The reason for the poor state of morale?

Wow. What a hard hitting, eye opening article. I saw this starting in 2009 before I chose to leave... It is not looking good for the home team.

"Life in the military has a lot of rewards, but also a lot of sacrifices and hardship. What has made soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines withstand those hardships throughout history is a sense of belonging and the knowledge that someone has their backs.

The source of the military’s discontent doesn’t lie in money. It's in the fact that many in the military believe that loyalty currently only travels up, not down."

Can't emphasis this enough. It's not about what they are doing in terms of a big picture (deployment, budget cuts, etc), it's what they are doing to support the individual service member (hostile work environment, toxic leaders). We might mumble and moan about the drop in BAH percentage or not matching inflation rates, but what really affects morale is the day to day operations. I've had multiple experiences where my command, IG, and EO do not care about the regulations or upholding the Army values. So if leadership doesn't care about what is legally and morally right it's easy to see how your average Joe gets fucked over.

I can't remember the last time anyone in my unit asked me about my personal life. It's lonely to have no purpose in my unit outside the work I do.

A well written article.