Originally Posted by
Phil_R
I'm coming at this from a UK perspective but I had a conversation with three people around the age of twenty a couple of weeks ago in which one of them said she'd considered joining the military, but rejected the idea after looking into it. We were astonished as she didn't really seem the type. Further discussion revealed the following reasons for this, which all three agreed on.
- They found military appeals to patriotism laughable and wondered how desperate anyone would have to be to rely on that sort of persuasion;
- They didn't believe recruiting commercials depicting military life as adventurous and fun, assuming that military service would mostly involve living in a mouldy house interrupted by brief periods of standing in the rain absorbing personal abuse for meagre wages. "Worse than prison" was one comment.
- They didn't like or trust politicians and did not want to work for them;
- They didn't want to be forced to participate in possibly-illegal, clearly-pointless wars (Blair following Bush for reasons of his own personal aggrandisement, etc).
- They simply didn't consider the UK cared about them enough to be worth defending, given the poor life prospects of people their age in 2022.
Every single one of them said they'd be more than happy to take any necessary risk to defend things they personally felt were worthwhile and I don't think modern youngsters are particularly more cowardly than those of the late 1930s. Still, whether you agree with these people or not, these are very hard things to change in the minds of potential signers-up, not least because some of them are pretty well true.
P
I'm 40 and I thought that 20 years ago after 5 years in the ATC and a 4 year degree. I'd seen what went on and how they lived and the type of people you'd have ot take orders from. The only thing that could have persuaded me to put up with that was the chance at a front seat, preferably in a helicopter or a.n.other aircraft. As it was UAS only recruited those with no need of glasses so off I went to design aircraft.
I still can't disagree with anything those young people said.