's rules about that undermining discipline) . I don't care who you plank off hours but keep the same standard. That's the crux. A lack of stressors on troops from the 1st day is probably the genesis of the problem EX: The last mission or operation I was in; in Africa. Our JSOTF had been up 36 hours to include crew time which was busted somewhere that day; nobody remembers. it was during the Rwandan disaster. We were in the field SCIF when an airman walked in from the JTF and wanted to see me as I was the JSOTF J4. I told him that I would get with him in a few (as I was busy with 5 senior NONCOMS and POs and the OPSO) and please leave the SCIF. The guard literally fell out at his seat so he walked in. The airman said he wanted to talk now and I politely told him to get the fuck out or he would be arrested by the SPs. He came back a few minutes later with a sorry assed AF provider. Our JSOTF senior enlisted was a STS type, E-8. Former 24 STS type. bad ass. The provider wanted to know who I was and he began a soliloquy of why I was "mean" to his E2 by saying "FUCK". The Ranger commo guy and Senior MSG XXXX pulled me off the couple. They never came by the JSOTF but they sent written messages. But the point is WTF is E2 "Smedley" lack of a tough skin because I said the word FUCK? BTW who is he? This was serious business and this kid wanted to see me tight then and there. WTF?

reading all the responses reminds me of the six blind men of indonesia .The parable of the blind men and an elephant originated in the ancient Indian subcontinent, from where it has been widely diffused. However the meaning of the popular proverb differs in other countries. It is a story of a group of blind men, who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and conceptualize what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant's body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the elephant based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. In some versions, they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest and they come to blows. The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people's limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true.
so each man was part right, but blind to the whole truth. :-) USMC 1961 1965

Anecdotal information should not be used as fact in developing a White Paper on any subject. Just saying...

This is said countless of times through different generations, one constantly trying to out brag the one after the next. There’s nothing stopping a PV2 who doesn’t care anymore to tell their 1SG to “Shut up”, that’s not a generation thing that’s a individual thing, always has been. Senior leaders see what they want to see, they see the one soldier not going to parade rest for the 1SG, but not the group of junior enlisted who’s ready to do anything in the world their NCOs tell them to make an impression and be a great group of Soldiers. The Army is huge, you’re going to see a lot more discipline issues then you would in the Marines, nothing a good nco can fix.

When I was a Buck SGT. I had one of my Pvt's tell me I didn't have enough rank to tell him what to do. When I got thru with him, he had no doubt that I did indeed have enough rank.

Because I've been out so long (retired in 2002), I can't really comment intelligently about army discipline now, but I can say this is not the first time and probably not the last time the army has had to and will have to go thru this cycle. During and after the Vietnam War the army had serious discipline problems including near mutiny in isolated incidents.

Because you’re dismissing them as ‘lower enlisted’ instead of mentoring them as ‘junior enlisted’

Honestly I wouldn’t use the “army” as a whole soldier discipline has always been maintained at a nco level Iv seen soldiers with great discipline and some without any and it’s been directly related to first line supervisors and their interactions by getting comfortable with their soldiers. It’s a lifestyle that’s what the army is it is not a job it’s a life style change and people seem to want to be liked by their own soldiers which they don’t go about it the proper way and leave room for that indiscipline. If I as a Sgt ever saw my soldier not go to parade rest talking to any NCO or attention to any officer then I correct them on the spot and make sure to fix it if my soldier ever felt it was ok to tell a 1sg he isn’t better then him because if his rank then I failed somewhere but I’d be damn sure to fix it quick. My soldiers discipline and any soldier 1-4 discipline is directly related to how they are trained and taught yea you have that one soldier. Who does what he wants well that’s easy to fix process him out of the military if he can’t play by our rules

At a previous duty station a general asked the ORSA team to answer this exact question. After collecting the data and running a regressive analysis on it, it wasn’t rank that was the defining predictor. It was age and to some degree, whether or not you lived in your own between Mom’s house and the Army. But it was an interesting age relationship because the curve dips down for folks around 25 to 35, but then cycles up so there is some lack of discipline uptick in higher ages. A lot of that was due to the SIR data. Lots of domestic spouse on spouse issues with the higher ages that resulted in disciplinary action. There is also a lot of variance between MOSs suggesting there is some leadership differences among our various job branches or our branches tend to attract different types of people.

I have been out for a few years now but I would think it is not any worse now then ever before. I believe a lot of kids join the military for a variety of reasons and some of them become disenchanted quickly and fall back to their undisciplined ways.