People can generally work 4-12 without much trouble or needing to recover after it other than weekends. Doing 12-8 might be an every other night kind of thing. Having a couple people handing those off might just cover it.
- the disregard for health and wellbeing of each soldier
- being required to do nonsensical things that are counterproductive and likely compromise medium-to-long term goals of the outfit you're attached to
So I agree with what you said - there is very likely a way to schedule these shifts so that these problems do not occur. The Army has little interest in this though, their requirement is that the shifts need to be covered and they currently are so there is no problem.
edit: updated comment to be country agnostic
“The “Comprehensive Crew Endurance Management Policy,” signed off Dec. 11 by Naval Surface Force Pacific and Naval Surface Force Atlantic, is the first update to the joint instruction issued just months after two 2017 fatal at-sea collisions rocked the Navy.”
Basically the crews were too tired to think clearly and crashed into things, causing damage and deaths on their ships.
https://news.usni.org/2021/01/28/latest-surface-navy-sleep-p...
The isn't a strategic or tactical purpose that makes this kind of situation an intentional or desired outcome. Any sufficiently large organization, and this especially holds true by militaries, are typified by the following two characteristics. First, turnover at scale necessarily prevents the rank-and-file, in aggregate, from learning and developing over time. Every year, X number of people will leave the organization for reasons the organization can't control (retirement, spouses moving, legal mandates, whatever) and they will be replaced by people who are completely unfamiliar with the organization and any lessons the people leaving may have learned. Not replacing the people leaving will leave positions unfilled, which is untenable, so they will be filled by whoever is around to fill the chair. This is inevitable and unavoidable. Second, there are only so many issues that upper management can focus on. By the time people rise up through the ranks and get into a position where they have the power to do anything, the vast majority of what it means to exercise that power is to act like a hospital at a mass casualty event - triage for the most critical issues that need your attention and trust that a solid reliance on process will prevent anything else from collapsing.
If you're looking for logic then you don't understand how these organizations work.
The logic is that everyone must be replaceable on a moments notice because they might be shot and someone else will need to pick up that job. Having roles that you need to be intimately familiar with in order to be effective is the exact opposite of what the military needs. If a job can be done by someone with minimal training while desperately sleep-deprived then that is perfect for their needs.
Exceptional workers in key (non-management) positions will take whatever they've learned with them, never to return. That leads to failed excavation projects looking for the original reasoning and business logic. Then, things need to be recreated from scratch because there is no alternative besides hiring the former worker as an expensive consultant. All because people failed to plan ahead and guarantee actual continuity, focusing exclusively on the small subset of elementary tasks. In the end, the work becomes more disorganised and product/service quality suffers because of gaps in domain knowledge, context and competence.
That myth might be relatively harmless in the primary and secondary sectors to a large degree, but is actively harmful in the tertiary, quaternary and quinary sectors. If you factor in that most of the work - both in terms of quality and volume - is done by a small minority of employees, the prevailing management dogma is costing companies lots of money to entertain the notion that worker retention is a secondary consideration. It's especially myopic because it usually doesn't take a whole lot to keep people happy in their jobs, leveraged as they are by their own obligations.
I've seen this both at large, stodgy organizations that have frequent layoffs and at smaller organizations with Frank Underwood CTOs.
Bottom performers get managed out on the firms schedule, but top performers find their way out on their own schedule. This can lead to great chaos.. people getting un-fired, throwing money at the key man risks you accidentally created, and over-correcting with too-fast over-hiring which then leads to inevitable future firings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_Joseon
http://www.koreatimesus.com/hazing-deaths-in-korea-disturbin...
When I was on guard duty it was usually a 24h shift followed by a 24h break for a group of 8 or 10 privates and 2 NCOs. That means that roughly a quarter of the company is permanently detached. If you switch to 12hour shifts, you have to consider that normal operations take place during daytime. At any day you then have three groups unavailable: One on duty, one resting from the night shift, and one preparing for the night shift.
My view about being a soldier, a serviceman has changed drastically during that projects. The cause is noble, and the thing they're doing is very hard. Make no mistake here.
