You have been given the authority to change three things in your branch or DoD wide … What are they?

1. Improve quality of food in the mess halls and in the field. Good chow is a major morale booster.
2. Stop screwing around with benefits and retirement. Service to the nation involves many hardships (more now than when I served). Promises made must be kept.
3. Hold officers to the same, or higher, standards than enlisted when it comes to the UCMJ. Shit flows downhill and it seems like enlisted soldiers, sailors, airmen, coasties, and Marines get punished while their officers avoid punshment and are allowed to retire or resign (as if that is punishment enough).

I don't want to sound bitter, because I am not. I lve the Marine Corps, respect the other branches, and would do it all again if I had the chance. I do know some young enlisted Marines who had the book thrown at them when they followed the advice of their seniors, yet their seniors were let off without even a slap on the wrist.

One comes to my mind immediately. I hated "up or out". I think if you get passed over twice for promotion to a particular rank, its time to go. But I loved being a 1stLt. If selected, I think there should be a "no thanks, I don't want to grow up" option. I would have stayed a 1stLt until my body was no longer capable of the rigors of leading a rifle platoon. Somewhere around 35 years old I would have had to accept "up", if I made that years board.

• Make every Branch work off the same budget constraints the Marine Corps has had to.
• Force the Air Force to develop an actual Fit to Fight/Physical Fitness Assessment that actually shows Physical Fitness. They would have to do this without a budget and within three months.
• Force the General Officers to make their budget cuts from the top down and not from the down up. No Cuts to equipment until the US Army and USMC has been able to mess it up, destroy it, or otherwise prove it is ineffective.
• Not allow any ineffective members serve longer than 6 months after graduating from AIT, Tech School, or 'A' School.
• Randomly select supervisors across the AF and spot check their documentation. If they are not doing Performance Reviews, Feedbacks, EPRs, or MFRs, give them a 2 month cycle to catch up or demote them.
• Force every branch to go back into a common battle dress uniform. Have the Navy try to destroy it, Have the Army & USMC test its effectiveness, and prevent the Air Force from making it obsolete.
• Force all branches to go with the same location for Rank.
• Force Officers (in Garrison, to include Field Exercises) to wear shiny, metal, full color rank. Subdued rank for officers is for OCONUS Operations only, when they do not want to be saluted.
• No Officer is to be saluted while wearing subdued rank.
• Force 15% of all service members to cross train with another branch of service. To assist in best practices being exchanged and learned.
• 10% of Service Members must cross train with Allied Forces for a minimum of 6 months.
• Not pay any Military Member while they are serving as a Military Fellow for Congressional Members. That cost should come from the Politician they are schmoozing.
• All Military Police Branch Members will have to wear their MP Shield while in any Uniform.
• Have the Air Force commit to an “All or None” hat rank and not just officers.
• Pride in Service will be held to a higher standard.
• No longer make a Community College of the Air Force’s Associate’s Degree a Standard for promotion or special duties. If a degree is required, any college should be sufficed. Furthermore a Bachelor’s Degree should trump an Associate’s, and a Master’s should trump a Bachelor’s.
Do you want me to keep going?

1) Allow hazing (still controlled by a salty senior, to make sure it doesn't get personal/out of control);
2) Promote those that are actually worthy and desiring of that rank;
3) Send boots to larger/higher echelon units, where they get exposure, training and then send them down the line;

1. I do what I want.
2. I get paid O-10.
3. I get to pick a five-star and an E-9 to make sweeping changes and run the joint as they see fit, because I have no idea what reality is on a bigger scale; I only know the life of junior Es and junior Os.

Overhaul the personnel system (using many suggestions of MAJ Donald Vandergriff
Re-evaluate the integration of women in the armed forces, focusing on military necessity rather than civilian egalitarian desires.
Make the DoD truly joint by reducing redundancies; unifying the HRMIS's; minimal equipment (uniforms, weapon systems, commo), etc

1. Increase psychological evaluations for enlisted and Officers before they are allowed to enlist.
One must be sure of themselves, for instance
A. Must have a clear understanding that they are either a man or a woman. The military is not the place for you to have a relapse or to be unsure if you feel like a man or a woman when you wake up every morning.
B. The military is in organization that trains and individual on how to kill people. That is the soul purpose of the United States military. You want to build schools and bridges join the Salvation Army or the peace course but do not joining the Marine Corps because you want to build bridges and serve coffee and rice to the natives.
3. Inform all in listed and officers that no matter what you're mos is, you are a basic 0300 rifleman. Because when the enemy comes where the thru line CR your job is the aim that rifle and take out is many as you can I don't care if you're radar technician tank technician super duper Drone joystick operator.
3. And still in all my officers from lieutenant all the way up to General you do not have to fear losing your pension because you don't agree with the current political climate. And to instill also in my officers to keep politics out of the training. And they don't have to fear what some crazy senator are congressman is ranting about on the nightly news.

1. Eliminate all PC, race/gender quotas, set-asides and incentives. One race: Americans!
2. Raise all standards to the same level, male or female shouldn't matter when training for the same job.
3. Re-evaluate cutting score procedures, promotion considerations are not fair across all MOS'.

1. Restructure both the Army Reserve and Army National Guard via the shifting of some actual combat arms units (infantry, armor, artillery, attack aviation) to the USAR and shifting some actual support units (engineer, medical, transportation/logistics and civil affairs, assault aviation) to the National Guard to allow better support for homeland / natural disaster missions.

2. Reform the current military-industrial complex where mergers have now created a handful of mega-defense industries that has over time reduced the overall ability of the DoD to actually have a competitive bidding process for items ranging from aircraft carriers down to small arms and ammunition and even the common gear utilized by the service member themselves.

3. Stop the zero-defects mentality that grips the military as a whole. Let leaders and service members make mistakes. But in doing so, expect accountability when service members are hurt or killed at the lowest level where is actual evidence of a failure of leadership at the level of the incident.

1) The fundamental purpose of the Armed Forces is to prosecute the nation's wars and prevent new ones, so I would actually make it easier for both Reserve Component and Active units, and individual SMs, to deploy into or near combat theaters, and make combat or combat support/combat service support deployments mandatory for retention for ALL SMs, regardless of branch, and no exemptions for "Training Units" or other desk jockeys, either. Cut the mandatory online training back by 85% or better--- almost NOBODY is going to conduct their combat over the internet--- and focus on battle-applicable skills like firing one's weapon, rather than Diversity Sensitivities and such. Make the Physical Fitness standards more relevant to current combat operations, rather than our fathers' combat operations in Viet Nam.

2) Stop using the DoD for social-engineering politics! Those who feel compelled to remove healthy and functional organ systems are not healthy enough for long-term combat effectiveness, and those who use the service as a sexual hook-up source to feed their promiscuity are in for all the wrong reasons, whatever their initial motivation for swearing in.

3) Cut out, gut, and eviscerate (with severe prejudice and malice aforethought!) the bureaucratic song-and-dance nightmare that now handles promotions, evaluations, and assignments in the Reserve forces. Let unit leaders and Senior Raters (MSG and above at the Company level, SGM / O5 and above at Battalion, et. c.), be the decisive authority for promotions up to two (maybe only three) grades below their own, instead of centralizing every decision Army-wide or DoD-wide in an impersonal server in Kentucky and a board of anonymous check-block-inspectors.