SMA Dailey: Army Installation Tasks Hurt Unit Readiness

So deck seaman at sea do not have to do mess cooking and fireman do not have to carry stores and ammunition.

MSG (Join to see) - I thought in the Army you call them Privates. In the Navy we call them seaman, airman, fireman, constructionmen. However they are encourage to "strike" for a rating quickly. The majority of them leave after a four year enlistment as petty officers. A large number of them become career sailors and serve with pride and distinction.

88 Lawnmower operator?

SCPO Morris Ramsey - All privates have at least a primary Military Occupational Specialty before they arrive to their first duty station and there lies the problem. This fresh new mechanic, infantryman, geospatial engineer or HUMINT soldier is now farmed out for a 6 month detail guarding the gates or in the gym folding towels and brain dumps their skills because lets face it Advanced Individual Training is a brief overview of the job and most skills are learned on the job. We do a disservice to those Soldiers but dont want to send our seasoned Soldiers because the mission must continue. So, we can potentially have a Soldier go his/her entire first enlistment not doing their job and getting promoted to supervise in that same capacity. I believe this is detrimental to retention as these Soldier feel the Army has not given them purpose and for the Soldiers under them they feel quite understandably that these Soldiers didnt get the true experience of their specialty.

HAHA MSG (Join to see) sad but very true. Seems like something we just have to plan around in order to keep readiness up.

MSG (Join to see) - What really sucks is that Big Army....and then trickling down.......are so worried about Readiness, Metrics and taskers.......that it does detract from training. Especially in the Reserves/Guard side of the house. My small 11 pax unit (with just one civilian Unit Administrator) have to complete the same taskers as those 100+ pax units with a bigger supply of full time staff.....that we spend so much time during our weekend BTA's that very little time is left for MOS training. We do manage to make it happen, but it's very painful and it's usually by the skin of our teeth. Basically, we can either focus on ALL the taskers during the weekend and disregard MOS training and have to explain why we didn't do training........or focus on MOS training and explain why taskers weren't accomplished. It's a very vicious cycle.

SFC George Smith this is still a thing. Red Cycle is a crazy phase for units, especially during that pre-deployment phase of training.