On the other hand, they're stripped of their emotions and humanity to an extent. They become something else, an hardened being after some time.
Because, they need to do what has to be done and they shouldn't think through it, but just act.
I'm a grandson of a commander. I love soldiers, but this is how they're trained, and this is how they should be to be able to perform this duty.
So, I contend you find remarkable soldiers even in terrible groups, and that they (individuals) should not be judged on their group but on their own qualities of service.
Whether you find those parameters noble is entirely subjective and not mine to question but I do believe anyone who sincerely understands and accepts these obligations deserves respect, as an individual.
So, we should praise ISIS fighters? I am intentionally picking up example of extreme, but very real organization. Same question can be asked about SS members. They knew what they joined. Does them doing good job in that organization is really praise worthy?
The better quality their service was, the more victims they have.
You're distorting it. I was trying to point out that, they have to deform themselves to somewhat non-human states.
It's not valid only for servicemen. Firefighters are same. Police are same. Long haul truckers, cargo ship crew are same.
I think everybody making sacrifices for doing what they find worthy are eligible for some respect. They accept to deform themselves to do something they find value in.
Do not add ethnicity, politics, geography, race into this. It's about being human, and other parts are neither part of my comment nor has place in this specific thread.
> soldiers even in terrible groups, and that they (individuals) should not be judged on their group but on their own qualities of service.
Unless you was forced into that group, which was not case of SS but in some cases could be ISIS, you know what you were joining.
I don't think sacrifice itself is worth respect, if the goal of that sacrifice is destructive and wrong. If you sacrifice yourself in service of group that does genocide or tortures to get power and so on, you did genocide and tortured people so that your group have power. The ideology of "sacrifice is worth respect no matter what" empowers exactly these groups first. Believing this makes people more likely to join these.
The victims, especially those who stood against that group should be celebrated. Those who said "no" deserve respect. Those who were avoiding still deserve more respect.
Wrong is a subjective term and relative to viewing point. This is exactly what I'm avoiding here. I'm not discussing whether it's right or wrong from one particular perspective. Moreover, I'm trying to direct discussion away from war and other sensitive matters with all the power I have with my words, but you want to fixate the subject to ISIS and other terrorist organizations, that's fine.
As a citizen of a country which has to defend against terrorism in point-blank distances, I understand you, but forcing the subject to this perspective is not correct, at least in this context. Especially me, as the OP, trying to clarify it further.
My family is a victim of a genocide, but world won't acknowledge it. With your reasoning my family was on the wrong side, in a war which they weren't actively participating and was not killing anyone.
When a TV channel renames the people killing our citizens, they become heroes. They become right and we become wrong. Hah.
So, don't pull this into politics, war, genocides and other stuff. That tar pit is not a part of this conversation. It shouldn't be.
Leave it here. End of this slope is not pretty.
It is simply not true that all armies would primary defend. You make the "state run army therefore good" implication, not me. You are not leaving politics out when you claim that sacrifice of joining army is always wortht of respect. It is very political statement that prevents criticism of armies and empowers abusers in uniform.
What you are doing is trying to divorce consequences of joining those organizations and paint their members in unfairly good lights.
Sacrifice is also subjective. Some of those people like the organizations they are in.
Maybe the armies I've seen are only were defending and wasn't causing any harm, and my view is distorted on that one. I can accept that. OTOH, the core of my comment is "Accepting a hard duty and dedicating yourself to it at the level of deforming yourself is worthy of respect".
This is not a weapon/army thing. Healthcare workers are doing this for more than a year now and most people respond with "So, what?". This is just ridiculous.
> What you are doing is trying to divorce consequences of joining those organizations and paint their members in unfairly good lights.
That's a brave accusation considering the information I've disclosed in the comment you're replying to.
> Sacrifice is also subjective. Some of those people like the organizations they are in.
Liking an organization doesn't exclude sacrifices. A lot of people are sacrificing their personal and family lives because they like the corporations they work in.
The aforementioned healthcare workers also fit into this definition. This is not a job which you can do without liking/loving. It also needs some sacrifices. Both personal and interpersonal.