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Originally Posted by ArmySGT.
Ending base housing and moving all ranks off post along with all the elementary, middle, and high schools to mingle the military population with the civilian population.
Moving all the college classes off post.... most posts have college courses that soldiers can take weekends and evenings to increase their promotion potential. Their classmates likewise are all soldiers. Sending the soldiers off post into state colleges and mixing them with civilians would be good for both of them.
Make ROTC something applicable to other physical .gov jobs like park rangers or wild life biologists to attract .civ participants and those left of center.
Up the enlistment age to 21. If we can't trust them to make good decisions with alcohol and handguns in the .civ domain; then it stands to reason that some of that embarrassment from company level leadership would be eliminated by maturity too.
Trades skills can be taught and learned in civilian schools. Boilers, carpentry, welding, pipe fitter..... mingle them with the civilian tradesmen and get rid of some of the stagnant fossilized redundant .mil schools.
Open military bases to civilian shops and stores..... Bring more variety and product into a zoned for shopping district.
Bring civilians on post in training programs that the military does well . Land navigation, rappelling, small boats, small arms competition. Some people pay truck loads of money for these taught by former soldiers.
Civil - Military cooperation in domestic and foreign humanitarian operations. The military tends to operate in parallel, but not interoperably.
Train on National Forest and Bureau of Land Management areas in a gradually increasing manner so that the .civ population sees the soldiers first hand in road march and training.
Domestic good will deployments like infrastructure or health programs. .mil co-operation usually entails support of law enforcement or regulatory activities. A six month deployment building roads, water projects, and schools in under served areas or medical missions to rural areas like the interior of Alaska or the four corners regions.
Tours of Duty to public schools for mid career NCOs at high schools to teach civics and mentor youth activities.
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ALL OF THIS WOULD BE GOOD. Give reservists/NG Tricare, or whatever the military health insurance is now, at reasonable cost as an incentive to stay in the reserves/NG long term. Close down the current VA system, turning the hospitals into long term care or rehab facilities and allowing all DAV's to go to the hospital of THEIR choice. This helps local hospitals and reduces VA overhead (and also helps with the staff shortages currently happening). Give anyone who trains in a military skill with a civilian counterpart the civilian rating automatically (like 88Mikes automatically getting a CDL A upon graduation from MOS training) to encourage joining the reserve/NG for job training. Have more individual voluntary reserve/NG deployments to help reserve members actually gain experience in a combat/deployment environment. Allow these reserve/NG soldiers to stay on the reserve/NG unit's rolls (since they will be returning to the unit) so the unit isn't punished for being "under strength" while the individual soldiers deploy.
The greatest thing the US did in the 80's was open up "exclusive schools" like Airborne, Air Assault, Ranger, and Sniper Schools to qualified soldiers in "ordinary" military units (including Reserve/NG units) in order to disseminate those skills down through the ranks. This definitely raised the performance of the units that those soldiers returned to.