But the military shouldn't be a means of an easy retirement
I've heard that from many people that have never worn the uniform.
Few jobs in the military can really be described as easy.
I don't consider what I did to have been terribly hard or particularly dangerous but not everyone gets a kick out of spend 80-90 days at a time submerged in a steel tube more or less entirely cut off from the rest of the world. Of course we weren't always on extended deployments. Most of the time we were on "weekly ops", at sea for 2-7 weeks at a time involved in training exercises, NATO ops, reactor inspections, weapons inspections and the like.
In port time of course allowed for upkeep, repair and maintenance of equipment, training, duty days, stores loads etc etc etc... Oh and there were always a few days to be spent with family, needs of the Navy permitting of course. The last 3 years on a boat we were in port less than 9 months total, So average something less than 3 months a year at home.
My first tour on a boat came after about 18 months of electronics training after basic. Then another year learning my job on the boat. It takes about a year to "qualify" submarines then the learning starts, you either earn your dolphns or your surface fleet bound. Then the rest of the first enlistment getting good at the job and starting to train the guys coming in behind.
Of course not all of my 12 years in the Navy were at sea. I spent almost 4 years as an instructor at Sub School in Groton teaching an advanced ESM system.
Yeah shore duty. Of course the CO of Sub School didn't think shore duty should be any kind of break and thought it should be considered an arduous duty assignment and operated accordingly.
Let us not forget that the military gets 30 days vacation a year right off the bat. Of course that includes weekends and holidays if your leave period included those days. And, unless you were on PCS orders getting more than 14 days leave at a time was out of the question.
Easy? not really.
I only stayed 12 years and decided to go elsewhere. So I don't have a dog in the fight as to the cuts in COLA or any other retirement benefits.
