While many have served, many are confused by the military's vague language of phonetically spoken letters and numbers with -er at the end, there is something that is as old as the streets that the military has picked up on and is good at....hustling.
With the surge in Iraq came something new for the Army. The 15 month combat tour. If you explore the 15 month tour in detail you will find that most tours are 90% mind-numbing boredom followed by the remainder being the most excruciatingly long, thrilling, scary, and confusing moments of your life.
When the military is engaged in combat comes the strange monster of the stop-loss. Usually stop losses are levied on certain specialties that have shortages to allow the unit to deploy with those "low-density" military operational specialties (MOSs). The Army went from individual based system to a unit based system. So, you get assigned to a unit and a certain time out from deployment that unit has to have a good reason to allow people to leave. We're talking everything from medical to exiting time in service (ETS). Which basically means you've served your active duty obligation and are free to be released back to the civilian world and put on the rolls of the IRR.
The new hustle is the two year enlistment and if you think of it in the context of stop loss and 15 month deployment you'll realize it's not really 24 months at all. It'a actually 2 years plus training. So, your initial entry training (IET)/basic training doesn't count towards your time in the service. After you complete IET you're going to get assigned to your new unit which is based on the "needs of the Army." Well, where do you think the army needs the most people? Probably units that are deploying. So you get sent to a unit that is deploying do a 12 month tour in Iraq come back for a year and go on your second 15 month tour of Iraq or Afghanistan. 12+12+15. Something isn't adding up that's 39 months. That's because 90 days before your second deployment, your 21st month of 24, your unit got stop loss implemented. Now, you have no choice you're locked in to complete that tour. So the Army has now received 27 months of service in Iraq alone, on a 2 year contract.
After you get out most contracts have an obligation to go on the individual ready reserve rosters for the remainder of 8 years. So, you could get called up on IRR recall to go to Iraq or Afghanistan again. Except once you separate from active duty dwell time, the amount of time between combat tours, doesn't matter. So, theoretically, you could be back in theater 3-6 months after separating from active duty. All of this for a two year contract, remember.
That's not even the worst part. Your military occupational specialty (MOS), or job, doesn't matter anymore. So these soldier may sign up to be electronics repair or something of a technical nature. But we dont need guys to repair radios we have contractors to do that, we need gunners and drivers for gun trucks for PSDs, QRFs, and convoy security. So the first and last time they see their job is in their initial entry. It would therefore do them no good to increase in rank and reenlist as electronics repair because they know nothing about the job. Officers can fake the funk, because they are generalists, but if you’re an noncommisioned officer (NCO) in a field the officers, the men and women who make decisions, look to you to help them make those decisions and you dont know anything about it, the Army is going to have issues. So, in short it seems the Army is out hustling itself.
As the Army catches up to the 15 month tour there is starting to be more flex in the system. Such as shorter stop loss windows, and compassionate reassignments. But these are the exception and not the rule, as soldiers just want to do their job and do it with the people they've gotten used to having on their left and their right. So, if it's a choice of deploying with the group you've known for 9 months or the group you've known for 3 months, 3 months later, You;ll pick the guys you've known longer every time.
Because of tremendous backlash from soldiers, family members, and members of Congress it is steadily becoming procedure in every unit to have a General's signature in order to waive dwell time. The General's are making themselves roadblocks to back to back deployments. Because noone below the rank of Colonel wants to see a General except for in their hello/goodbye dog and pony show vists. So, while the Army is responding to pressure within it's own ranks, and external pressure from the politicos and American public change is slow in coming, and the system still has it's ways of screwing the people who volunteered to serve.