Military worried that soldiers are getting bored without wars [View all]

[n2doc]

There’s an old saying that war is 99 percent boredom and 1 percent sheer terror.

Now that the war in Iraq is over, operations in Afghanistan are winding down and budget cuts are curtailing training missions, several Joint Chiefs told Congress on Monday they’re worried that their troops are “bored.”

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said he recently met a group of young pilots who are eligible for an incentive bonus to stay in the force. “Of that group, there were six to eight in the group, none of them had accepted the bonus to that point in time,” Welsh told the Senate Armed Services Committee, during a hearing on the impact of sequestration. “That doesn't necessarily mean they're planning to leave the Air Force, but it certainly means they're keeping their options open as a minimum.

“By the way, it's not just pilots. I was at another base where a couple of very young airmen told me that they love the Air Force but they were bored,” he said. “Their particular squadrons were not flying. They were sitting on the ramp because of the reductions last year. And they said at the end of their enlistment they planned to find work that they thought was a little more exciting. I haven't heard anybody in our military say they were bored in quite some time, so that got my attention.”

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http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2013/11/after-war-budget-cuts-top-brass-worry-troops-are-bored/73478/