Military personnel
Military personnel or military service members are members of the state's armed forces. Their roles, pay, and obligations differ according to their military branch (army, navy, marines, coast guard, air force, and space force,), rank (officer, non-commissioned officer, or enlisted recruit), and their military task when deployed on operations and on exercise.
Overview[edit]
Those who serve in a typical large ground or land force are soldiers, this branch is the army. Those who serve in seagoing forces are seamen or sailors, and their branch is a navy or coast guard. Naval infantry or marines serve both on land and at sea, and their branch is the marine corps. In the 20th century, the development of powered flight aircraft prompted the development of air forces, serviced by airmen. The United States Space Force service members are known as guardians.[1]
Designated leaders of military personnel are officers. These include commissioned officers, warrant officers and non-commissioned officers. For naval forces, non-commissioned officers are referred to as petty officers.
Demographics[edit]
Military personnel may be conscripted (recruited by compulsion under the law) or recruited by attracting civilians to join the armed forces. Most personnel at the start of their military career are young adults. For example, in 2013 the average age of a United States Army soldier beginning initial training was 20.7 years.[2]
Most personnel are male. The proportion of female personnel varies internationally; for example, it is approximately 3% in India,[3] 10% in the UK,[4] 13% in Sweden,[5] 16% in the U.S.,[6] and 27% in South Africa.[7] Many state armed forces that recruit women ban them from ground close-quarters combat roles.[8]
Personnel who join as officers tend to be upwardly mobile young adults from age 18.[9][10] Most enlisted personnel have a childhood background of relative socio-economic deprivation.[11][12][13] For example, after the US suspended conscription in 1973, "the military disproportionately attracted African American men, men from lower-status socioeconomic backgrounds, men who had been in nonacademic high school programs, and men whose high school grades tended to be low".[9] However, a 2020 study suggests that U.S. Armed Forces personnel's socio-economic status are at parity or slightly higher than the civilian population, and that the most disadvantaged socio-economic groups are less likely to meet the requirements of the modern U.S. military.[14] As an indication of the socio-economic background of British Army personnel, in 2015 three-quarters of its youngest recruits had the literacy skills normally expected of an 11-year-old or younger, and 7% had a reading age of 5–7.[15]
Military personnel must be prepared to perform tasks that in civilian life would be highly unusual or absent. In particular, they must be capable of injuring and killing other people, and of facing mortal danger without fleeing. This is achieved in initial training, a physically and psychologically intensive process which resocializes recruits for the unique nature of military demands.[16][17][18]
According to an expert in military training methods, Lt Col. Dave Grossman, initial training uses four conditioning techniques: role modeling, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and brutalization.[17] For example, throughout initial training:
In conditions of continuous physical and psychological stress, the trainee group normally forms a bond of mutual loyalty, commonly experienced as an emotional commitment. It has been called a "we-feeling", and helps to commit recruits to their military organisation.[21]
Throughout their initial training, recruits are repeatedly instructed to stand, march, and respond to orders in a ritual known as foot drill, which trains recruits to obey orders without hesitation or question. According to Finnish Army regulations, for example, the close-order drill:
In order to ensure that recruits will kill if ordered to do so, they are taught to objectify (dehumanize) their opponent as an "enemy target" to "be engaged", which will "fall when hit".[17][22] They are also taught the basic skills of their profession, such as military tactics, first aid, managing their affairs in the field, and the use of weaponry and other equipment. Training is designed to test and improve the physical fitness of recruits, although the heavy strain on the body also leads to a rate of injury.[23][24][25][26]
