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

Well I was Air Force and Army used to be "really" rank conscious. I got out in 2008. I appreciate structure and I always appreciated being enlisted! NO BASHING, just saying I could talk to an officer easier. That said. I hear that there maybe a "pack mentality" with millennial's hope that is not the case. When I was in it was everyone for themselves.(sounds bad but good) I never thought to gather others and work against our leader or just someone of higher rank. I was busy keeping my shit together :)

I have been out of the army since 1994. I was in the navy from 1997-2000. So, I don't have recent direct contact with the military. But, it is my experience that young people are the same as they ever were. My generation which invented HIPPIES for GOD'S sakes HIPPIES! were the worst generation ever.

A cultural change from discipline to political correctness has eroded respect for military tradition in some branches. Marines will not tolerate such. That is why they can do more with less. Unquestioned authority engenders obedience and effective command.

I'm not sure if this is a "military" problem. I see it as a generational problem. People are growing up with the idea that they are always right and no one has the right to tell them otherwise. They have lost the concept of working for something. They expect it to be handed to them because they "deserve" it. This carries over into the military. When they join, they come with the attitude "just because you're a First doesn't give you the right to tell me what to do.". Society has to change first, then everything will follow. And yes, as you can probably tell from my response, I've been out a while (Oct '71).

It's because of civilian politicians constantly using the Army as their favorite place to do social experimentation. The Army, to its credit, was the first to racially integrate. I believe they are also the first to open most MOSs to females. After that, it seems that it seems like discipline degraded because you couldn't say certain things because it hurts someone's feelings or violated their civil rights. I remember having the race card thrown at me several times when I was just doing normal discipline without regard to a person's color. I remember when we were told we could not use certain cadence calls will marching troops if they had profanity or were sexist. Every cadence that I learned as a private fell into that category. When I became a Drill Sergeant we were told that the new policy required cadences that were gender-neutral, not sexist, not violent and not profane. No more "Yellow Bird" or "I saw an old lady" or "I wish all the ladies" Then we had a Brigade Commander that would get on the bus with the new recruits coming from the Reception station, just to catch us verbally abusing the new troops. We also couldn't rush them through chow like they did when I was a recruit. Some of the new requirements made a little sense, but most of it tied our hands on the discipline level and the troops knew it. Today's society has brought this into the Army. Kids that smart off at their parents and teachers and are not afraid of the consequences and come into the Army with the same attitude make it really hard to instill a respect for authority. They are really quick to yell I'm going to the IG because you hurt my feelings. It all goes to crap from there.

More senior enlisted and the vast majority of junior officers are from the same generation as the enlisted. Sure, in the case of the NCOs they been in for a while but, seeing as how they know and understand the nuances of the what and why for these new soldier’s are less likely to use disciplinary techniques that instill the military bearing, etiquette and discipline of old.

Sadly, this can only get worse before it can get better.

In 1985, the US Army in its infinite wisdom chose to eliminate Sp5 and Sp6 ranks, thereby thrusting thousands of people into positions of "rank" and "authority" that they were neither mentally capable of handling by natural ability nor mentally prepared for handling by military training. These were not bad people, they were skilled workers who were extremely capable of performing their MOS. I served in the mid to late 80's and early 90's and watching some these people, cry out, "I'm a sergeant, I work for a living..." only to follow up with "I don't work for a living, I get paid to supervise only." You would quickly lose respect for these types of half-wits. I firmly believed that everyone in the Army deserved every penny possible, but not everyone should have been a leader whether the driver was a commissioned officer or a non-commissioned officer (NCOs). Officers were rare and NCOs should have been a rarity in any unit. The Army had too many chiefs and not enough Indians. To make matters worse, Promotions points stayed at 999 for many MOSs, stagnant NCOs would take up a secondary MOSs in an effort to get their next rank. So many would come into our unit (tractor-trailer unit in central Germany) absolutely skilless, and put people in danger through acts of wrecklessness, but at least they could puff up their chest and say, "I'm a sergeant, I'm a leader of MEN..." as if that excused their incompetence. These types of things led to many discipline problems that have continued to this day.

IMHO, a large part of the overall discipline problem in society as well as the military today can be traced back to the decision to remove prayer from schools. Growing up in that era I was able to observe kids who did not attend regular church services have an awareness of personal accountability. That accountability has largely gone away as the result of Dr. Spock has been the loosening of discipline in both the home and schools. Between Dr. Spock and the loss of prayer in schools there was a loss of the moral compass, having a better understanding of right and wrong, and thus respect for others has lowered...especially those in authority positions. As I remember, a few years ago AF basic trainees were given some sort of "timeout" system that allowed them to avoid being yelled at and actually punished. The discipline problem in the military is due to the lack of discipline outside and now trying to instill a foreign concept into minds that don't want to accept it. My rant, sorry.

I apologize for the length of this and if it seems to jump around a lot. I haven't slept and I have class in a few hours.

I will say that this issue is not solely limited to the Army. After I got back from my deployment, almost all of my shop had turned over and it was almost completely new Marines. Before I got out I was made the platoon sergeant for my shop and I noticed a prevalent trend amongst the younger Marines. They were a lot faster to make accusations of hazing or that you are targeting them if you attempt to discipline them in any way, shape, or form. If they gave attitude and the next day for PT you ran a particularly rough session, it was "hazing", as was making them stay past 1700 for inventory. The issue that I had was that the SNCOS would go to the defense of the junior Marines, rather than backing the NCOs to enforce discipline. I don't know what happened while I was gone, but when I was a Junior Marine, I would have *NEVER* mouthed off to an NCO, they didn't do it to me so much as they did it to my Corporals.

This inconsistency and crumbling of the chain of command created even more problems, it got bad enough at one point that the company 1stSgt had to have a separate sitdown with the Junior Marines, the NCOs, and the SNCOs (SSgts and GySgt), and basically told the Juniors that not everything under the sun was hazing, and told the SNCOs to allow the NCOs to do their job and stop letting the Junior Marines jump the chain of command.

One thing that I found worked was that instead of any sort of traditional verbal adjustments, or extra work, I was having to rely on formal counselings more, and also a bit of extra scrutiny on field day. This allowed me to keep a signed paper trail on any misconduct, and it covered my ass if any accusations were made towards me. After the talk with the 1stSgt, I also made it a point to pull up the UCMJ and outline many of the articles that they could be charged with if their behavior did not change.

I also made it a point to never be in a counseling one on one with a female junior Marine, I always made it a point to grab one of the female Sergeants to act as a witness. I think in the 2 years that I was an NCO, I only had to raise my voice twice, so that they knew that If I was at that point, things were going to be very bad for them very fast.

It's a changing Corps and leadership needs to stop trying to be friends with the Juniors and start being leaders again.

Once standards were lowered to allow women in the military the standards could only go down